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RIAA Accepts $300 Offer of Judgement In Carolina
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a North Carolina case, Capitol v. Frye, the RIAA has accepted a $300 offer of judgment made by the defendant. This is the first known use, in the RIAA v. Consumer cases, of the formal offer of judgment procedure which provides that if the plaintiff doesn't accept the offer, and doesn't later get a judgment for a larger amount, the plaintiff is responsible for all of the court costs from that point on in the case. The accepted judgment in the Frye case (PDF) also contains an injunction — much more limited than the RIAA's typical 'settlement' injunction (PDF) — under which defendant agreed not to infringe plaintiffs' copyrights."
Seems like a reasonable resolution for the defendant. $300 to make a lawsuit like this go away could be worth it if you don't really have the financial means to mount a decent defense and there's no way the RIAA had spent less than $300 to that point, so they lost money on the deal. This a very low settlement amount for the RIAA, so it's possible others may be able to utilize this.
It'll be interesting to see if the RIAA accepts it if anyone else tries it.
Providing that's possible, of course...
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Your post is redundant if anything.
Now that I've meta-moderated your meta-moderation, I need a nap.
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
I'll be sure to ask my lawyer to translate it for me.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
True, but on the other hand it's entirely possible she was guilty, knew she was guilty, and thus saw this as the cheapest way out. Which is not to say that the RIAA could have proved it to the satisfaction of the judge, but rather that the defendant knew she was wrong and owned up to her mistake.
Get thee to Wikipedia!
/d?/ was seen as an incorrect spelling. In the context of the law, however, judgment is preferred."
"The spelling judgment is found in the Authorized Version of the Bible. However, the spelling judgement (with e added) largely replaced judgment in the United Kingdom in a non-legal context, possibly because writing dg without a following e for the
Actually, RIAA won. In simple terms her offer was "Okay I'm willing to plead guilty and pay you $300 inclusive of everything" and RIAA accepted. So the award is made against her. It's different from convincing the RIAA to "drop the matter".
We should note that their are other situations where the "j" pronunciation with "dg" is found, such as the English town of Bridgnorth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgnorth) So there are still places in England where "dg" is the correct spelling. This probably stems from earlier times when spelling in English was less consistent and not as standardized.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I believe it was a hypothesis, not a conclusion, and I'd expect everyone to have figured out that the courts aren't always able to determine truth... Or do you think someone is only guilty or innocent after the findings of a court, regardless of what actually happened in real life? Put another way - if courts are able to reach accurate verdicts 100% of the time, no matter the nature of the case, why is there so much unsolved crime? The Justice System is pretty good, all things considered; but it's not at all like television. You don't always get fingerprints; you can send stuff off to the lab and get a clearcut answer all the time...
A cheerful little bird is sitting here singing.
...Because we all known that the Holy Bible is a great source of factual information!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
I love the way people keep throwing around this word "guilty". Like this is a criminal case. The longer people apply criminal law terminology like "guilty" and "innocent" and "theft" the easier it will be for the copyright owners to get new criminal laws passed.
Stop playing their game.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Not really. First off, you don't plead guilty in civil cases such as this. Second, courts have held (see, e.g., Scosche v. Visor Gear) that Rule 68 judgments do not have a preclusive effect on litigating issues they dispose of. Therefore, the RIAA probably cannot take the Rule 68-based judgment and use it against this defendant in a future case to avoid actually litigating the issues in the future case. Numerous sources indicate that Rule 68 has the sole purpose of encouraging settlement.
Finally, the real issue that was raised and to which I responded: There is no precedential effect, no matter how you take the Rule 68-based judgment. Legal precedents are only as to issues of law. It seems that no interpretation of law was made here, and any issues that were disposed of by the judgment are factual in nature. There is no such thing as a legally binding factual precedent.
Even if the RIAA took it all the way to trial and won a judgment of $8 billion dollars, it would likely still have next to no precedential effect. It's not like you can go to another court with a different defendant and say "See! We over there against that chick, so, Your Honor, you have to give us money from this guy too!" Thankfully, whatever faults it does have, the American legal system doesn't work quite like that.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
WTF are you talking about? It makes perfect sense.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I dare you to try to recover more than that.
If you don't recover more than that, you're going to be liable for all of the court costs from this day forward.
If you've got the guts, bring it on.
If you don't, pick up the $300 and get out of my life.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
But there are consequences if the RIAA accepts the offer. There is a judgment against you, which shows up in a credit report, and in view of the judgment you can't claim to be the prevailing party and assert entitlement to attorneys fees.
But for many the Rule 68 offer of judgment will be a useful tool.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Since most written languages in the Western world were standardized by their translation of the Bible, the Bible is a great source for this information.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Note, in cases in which the suit is simply wrong in alleging you've fileshared, an "offer of judgment" is going to SHIFT THE BURDEN TO THE RIAA to make DAMN sure they haven't been careless in their statement of claim. An offer of judgment is apparently going to be POWERFUL in fighting these b*****ds. And if you're a one-file-at-a-time kind of guy, $750.00 is cheap to buy out of this fscked-up RIAA misery.
Congress should rein in the **AAs, but I doubt they are going to. This is a great evil. Corporate America has co-opted our culture and is fighting hard to keep control in perpetuity.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
One of the dot coms I worked for imploded. During the implosion there was a lot of confusion over who owned what, at the center of all this controversy was a little sun box that contained the source code for the company product.
At the time I was the IT guy for this company. I took my orders from the CEO because the CTO was just psycho. In one of the meetings between me, the CEO and CTO the CTO accused me of being on "Mind Altering drugs" at work because I had a can of get this.. Jolt Cola on my desk (This CTO was a devout mormon)
The CEO fired the CTO, then decided to pack up our office and head north from Sunnyvale to Alameda. Being the IT guy, it was my job to make sure the computers made it up there safely. A few months later the company completely imploded, everyone went off to work for different companies, and that was that or so I thought.
About a year later I got a court summons. The CTO was suing me for $15 million dollars. I was being accused of "Stealing his source code" because apparently the company didn't own that little sun box I moved. After a few initial rounds in pre-trial we were all set to go to trial.
My lawyer and I were sitting out in front of the courtroom when we got a surprise. The judges assistant came up to us and started telling us the CTO was willing to settle for $1500. He explained it like this..
"You know toq, we're really sick of this asshole. Me, the judge, the other lawyers all think he's a cocksucker, but you already know that. Just take the settlement"
Me, "But I didn't do anything wrong"
Assitant, "Well let me put it to you another way. If you don't take this settlement, it's going to mean a trial, which is going to mean jurors, and a whole bunch of menusha I don't want to get into, but it's going to cost ALOT of money. The judge is going to look at the fact that you didn't take this $1500 settlement, and wonder why you costed all these people time and money"
Me: "So the judge just wants this out of his hair, is that what you're saying?"
Assistant: "Yes"
So I took the settlement, nothing went down on my record.
I'm guessing this $300 RIAA case is the same deal. The judge probably got sick of the team of lawyers that represent the RIAA tying up his courtroom with petty bullshit, and i'm guessing the person taking the settlement got the same speech I did.