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RIAA Short on Funds? Fails to Pay Attorney Fees
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Can it be that the RIAA, or the "Big 4" record companies it represents, are short on funds? It turns out that despite the Judge's order, entered a month ago, telling them to pay Debbie Foster $68,685.23 in attorneys fees, in Capitol v. Foster, they have failed to make payment. Ms. Foster has now had to ask the Court to enter Judgment, so that she can commence 'post judgment collection proceedings'. According to Ms. Foster's motion papers (pdf), her attorneys received no response to their email inquiry about payment. Perhaps the RIAA should ask their lawyers for a loan?"
So where is all that cash going that they are "winning" in settlements??
Oh, that's right! Straight to the artists' pockets. Sorry for the stupid question. I was wondering how Fiddy Cent's new gold tooth was financed.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
IANAL, but I think this would be a good time for Foster to hit 'em with Contempt of Court... Is that possible?
It removes responsibility. In particular, assume that RIAA declares bankruptcy, or simply decides to say that it is none-existent. The labels will simply spin up RIAAII. What is needed is to require the parent companies to take full responsibility for ALL of their subsidiaries, ownerships.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually, this shouldn't surprise us. They haven't lived up to their end of the copyright bargain, either.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Knowing they lost the next best thing they can do is delay the payments in court as long as they can.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Why should they pay when they can ignore it and make her go through the extra steps to actually get the cash? Is there any penalty for failing to pay?
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
*piracy - producing crap loads of crappy music and selling it at over inflated prices
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex. I could pinch them."
Marvin the Martian
I wonder if they've structured themselves that they can simply close whatever small working unit owes the fees.
...refuse to buy from our music industry overlords.
According to Ms. Foster's motion papers (pdf), her attorneys received no response to their email inquiry about payment.
If you're trying to collect money owed due to a legal ruling, it'd be prudent for your attorney to pick up the phone, and/or put the request in writing and send it via certified mail.
I hate the RIAA and the assorted *IAA's that seem to want nothing more than to force me to re-buy something I've already bought over and over again, but is an email inquiry really worth anything? There's no real mechanism for guaranteeing delivery of the email, short of a reply from the recipient. If they'd sent a certified letter and heard nothing back, that'd be one thing. But an email seems to be wide open to "we never got it" or "the guy that checks that account was out the last two weeks."
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
"Your Honor, we ask for your understanding and leniency in this case. Rest assured my client and I are suing people as fast as we can. I mean, it's not like money grows on trees. We have to wring it out of grandmothers and college students and people who don't even have PCs and hey, those cheap bastards just aren't coughing it up like they used to. Plus, it's getting harder and harder to trick the public into buying the latest Bubblegum Boys album. So even with a crappy contract that guarantees poverty for the musician via advance fees, bills for studio time and 18th century "breakage" clauses, times are tough for us over at the chrome & glass RIAA skyscraper. We need just a little more time to get some cash together. We've got hungry executives to feed, and those Gulfstream jets don't exactly fly themselves, you know... etc. etc. etc."
Or something like that.
Other than having assets seized by the Sheriff and auctioned off to settle the debt? No, none.
Which occasionally leads to an attorney for a major corporation running to the court house steps as said corporation is about to have its home office auctioned off to cover some paltry judgement. Sometimes the suits forget that the legal process does in fact have an end game, and that their team lost.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Get some perspective, consider how much record labels make, then look at the amount they owe: $68,685.23. I dunno but that seems like a bit like saying someone is broke when their child asks them for a quarter for the gum-ball machine and they shrug it off. Even if said person was broke you'd think they'd find a way to get a quarter to keep the screaming kid happy :-p
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Here they're spending about $5000 in attorneys fees to try and squeeze $543 out of a 20 year old. I guess
-they really do need the money, and
-they're really bad businessmen.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I don't believe that you have any requirement to communicate with someone who owes you a judgment at all, much less prove that you did. It's their obligation to pay, and to prove that they paid to the court. The legal document that needs to be sent certified mail is the complaint they're placing before the judge (and I'm sure it was), not the request for information that was sent via email.
That's what the 'post judgment collection proceedings' are all about. The RIAA would be wise to just pay up before things get really expensive for them.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Looking at the actual motion at irweb, It appears that
the judge may have erred slightly in procedure. Apparently
the order and judgement were not put in separate documents
or were not filed as separate documents. I'm not exactly clear
since I am not a lawyer. The motion is to correct the paperwork
by filing a judgment consistent with the court order of July 13, 2007.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
It's true that the person themselves has no mechanism to force payment, but that's just true in general - if someone owes you money and won't give it to you, you have to petition the court for redress. The court has the power to enforce the judgment, up to and including having officers of the court forcefully seize property to auction and even piercing the corporate shield and finding the corporate officers in contempt and jailing them. It would require a blatantly, outright corrupted judge to refuse to enforce the ruling (you could possibly petition a superior court in that case) and they never would have won the judgment in first case if the judge was that corrupt and that willing to show it.
OT: I was going to use "Therein lies the rub" as the title, but it looks like that is an abuse of the original phrase.
Surely in a music related thread it would "Theremin lies the rub"
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
IANAL, but I think this would be a good time for Foster to hit 'em with Contempt of Court... Is that possible?
Kind of. However, you damn well shouldn't be using email:
According to Ms. Foster's motion papers (pdf), her attorneys received no response to their email inquiry about payment. Perhaps the RIAA should ask their lawyers for a loan?"
What, a letter via registered mail was too expensive? Gimme a break, guys. This crowd should know, email is easy to lose (on purpose or completely accidentally) or never get in the first place. Registered mail, someone has to SIGN for and accept. Then they have no wiggle-room...the other party is holding on to a piece of paper with your (or your representative's) signature.
Please help metamoderate.
I installed a 'spam filter', or should we say 'spam shredder', in my RL mailbox. After that I haven't gotten a single herbal advertisement, etc.
Oh, and I'm loaded now since my cell-phone provider and landlord seems to have forgotten to send me the bills these past few months.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Too bad that Capitol Records has plenty of office space, furniture, computers, and don't forget very expensive studio recoding equipment that they own. There is probably $5-10 million in each recording studio worth of assets that can and will be auctioned off if they fail to pay.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Maybe the RIAA should release an album - If it was a hit and not downloaded too much they could collet enough royalties enough to pay for their court cases.
Sounds like they're too busy spending money producing good music. And by good I mean horrible.
You really should do some research on how this sort of thing works. If you have a judgment against someone who has the assets, it is generally a very simple process to force collection. In California, you subpoena appropriate employees of the company in to court to answer questions - somebody like the CFO, to answer questions like "Where are you bank accounts" and "What is the account number and current balance" and "What is the license plate number and VIN of every car owned by the RIAA and issued to employees to use." Then you just pick what you're going to have uniformed Marshall's deputies go out and seize, at gunpoint if necessary, to sell off. Banks are very cooperative about taking money out of a bank account.
And if they ignore the subpoena, judges tend to do things like issue arrest warrants, eventually.
Anybody who fails to collect on a judgement against someone who actually has the wealth has no one to blame but themselves.
Hell, even $cientology was forced, on pain of prison time for higher-ups, to pay a judgement.
Is there somewhere where we can send donations to help out the poor beleaguered RIAA, who can't afford their legal bills? -PHiZ
Pretend I said something meaningful or insightful here.
It's the RIAA's stubborn refusal to pay a single cent in exoneration that puts them at the top of the list of most evil organizations ever!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
IANAL, but it appears that dia-RIAA has the option to appeal the judge's order. The defendant needs to get an official judgement in order for the clock to start ticking. Otherwise dia-RIAA can just wait forever.
Regards,
Art
You obviously don't use Hotmail.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Send them directly to me. Make them out to CASH, which is much easier to write than my entire name otherwise. I promise to be as honest in passing along the proceeds to the RIAA as they are in all of their other business dealings.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This isn't really news so much as it is just the result of the apathetic civil justice system in America. Our judicial system here is really only expedient with executing (most) sentences when it is a criminal trial (convict goes to prison immediately usually). When it comes to civil cases, orders and judgments can take forever to be enforced. This isn't news, just a fact of our broken system.
The worst is when an attorney for whichever side will act as an officer of the court and then you're liable never to get your paperwork from them (or judgment). These private attorneys are money-hungry and as a result over-worked and almost never bother to make sure that things get done unless it benefits them directly.
In this case, I'll bet the only reason her lawyer is pushing the judgment is so they can collect the fees for their time. If she were collecting something she'd never see it except for maybe pennies on the dollar from the collection agency.
* Fat Tony voice *
Excuse me Mr. RIAA, I'm a building safety hobbyist. Just out of curiosity, how fireproof is your building?
To stop referring to RIAA and start using the names of it's members. RIAA is nothing, and when they fade into the shadows it's members who drive it's current tyranny will walk around as if they were pristine.a boutus_members w ho_we_are_board.
It's not RIAA, the real culprits include: 20TH CENTURY FOX
A&M Records
Arista
Capitol
SonyBMG
Universal Music Group
Virgin Records America
and a slew of others you can find at http://www.riaa.org/aboutus.php?content_selector=
Of particular note is their board of directors http://www.riaa.org/aboutus.php?content_selector=
Honestly, are their lawyers telling a judge that Sony, Universal, Virgin and the rest are low on cash?
Pathetic to the n-th degree.
Hope is the currency of fools
But if the parent was actually serious that makes it all the funnier. Before Napster, I'd bought 12 CDs over the course of 3 years. Within a year of using Napster, I'd bought 20. After 4 years of pirating music I'd bought 400 CDs.
I bought more music when I had the chance to decide if I liked the CD first... and I was happier with my purchases.
It's a matter of public record.
I know. Humor is lost when used with lawyers..
The truth shall set you free!
I thought when he said bullet point maybe he meant they would whip out some powerpoint presentation. Hey, it makes about as much sense.
Get a clue. ALL governments (whether legitimately elected ones or even evil dictatorships) should enforce a strict monopoly on violence - no one else allowed to shoot people except the government. Whether you're the Gov of Switzerland or Saddam, that's how you keep order in a country AND stop others from usurping your authority - if you allow a mob leader to go about bashing others, he might gain power and kick you out next.
The justice system decides who should be punished. The cops/military are to come in whenever the justice system gets ignored.
With your suggested "abolition of the civil justice system" it'll be "winner is the one left alive with the most after the civil war".
You may like that, but I hope most people don't.
Which sentence? There are two in the quotation.....
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
You can't sue someone else 'til the claims of another case you lost are settled.
I doubt that they can't pay. They just don't want to. They want to make people suffer. They want to make people invest all their life to fight the harrassment, because they dared to stand up against the extortion. The message: You better just pay and go on with your life, because the alternative is to invest more of your time than it's worth.
Create that law. As long as you didn't pay in case A, your case B is stalled. Because, hey, if you can't pay in A, what keeps you from suing everyone and their dog, even if you lose you don't lose. You can't lose more than you have.
Because for me at least it's clear what should be the logical consequence if you lose against the RIAA and are forced to pay more money than you make in your lifetime: Sue every single record company for idiotic reasons. I mean, what can you lose?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is precisely the kind of behaviour to be expected of a big modern corporation. It's not quite accurate to say that they ignore the law completely. It's more that they don't have any of the emotional respect for law that some (I hope, many) of us individual citizens have. Sure, we might cut corners in a few small matters... parking where we technically shouldn't, taking some stationery from the office cupboard, that kind of thing. But we would never dream of defying a court order.
Joel Bakan explains what's going on in his great book The Corporation. Thanks to a framework of laws set up in Britain, the USA and other places in the late 18th and 19th centuries, corporations get treated as people - except that they don't have all the responsibilities of people. You can't imprison a corporation, and if it runs out of other people's money, it can simply declare bankruptcy and leave everyone else holding the bag.
As Bakan explains, while corporations are hard to pin down legally, they are increasingly compelled by law to leave no stone unturned in the search for profits. Not just profits, maximum profits. Not just maximum profits, but maximum profits NOW. That makes them liable to behave, in some important ways, just like human psychopaths. A corporation has no "better nature"; no decency, no innate or learned morality, and very little actual reason to fear the law. To it, "ethics" means a set of showy acts designed to improve its public image.
So it's hard to be surprised when a corporation behaves the way the RIAA has done. It simply compares the upside with the downside, and acts accordingly. Don't expect it to think or act like a decent human being: there's no "there" there.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.