Boston Judge Denies RIAA Motion for Judgment

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a Boston case, Capitol v. Alaujan, the defendant is representing herself, without a lawyer. Nevertheless, the Judge denied the RIAA's motion for summary judgment, which the RIAA had based upon the defendant's alleged failure to respond to the RIAA's Request for Admissions. The Court's decision (pdf) held that the RIAA had served its requests for admission prematurely, prior to the conduct of any discovery conference. The Court also noted that the RIAA had upped the ante quite a bit, trying to get a judgment based on 41 song files, even though it had originally been asking for judgment based on 9 song files. This would have increased the size of the judgment from about $7,000 to about $31,000. The Judge scheduled a discovery conference for October 23rd, at 2:30 P.M. and ordered everybody to attend. Such conferences are open to the public."

Comments

Re:Judges should ENFORCE the law, not MAKE it.

[stratjakt]

No, judges do not enforce, police and prosecutors do the enforcing. But that would be criminal law, and this is civil.

The judges job is to interpret the law, as it is written, and based on past case histories.

I do agree with your sentiment though, too many judges are trying to go against precedent and legislate from the bench.

shaving is for female interest

[circletimessquare]

women, in general, like men without facial hair. women wear lipstick and high heels for male interest, men shave for female interest

again, considering the forum, i am not surprised you don't know this

Bottom line

[stox]

Since the defendant is Pro Se, the judge forbid the plaintiff from rolling over the defendant on a technicality, and sited another technicality to make sure. This sounds like a great judge, who believes in the spirit and not just the word of the law. I wish we had more like her.

Re:Newsworthy

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Why is this news? I think it is better served a an example that even the poor are getting a fair shot when defending themselves from huge corporations with tons of money backing their case. Not only do I see this as promising, I see it as a possible assault to the RIAA style tactics. Most people wouldn't have the money to pay the settlement or the full fine so why not fight it even if you have to learn how to in the process. Worst case scenario, you have lost some time which seems to be a commodity poor people could afford as easily as rich people. If you gave up, your still losing so sweat equity is the best way around. Especially if you have the truth on your side. Anyways, If RIAA continues picking on people with dirty handed tactics and they keep standing up to them, The costs they cannot recover will mount and maybe even be owed to whoever they are going after. Then maybe they will stop the dirty handed tactics and some rational sense will prevail from the situation. Think of it as a form of grassroots organizing over the internet. It drives the RIAA crazy knowing that defendants and defendants' lawyers all across the country are starting to have almost as much information as they do about what's going on in these cases. It's harder for them to lie about it.