Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Defendant Cross-Sues Kazaa And AOL
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In what appears to be a first, RIAA defendant Michelle Santangelo, the 20-year old daughter of Patti Santangelo, has made a motion for leave to serve a third party complaint against Kazaa and AOL, as well as against someone who installed Kazaa software, in Elektra v. Santangelo II. Her proposed third-party complaint (pdf) alleges that any injuries plaintiffs might have sustained were the result of the third party defendants' "negligence and breaches... in the defective design of Sharman Network's program, "Kazaa" which was a dangerous instrumentality in its each and every use as it existed in 2002-2004; the trespassing and reckless installation by Matthew Seckler [the person who allegedly installed the software without authorization] of such program; the failure to warn by AOL and Sharman; the failure to block the downloading of such files by AOL; the improper blocking of alleged (RIAA) warning messages by AOL and Sharman; and, the secretive file sharing system of and by Kazaa.""
Is everyone suing everyone for everything? It's getting to the point where if I hear about a lawsuit my first thought is that the plaintiff is trying to take advantage of someone. If that a sign that I'm an extreme cynic or that there's something really wrong out there?
The speedometer on my Jeep goes up to 100mph. Does that mean that if I get pulled over doing 100mph in a school zone that it's Chrysler's fault and not mine? Did Chrysler take measures to prevent me from speeding in a school zone?
Generally, I'm excited when anyone fights the maFIAA, but in this case, I hope she loses badly so she'll learn about pointing fingers.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
No, AOL should not block files that I am downloading at all.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
I hope this chick loses. If she wins this idiotic suit, it would set legal precedent that it's the ISP's responsibility to police its users. That's just about the worst possible idea ever.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
1 "End User License Agreement," a contract of adhesion, abominably long, written in tiny print, which no one reads.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Let 'em litigate this for 3 years.
I'm only surprised that they didn't assert that the plaintffs are partially liable for continuing to publish DRM free CDs long past the point when they knew that tools and techniques existed which permitted these tracks to be ripped and shared.
Hmmm...I'm still wondering if that last paragraph of mine is a joke or not.
With lawyers involved, I suppose you never can tell.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
to sue Microsoft because Windows allowed the installation of software such as Kazaa and the manufacturer of her computer for allowing the installation of a Windows that allowed the installation of Kazaa and the local power company for permitting the operation of a computer which allowed the.... oh you get the point
She's obviously proved she has what it takes to work for the RIAA.
As I said, interesting...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
While I'm not sure what you mean by 'Stand up and declare your rights', I'll let it go and talk about weaseling for a second.
In this case, the defendant claims to have done nothing wrong and to be guilty only of the following:
Taken at face value, I don't see any weaseling going on. The only seemingly weasel-ish aspect is the way that the third party complaint spreads across so many defendants. This, however, is perfectly acceptable in the legal system if, again, you take the original defendant's testimony at face value.
The way I see it, Miss Santangelo is basically saying, "I didn't do it. It's not my fault. I don't know who is responsible, but it's probably one of these guys, let the court figure it out."
It's not that she's accusing aol and Sharman as much as she's saying that they had more to do with any infraction than she did.
Looking at how this looks for precedence, I'm interested to see how this turns out. We currently have laws that hold a bar liable if a patron gets a DUI on the way home. Bars serve alcohol, it's what they do. But they get in trouble if people use their product illegally. By the same token, aol supplies internet access. Should they be held completely harmless if people use their product illegally? If so, why is there a double standard between bars and ISPs?
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV...
Second Kazaa as it once existed tended to at least attempt(if you didn't actively tell it not to, which if she didn't install it she didn't get a chance to choose) to share pretty much every music file on your PC. If she had a legitimate music file on her PC Kazaa would have attempted to share it with the outside world leading to infringement. This was always bad design in every program tham implemented it(it's alright in a media player, but not in a file sharing utility, it'd be like having apache automatically make all your documents available.
Thirdly the RIAA is presumably alleging that they sent warning e-mails to this girl or her parents, and the girl and/or her parents are apparently alleging that they didn't get them. The suit against the ISP means that the ISP will be required to prove whether those e-mails got through or not and wether they ever got to them in the first place. If they did block them then there's a case there, if they didn't arrive then the RIAA loses their "she knew it was wrong and kept going" angle and look more like vultures going after a little girl who didn't know what she was doing.
Her suit about the ISP blocking the files is of course bollocks and should and likely will be tossed out(presuming that the ISP wasn't offering some sort of parental filtering service at cost in which case there's a case there too).
It's hardly secretive though. The icon is in the system tray at least.
/.) doesn't have a clue what all that crap on the system tray is. Take the average consumer computer that comes with all those convenient preloaded programs, it's got about 25 tiny inscrutible icons down there, the only one they've figured out is the clock. Maybe. So they ignore all that stuff.
The average user (who doesn't read
And half the time Windows hides those icons anyhow.
Perhaps you are in school. That 10 page paper you wrote after spending 10 hours in the library, 5 hours in writing, and 3 in revising, is worth about 0.7 cents per page in paper costs ($3.50/500 page ream) and 1.14 cents in toner per page ($200 cart @ 17.5k pages) for a grand total of 1.84 cents per page. Your paper is worth just over 18 cents. That means your time is worth 1/100th of a cent per hour. In a few years, you might graduate and your work might be worth 2 or even 3 times as much.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Interestingly enough, thats actually more (18 cents) than an artist gets per song.
The RIAA, record companies and their distributors get the rest.
I had a long fight once where I was at a house visiting a friend, a knock came at the door and the guy came in to split some coke up that they bought together. Literally 3 minutes after he walked through the door, they were passing it back and forth looking at it and three knocks came to the door followed by it bursting open with about 6 officers running in telling everyone to get down. IF you weren't on th floor by the time they reached you, they put you on the floor and I don't mean helping you either.
In the commotion, the 8ball got tossed onto the floor and everyone got arrested for it. Including me and another friend I was riding with.
It took 10 months of fighting in court and almost 5 grand to get out of it. Evidently, the guy who came in, bought it from a undercover cop and they followed him home instead of busting him there because the two (who were splitting it) were actually talking on the cell phone trying to haggle the price when the one got it from the cops. I had both of them saying I wasn't involved and it didn't matter at all. This was about 12 or 13 years ago during an election year and they were tough on crime.
Sometimes you will be in just as much trouble just being there until you can prove your innocence. The cops kept saying they were going to take my cars and sell them and all that shit. Fortunately, My job easily payed enough to cover my "lifestyle" and they couldn't find anything indicating I was selling drugs to support it. And yes, they had my banking records and frozen my accounts for 2 months when my lawyer was finally able to got them back. They charged me with conspiracy, trafficking, possession with intent (which was part of the conspiracy) resisting arrest (because I wasn't on the floor fast enough), then they attempted to say I could plead out to on charge of possession and get 5 year probation. Of course I refused and fought it but the guy who drove me there took the deal and got hit for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was still out almost $5000 though and had a bunch of checks bounce when they froze my accounts.
My advice, if you see it happening, throw it out or move out yourself. Maybe breaking it a couple of time would force them to keep it locked away. It just isn't worth it if your not doing it "too". Pot alone is a little more relaxed then an 8 ball of cocaine and a few quarter bags. But I could easily see a cop being an ass and trying to make an example or something. My lawyer said if it wasn't an election year when it went down, I would have probably been let go the day it happened.
it's got about 25 tiny inscrutible icons down there, the only one they've figured out is the clock
Holy shit! Those little numbers in the corner are a clock?
Daaaaamn! You're right! The numbers in the corner of my computer are almost the same as the numbers on the front of my cable box! That's neat!
I'm really starting to get into this computer stuff. I learn something new almost every month.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.