RIAA Complaint Dismissed as "Boilerplate"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The decision many lawyers had been expecting — that the RIAA's 'boilerplate' complaint fails to state a claim for relief under the Copyright Act — has indeed come down, but from an unlikely source. While the legal community has been looking towards a Manhattan case (Elektra v. Barker) for guidance, the decision instead came from Senior District Court Judge Rudi M. Brewster of the US District Court for the Southern District of California. The decision handed down denied a default judgment (i.e. the defendant had not even appeared in the action). Judge Brewster not only denied the default judgment motion but dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. Echoing the words of Judge Karas at the oral argument in Barker , Judge Brewster held (pdf) that 'Plaintiff here must present at least some facts to show the plausibility of their allegations of copyright infringement against the Defendant. However, other than the bare conclusory statement that on "information and belief" Defendant has downloaded, distributed and/or made available for distribution to the public copyrighted works, Plaintiffs have presented no facts that would indicate that this allegation is anything more than speculation.'"

Comments

Re:Are these people morons?

[Atario]

It's the same reason people continue to spam.

Even if it only works a vanishingly small percentage of the time, applying a tiny effort to loads of people still results in a net gain.

(Except, of course, when you factor in the damage to reputation, but that never stopped the unscrupulous before...)

Different day, same old stuff

[Whuffo]

The members of the RIAA have been enriching themselves as (essentially) statutory middlemen. For decades, any music you listened to came to you through their distribution system; there was no other option.

This internet thing blows their monopoly apart - there's a new method of distribution that's cheaper, faster, and out of the control of the music companies. This presents a problem to them: their "money for nothing" gravy train is threatened. It's no surprise that they're using every tool they can to stop reality from sending them to the realm of the irrelevant.

But since they haven't worked for their money for years, when it comes to taking legal action they don't seem to be willing to put forth an effort there either. This latest decision is an interesting one; significant enough by itself, but it'll cause some big changes for a lot of people...

Re:Are these people morons?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Ah, cool, I'm glad to hear that. Thanks! (And thanks for the work you do around this; even though it isn't in my country, it is appreciated.) Thanks for your kind words, Eivind.

I hope your country remains free of this plague, but I will tell you it's an international thing.... they're certainly persecuting people throughout Europe, except for the Netherlands, where the courts astutely saw through their scam from the outset.

Re:Don't get too enthusiastic

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Perhaps you can explain why they aren't using (and I hear dropping) the "made available" argument. I have a selfish interest as the Canada's Parliament keeps suggesting they will pass legislation implementing the "make available" sections of WIPO. BTW, really, thank you for these articles and posts. I always read NewYorkCountrylawyer posts/articles first! You're good.

I guess you read Canada's own p2pnet.net by Jon Newton.

Actually, I can only speculate what is going on in RIAA-land.

All I know is that, in the wake of the Interscope v. Rodriguez decision, which forced them to come up with an amended complaint, they filed an amended complaint which totally omitted the "making available" theory.

I'll be doing a post on the possible implications of this, but as to their reason, my guess is they did it because

1. they know that it's an invalid argument, having no basis in the statute, in caselaw, or in legal scholarship, and

2. the Bell Atlantic v. Twombly decision gives them a way to back down gracefully.