Slashdot Mirror


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.'"

4 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Boilerplate legal documents? by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Shocking.

  2. Sooo... by bitterfun · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Is it over yet?

    --
    The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents.
  3. Re:Are these people morons? by StikyPad · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Clearly.

  4. Re:magine that riaa by Sanat · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The parent post is really an "interesting" bit of information but is modded as "Offtopic".

    Which is exactly what the parent post topic was about... that of down modding posts critical of the RIAA

    Are there RIAA lackeys who have moderation points?

    It would be interesting to correlate the down modded posts about RIAA with actual UID's to see if such an effort is underway and by whom.

    --
    And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make