First New Dismissal Motion Against RIAA Complaint

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Several weeks ago it was discovered that a California federal judge, in rejecting an RIAA application for default judgment, had dismissed the RIAA's standard complaint for failure to state a claim, calling it "conclusory" "boilerplate" "speculation" in Interscope v. Rodriguez. In the wake of that decision a New York woman being sued in Brooklyn federal court, Rae J Schwartz, has told the Court that she is making a motion to dismiss the complaint in her case, Elektra v. Schwartz. This is the first post-Interscope challenge to the RIAA's boilerplate, of which we are aware. This is the same case in which the RIAA had sent a letter to the Judge falsely indicating that AOL had 'confirmed that defendant owned an internet access account through which copyrighted sound recordings were downloaded and distributed'. Ms. Schwartz suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, but the RIAA has pressed the case against her."

Comments

Not irrelivant

[flyingfsck]

The USA is a Socialist state and the state has a duty to protect the old, the young and infirm. The US has Social Security and many other socialist programs and the judiciary is the teeth of the system. The RIAA is casting such a big drag net, that they are bound to snare many cases that deserve sympathy, which then weakens their overall strategy. So it makes sense for lawyers to use these cases to hit back at the RIAA since they have a better chance of winning.

Re:It doesn't matter when the defendant suffers fr

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Stress accelerate[s] the development of this disease. But of course insensitive clods like you don't care about quality of life. Thank you, bidule. Comforted to see a little humanity here. Yes it is absolutely true that stress has a very bad effect on MS, and in this case her brain lesions and other problems have been exacerbated by the litigation.

Meanwhile, this is a person who never even heard of, let alone participated in, file sharing, let alone used file sharing to infringe plaintiffs' copyrights.

Read TFA

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Those of you who are suggesting that the focus of the article is the defendant's Multiple Sclerosis haven't read the article very carefully. The mention to MS is in the very last sentence.

The last two sentences of the article have nothing to do with the main point of the story, which is defendant's attack on the insufficiency of the RIAA's boilerplate complaint, which is the first such attack of which I am aware since the Interscope decision was handed down. Those last two sentences are merely background to give you a point of reference to which of the RIAA's 30,000 cases this happens to be. The next to last sentence describes a lie the RIAA told last year in this case to the Judge -- that, too, has nothing to do with the sufficiency of the RIAA's complaint, but none of you have singled that out or suggested that the article emphasizes that.

So it's baloney to say the author is relying on the defendant's MS for anything. I.e., it's intellectually dishonest to suggest that this article emphasizes the defendant's MS.

******************

Now a digression.

Had I chosen to emphasize her disease, as I might have, I don't see that there would have been anything wrong with that. And to those of you who think it's okay to bring nonsensical litigation like this against children, stroke victims, hurricane victims, MS sufferers, disabled people on welfare, and others.... to you I can only say that your value system is not unlike that of my opponents, who likewise see nothing wrong with what they are doing.

As I have previously mentioned, I use the "friends" and "foes" feature in Slashdot for the purpose of managing my reading load. Although I haven't in the past, going forward I am going to mark as a "foe" -- and therefore be spared reading the comments of -- any user ID who says that it is irrelevant that the defendant is disabled, or impoverished, or a child, or one of the other categories of disadvantaged and/or defenseless victims. Anyone who feels that way is not my kind of people.

Re:Read TFA

[mdobossy]

Ray-

Thank you very much for the clarification. I hope I am not "foe'd" yet, so I can clarify what I was trying to say.

The fact that there are people with MS, old ladies, those who have never even had an internet connection, being sued by the RIAA is terrible. And if they are truly targeting those kind of people, they are the most despicable of the despicable.

My only concern is that when an emotional plea is sent out in a description of a court case, the public changes their focus from "The RIAA is making a mockery of our justice system" to "The RIAA is attacking people with horrible diseases." I may be wrong about this, but in this country, you are free to sue anyone, regardless of their status, health, etc. What you are NOT (supposed) to be allowed to do is bring the kind of litigation against ANYONE without proof or grounds as the RIAA is doing. Now I may be 100% off on these thoughts (as I am not a lawyer, dont play one on TV, and didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night), but it seems to me that to put the focus on the illegality of what the RIAA is doing, rather than the emotional side, may cause more sweeping changes.

All of that being said, I am not a lawyer, and would like to hear more of the other side of the coin (that is unless I have been foe'd and you never read this ;) ).

Re:It doesn't matter when the defendant suffers fr

[Anonymous Coward]

As a legally blind computer user, I find your proposed defense somewhere between amusing and offensive.

Also, while MS can cause legal blindness, in many people it doesn't. I know an MS patient whose vision briefly became impaired then returned to "normal". Equating MS to vision impairment is an error.

On to the more valid part of your post:

I agree that it was mentioned because it fits a pattern in the RIAA's lawsuits. But, I also think it feels out of place the way it's wedged into the article summary. Bottom line: If, on the one hand, the RIAA believes in their case, they shouldn't be expected to cede their perceived rights to anybody with a health problem. If they know (as many suspect they do) that their legal actions are bogus, and if they are trying to intimidate people and extort money wherever they can, then their choice of target in this case makes their behavior marginally worse -- but only marginally compared to the underlying premise that they're knowingly bullying innocent people.

Re:It doesn't matter when the defendant suffers fr

[AGMW]

For a very long time, the evidence has overwhelmingly pointed to her being "not liable" (that's the legal term for being "innocent" in a civil case).

If this is also true, then it could also be used to help drive up any damages due!