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New Attorneys Fee Decision Against RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has gotten slammed again, this time in Oregon, as the Magistrate Judge in Atlantic v. Andersen has ruled that Tanya Andersen's motion for attorneys fees should be granted. The Magistrate, in his 15-page decision, noted that, despite extensive pretrial discovery proceedings, 'when plaintiffs dismissed their claims in June 2007, they apparently had no more material evidence to support their claims than they did when they first contacted defendant in February 2005.....' and concluded that 'Copyright holders generally, and these plaintiffs specifically, should be deterred from prosecuting infringement claims as plaintiffs did in this case.' This is the same case in which (a) the RIAA insisted on interrogating Ms. Andersen's 10-year-old girl at a face-to-face deposition, (b) the defendant filed RICO counterclaims against the record companies, and (c) the defendant recently converted her RICO case into a class action"
when plaintiffs dismissed their claims in June 2007, they apparently had no more material evidence to support their claims than they did when they first contacted defendant in February 2005
You'd think it would take them a lot less than two years to fabricate the proper evidence. Maybe their "research" team is running a backlog of cases and this one fell through the cracks.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Although I shouldn't respond to you - I will. This is nothing about Americans not paying their way. This is about cases being brought to court with inadequate evidence, or simply no significant evidence at all, in a hope that the case will either be settled by the defendants simply to avoid the expense of the case - but not as an admission of their guilt - or as a way of frightening others. If they had adequate evidence then the case should be in court, but they haven't. And recently we have learnt that MediaDefender, the company that collects evidence on behalf of many of these cases, are not beyond fabricating evidence or using very dubious tactics indeed in order to frame individuals.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
If they learned something, they wouldn't push DRM so viciously.
Got that right. It's the number 2 reason I haven't bought any music online. Value is number 1. Too much money for too little quality, content and usability. DRM/Copy protected CD tracks are incompatible with my car stereo, living room DVD player, portable DVD/MP3 player and Winamp, PowerPoint, Lights-O-Rama, DigitalPhotoFrame,.... I buy DVD's instead. CSS is broken enough DVD's can be put on both the kids Zen and iPod without buying the media twice, once in each format.
The truth shall set you free!
Copyright is a fairly recent notion, as it popped up only four hundred years ago or so, and in a small part of the world. Long before that--and today in places were copyright is not respected--culture and content continue to abound.
Think about all the great poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome. They didn't get a dime when copies were made of their work by amanuenses and sold in the marketplace, but they didn't complain. Indeed, the only time someone had issue with copying, the Roman poet Martial in his Epigrams , it was because another fellow was putting his name on those copies. And even then, Martial didn't demand legal penalties; he just lampooned the guy.
In Hong Kong, the film and music industries continue to flourish even though very few pay for content, as creators there have discovered other viable economic models. In the European Union especially, many forms of art couldn't generate a profit even if all copies were sold, but government subsidies ensure culture remains vibrant.
Because they can. Seriously.
See, the value of it is very very low. The asking price is considerably more than that. Therefore, most people wouldn't seriously consider buying it at the asking price, and will simply go without, or wait until it comes onto TV and then record it, or buy it second hand, or whatever.
Digital content provides another option, and one which is quite convenient for many people at that. It's so convenient that many people pay for fast internet connections specifically so they can download things; and many of these people also wear part of the cost of allowing other people to access the content too! Which just goes to show, the content does have some value, it's just much less than the content producers want to charge for it. Also, since the content producers aren't making it available in a convenient and affordable manner, the money is going to those who do: ISP's.
Previously, Big Media have been able to charge whatever they wanted, because it was impractical for anybody else to distribute it. Now, it's cheap and easy to distribute high-quality copies of the content to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Eventually, the content producers will have to accept that they can only charge what the market is willing to pay, but for now they're just throwing a tantrum and calling everyone who doesn't value their content as highly as they do "thieves".
If it can be shown that any significant number of the RIAA's settlements were only settled to avoid lawyer's fees greater then the settlement combined with the RIAA backing down when actually opposed, would it be possible for the court's to order all such activity by the RIAA be stopped, all money collected by them through such activity be refunded with additions to cover costs and interests? The RICO counterclaims are appropriate cause the RIAA's lawyers and their so called experts are doing little more then running protection rackets for the record companies. Considering all that the recording studios pull on artists, the artists really should join in on the RICO claims.
Standard IANAL disclaimer.
Yeah, no doubt there will be a new round of lobbying for changes in the law starting any time now.
(Even better would be to force the RIAA to pay the defendant what they were attempting to collect in the first place - do that only once or twice and all of these cases go away.)
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
-leave too much to chance
-heighten unpredictability, and
-wreak havoc on our ability to plan our lives. I.e., it would be a step towards lawlessness.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
It's not theft, because you're not depriving the producer of anything. In your gadget example, those gadgets a) cost money to produce and b) selling them is the only way for the company to recoup its costs.
My downloading a copy of a film or whatever doesn't prevent the producer from being able to sell it to other people. The other big difference is that the outcome, for the producer, is the same whether I choose the legal option (don't buy the content, and therefore never see it) or the illegal option (to download it): they get nothing from me, but I also don't cost them anything.
It's for this reason that it appears "neutral": I'm not directly harming them by downloading something I would've otherwise chosen to ignore.
This of course, depends on the idea that you only download things you truly wouldn't buy if you couldn't download them. This isn't always the case, and I guess this is where an individual's sense of ethics comes into it, and why distributing copyrighted material without the copyright holder's permission is against the law. On the other hand, quite a few people do buy things they've already acquired by downloading them (myself included), and in many cases had they not being able to try it out "for free" they wouldn't have bought it. There's also the potential for increased word-of-mouth advertising: downloaders telling their friends, who go out and buy the DVD because they actually find it more convenient than downloading, or more people watching it on TV resulting in more advertising revenue. And, since downloading and sharing is an "underground" activity (due to it being illegal), it's nigh impossible to track with any kind of accuracy the nett effect of downloading. So, those in favour of it say it actually helps them sell more stuff, and those opposed say it decreases sales. Both sides are just making stuff up, because nobody actually knows.
Back to your gadget analogy, it would be more accurate to imagine that someone finds a way to duplicate the gadget for a tiny fraction of the RRP. So, he buys one from the store at full price (maybe splitting the costs between a few friends), then he uses his gadget duplicator technology to make limitless additional copies and sells them for a pittance to cover his costs. The manufacturer of the gadget, rather than embrace this new copying technology, continues to make their gadgets the old fashioned way and sell them at the same price. Conscientious consumers naturally choose the cheaper option.
Even worse, the manufacturer may in fact embrace the copying technology in order to lower their costs, but sells their now much cheaper to produce gadgets at the same price as before. Or, they sell them a bit cheaper but with built-in self-destruction devices so you end up needing to buy it several times over if you want to keep using it (that's my analogy for certain DRM schemes).
Now, the manufacturer does still need to defray the R&D costs so they can't sell it as cheaply as the guy who merely copied it, but they need to do it in a way that doesn't make the customer feel like they're being ripped off. That's the tricky bit, and the answer may very well turn out to be that spending millions (or hundreds of millions) of dollars making TV shows or movies just isn't a viable use of resources. For example, Prison Break is a reasonably entertaining programme, but is 42 minutes of reasonably entertaining TV really the best use of two million dollars our society can come up with?
Fortunately, other, more civilized countries use a civil code system where most situations are formally codified, which essentially prevents rich people from making their own custom-made laws and shove them down the throats of, We, the People, against our will.
Poppycock. Common law embodies a heritage of freedom. Code Napoleon embodies a heritage of state dictatorship. Instead of a body of of laws imposed by a central authority to govern every possible situation (and no doubt to the benefit of those with the money or position to influence the shape of those laws) Common Law provides a mechanism where laws arise from the lower levels of the legal system and percolate upwards through the system. And the idea the precedent is immutable is fatuous. Precedent is a living body.
Louisiana has been using the Napoleonic system since it joined the US. I can tell you from having lived and worked in that state that their legal system is no better or worse than any other state- it is in fact the implementation and administrators that govern the effectiveness of the system. And in Louisiana they certainly have no special competence.
Yes, common law is more chaotic. It is also a far older system which has a much longer track record of success.
I think the GP's point was "what is to stop the RIAA continuing to sent out nastygrams demanding money or we'll sue?"
The risks of having to pay all costs (which include negative publicity), being sanctioned for bringing frivolous lawsuits, and having additional judgements narrowing the **AA's target area.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
That's the attitude the RIAA and MPAA have towards their customers-and they wonder why their customers are voting with their feet in droves! Yes, downloading has a small effect on their sales, but it's their complete lack of customer service that's their biggest problem! Look, if I go to a grocery store and time after time either can't find what I want or the it's packaged so I have to buy five pounds of hamburger or rice when I only want one pound of it, and/or am treated rudely by their staff, I'm simply going to say; "Hasta la Vista, baby!" and go to another store. Yet, that's EXACTLY the way the music and movie industries treat me. Big problem for them is there are OTHER things I can spend my money on that I get enjoyment from. Look at iTunes-they provide music in a user friendly way and provide a no hassle way for me to buy EXACTLY what I want-WHEN I want it! No wonder why they've sold over a billion songs in such a short time. If everyone was pirating content, they'd have NO business! The thing I can't understand is Congress' hard on to pass laws friendly to the music and movie industries. You don't see them passing laws requiring me to shop at Safeway, for example. Are they THAT corrupted?
I'd mod the parent Insightful +1 for that point alone.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Playing on the idea of the noble savage not needing copyright law is disingenuous
Pretending that current copyright law is the only alternative, and bring in irrelevant nonsense like "noble savage", is a lot more disingenuous.
and completely neglects the main issue -
The main issue being to encourage the most efficient and cost effective creation, dissemination and use of ideas. Nothing more. Copyright, as it is currently implemented, appears to be increasingly useless in the efficient creation, dissemination and use of large classes of ideas.
mass production or copies at prices low enough to make a creator's work a significant part of the cost of the copy.
A limited argument that becomes increasingly unsustainable in a population of billions where the originator can copy just as efficiently as anybody else and also has the advantage of being the first and being authentic, which a lot of people care about.
There are many reasons why people create art and content. In a population of billions it is a statistical certainty that it will happen regardless of the state of copyright law. People like to create, it is often it's own reward. The copyright distribution cartels like to pretend that copyright is the only reason to create. As usual they're lying.
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Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.