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RIAA Will Finally Face the Music In Court
Falstaff writes "Exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen is expected to refile her malicious prosecution lawsuit against the RIAA today. The refiling will mark a significant watershed in the RIAA's fight against P2P users because for the first time, the group's tactics, secret agreements, and fee splitting with MediaSentry are likely to come to light, thanks to discovery. Andersen's attorney says he'll be 'digging into agreements between the RIAA, RIAA member companies, MediaSentry, and the Settlement Support Sentry. Part of that will involve looking at compensation, like how much MediaSentry gets from each settlement. "I'd love to know what kind of bounty MediaSentry got paid to supply erroneous identities to the RIAA," Lybeck says.' The judge has barred further motions to dismiss the complaint, which means the RIAA will have to face the music. 'Unlike the thousands of lawsuits filed so far, the RIAA does not have the luxury of walking away from this case if there's a real chance of embarrassing information being released. "Once discovery happens in the cases the RIAA brings, they run," Lybeck says. "This is our case now, and they can't run."'"
I fully expect the RIAA to do everything in it's power to hide any so called "embarrassing" information, probably successfully so. I hate to be such a pessimist but the fact of the matter is multi-million dollar corporations will always have the upper hand in this sort of thing. I got my fingers crossed though, hopefully someone will finally slay the dragon.
IANAL, but it sounds like the RIAA is going to want to settle and prevent discovery from happening since they don't want all the sordid details of their dealings brought to light.
But that makes me wonder . . . if they do in fact settle, won't this just embolden all the other lawsuit recipients to file against the RIAA too? They can settle malicious lawsuits to keep them from going to trial to their heartss content (*snicker* we know they don't have hearts), but ultimately they're going to have to either WIN a malicious prosecution suit or stop engaging in malicious suits alltogether, no?
Not at all. Its a good thing to want to see how a group(The RIAA) does its dirty laundry.
Yay, I have a sig.
For example, many Open Source installers are available via BitTorrent. Their use of p2p is crucial to their success, because it reduces distribution costs.
P2P is also crucial to the success of struggling musicians who offer their music online for free, as a way to promote themselves. Direct HTTP downloads can lead to bankrupcy if their songs become sudden hits. I myself offer Bit Torrent downloads of my piano compositions.
(While I presently work as a software engineer, I'm studying piano with the aim of changing careers into music. You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.)
In your letters to your legislators, please emphasize the legal uses of P2p.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The RIAA could easily dangle a $1-2 million carrot in front of her, and probably will. While we all know she shouldn't take it, most sane people (and probably her lawyer) would say "take the money and run" to not have to deal with this issue for the next 5 years...
Call me a pessimist, but her case against the RIAA will not change their tactics because they will buy their way out of the mess.
Now, if some DA or AG were to file criminal charges against the RIAA (God knows the FBI won't), then that would change their ways... But, alas, we live in the Corporate States of America.
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
In light of resistance from the courts, the RIAA will probably shift its resources toward the legislative branch.
It may be fun to win one small battle, but the RIAA companies still control media distribution.
From the RIAA's perspective, this has been a wildly successful strategy because it successfully struck fear into the hearts and minds of consumers.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Whether or not people here illegally download and share copyrighted music isn't the issue. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that most Slashdotters don't file baseless lawsuits against random people who are unprepared to defend themselves from the full force of a massive corporation's legal department realizing most will capitulate and just settle regardless of any wrongdoing as a tragically misguided attempt to strike fear into the heart of someone who gets the latest Britney Spears release from bittorrent.
Big companies are abusing the legal system due to circumstances brought about by new technologies and the Internet. Meanwhile real (and innocent) people are having their lives and livlihoods ruined in the crossfire. So yes, we care a lot about that.
Start encouraging your favorite artist to go a route of sales & distribution and royality collection outside of the RIAA.
Though there may be contracts holding them to the RIAA directly or indirectly, such contract will either become expired or after this case, be challenge-able.
I guess the key word to take from that is "professional"
Also, I'd wager that the studio's a one time fee. Pressings are cheap once all the mastering is done; so the more distribution you get, the easier it is to break even.
I don't think that's what he meant by "each song costs thousands of dollars".
I'll pay fifteen bucks for a CD, no problem. But if someone copies that CD instead of buying it that's only fifteen bucks, not 9,000 times however many tracks are on the CD, which is what the RIAA is demanding. They're better off shoplifting it: the fines are unlikely to be more than a few hundred dollars.
That's not necessarily a victory for the RIAA. Because what works once works twice, too. In other words, being sued falsly by the RIAA might be the jackpot.
I'm fairly sure we'll soon see lawyers hopping onto it, specializing in counter suits against the RIAA if they simply try to buy their way out of an embarrassing trial. It's easy money for them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The judge has barred further motions for dismissal, so unless the RIAA decides to settle--a move Lybeck believes is in the group's best interest--the case will proceed through discovery and to trial. Unlike the thousands of lawsuits filed so far, the RIAA does not have the luxury of walking away from this case if there's a real chance of embarrassing information being released. "Once discovery happens in the cases the RIAA brings, they run," Lybeck says. "This is our case now, and they can't run." Her lawyer's words are very discouraging - she already has settlement in mind.
But from what we have seen from this woman, well... I think it's pretty obvious that she is very pissed and she will not settle for anything less than victory in this.
If I were in this position, I would be recording every phone call and saving every e-mail. I hope they're dumb enough to try to threaten or bribe her, because she seems like the kind of person who is going to make that kind of information public and make the RIAA look much worse than they already do.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
That is a DAMN good idea. I'd easily contribute $20 or more to a cause like that.
Judging by the grandparent poster's reference to his law-school gf, he's probably too young to recall the Bill Clinton era. Ahh, you've gotta love the youth vote. To be young and idealistic instead of old and practical again...
So would I. The RIAA would lose such a bidding war with the Internet.
The problem is that OK, someone downloads a copy. Great. Now they have it instead of buying it. $15.
Then, being the good little net-citizen we all hope they are, they share it with the rest of the fsking planet and 100,000 people download it from them and sources obtained from them.
$1,500,015 is the total then. Right?
Seems to me that an enterprising hacker or two might end up teaming up with an "innocent party" in order to set the RIAA up for just such a case...
Exactly. If a law is passed with more than a 2/3rds majority, vetoing the law is a pointless gesture of defiance and gains you nothing except a couple of weeks. A law would have to be really heinous for you to piss off Congress by defying a unanimous vote, and the DMCA just doesn't rise to that level. Besides, I think a lot of people assumed the courts would overturn it as having an unconstitutionally long term anyway. They didn't, in large part due to all the Bush Sr. and Reagan appointees on the court.
Clinton didn't give us the DMCA. The predominantly Republican legislature did. He was completely powerless to overturn the law. There's no way to know if he would have signed it had it been passed by a narrower margin. That said, I would love to see every Democrat in Congress who voted for that law sitting on the curb begging for change.
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Just don't get caught at it if you don't particularly enjoy prison.
You mean as opposed to what we have now? Oh, wait...
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Am I the only one surprised that someone beat NewYorkCountryLawyer to a RIAA story?
>Similarly, the RIAA are a bunch of scumbags who deserve to be slapped around.
And that still doesn't make copyright infringement legal.
Victory over the RIAA and their agent/thugs means nothing.
RIAA is a front organization. It is just a way the record companies to use to interface with the legal attack dogs. They have no real assets to give up. They pass all their ill gotten gains back to their masters.
If there is a serious legal setback, then RIAA just dissolves, and comes back tomorrow under another name. The legal pit bulls, and the record companies who control all this carnage will remain untouched. To really make it stop, you need to have the courts pierce the 'corporate veil' to make the operators responsible.
The whole mess only stops when the individual record companies who are sponsoring this blatant attack on their own customers are financially penalized.
Sending a few lawyers and CEO's to prison would also help. But, that isn't going to happen.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.