U. Maine Law Students Trying To Shut RIAA Down

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Remember those pesky student attorneys from the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic, who inspired the Magistrate Judge to suggest monetary fines against the RIAA lawyers? Well they're in the RIAA's face once again, and this time they're trying to shut down the RIAA's whole 'discovery' machine: the lawsuits it files against 'John Does' in order to find out their names and addresses. They've gone and filed a Rule 11 motion for sanctions (PDF), seeking — among other things — an injunction against all such 'John Doe' cases, arguing that the cases seek to circumvent the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act which protects student privacy rights, are brought for improper purposes of obtaining discovery, getting publicity, and intimidation, and are in flagrant violation of the joinder rules and numerous court orders. If the injunction is granted, the RIAA will have to go back to the drawing board to find another way of finding out the identities of college students, and the ruling — depending on its reasoning — might even be applicable to the non-college cases involving commercial ISPs."

Comments

Those pesky students...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right, it was I who falsely accused thousands of innocent people of having violated copyright. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

Re:Hidden subject

[Red Flayer]

Sheesh, what is slashdot coming to when even BadAnalogyGuy gets too complacent to come up with a car analogy in order to clarify something that is apparently confusing?

And note,

If you ever wonder why lawyers get paid so much, it's the same reason porn stars do. It's not a difficult job, but you wouldn't want to tell your family that you spend all day producing gibberish.

Last time I checked, porn stars aren't paid for producing gibberish. /deliberately obtuse