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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."
All the so called evidence the RIAA has would be circumstantial. Just because a particular computer was at a particular IP address does not mean a particular individual was responsible for the infringement. I certainly hope they are fully successful.
When I was studying Engineering, the most interesting case studies were the real life cases - actual original research and current theories.
Similarly here, these students seem to have a deparment which values them enough to give them something interesting AND useful to work on.
Good on them all.
Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
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!
And note,Last time I checked, porn stars aren't paid for producing gibberish.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Dedicated by the RIAA in the near future at the University of Maine.....
:)
That should get the faculty to shut up those pesky law students
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Last time I checked, porn stars aren't paid for producing gibberish.
Hence the BAD FUCKING ANALOGY. WTF were you expecting?
In case you were wondering what Rule 11 is like I was...
Answer #1: Why not?
Answer #2: Since it's now free, everyone can afford it.
Answer #3: These days, you can have the music even if you can't afford it. Since they're at college to learn, they'd better spend their money on books.
c++;
FERPA is a law that products student records. FERPA
Joinder rules are what let a party join, whether the plaintiff or defendant, be named together in a single lawsuit. What these law students are doing is accussing the RIAA of misjoinder: The 3rd one is pretty obvious and means what it says.
Rule 11 is just the part of the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure that lets parties seek sanctions against a party in a lawsuit, usually for some type of misconduct.
My blog
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
I don't question the money my doctor will make when he sticks needles in my eye tomorrow. He has the training and experience to do the job. I also didn't question the money I paid my divorce attorney when I was divorced; she, also, had the training and experience. I don't pay my lawyer to produce gibberish, I pay him to translate it to me, and speak Martian with his fellow Martians. Most normal people (i.e., those not on slashdot) whouldn't have a clue what two slashdotters were talking about when we're discussing, say, computers. "Sorry, Mr. Geek, I don't speak nerdish".
I don't see where a porn star has to have a lot of education. Like an MD, you pay your lawyer more for what he knows than for what he does.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
im a foreigner, dont know us law, and even i have understood what they were suing against, and what they were going to use.
you dont need to have a big name to be a good law school. you just need quality students, and encouraging teachers.
Read radical news here
Re: to answer 1, 2 and 3. No.
Look, its seriously time to stop pretending your silly excuses are valid. I will admit I download music/vids/etc, but it IS illegal. No seriously. Yes, some music through special online, downloadable vendors are legal ways to d/l music, but Kazaa is not. Limewire is not. Stop making excuses for yourselves and those who do this. Now, i am in no means a RIAA lover, but ignoring that stealing anything is illegal is irresponsible and childish.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
As long as they suffer the same sort of demise SCO has suffered in the end - I don't really mind.
/. and reddit, but only because that would go hand in hand with a decrease in corruption and braindeadtivity on the MAFIAA's side.
Besides, RIAA gives us plenty of reason to bitch about them, as long as they do, I actually want to stay informed. I'd be glad to see a rapid decline in bitch-against-RIAA-stories on
I'm an infovore...
Thanks, Morgan. Hope you get modded up for providing all that useful information.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Then they will have too much power to continue these actions. On the flip side, constantly fighting these cases in court is not what RIAA wants to do. They want it settled and out of the way as soon as possible. Hopefully law students in each state all take up this cause pro bono. I say law students because they probably will be most likely to fight pro bono and save the defendants money but also they will probably fight as hard as anyone against the RIAA. Imagine putting that on your resume after law school...that you successfully brought down the RIAA.
Have you ever been subjected to porn which attempts to actually have a dialog and maybe a plot? Believe me, these people aren't really capable of delivering lines. It's purely gibberish, and jarringly annoying.
Er, at least, that's what I've been told. Yeah, that's it. I, uh, read it on line some place.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Talk about your bad car analogy.
Look: I take your car. Now I have a car, and you don't. I have clearly caused you harm: I have made it more difficult for you to go to work, spend time with your family, pick up groceries, and pay for a new car.
Now look again: You're sharing some music files. I download them from you. Now we both have a car... I mean, music files. I have not caused you harm- you still have your music that you (presumably) paid for. The only argument you can make is that I have caused harm to the RIAA (and those who work for it) and the artist. This may be the case, but it's not a given. If I was never going to buy that music to begin with, I haven't deprived anyone of anything. In fact, if I decide I like the music I would never have heard otherwise, I may decide to buy it somewhere down the road. I have caused no harm; I have simply gained a benefit, but not at anyone else's expense.
On the other hand, if I were planning to pay for the music, but downloaded it instead, I have denied income to the RIAA and the artist. That's pretty lousy, although a lot of people understandably have a lack of sympathy for uber-billionaire multinational corporations and their multi-billionaire hack artists. This lack of sympathy doesn't make the denial of income any less wrong; just more understandable.
You paint this out to be black and white, but in truth, this situation is extremely nuanced, and the heart of the problem is that our current laws (and the RIAA's current business model) are in no way sufficient or even relevant for it.
The RIAA is creating a whole generation of enemies by going after College students. Their demise can't happen soon enough.
In the exchange you proferred, the school broke the law. They should have, to cover their legal arses, requested the cops come back with a subpoena. THat would be completely within the law.
My blog
>But privacy protections do not extend to protections of illegal activities.
Actually, they do. My wife is a doctor and she always asks her patients if they're doing crystal meth (we're in the midwest; apparently the question gets changed to coke/crack in the east and pot/shrooms in the west) to make sure the meds don't have adverse reactions. Under HIPAA, she cannot provide that information to the authorities. A recent case in Kansas supported this where the attorney general (AG) tried to get Planned Parenthood (PP) to turn over medical records because he thought they were performing illegal late-term abortions. The Kansas Department of Health and PP fought the order and after 4 years have succeeded multiple times in preventing the AG from looking at patients medical records because he thought they _might_ have done something illegal (he was on a fishing expedition).
Lawyer records are similarly protected, except that a lawyer has an ethical obligation to report an ongoing crime (eg if his client tells him he plans to kill the informant).
Actually, I pay him because he knows what the hell he is doing and has had the training to do it. I wouldn't pay an auto mechanic to represent me in court, and I wouldn't pay a lawyer to fix my transmission. It has nothing to do with any sort of government enforced monopoly. It has to do with the fact that they are trained to perform the jobs I ask them to do.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Using a cantenna, the "smart" students should aim the directional wifi to their dorms and surf on the library IP address. That would be funny. Then the university would HAVE to defend itself against this nonsense instead of throwing its students under the wheels.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So the real culprit is the judge who signs an ex parte order instead of requiring proper notice of motions, as the law requires.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Yeah, I just read the scripts.
IANAL so don't mind me if I'm incorrect here, but in that case the ruling magistrate judge suggested Rule 11 sanctions. Stating In my view, the Court would be well within its power to direct the Plaintiffs to show cause why they have not violated Rule 11(b) with their allegations respecting joinder. This judge's complaint is the last point of the motion that the legal aid is filing, but if even the judge has problems with what the MAFIAA is doing here I see the defendants winning most, if not all of the points of this motion.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Actually, reading the complaint, the RIAA did subpeona the records. The argument is that what they requested should still be protected, because the RIAA doesn't actually end up litigating these cases. It's a stretch.
And because it is written in the holy book it is true and shall always be.
ignoring that stealing anything is illegal is irresponsibleA copyright violation is not stealing.
c++;
No, you're mixing together two different arguments.
The FERPA argument is: "The records are not discoverable under FERPA; the issuance of the subpoena was contrary to law. Period." The same point is made by the Oregon Attorney General in Arista v. Does 1-17.
The additional arguments for sanctions, which are separate and distinct from the FERPA argument, are that (a) the case is brought for improper purposes (publicity, intimidation, and discovery) and (b) the deliberate misjoinder flaunts the court rules and numerous court orders.
The discovery issue under (a) is that it's never proper to bring a lawsuit in federal court for the purpose of obtaining discovery. The "John Doe" cases are definitely brought for that purpose, because they are immediately dropped after the RIAA gets the information it was looking for. I.e., it is a pre-action discovery proceeding [which is not authorized under the Federal Rules] masquerading as a copyright infringement proceeding. It is immaterial to the latter argument whether the discovery is or is not barred by FERPA.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
The only reason why we pay for art is to support the artist. If we see that the artist is either high on the hog or that the artist isn't making very much from the recorded music, then there is less incentive to buy. Artists will always make money from concerts and various things like t-shirts and such, so they people we're really supporting are the ones who are popularizing their music globally. Basically, it is the businessmen who we aren't supporting through downloads.
The problem businessmen have is that they can't figure out the solution to this problem. Perhaps by exposing a band to a wide market, they could collect x amount of dollars from the concerts they performed, as they're supposedly responsible for popularzing the band to begin with. So the contract would spell that out for as long as the band is signed up with a particular record label. Recording music would simply be to advertise for the band rather than a major means of profit. You simply can't reproduce live performances--it's a different experience. Start making shit that can't be downloaded! Add extra shit to those hard copy of albums to make them worthwhile to buy: extra art, neat case, raffle tickets to win apparel, dogtags with band member names on it, et cetera. It's time to be creative. The artist at this point seems to be supported, so now I want my art for free and I'll worry about the artist when necessary. After all, isn't art's main purpose to be enjoyed by both the creator and his of her fans? As long as the artist isn't broke, I'm not going to feel guilty for not supporting the business of uncreative suits.
Like an MD, you pay your lawyer more for what he knows than for what he does.
Not quite. A good lawyer, or team of lawyers, should be able to put their knowledge to good use. Just knowing how to defeat someone doesn't mean you actually can.
So you're paying for both, the strategist who comes up with the game plan and the warrior who executes it.
It's the same with surgeons, and even sometimes with general physicians. You wouldn't want to have a needle meant to draw blood going into a nerve, would you?
I kind of agree with everything else though. Well, except that it's far more likely to be: "Sorry Mr. Geek, I don't speek Klingon."
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
So the real culprit is the judge who signs an ex parte order instead of requiring proper notice of motions, as the law requires.
;) ), but it just seems like judgment made in ignorance of a law that would affect the judgment would be grounds for appeals.
You can blame the judge, but I usually like to presume ignorance until I know otherwise. Rather, I'd blame the lawyers of the RIAA, for not informing the judge of this particular law (which they're not obligated to do, but is a matter of ethics), and for the schools for not appealing based upon this.
IANAL (which makes me either really foolish or really bold to argue with you
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
actually, the lawyers are required by the bar of whatever jurisdiction they practice in to disclose to the court all applicable laws and binding precedent. failure to do so leads to serious sanctions, including disbarment, which is a very serious matter for a lawyer
You really nailed it. It is very nuanced and the reason why the debate rages because people can play the semantics game and make either side sound plausible. Thing is, slashdot is *the* place for geeks, and geeks are normally more objective than this. I guess everyone (or community) has their blind spots. You'll probably catch a few undeserved troll/flamebait mods for stating what you did because you'll look like an RIAA stooge (and you obviously aren't). But at least what you said is objective.
That said, the RIAA should NOT be allowed to use questionable tactics to enforce their copyrights. They really do bully people. It's unfortunate that well connected and very wealthy organizations can do things that the average guy couldn't. The law should be enforced with a modicum of parity. If the law really falls short in addressing what downloading music illegally is defined as, at least it can be consistent in how far a corporation can go in defending its IP, as well as how much in damages it can seek in a civil trial. The story of the woman from Michigan who was successfully sued for >200K should have never happened. What sane court could grant such a sum for such a small crime? That should be as illegal as copyright infringement, I know the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment doesn't pertain to civil trials but in this case that's what it was.
blah blah blah
There was no need for that. Apologise.
simon
A federal judge is not supposed to sign orders where the other side has not been given prior notice.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Aren't you both right? There are some illegal things that have privacy protection in some circumstances and some that don't.
In the case of your wife who's a doctor, she may be obligated under HIPAA to keep drug use private. But if some 8-year-old comes in with a condition clearly caused by repeated sexual activity, I'll bet she has a higher priority legal obligation to notify the authorities. You can get no-questions-asked treatment for drug addiction but if you go to a therapist and ask for help overcoming your addiction to child porn, you're likely to find the cops banging on your door.
Likewise, confessional privilege varies. It doesn't exist in the U.K. In the U.S., it's modified depending on the state you're in, whether your priest is a licensed counselor of some sort (and thus subject to the laws applying to that profession) and the context under which your confession is made.
In the instant case, we're dealing with things at a lower level. This isn't a planned murder or ongoing child molestation. This is a civil claim, represented as being *really* big and important by the people who are bringing it, versus a set of legal protections for student records, something generally acknowledged to be a good thing. But neither concern is so clearly inferior to the other that a judgement is easy. It sounds to me like a real crap shoot whether a judge would come down on one side or the other.
Of course, I could render a more insightful opinion if I actually read the article. But then I wouldn't be a true slashdotter, would I?
So the real culprit is the judge who signs an ex parte order instead of requiring proper notice of motions, as the law requires.
Unfortunate that we can't hold these judges responsible somehow. Sovereign immunity should be abolished.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Thomas Galvin
You'd think the judge could put a stop to that -- or better yet a new Federal Rule -- mandating that any identities discovered could only be utilized in the current case. That way, if the plaintiffs lost, or never went to trial in the first place, that information couldn't be misused otherwise.
There was a non-RIAA non-Copyright case a couple years ago where a company sued to obtain the identity of a blogger, critical to that company, and believed to be an employee. While that company had no possibility of winning their case under the First Amendment, once they forced the internet site to cough up sufficient identifying information, they dropped their case and simply fired the employee. That should have never been allowed, and side-steps the whole intent that anonymous persons can be forced to be identified by the courts in virtually any case, no matter how lame, because it's necessary for the administration of justice to identify these defendants.
The whole idea that this will all come out in the wash so to speak, meaning at the actual trial exonerating innocent defendants and punishing overreaching plaintiffs totally misses the point of the damage already being done by the time identities have been revealed under the most flimsy of pretenses.
There should be an argument made that because the RIAA cannot win at trial with the illegally gathered evidence they already have, then identities shouldn't be revealed in the first place. Of course the RIAA will throw back the Jamie Thomas case were stupid juries, a less than bright defendant, and outright wrong jury instructions show that anything is possible if you throw enough b.s. at it.
Of course, my idea will only work if the penalties for actually misusing identity information outside of the trial itself are very VERY severe!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
No judge or lawyer can be expected to "know the law". I don't care if the judge knows all about FERPA or not. I do care that the judge knows that our system requires "notice" to the other side, so the other side can get a lawyer to look into it and bring the law to the judge's attention.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
flaunt to exhibit ostentatiously
flout scoff: treat with contemptuous disregard; "flout the rules"
damaged by dogma
scoff: treat with contemptuous disregard; "flout the rules"
Sorry. Thanks for correcting me.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
There are mandated certification schemes for doctors and lawyers (among many other professions). Which isn't a bad idea, in itself: there are medical quacks (dunno anything about potential legal quackery), and the certification process provides some protection against this, along with academic qualifications and so on.
Those can be viewed as legal monopolies, but I don't think it's much of an issue. Provided you're not a quack, that is. Then I imagine it's the height of injustice.
It might even be a good idea to certify IT professionals (beyond other schemes like Cisco certification), as the presence of IT quackery is manifest. How you'd go about it in an industry like IT would take a great deal of thought, though.
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
This "government enforced monopoly" basically boils down to being able to pass the
entrance exam into law school. That's really not much of a bar. That's much like
saying there is a conspiracy to limit the supply of programmers and engineers.
Actually, the latter makes far more sense. The BS level is higher.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Have you ever watched porn close caption?
"Have you ever watched porn close caption?"
Transcribing porn for the hearing impaired.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
What I question is the need to obfuscate the simplest legal document to the point it "requires" a lawyer to interpret. What should be a one page paper telling you what the law is turns into a sixty-five page essay trying to address every possible nuance of where and when the law would apply. That is what a judge and jury is for.
Sounds almost as useless as porn via braille.
I don't question the money my doctor will make when he sticks needles in my eye tomorrow.
Aren't you taking the whole "cross my heart, hope to die" thing a little too far?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
1. not to mention not go to the same educational institution or use the same ISP, or live in the same general geographic area as someone who might be distributing copyrighted works without authorization.
2. you're missing the fact that almost every time anyone has lawyered up against them, they speedily drop the suit. that would seem to point to the fact that they're simply throwing lots of lawsuits with minimal or non-existent/inadmissible evidence and hope that they're uninterested in contesting the claims and/or unable to get a lawyer to do so, and simply pay them X thousand dollars to go away.
3. no doubt that what they [the sharers] are (allegedly) doing is illegal under current (US) copyright law. what is at issue is the manner in which they are perusing appears to blatantly violate several other laws regarding legal process. simply because they believe they are perusing people doing something illegal should not give them carte blanche to do whatever they like in the process.
4. that is being worked on.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Smart != educated. Smart+educated is better than either one alone.
But you're not going to have a clue about any actress' intelligence or education from watching her in a film, whether porn star or G rated actress.
What would happen with a pr*n start as president?
Maybe they'd finally legalize prostitution? I'd vote for her!
Dumb peple are IMHO irritating, especially when they become president.
You know, I never thought I'd see a worse President than this guy (Bachelor of Science degree in physics), until This guy (MBA) moved into the White House.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
What I question is the need to obfuscate the simplest law to the point it requires a lawyer to interpret.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
You know, I really wish I hadn't said that as a kid!
I have a detached retina. Dr. Odin is going to do a Pneumatic retinopexy and a Vitrectomy. I'll probably write a journal about it, maybe Friday but probably Monday.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
B.) They are excessive.
C.) Therefore, unconstitutional.
It certainly does apply to Civil Trial when damages are a priori set by Federal Statute, juries are instructed, biased, and beholden to not awarding actual damages, which according to recent Supreme Court cases, are deemed excessive at more than three times the actual damage amount. So any penalty greater than $3 per infringed song is unconstitutional, let alone $150,000 fines for $1 (not even *proved*) actual damages.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
And I always preface it with: "I'm not the cops, and I don't really care, but I have to know."
I notice that one form of trolling which takes place, every time we have a post on a litigation event in the RIAA cases, is that someone starts some thread about whether it's okay to take people's content without paying for it, whether the money goes to the artists, etc.
I wish folks with moderation points would mod those posts as "off-topic".
It's got nothing whatsoever to do with the litigations, which are not about whether it's okay to take people's content without paying for it, but about whether morons with a lot of money in the bank and a bunch of unscrupulous lawyers have the right to be suing (a) innocent people for no reason at all, and (b) people who may have committed copyright infringement for excessive sums of money.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful