Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Sues Homeless Man
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a Manhattan case, Warner v. Berry, the RIAA sued a man who lives in a homeless shelter, leaving a copy of the summons and complaint not at the homeless shelter, but at an apartment the man had occupied in better times, and had long since vacated. The RIAA's lawyers were threatened with sanctions by the Magistrate Judge in the case, for making misleading representations to the Court which the Magistrate felt were intentional. The District Judge, however, disagreed with imposing sanctions, giving the RIAA's lawyers 'as officers of the Court the benefit of the doubt,' and instead concluded — in his 6-page opinion (PDF) — that the RIAA's lawyers were just being 'sloppy' and had not made the misstatements for an improper purpose.'"
'as officers of the Court the benefit of the doubt,'
Wrong!
As officers of the Court they should be held to a higher standard. Sloppy isn't an excuse.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
*** WARNING ***
Link in parent is malicious. Do not click.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
My blog
So make some sanctions against 'sloppy' work. I dissent with the judge's ruling. This is clearly grossly negligent conduct by the lawyers. Any minimal due diligince in this case would have eliminated the error immediately.
I really don't know why these things surprise me anymore.
I hope some judges (especially those that sign those search warrants) light up in the light of this. Could you imagine something like this in the future?
(cue judge, asked for a warrant)
A search? Why? The RIAA thinks someone's downloading their stuff? The organisation that randomly sues people, from grannies to bums? Get outta my courtroom before I have you thrown out the window!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The sad thing is, there are real legal issues here. The RIAA is using the American court system as an vehicle of intimidation, and to give a mask of legality very illegal activities (like investigating people with unlicensed private investigators, shotgun lawsuits that target innocent people, organized extortion, etc.). Meanwhile, the courts seem all too willing to just sit back and let them do it, with no acknowledgement that this is part of an organized campaign. I guess the Supreme Court has more important things to deal with.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's just like when fishing fleets trawl the bottom of the ocean trying to catch scallops or mussels ... they end up dragging all kinds of other species into the boat.
... no biggie ... just move on.
RIAA is looking for file-sharers, and if they dredge up the occasional homeless man, or dead person, or bubble-boy
[sarcasm:enabled]
The damn homeless, always thinking about themselves! This guy clearly can afford to buy this music, as opposed to pirating it. We need to criminalize his actions, so we can keep his kind off of the street!
[sarcasm:disabled]
I mean seriously, this has to be an article from The Onion. I can't believe that TFA is news about what is happening in the real world. I just can't. Someone tell me that it's just a bad joke, two weeks late of "April fools".
I don't know what outrages me more, the RIAA suing a homeless man or the judge for not imposing sanctions.
I can only hope that the judge is elected rather than appointed and that the voters fire him next election. To not lay down sanctions against this agregious behavior is itself sloppy. A lawyer has no more right to be sloppy than a surgeon does.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
How in the world can you sue someone who is homeless and has no internet access, take them to court, get shot down, and then have a district judge say "We think you, the RIAA, had the right intentions but the wrong paper work."? They let murders off for clerical errors, but get caught downloading tunes and its a trip to the financial electric chair.
If this isn't proof positive that our court system is completely wanked, I don't know what is. And people wonder why our society is going to hell in a hand basket.... Kill someone and get off scott free vs. download tunes and go bankrupt paying the fines.
RIAA sues a rock, infringing on the musical style.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Rule one in litigating for profit is to go after a defendant deep pockets. The plaintiff's attorneys are clearly trying to earn whatever equivalent there is that the bar association has.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
I had a few mod points to spend and clicked before it was modded troll. To my total surprise, that link launched X11 (along with numerous popups). How can this be possible? See how naive I can be: since I surfed with Safari 3.1.1 on a up-to-date mac (don't hate me too much, I use Debian at work ;-), I though nothing really bad could happen. I don't think anything bad actually happened, but how come can X11 be launched by a website?! Thanks for any explanation :-D
Animoog.org
...You don't even have to own a computer for them to sue you for downloading music! Hell, you don't even need an address!
See why we don't RTFA?
With Javascript turned off all is well.
I guess Flash might play a role too.
Regards
-- t
The linked blog does not make it clear whether or not the man was sued for filesharing that occurred after the date he lost his place of residence/computer. Without reading the 6 page order, what's the real deal? The kneejerk from everyone is to think this man could not possibly have done P2P since he's now homeless. What's the real answer? How did they come to accuse him in the first place? Blog and summary seem short on details.
The homeless guy should sue the holy fuck out of the RIAA for defaming his character. I'm sure the guy could get some lawyer to take that case on contingency and get about a million dollar settlement out of the RIAA. The lawyer would get $800K of that and the homeless guy would get about $200K but that might be enough money for him to get back on his feet again.
It's a shame that Lou Dobbs or some other "crusader" type TV pundit hasn't jumped on this saga yet.
You realize there are only 4 major media companies in the world right now. Lou's bosses reports to a producer who works for a company that is owned by one of these media conglomerates, who also owns several major recording labels. The moment Lou reports that the RIAA is doing something evil, Lou and his producer immediately get fired for casting the company in a bad light and Lou gets blacklisted.
Now... I am surprised that the BBC and NPR haven't picked up on this yet. Maybe they have, but can't devote a 2 minute segment to it each and every day so I may have missed one of their special reports, but considering there are, seriously, more important stories to run such as olympic protests, government upheavals, elections here and abroad, etc, I'm not entirely surprised. It sucks, but put into perspective of US National and world news, is it as important?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Seriously, when it became obvious that this guy was homeless (what, he totes around a laptop, getting mobile Internet access using Sprint or AT&T???), the RIAA should have dropped the case as this is an amazing case of "getting blood from a turnip." The RIAA seems dumber by the day. Let's see...
1) RIAA physically finds homeless man to sue. Serves with papers.
2) RIAA extorts (er, "offers settlement") to homeless man.
3) Homeless man appears in court for trial, maybe even with pro-bono attorney. (Free heat, maybe even free food. Could judge offer temporary housing--like sequestering a jury???)
4) Homeless man loses case big time, owing hundreds of thousands of $$$.
5) Homeless man declares bankrupcy.
6) Homeless man sues RIAA for mental stress.
Seriously, under what circumstance could the RIAA win? Bragging rights?
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
How much could they possibly sue a bum for? I don't think he declares the change he gets in his taxes. Of course someone will come and correct me, saying it prevents him from ever achieving any future success and moving back to an apartment. I don't think he really has that ambition. Either way, so long as he works for cash and pays in cash for the rest of his life, can't he live just fine?
Help fight spam
You know the lawyers at RIAA are insane when actual headlines like these read like if they were from The Onion
Well done, RIAA! You're not evil, just incompetent!
I guess we know the real reason they are losing money.
They may not get a fine, but how would you like your incompetence becoming a part of the public record...
Legally rendered for all who care to look...
when an organization whose entire raison d'etre is malice does something stupid, its still malice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm amazed nobody has asked the real question yet.
Namely: how much money did the MafiAA pay the district judge for this ruling?
one must anticipate these sorts of attacks
for indeed, a rolling stone gathers no moss
oh shit! what am i saying?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Here I thought *I* was a dick.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Baer and Fox??? Sounds like a fairy tale!
(This sig intentionally left blank)
Pirating music makes you homeless!
But the malicious link poster was not an AC..
Or did he post as AC and then get revealed because he posted a malicious link?
Is /. ever going to get round to sorting this issue? They've clearly found a workaround for the [yahoo.com] thing and it's sure as hell not the first time I've seen it (or been abused by it)..
HAHAHA, how many times are you guys gonna fall for the same trick? It's even worded the same every time.
Is this slashdot, or fluffybunnykitties, it's hard to tell sometimes.
Has the RIAA ever sued anyone for just downloading? Isn't it true that everybody they have sued was allowing others to download from their computer. It would be hard to defend allowing others to have your content, but if all you did was download without the sharing, the RIAA would have to prove you didn't own the content.
I just read the whole opinion, I cannot find where it says this man was homeless.
If there are no facts that show that this man is homeless then he may just be outside of the reach of the process server(an independent company the plaintiff uses).
One issue that is not brought up for discussion, but should be, is the RIAA's apparent "Clerical error". They missed the time required to file a memo of law for the judge. It is obvious that there was no "error", rather the RIAA just did not have anything to add, no affidavits, nothing. It looks to me like they just ignored the Magistrate's request for a memo until they had an affidavit from the process server.
I do feel sorry for the homeless man for being the target of the ruthless RIAA, and am disappointed with the judge for allowing the RIAA's behaviour.
At the same time, I hope this man will fight the RIAA and tie up their legal resources. It's not likely that the RIAA would be able to collect any judgement against a homeless man, and they might run up huge legal fees if the man fights the suit. That would be money they couldn't use to sue other innocent people.
Of course, if any legal precedents are made due to such a case, it could harm the other innocent RIAA targets. At least I can hope that the RIAA's empire collapses long before that.
Regards,
Art
Statistics / Editing
Total Clicks: 260
Most recent 10 days with activity:
Date Clicks Unique IPs
2008-04-18 260 226
(updated hourly)
And that's just with that post. 226 unique suckers, and 34 who even went back for more!!
No, it looks like an account was created just for trolling. I'm sure that it's happened before and I'm sure that it'll happen again.
He/She/Its one other post is identical to this one (which I've just modded down and the warning for it up, btw).
Or a really, really sloppy lawyer.
The judge's order to deny sanctions noted that the entire case against the guy had already been withdrawn, hence with no case proceeding, no sanctions were relevant. But you can bet he'll be looking at the firm and their wayward process servers the next time they show up...
Ibid.
Is that tax dollars will have to pay to help support this poor man because he won't be able to get back on his feet after paying assloads of cash out to billionaires.* * Not that they'll ever see a dime from him anyway. Hell, if OJ can avoid paying the Goldmans, this guy's set for life.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
Link doesn't work. How are we supposed to see it with NoScript and FlashBlock enabled?
$
Firefox and NoScript saves the day again
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Rule 1: Never sue poor people.
Rule 2: Always sue rich people.
Sheesh, didn't these people learn?
Personally, you and I know that the judge in this case has heard about the stories of the **AA's actions around the country
That's not likely. First and foremost he's vested in keeping his job so that means he's up to his eyeballs in the political machinations of his region and processing cases as quickly as possible. Unless it's some sort of hobby for him like it is for NewYorkCountryLawyer.
Which takes less time, giving prosecutors a free-pass or generating MORE work calling the RIAA lawyers out on their shennanigans? Which one gets him re-elected?
We're talking about "The Law" and intellectual property machinations where 2 + 2 can equal 5. It's quite likely he's vested in the RIAA's pablum.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Link in parent is malicious. Do not click. AVG just shit a break about that page containing a worm/virus/trojan.
I agree that the judges should be following the **AA actions around the country... but on the other hand, our founding fathers probably never envisioned all of this new-fangled technology that your typical old crotchety judge doesn't want anything to do with, nor has the appropriate time, exposure, and comprehension for totally "getting".
The telephone, radio, and television were not hard to be adopted and understood by all people of the world, but in this era, it's a different story.
I wouldn't be surprised if these judges are under the impression that this homeless person actually stole something material, just like booze or food.
Move all sig!
Your page isn't valid xhtml. You should fix that.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fslashdot.on.nimp.org%2Funlucky%2Fsucker.html&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0
:x
Several people in the homeless shelter have heard this man humming Beatles songs in the community shower. That is a public place. He showed no evidence of purchase nor did he display any permits or licenses. The RIAA has since placed recording (video and audio) equipment in these showers and has 100s of hours of homeless people showering. This is done for the protection of the owners of music and lyrics not in the public domain.
Throughout that shit storm, my Leopard machine remained responsive to all user input and I was able to cleanly close Safari and Mail. Good job, Apple. Thanks for the help in troll combat.
Remind me why I bother to buy music? It seems even if I do the "right thing" all it takes is some lawyer at the RIAA and boom next thing ya know I'm getting sued. I'm thinking I should save the $ I was going to spend on music, then I'll have some funds set aside for when I get sued. I say when because they seem to be suing everyone these days. What is to stop me from going to a used cd trader or amazon and buying the cd they accuse me of "stealing"? I can say doesn't matter I own a copy right here. no I am not a lawyer
... and there's a fair amount of this out and about http://www.therobingroom.com/Judge.aspx?ID=1392. Please read this and other user submissions on the net from counsel and others who deal directly with this guy. Then try to explain how he found the sympathy and tolerance for this nonsense? FYI - I have nothing to do with that site nor do I have a vested interest in seeing him go down. Just posting this, from what I hear, is ballsy enough given his NY connections.
This is our "justice system." Makes me sick.
That's just my POV... no more, no less.
The fault here is in the way they attempted to serve him, not that they were suing someone that was now homeless. They were after him before. From the comments below TFA:
"This is the second time this defendant has had his case dismissed without prejudice. The first time was as a joined set of Does after his identity information was revealed to the RIAA goons. The second time was just now here after a failure to serve him properly."
I think we can safely assume they were working with data generated when the guy did still live in the apartment and have a computer. Of course that remains to be shown, and perhaps they'll get the chance. I'm sure they don't hope to recover a settlement or judgement award, but they still have to act to protect the copyright if they believe it's been infringed.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
...you can only be sanctioned for being improper, but not being stupid.
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
If you believe that, then you got to come over here and look at this piece of the Brooklyn Bridge that has this wonder full overlook of the river and I can let you have it for a song...
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
"all I need is this lamp" walks a little bit
"all I need is this lamp and this laptop." walks a little bit
"all I need is this lamp, this laptop and this wifi card"
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
One has to ask what quality of lawers the RIAA hire? The task of chasing thousands of suspected downloaders is hardly cutting edge. Thus one has to presume that the RIAA pays decent money for the bottom of the barrel lawyer talent. I mean who would want to doing this for a career position. This after a 4 year college degree followed by a legal qualification. Imagine their next interview for a better position. "Now Mr(s) J Lawyer what exactly have you been doing these last 3 years that qualifies you for job you are applying for?" "Well for 3 years I have been filing suits against, students, soccer Mom, homless people etc. to extract a guilty verdict and $3K penalties" Says it all doesn't it!
I guess they are going for the clothes off his back? Or maybe his cardboard home, or perhaps his blankey? I know, the RIAA could have used the money they paid their lawyers to sue him, and gave that to the homeless shelter in his area...now that would have really been something pleasantly unexpected.
They keep referring to the homeless guy like a random individual. He was a college student at Columbia that downloaded a Metallica song. RIAA got him 2 years ago. How do they think he became homeless in the first place?
Maybe I'm missing something, but how do we know this guy is homeless? All that we know is that the RIAA cannot find him - i.e. he is not at his last known address - the address that his AOL account was registered to. Since the RIAA didn't do a thorough search for the guy, they couldn't properly serve him with the complaint - For all we know he just moved to a new address and the RIAA was too sloppy to find that out.
Note also that the RIAA has dismissed the complaint.
I'm curious how much money recording artists have seen trickling back into their own pockets from these law suits. It seems to me this is all just a setup. They've prosecuted children, the childrens parents, homeless, and even pressed into countries they don't belong. Now, they own us all at this point. The court isn't going to protect you. These guys already got money off 8 year old Dick Jr. two blocks down from you.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
...that the RIAA has sued many students, but no military personnel? I mean, if they want to appear Stalinesque, don't screw around! Find some USCG 'seaman deuce' in Bumfuck Alaska that shared a Gwen Stefani file and hose him. Oh, wait, the JAG would be defending him. Maybe not a good idea.
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.