Slashdot Mirror
Florida Judge Smacks Down RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA is going to have to face the music in Tampa, Florida, and answer the charges of extortion, trespass, conspiracy, unlicensed investigation, and computer fraud and abuse that have been leveled against them there. And the judge delivered his ruling against them in in pretty unceremonious fashion — receiving their dismissal motion last night, and denying the motion this morning. The RIAA's unvarying M.O., when hit with counterclaims, is to make a motion to dismiss them. It did just that in one Tampa case, UMG v. Del Cid, but the judge upheld 5 of the 6 counterclaims. The RIAA quickly settled that one. When a new case came up in the same Tampa courthouse before the very same judge, and the same 5 counterclaims were leveled against the record companies, I opined that 'it is highly unlikely that the RIAA will make a motion to dismiss counterclaims,' since I knew they'd be risking sanctions if they did. Well I guess I underestimated the chutzpah — or the propensity for frivolous motion practice — of the RIAA lawyers, as they in essence thumbed their nose at the judge, making the dismissal motion anyway, telling District Judge Richard A. Lazzara that his earlier decision had been wrong. The judge wasted no time telling the record companies that he did not agree (PDF)."
Call me when Boyer refuses to settle and we finally get a decision on this.
Until then, BFD.
Hi. I'm the judge in this courtroom. I told your ass to get out of here once. you didn't listen. You came back with the same complaint. Guess what happens. I deny any and all settlement offers you offer to the counter-claimer. I will make it pretty damn clear this time your crap will not be welcome in this courtroom again. Prepare for contempt processes. Oh ya, I'm gonna make sure they put you in the same cell as a guy who likes to steal car steroes.
I'd like to see a statement by the judge or other qualified individuals detailing why they didn't get sanctioned for this (mostly for curiosity -- the legal process is obtuse and interesting). It seems like the RIAA lawyers took a big risk in submitting the same info to the same court.
The problem is, the RIAA can get sued and convicted into oblivion, but all the RIAA is is a shell corp for the big record companies. The record companies themselves won't have to answer for this, and if RIAA is legally forced under, the record companies will just make another shell corp to cover their asses. This will only truly matter when someone sues the record companies themselves.
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
The same process you use to mass mail your legal complaints can not be used to file your legal responses. This is why fellas. This case is going to get messy *grabs popcorn*
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Agreed. The RIAA should be allowed to break the law and use illegal practices to bring all those horrible copyright infringer's to swift and brutal justice. The RIAA's clients are literally losing TRILLIONS of dollars to people who are worse than terrorists. Personally I think RIAA should be able to hire mercenaries to rid the earth of such scum.
That is fascinating. The judge got a motion from the RIAA to dismiss the defendant's counterclaims, and he didn't even bother to give the defendants a chance to reply! Instead he saved them the cost for their lawyers and rejected the RIAA's motion to dismiss without causing any work for the defendants. I just wonder how unusual that is.
(Quoted for when the OP is modded -1 Troll a few times...)
from your local friend of thieves always peddling his dubious services here at slashdot, where the people who make the movies we watch are scum, and the people who think the world owes them a living a welcome. Stop fucking stealing and you wont need the services of the ambulance chasing dick who submits all this biased bullshit.
I would submit that all the false positives that the RIAA has ensnared were not protected by being innocent. Defending yourself from a wrongful prosecution is very expensive in this country. A fact that the RIAA uses to its advantage.
...but if there's a supreme being out there somewhere, I'll agree to start praying to it or sacrificing cans of tuna on its altar or whatever the hell it wants (within reason, of course) if only, please, please, please, there's jail sentences for the bastards at the end of this affair.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
What's the matter, son, the judge upheld all the counterclaims against you? If you litigate as badly as you troll, you're in deep doo-doo.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
For you litigation buffs out there, let's take a quiz.
The facts.
A lawyer just filed a 30-page brief in which he (a) devoted 28 pages to repeating the same arguments he had made in a motion that was decided less than 8 months earlier, and (b) devoted 3 pages to telling the judge that his previous ruling was "wrongly decided".
Question #1
What will happen?
(a) The lawyer will win the motion.
(b) The lawyer will lose the motion.
(c) The lawyer will have to find a new line of work.
(d) Both (b) and (c)
Question #2
If you are the client who pays lawyers to do things like that you are
(a) A smart businessperson
(b) A moron
(c) A fool
(d) Both (b) and (c)
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Does "ATLANTIC RECORDING CORP., etc., et al.," (the people being countersued) include the RIAA & RIAA member companies?
Or did you just use "RIAA" in the same (wrong) way that frequently happens around here.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Just wondering: Since this is Judge Lazzara's second case already, I would think that he now knows more about the subject than your average judge, so it would only make sense to let him handle whatever over similar cases come anywhere near his court. Does the judicial system work that way, giving judges similar cases where possible, or are the cases handled by a random judge?
It seems like an automated system. I think the RIAA's legal team has been replaced by a server farm.
> Could the lawyers involved be disbarred?
No.
> Could anybody actually see the inside of a cell over this?
No.
Not even sanctions. Really. Seriously, people, I know you've all been whipped into a frenzy and want to see the public executions of every spouse and child of every clerk and paralegal of every law firm who's ever done business with the RIAA, but all that happened was that the plaintiffs made a useless motion, and the judge gave it the due consideration it deserved, which was nothing. Trust me when I say that no baby seals were clubbed in the process.
If anything, UMG should be pissed that their legal team phoned it in when it came to this motion. These are pretty serious counterclaims and they don't appear to be taking them seriously. Hubris does that I guess.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
You are correct. Innocence is no defense. While you may be presumed innocent until proven guilty the simple fact that you have been pulled into court before a judge and charged with a crime leaves a an indelible stench of guilt on you.
I recently listened to a defense attorney spend considerable time schooling potential members of a jury in the difference between innocence and not guilt. He apparently was going for the not guilty verdict even though his client participated in the car jacking willingly. Most amazing speech I had heard in a long time. I think he was actually going to argue that his client just went along due to peer pressure and wanted to fit in.
I learned a long time ago that in the court room the judge and attorneys involved are not interested in the truth, the facts, or with dispensing justice. They are there to tell a story and put on an act to convince the jury that their side is telling a better story than the other side.
It reminds me a lot of survivor at the end where the remaining contestants tell a story to convince everyone in the jury to vote them the money.
First, I think the RIAA lawyers are probably doing nothing different from any lawyer - trying to get as many suits dismissed as possible, so they only have to argue the smallest subset possible. I can understand such a philosophy, when time is money, there's a pressure to get quick results, judgements are worse publicity than accusations, and so on. That is probably more a function of the legal system and the American attitude to high-pressure living/working than the RIAA.
Second, if a motion is frivolous, the judge should be doing more than just wagging a finger. Abuse of legitimate procedures devalues those procedures for others, as it increases the likelihood of judges in future regarding all such motions in a more hostile light. The judicial system does not just have a responsibility for those who stand before it today, but a responsibility for all who may ever stand before it, which means that there should be subtle encouragement of motions which are plausible (even if they are ultimately dismissed) and an unsubtle discouragement of motions which cannot possibly be construed as reasonable.
It would be interesting if the courts had greater powers (within reasonable bounds) to deal with contempt of court and any other abuse of court procedures, and a greater willingness to use those powers when lawyers or clients go beyond mere over-enthusiasm to being out of control. It wouldn't need to be severe. A compulsary psychiatric evaluation would be interesting, as it conveys all kinds of messages (real and imagined) about those who try to twist things.
I also think that some sort of staggered system, where you have a first round of aggressive fact-finding that feeds into a second round trial system, would help avoid the problem, the idea being that dismissal or whatever doesn't have any meaning until after the facts have been established, and accusatory systems are not very good at establishing facts, they're too busy constructing theories, but fact-finding missions are very bad at establishing context. Hence the need for both in a way that doesn't lend one to distract from the other.
The SCO/IBM case demonstrates a lot of what I'm talking about - a lot of the hold-ups and confusion was caused by wild speculation and insinuation, a lot of the useful stuff was done by establishing the groundwork, and all of this was before any actual trial had taken place. It would seem to follow that tuning the system according to experiences of what has been effective is better than maintaining a multi-millenia-old method that has acquired a lot of cruft and could do with some refactoring and bugfixing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No, these scum are far worse than terrorists; they are a plague, an infectious disease that destroys all it touches. Unrelenting, incurable. Even the courts are at their mercy. Mercenaries are not enough, here. Entire armies are insufficient. Not even the Spanish Inquisition (which nobody expects), could handle this. No, they must be wiped out from orbit, with nukes. It's the only way to be sure.
Signed,
The RIAA:
Creators of the Culture,
Bearers of the Truth,
Defenders of the Civilization,
Champions of Liberty,
Dearer than Life Itself,
Dread Rulers of the Abyss (in a good way, we assure you),
Awesome Enough to Have Many Many Titles,
Your Beloved Content-Owning Overlords.
You wouldn't perchance be that certain talentless hack of a lawyer that NYCL has humiliated before, would you? Maybe you weren't cut out to be a lawyer, you know I hear KFC is hiring.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Not quite, the Lawyer and Procecutor are each telling thier side. The prosecutor goes first and tries to make the defendant seem like the most vile person ever to walk the earth. Then it's the Lawyer's turn to make the defendant look like an angel and to make the procesutor look like he doesn't know anything.
Many people at this point would think that this is silly, and nothing more than a show. It was always put to me this way: It's not a lawyers job to determine if thier client is innocent or not, that is the judge/jury's job. The lawyers job is to put the defendant in the best possible light, and to ensure that a fair trial is being conducted.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
One movie that describes this perfectly, is "my cousin vinny". In the movie, Ralph Macchio of Karate Kid interprets a teenager who just happened to buy something at a store where 5 minutes later the clerk was shot.
The district attorney hired a wonderful lawyer that moved the hearts and minds of everyone. Fortunately, the kid's cousin, Vinny, the most inefficient lawyer on earth, happened to save the day by presenting the facts to the jury (and add a lot of fun with his irreverence).
One of my favorite movies, btw.
How about one better. There are probably dozens of ways to do this, I would do with with Windows Vista Premium / Ultimate 64bit and an xbox 360. But you can do it with Apple TV, myth et al. I would like to load all of my DVDs onto 1 server and just stream that shit to my tv. Fuck opening DVD cases. It would be much better to leisurely watch all of MASH, or Dead Like Me, or whatever 1 or two episodes when the mood strikes, and not having to remember which episode/disc I was on. And while I'm at it, the NFL doesn't provide a DVD yearbook for each team (apparently they hate money), but think of the possiblity of that, a whole lifes worth of passive entertainment and slice of culture really on one server at the touch of a remote. The RI/MPAA says that's illegal and I should be punished. For using technology that already not only exists but is trivial to setup (aside from the nusiance of DVD ripping, which itself could be far less of a mess) my livelyhood, my future should be in jeopardy? This is how market forces are supposed to work? To prevent the embracing of wealth and progress, largely for sake of the poor math skills and emotional convenience of people who obviously don't know how to manage their businesses?
The only just, sanction as far as I'm concerned, when such entities as the media companies overstep their bounds is to have the disputed properties placed in the public domain. The use of the works can still be tracked, and the companies that lost their rights to control the works can still be on the hook for all the royalty payments. If they're going to endanger people's livelyhood with their mistakes, it's only fair that their own hangs in the balance.
Disbarred, NO
Sanctioned, Yes
Actual misbehavior by lawyers and their clients is decidedly unfunny. That is the message of Rule 11, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This is the law that obligates the federal courts to impose sanctions on lawyers and clients who file and pursue lawsuits in unreasonable ways. Rule 11 breaks with precedent that required proof of bad faith to trigger sanctions. Unreasonableness is a lighter trigger that has proven beneficial to persons burdened by lawyer and client misbehavior. By the way, sanctions is legal terminology for getting your expenses back in some degree from an attorney or party who did you wrong in a lawsuit.
WHAT REMEDY RULE 11 PROVIDES
Rule 11 prescribes sanctions for certain basic misdeeds: (1) the filing of a frivolous suit or document; (2) the filing of a document or lawsuit for an improper purpose; (3) actions that needlessly increase the cost or length of litigation.
Relevant parts of the rule are these:
The signature of an attorney or party constitutes a certificate by the signer that the signer has read the pleading, motion, or other paper; that to the best of the signer's knowledge, information, and belief formed after reasonable inquiry it is well grounded in fact and is warranted by existing law or a good faith argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law, and that it is not interposed for any improper purpose, such as to harass or to cause unnecessary delay or needless increase in the cost of litigation... If a pleading, motion, or other paper is signed in violation of this rule, the court, upon motion or upon its own initiative, shall impose upon the person who signed it, a represented party, or both, an appropriate sanction, which may include an order to pay the other party or parties the amount of the reasonable expenses incurred because of the filing of the pleading, motion, or other paper, including a reasonable attorney's fee (emphasis added).
Sanctions may apply against an attorney, the client, or both; therefore, we have adopted the collective convention, attorney/client.
You missed the update. The RIAA and poor recording artists are losing Quadrillions of dollars a second. In fact it's so bad that bands are now resorting to cannibalism. Metallica Ate DEO's drummer and bass guitarist. and Nobody has seen Robert Palmer for a few weeks.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You wouldn't steal a handbag!
You wouldn't steal a car!
You wouldn't steal a baby!
You wouldn't shoot a policeman, and then steal his helmet!
You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet, and send it to the policeman's grieving widow, and then steal it again!
The IT crowd is funneh
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
And thank you for mentioning me in the same breath as PACER and Groklaw.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
In the words of the great philosopher, "Nuke 'em till they glow. Then shoot 'em in the dark."
Words to live by.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
"Success is based on knowing how far to go in going too far"
My mom always called that "selective hearing". Apparently, all the men in the family suffer from it severely.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
Well if I'm accused of feeling pleasure over the RIAA's misfortune, I am guilty as charged.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
"Consequently, because the Court has previously resolved all of the issues raised in Plaintiffs' motion to dismiss, and because the Court is not convinced that its prior decision was wrong, the Court needs no response from Defendant and the motion is due to be denied."
Translation: Not this shit again.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
I'd really like to see a version of that 'commercial' where it goes like this:
...BUT if you could duplicate them for free without anyone losing anything... you WOULD! (show guy pulling 'magic duplicator' from pocket, point it at car, ::poof::, second car appears. Guy gets into duplicate, drives off. Car dealer starts to run after him, then notices he's not missing any cars.)
You wouldn't steal a handbag! (Show guy grabing handbag, women freaking out)
You wouldn't steal a dvd (show guy stealing dvd, shop owner freaking out)
You wouldn't steal a car (etc)
(repeat similar with the other items, in reverse order- dvd, handbag. In each case, the person who was pissed off before is no longer,because they aren't missing anything.)
It takes years of training to master that skill.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
"Frivious" is a perfectly cromulent word!
It's hardly a smart move to annoy the judge. This is a pretty accurately aimed footbullet.
"Hardly a smart move" could be the RIAA's secret motto.