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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.
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.
The plantiffs in this case are "Alantic Recording Group, etc. et al" so it looks like the actual RIAA member company/companies are on the hook for this.
Very much so wrong. Look at who brought the suit the first time: UMG.
The individual record companies have to sue; the RIAA just does the legwork for "finding" who "made files available" and hands it off.
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
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?
I've known some lawyers who talked about the degree of animosity that exists between lawyers and judges.
... then by the time their turn comes to sit on the bench, they are so thoroughly bitter and full of spite they simply can't wait to unload gallons of the same kind of poison on the next batch of lawyers who come in front of them.
A lawyer spends several decades suffering various forms of abuse and condescension at the hands of the judges he/she faces with every case
> 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.
Maybe the RIAA could make the claim that it wasn't them that filed the papers, but a neighbor using their unsecured wifi?
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.
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.
IANAL but I'll take a guess.
The two items - ruling on the motion and imposing sanctions - though fallout from the same act by the plaintiff lawyers, are separate. I'd bet the judge issued the ruling quickly in the interest of justice, to spare the defendant additional delays and lawyer costs. Rule 11 sanctions, if the distinguished jurist decides to impose them, may be along later.
Given that there was a change in one of the counterclaims and an extra pleading by the RIAA, perhaps the judge doesn't think the motion was TOTALLY out-of-line. Or perhaps, now that he's given them some more rope, he's sitting back quietly while the RIAA's lawyers continue to demonstrate a pattern of abuse of process, in case they come up with some clearer examples. Since that's one of the counterclaims, perhaps the judge thinks a better sanction than spanking them early with Rule 11 (and perhaps deter their activities in THIS trial) is to add this (and any future frivolity) to the list of misdeeds when considering the amount to award on that claim.
Wouldn't justice be better served if they have to pay the price of their bullying to the defendant? B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
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?
Remember, absolutely everything creative is copyrighted, and it would be extremely easy to open a floodgate of tens of millions of copyright trolls. This is why Congress will see the light sooner than later, because the RIAA business model mass adopted could and would literally shut down commerce in the US. Politicians will be exposed to the same liability as consumers.
The RIAA is *losing* because the laws are being fought with laws. And it's utter business suicide to be playing with $150,000 per violation statutory fines against 200,000,000 people who hate your guts.
You know how fucked the RIAA is going to be if they ever mistakenly copy somebody's critical commentary file and attempt to sue for that file? Or it will happen if one of their artists like Bob Dylan plagiarizes lyrics from a novel about the yakuza. All their computers are going to be seized and examined in countersuits. I'm surprised there isn't already a 20 year backlog on examination of RIAA computers from one defense to another. Hell, just routinely make countersuit motion for the seizure and examination of all computers used in the original gathering of evidence. Defense has a right to examine the programs for mistaken identity. And speedy trial requirement will eliminated 90% of the cases due to discovery backlogs on RIAA computer equipment. Governments copying the data of travelers entering the USA are going to have their computers seized for copyright infringement discovery purposes as well. Are you willing to let the US Government copy your files at $150,000 per file copied compensation?
Constitutional immunity for government agencies and businesses like the RIAA will be impossible. Congress will wise up and realize the more they attack the privacy of individual citizens the more they will be attacking their own privacy as well. And people like that have a helluva lot more dirty secrets and a helluva lot more assets to pay fines without declaring bankruptcy.
This is a matter of Civil Law which is already well beyond unconstitutional. Further strengthening unconstitutional law will just hasten the inevitable end, especially when every citizen can privately track isp addresses and embarrass politicians by exposing their children's downloading and internet surfing activities. At that time, such RIAA investigative practices will be shut down faster than you can say how to catch a pedofile.
The internet is a giant P2P program. Nothing can be seen, heard, tracked, or logged without by definition mass copying the entire internet. Allowing suits on weaker evidence will just open trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of legal liability. The only way the RIAA could win is if the internet was shut down. And that's not going to happen when the GDP of business interests not the content industries dwarfs dying businesses like the RIAA.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Yes, but they are lawyers. By definition, they not only deserve it, they have *earned* it. ;)
"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