RIAA Throws In Towel On "Making Available" Case

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has thrown in the towel on one of the leading cases challenging its 'making available' theory, Warner v. Cassin, in which the defendant had moved to dismiss the RIAA's complaint. We have just learned that the RIAA submitted a voluntary notice of dismissal before the judge got to decide the defendant's motion to dismiss the complaint. It will be of interest to see if Ms. Cassin pursues a claim for attorneys' fees in view of recent court rulings that successful copyright defendants are presumptively entitled to an attorneys fee award, even if the dismissal came about from the plaintiffs' having 'thrown in the towel.'"

Comments

Your Honor

[whisper_jeff]

Your honor, we know you're going to rule against us and set a precedent which will completely torpedo most of our other legal efforts so we'd like to respectfully withdraw our claim. Kthxbai.

sigh... Gamesmanship at its most disgusting...

I'm curious - can the judge deny their voluntary dismissal and still hand down judgment?

Be afraid, be very afraid

[Anita Coney]

The RIAA is obviously afraid of losing outright on the issue of its "making available" argument. I say that because without the "making available" argument the RIAA will no longer be able to sue it fans. Let's face it, if the RIAA had actual evidence of copyright infringement, it would not need to use the "making available" argument. Thus, it's clear that the "making available" argument is the only pseudo-legal straw available for it to grasp.

I personally think it has something to do with the nature of P2P. In the old days if you shared music, the person would download it directly from you. Now you're only sharing bits and pieces of songs,not entire songs, spread out among many different people.

Of course the RIAA could attempt to make the argument that that sharing one even one bit of a song constitutes infringement. However, when one and zeros themselves become illegal, we're all in trouble!

Re:It will be of interest

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

So, what will Ms. Cassin do? Who's representing her anyway? Maybe that attorney could find out and get back to us? I guess you've figured out that her lawyer is me.

And the answer is, she hasn't decided yet.

She clearly has a winnable attorneys fee motion ahead, if she decides to make one, with a lot of good recent precedent behind it, such as Rivera v. Jones, Mostly Memories v. For Your Ease, Capitol v. Foster, Atlantic v. Andersen, and Bridgeport Music v. WB Music.