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RIAA May Be Violating a Court Order In California
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In one of its 'ex parte' cases seeking the names and addresses of 'John Does,' this one targeting students at the University of Southern California, the RIAA obtained an order granting discovery — but with a wrinkle. The judge's order (PDF) specified that the information obtained could not be used for any purpose other than obtaining injunctions against the students. Apparently the RIAA lawyers have ignored, or failed to understand, that limitation, as an LA lawyer has reported that the RIAA is busy calling up the USC students and their families and demanding monetary settlements."
So, how many countersuits would it take to wipe RIAA off the face of the planet?
They could...IF that weren't blackmail.
The article's title should read: "RIAA Violating a Court Order in California".
**insert favorite profound quotation here**
Sounds more like a pragmatic solution and better than criminalizing your potential customers via dubious legal processes, such as this one.
...Or legalized racketeering.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
May I redirect you to The Pirate Bay's legal department?
To put it simply, NO. The judge put a very narrow restriction on the information. Any other use is a violation of that restriction. Judges take a dim view of being ignored.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Because if there's one thing students in the US don't have enough of, it's fees.
But seriously, an opt-in fee to benefit the artists sounds like a good compromise, though I think it's safe to say that's not going to happen. It will be a mandatory fee, collected by the universities and deposited into the coffers of Sony BMG, EMI, Warner and Universal without them having to lift a finger. Artists will never see a dime, labels will have a new printing press for cash and students all across America will get screwed.
It's a sad state of affairs when the pessimistic view is synonymous with the realistic.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Free?
I'm Canadian. I pay a levy on all blank media to pay for the possibility that those materials might be used - at some point - to hold copyrighted materials.
I've paid for the content, and I am damn well going to get my money's worth. It is NOT my responsibility to make sure that the money I paid is going to the right hands. I've paid; it's done.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Its racketeering to sue someone for infringing on their copyright?
The suggestion was to have the infringing person(s) pay a fee in lieu of legal action. The definition of racketeering approximately is; Paying someone to not undertake an economically damaging course of action to you and/or your business. That's a nice credit score you have there. Shame if something were to happen to it...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Invalidate the copyright? You must be thinking of trademarks. You can't invalidate a copyright by lack of defending it (or in this case, bad faith). If someone reproduces a book I've written for 10 years and I don't do anything, I can still sue them at anytime even if I was previously aware of the violation. You can't 'lose' a copyright.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
The legal word is extortion, but I concur.
And when has that ever stopped them?
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
This is a country where the congress can reject a bill (auto bailouts for example) just to see the president go ahead and do it anyhow.
I hope he does, so I can enjoy watching the Republicans who voted against the Detroit bailout bitch about the president ignoring Congress. You know, since those Republicans have acted as a rubber stamp for every violation of the Separation of Powers or the Constitution the last 8 years.
Blank media includes hard drives. You have to put those files somewhere.
Laches only applies to "equitable relief", ie, compensation. Basically, you can't let someone sell your stuff for 10 years (knowingly) and them hit them for all the money they've made distributing it since they started. However, it will not in any way invalidate your copyright. You can still stop them from redistributing your works, you just can't go after them for a zillion dollars.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
You misunderstand. The "artists" are defined by the RIAA as "those who have made an art of suing people."
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
That is what they're already doing. I work for one of the top 10 universities targeted by the RIAA, and the "offer" they make the students has absolutely no legal authority to it. They're quite literally "promising not to sue" if the student pays them some number of thousands of dollars. There is no suit being filed, no legal action being taken, no trial. Just a letter, an offer, and instructions to visit their handy website to make paying as easy as possible: www.p2plawsuits.com
As a fellow Canadian, I couldn't agree more. I have been paying this "tax" for years on every media purchase I've made. My business requires me to purchase recordable media and I know I would save thousands every year if this "tax" did not exist.
I'm almost tempted to "get my monies worth" but I feel I have too much to lose, if I were dragged through court.
I suppose this is how the RIAA/CRIA operate. Preying on those they feel are vulnerable. I'm not even a very big music fan, in fact most of what I listen to is about to lose its protected status soon.
I do believe that if given enough time and political conditioning, they will craft laws for themselves in favour of their business model to the point of absurdity, if they haven't gotten there yet.
Its only a matter of time before they begin to investigate and sue "suspicious purchasers" of recordable media. Read "big purchasers".
In their effort to limit copyright infringement and maximize profits, they have created a generation of would be criminals. Simply because they refuse to adapt their revenue stream and the only outcome is aggravation and financial loss for all who are involved, given enough time.
Protip for those of us a bit south of canada
Never buy music CDs. The MAFIAA gets a cut. Always buy "data" CDs. They're the same physical thing.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
this business of suing people has become so lucrative...
I don't think so. According to my math, they're losing money hand over fist.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Yeah, and the Democratic party majority sure put a stop to the abuses and saved us. Two factions of the same Oligarchy if you ask me.
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
Never buy music CDs. The MAFIAA gets a cut.
True.
Always buy "data" CDs. They're the same physical thing.
Partly False. They have a header on them so that standalone CD recorders, like the Pioneer PDR-609 can recognize them, those recorders will not record on regular DATA CD-Rs.
Otherwise though, they are pretty much the same.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
According to my math, they're losing money hand over fist.
Yeah, but what does the RIAA math say?
I don't know. They're not very good at math, or law.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Yeah, but can he give them a slap on the wrist (i.e. a fine)? Or can he actually give them a solid kicking (a 7-figure+ fine and organise some sort of professional sanctions against the lawyers) and actually end the cases? Because the RIAA isn't suing people for the money, they're suing people to try and scare the public at large and if they can go "look, we can get your names on a 'no-sue' basis, ignore that, sucessfully sue you anyway and it'll only cost us a moderate fine" then they're come out clearly on top. Infact if the message that they can carry illegal lawsuits all the way through even after being called on it gets out, it'll play right into their hands.
To play devil* for a moment, using the old information-wants-to-be-free argument, once someone knows who it is that they need to sue how can you conscionably tell them that they can't actually sue them because you only told them the name so they could use it for something else?
*the devil is the RIAA's advocate.
FGD 135
The legal term for that is "extrajudical settlement". Man, you make that sound like something illegal. What are you, a commie? It's perfectly legal to buy yourself a get-out-of-jail card here if you're rich.
Or to browbeat your opponent into submission by giving him the choice of giving you a nice amount of money or face higher legal costs than he can afford, if he's poor.
Didn't anyone ever wonder why the RIAA never went after someone who has enough money to actually defend himself in court?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ray, I've always been curious about something and was wondering if you could comment... When you post comments (and blog, for that matter) you generally seem to post your opinion, as well as humor and even attacks on "the bad guy" without holding too much back. You appear to be somewhat more restrained when discussing cases which you are personally involved in - and appear to be most restrained in cases in which you are being directly attacked (ie the RIAA lawsuit). This is all as I would expect from a professional -- if anything, you appear more open than I would have expected. So: Are you ever concerned that comments made here will come back to bite you? Where do you draw the line? Are you ever concerned that, for example, a judge may read your comments here (or on your blog) and that may influence their decisions? I have always enjoyed your sense of humor (sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes biting sarcasm, etc) and would not like to see that stop - I was just curious if you ever write something and think "No, I better not post that - that'll come back to haunt me."
Yes I've had to think about those types of questions. I think about them before I write them. The area that's required the most restraint is that I can't talk about my litigation ideas until they have been memorialized in publicly filed litigation documents. No I don't worry about judges reading my arguments, because my arguments here are the same as the arguments I make in my litigation documents. And I don't worry about the RIAA lawyers reading them, because they can't read.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
stop stealing and law-suits will stop.
Only after you stop murdering your children, and by "murder" I mean fail to pay them additional allowance for not crapping their pants.
Having paid off our congress to continuously extend copyright far beyond its intended utility does not give them even a sliver of moral credibility. The works in question did not spring from a vacuum. They are the fruits of our common culture. Reasonable recompense adequate to encourage the works' creation is all they are due (just as it says in the Constitution) and complete control for two lifetimes is not reasonable. The fact that it's the law does not make it automagically right.
Seriously, you still call copyright infringement "stealing" despite having it explained to you hundreds of times exactly why it isn't in any way related to stealing? You're an idiot.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I was just reading NYCL's article on this whole situation
http://beckermanlegal.com/Documents/080729LargeRecordingCompaniesVsTheDefenselessHTMLVERSION.htm
and it seems to me that the RIAA lawyes have come up with a scheme that brazenly uses the legal system to threaten people (nothing new there) but ALSO that the legal system has tacitly gone along with it. The "old boys club" of judges has decided that it's OK for these dirty pirating scum to be hammered through their courts, because they are so sneaky that there is no other way.
To the older generation, copyright infringement like this seems very wrong and the fact that the internet allows it to be done anonymously, with no easy trackdown, also seems wrong and perverted.
So basically they have allowed the RIAA to jam some wedges into the court system and use it to get those naughty infringers.
If they were not at least partially comfortable with the RIAA doing this, surely, they would have close it down long ago, because the whole process is surpremely dodgy.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
You make the RIAA look like the good guys.
Even I can't pull that one off.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful