RIAA Lied To Congress About New Filesharing Suits

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 5, 2009 @09:10PM from the honestly-they're-all-at-the-cleaners dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "On December 23, 2008, the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol sent a letter to the Judiciary and Commerce Committees of both the House and Senate, falsely representing to them that the RIAA 'discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August.' A copy of the letter is online (PDF). In fact, as many of you already know, the RIAA brought hundreds of new lawsuits since August. See, e.g., these 40 or so cases which just represent some of the cases brought in December." Maybe they're just taking a broad view of the world "initiate."

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Re:Promissory estoppel? by adamchou · 2009-02-05 22:22 · Score: 5, Informative

IANAL.... but my gf is =)

If my understanding is correct

1) Promissory estoppel is used for contract law and there was no contract initiated by the RIAA and the people so it wouldn't be valid here

2) The document linked to on Mr. Beckerman's site says they discontinued the lawsuits. They didn't specify a length of time that it would remain discontinued for so it'd seem to me they're free to start again when they wanted.

I'm not trying to take the RIAA's side... just making a point. I still hate them with a passion.