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RIAA Lied To Congress About New Filesharing Suits

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."

4 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Is lying to Congress illegal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is lying to Congress illegal? Is it considered perjury?

    1. Re:Is lying to Congress illegal? by OutSourcingIsTreason · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And if you're a president lying to Congress about Saddam Hussein trying to buy yellow cake uranium in Niger, and thereby causing thousands of deaths, it's legal?

      --
      "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
  2. Promissory estoppel? by Andy_R · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does this make promissory estoppel a defence in these new cases? (I didn't know what it was either until it was mentioned on /. a while back, basically it's legalese for 'hey no fair, they said they wouldn't sue if I did it'.)

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  3. I say we take up arms... by macraig · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... and use good old-fashioned violence. The effectiveness of physical violence in achieving goals is much underrated these days. I seem to recall the American Revolution involved a bit of violence, didn't it, and we trumpet the success and worthiness of that violence in every classroom in the country, right? A second revolution in these not-so-entirely-United States seems a bit overdue. We have more than a few barons and overlords and Captains of Industry just begging to be introduced to a guillotine. I think the folks in Texas would readily understand this notion that some people just need killin' (http://bennettandbennett.com/blog/2007/11/texas-murder-sentences-probation-to.html).

    What sort of revolutionary vigilante violence might we visit upon the RIAA's clients and its sympathizers in Congress?