Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Santangelo Case 'Settled In Principle'
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's long-running war against Patti Santangelo, her children, and even her children's schoolmates has been 'settled in principle,' with final settlement documents expected to be submitted by March 18th. Patti Santangelo is believed to be the first RIAA defendant to have made a motion to dismiss the RIAA's 'making available' complaint. The case first caught the attention of the Slashdot community back in 2005, when a transcript of Ms. Santangelo's first court appearance became available online. The case attracted national attention in December of 2005. According to the Associated Press report of the settlement, neither side was able to comment on the terms of the settlement."
This was also the case that introduced me to Slashdot. One day I discovered that people on some crazy place called "Slashdot.org" were going nuts analyzing the transcript of Patti's court appearance. I couldn't understand what I was seeing. It looked like an online Talmudic debate. The people seemed a little like lawyers -- but they clearly were not lawyers -- and many of them seemed to be smarter than lawyers. So I asked a few people, and eventually found one -- my youngest son who is a techie -- who explained it to me.
Since discovering Slashdot, my life hasn't quite been the same.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
For 3 stressful years the RIAA was able to hold this citizen in fear.
Such extortionate practices should not be allowed.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Without knowing the details of the settlement, I suspect the RIAA agreed to drop the entire case, in return for silence on the subject and a non-binding secret precedent. Ms. Santangelo and her family are doubtless by now dreadfully tired of the entire mess and anxious to see it go away, and the RIAA is doubtless in a thug lawyerish way dreadfully tired of the entire mess by now and anxious to sweep it under the rug, leaving them with freedom to continue their other cases without an embarrassing public precedent.
Of course, this leaves Ms. Santangelo and her family uncompensated for having been put through the mill, but that's the legal system for you.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
So when an org. with a testosterone plasma cannon has to "settle and go secret", they are probably 3/4 in the wrong and only using bully powers to silence her.
The solution is to publish using the glorious powers of the net encrypted synergistic simultaneous codexes against every single unreleased act they have which, when joined against the innocent song lyrics of the nicely broadcast music, tells the whole story in subtitles on every retail demo tv in the world.
Oh, Hi Echelon. You're a nice little compy. But Slashdot has prior art.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It means that no principles were involved.
Time to stop RIAA corporate conglomerate racketeering. There misuse of legal systems and there use of gangster like methods has completely gone wild. It can't be accepted anymore in a democratic society. Corporations are not higher ranked entities, we citizen must act.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Confidential settlements should be illegal - entirely! The courts are a public institution and once you drag people into them it affects the public. The public deserves to know who won and who lost here - and in all such cases!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is anybody else tired of following highly public legal cases for several years, only to have them end in secret settlements? Highly litigious entities like the RIAA have full access to their own records of how they settled past lawsuits, but their new opponents have no such information. This hardly seems fair. The outcomes of lawsuits become, in effect, laws we have to live by, and people have a right to know the law. I think there should be a threshold for lawsuits, maybe a certain amount of court time. If it takes longer, the outcome should be made public. After all, the public pays much of the actual costs of operating the court system. I think we're entitled to find out how these stories end.
I agree. And I have no doubt that the RIAA uses its financial might to determine which settlements are confidential and which aren't. Those they want the public to see, are public. Those they want to keep confidential, are confidential. It's important information not only to the public, but also to the defendants in other cases, and lawyers representing them.
But the thing is I can't imagine the law being changed. Our courts are overloaded. The courts need for cases to be settled. And some settlements just wouldn't happen if one or the other of the parties couldn't insist on confidentiality.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful