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RIAA Filed 62 New Cases In April Alone
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Based upon a quick examination of the records in PACER, I detected 62 new cases brought by the RIAA against individuals in the month of April alone. In December, 2008, the RIAA had represented to Congress that they had 'discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August [2008].'"
Which means - and to my understanding, the RIAA was actually quite clear on this - they will still file lawsuits related to cases already in progress, but will not begin any new cases against new individuals.
And even still.. I believe the RIAA said they reserve the right to begin filing lawsuits again in the future.
Either way.. so long as the lawsuits they file are legitimate (ie. the person being sued actually broke the law) I, personally, have no problem with it..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Just to get down to brass tacks, the representation in question in the letter seems to be:
"Also, during this past summer, we began discussions with New York Attorney General Cuomo, who suggested that now was the time to take our practice of last resort -- lawsuits -- and replace that form of deterrence with productive engagement by the ISP community in the form of graduated response programs. At his request, as an act of good faith in pursuing these alternatives, we discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083001418.html
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I may have misunderstood, but I think wealthychef was suggesting simple clear rules should be applied to everyone by people with integrity, rather than hoping everyone will have integrity.
Rather than having to explicitly cover every little corner of human nature in laws, you have simple guidelines (don't kill, don't steal etc), and leave it down to a panel (ie a judge and jury) to decide whether the actions of the defendant were right or wrong, based on the guidelines set down.
It's pretty clear you'd have to go into a bit more detail than "do not kill", and some work would need to be done figuring out how to ensure consistency etc, but I like the idea in principle.
Here is Bainwol's bio; he's not a lawyer.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
You might be interested in reading Ronald Dworkin's Law's Empire, the definitive treatise of law as integrity, Amazon's blurb being:
"In this first full-length exposition of his theory of law, Dworkin, who teaches jurisprudence at Oxford University and New York University, maintains that society should ensure for all its members a legal system that functions in a coherent and principled manner. In prose accessible to the lay reader, he discusses at length several views of American constitutional law such as "passivism" and "framers' intention." Rejecting both conventionalism and pragmatism, he advocates law as integrity which holds that propositions of law are true if they derive from justice, fairness and procedural due process in accordance with the community's legal practice. Citing examples, he further argues that law should be more than a collection of formal guidelines and that it should uphold more abstract moral principles, distinguishing between issues of policy and matters of principle affecting rights of the individual. Uniting jurisprudence with adjudication, Dworkin sees each judge as a link in a chain of law of which his or her judgment becomes a part."
You will be well armed to have an informed discussion of law as integrity after reading Professor Dworkin's book. It aptly describes (or perhaps in no small part constituted) one of the prevailing "modern" approach to judicial reasoning.
Another blurb:
"Dworkin (Jurisprudence, Oxford; and Law, NYU) sets out a theory of how judges determine what the law is and its application in hard cases where no settled or clear rule of law disposes of a matter, testing his theory in common law cases turning on statutes and constitutional cases. He posits that propositions of law are correctly established not because they represent a consensus or an efficient means to social goals, but because they answer the requirement that a political community act in a coherent, just, and principled manner toward all of its members. An exceedingly complex work which echoes certain of his previous writings, this volume will be of primary interest to scholars with an intense disciplinary interest. For subject collections. Merlin Whiteman, Dann Pecar Newman Ta lesnick & Kleiman, Indianapolis"
We need to wipe out RIAA's financing!
The best way I know of to do that is before buying any cd or mp3 go to RIAA Radar and make sure that the label is not a member of the RIAA... and of course to (a) spread awareness of the site, and (b) help the site out financially.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
it was kept 60F _above_ what was industry standard.
That is a bold-faced lie. Not only do other major sellers of coffee sell their coffee at temperatures near, at, or above the temperature in question, but McDonald's continues to serve it around the same temperature as well. Starbucks - FUCKING STARBUCKS - recommends coffee be served at or near the temperature McDonald's serves it at.
Get a clue. Even after a big settlement and a high-profile case, the only changes made in the coffee serving industry were more secure packaging and more/clearer warnings. If those thins had been the claims in the case, maybe I'd be okay with it. But to say that the coffee was too hot is definitely a frivolous claim.
Freedom is assumed. Then they try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
Liebeck placed
the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from
the cup. As she removed the lid, the entire contents of the cup spilled
into her lap.
Right there is the whole case- she mis-handled the coffee. The spill was her fault.
During discovery, McDonalds produced documents showing more than 700
claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims
involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebecks. This
history documented McDonalds' knowledge about the extent and nature of
this hazard.
What this conveniently leaves out is that those 700 burns (of all types, only "some" were serious) were NATIONWIDE, over TEN YEARS. When you consider the number of cups that they sold in that time, only one in 24,000,000 burned anyone.
One burn for every 24 million cups.
McDonalds also said during discovery that, based on a consultants
advice, it held its coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees fahrenheit to
maintain optimum taste.
That also matches the National Coffee Association's recommendations. And why would the NCA give bad directions for preparing their product??
He admitted that he had not evaluated the
safety ramifications at this temperature. Other establishments sell
coffee at substantially lower temperatures, and coffee served at home is
generally 135 to 140 degrees.
That's simply not true. For example:
http://www.bunn.com/retail/bunn_difference.html ."
"The patented ready-to-brew reservoir keeps water at the ideal brewing temperature of approximately 200 degrees
http://www.bunn.com/retail/dos_donts.html
" We recommend a quick brew time, using a brewer that keeps water at 200 degrees Fahrenheit (the ideal temperature) and mixes the grounds for full flavor extraction. "
http://www.cuisinart.com/share/man/29_man.pdf
After brewing, the heater plate will keep the coffee at about 180 degrees -185 degrees F."
Post-verdict investigation found that the temperature of coffee at the
local Albuquerque McDonalds had dropped to 158 degrees fahrenheit.
Also not true. "McDonald's policy today is to serve coffee between 80-90 degrees C (176-194 degrees F), relying on more sternly-worded warnings to avoid future liability, though it continues to face lawsuits over hot coffee."
As an example. see http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_huntingdon/displayarticle.asp?id=180135 from 2007.
"McDonald's says its black coffee should be served at 85C, plus or minus five degrees."
And you were saying we needed to find out the facts??
Spot on with Judge Judy - I meant the way there are no lawyers and the people just present the facts, rather than the way she shouts them down and makes a seemingly arbitrary decision based on little more than whether she likes the person or not. I was certainly not suggesting we clone her in order to restock the legal system :)
No, my immediate reaction to the wikipedia article was that this could have been written a lot more clearly. The legal profession tends to use excessively verbose language to explain things, and unless you're used to dealing with it (ie a lawyer), it is difficult to decode the true meaning. I stand by my comment that the wikipedia page is a perfect example of how the constant need for the syntax of law to tie down the semantic meaning has led to legal documents being difficult for the layman to understand.
As for estoppel, my understanding based on my initial reads of the wikipedia article was that it's for the specific circumstance where Person A says something to Person B, and Person B makes a decision based on that; Person A was wrong or changes their mind, and holds Person B responsible. That would certainly seem to be covered by "Be honest" and "Honour your promises" under wealthychef's system - and those are a hell of lot easier for people to understand.
I think we've got away from the main point, which was that by writing incredibly detailed and verbose documents you cannot reliably stop people without integrity breaking the spirit of the law while you rule by the letter of the law.
There are plenty of cases where people get away with a crime due to a legal technicality. Although clearly not without issues, you can solve a lot of problems by writing relatively high-level moral guidelines and then using the integrity of a panel of impartial laymen to pass judgement, rather than by tying their hands with specific legal rules that allow someone who is clearly guilty to walk free.