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].'"

Comments

Surprising

[count rostov]

The RIAA, lying? Who saw that one coming?

Re:Surprising

[futureb]

Everyone hates lawyers until they need one. If you are ever served with a complaint, I would welcome you to the Guild and would look forward to your learning civil procedure in the time given to you to file your answer...if you know how much time that is.

Re:Surprising

[TheGratefulNet]

remove the NEED for lawyers, then.

you guys are not very smart, are you? you can't quite see that you created this monster and are still arguing that the monster 'needs' to continue living.

so that the monster can continue.

circular, huh?

simplify the laws, put normal 'thinking' people in charge as judges and we could NOT do a worse job than is being done now. not joking about it either, the system is just too complex and needs to be totally broken down and redone.

lawyers are slime and the fact that you 'need' them indicates a bigger social problem.

Re:Surprising

[v1]

But you're forgetting, there'd be a lot less poor innocents such as the OP being served if there weren't so many lawyers to begin with....

Considering lawyers as the answer is clouding your vision that they are also the cause.

It's a common situation to be in, "What's the answer to x? More x!". No. The answer is "NO x."

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Simplify the laws. Good answer.

You know what happens in any game, be it online, tabletop, sport, or whatnot? You lay down a simple rule, it will get abused. You tell people they can't do something in general, they'll argue for specifics. If anybody disagrees, without a specific rule to account for the situation, it's all bitch, bitch, bitch.

Now, that's just in terms of games. Which don't mean shit. Move that to the real world, where things matter. Someone spilled hot coffee on themselves? Well, they certainly don't want to be embarrassed, so they'll take advantage of a lack of explicit warnings on the cup and sue the restaurant! Broke into someone's house and tripped over something they left out? Technically, you're in a legal grey area regarding trespassing, and besides, there's nothing in the trespassing law saying you don't have to clean up your junk, so sue the homeowner!

People will fight that much harder to abuse any law you give them until it's spelled out in such explicit detail that they can't find loopholes in time. And thanks to these assholes abusing the "simple" laws, we need to staple more laws on top of them to shut them up when they're being assholes. And that's what's happened. Lawmakers make a law that should be simple, some asshole wants to abuse it for kicks, judges set precedents to attach more detail to laws, repeat cycle.

If you simplify the laws, you'll get nothing but an army of assholes abusing them. Either they'll get their way or they'll keep arguing you to a stalemate, and seriously, what else are they going to do with their day? You've got important things to do and they don't. They'll win. And regardless of your personal views of how reality works, you'll have that army of assholes whether the laws are "simple" or "complex" or if we "need" lawyers or not.

The laws and social norms are the only things keeping some overly creative asshole with too much time on his hands from picking you at random, finding some way to empty your life, and getting away with it scot-free. Yes, even if you think anarchy is teh bestz!!!!1!1 and we'd all be better off if we just did things your way. The legal system didn't make society into what it is. People did.

Unless it's your plan to eradicate all of humanity?

Re:Surprising

[SydShamino]

simplify the laws, put normal 'thinking' people in charge as judges and we could NOT do a worse job than is being done now. not joking about it either, the system is just too complex and needs to be totally broken down and redone.

lawyers are slime and the fact that you 'need' them indicates a bigger social problem.

"Normal, 'thinking' people" can arrive at drastically different conclusions. See Conservative v. Liberal v. Libertarian. So, if you want the law to be consistent, what your saying is that we should scrap all the existing precendences, but start over reestablishing them, which will eventually require lawyers again.

Or, do you intend to abolish precedence, and let each judge conclude for each case how to interpret and apply the law? Because I see the world where judges can arbitrarily apply law with no regard for established precedence to be far, far worse than the world we have now.

Re:Surprising

[Miseph]

If I were to say that we should do the same for programming, engineering or open heart surgery, what would you think about it? If you can't see why law needs people who specialize in it, then you are a fool.

Most lawyers and attorneys are actually pretty reasonable (keep in mind that most are also not involved with trial law), and most judges get that job because of their well-tuned BS detectors. The only thing I got out of your post is that you don't actually have any idea what you're talking about, that you've probably never even been in a court, and that you honestly believe your reading a handful of blogs and news sites that just touch on law actually give you a serious capacity for it.

Re:Surprising

[TeXMaster]

"Normal, 'thinking' people" can arrive at drastically different conclusions. See Conservative v. Liberal v. Libertarian.

Wait, why are you talking about thinking people in the first sentence and then switch to a totally different topic in the second one?

Re:Surprising

[HuguesT]

Judges are normal people like you and me. The right to belong to a political party of one's choosing is a pretty fundamental right.

Re:Surprising

[wealthychef]

You cannot keep making more rules. In your world, integrity is assumed not to exist, and you rely on the rules to keep order. Consider two options. In the first, we rely on simple, clear rules and citizens with integrity to enforce them. In this system, some people will cheat, yes, but when the rules are clear, then we can deal with the cheaters by executing good-faith judgment in a trial of their peers, and delivering the full punishment when the law is broken, in speedy, reliable fashion. The downside is that the citizens are expected to be men of honor and we all then have a burden to keep our word. Abuses will occur. In the second option, which is the system you propose, we assume that everyone will cheat, in fact, we expect it. A little cheating is OK, but a lot is "bad." We punish the eggregious cheats, but let the little cheats slide with a wink, since we all do it anyhow, right? How dare some sanctimonious person dare judge our behavior? In this system, you have to keep making more and more rules to cover the edge cases because everyone is looking for a little advantage. Juries are not allowed to exercise as much judgment, instead the rules keep getting "improved". The good thing about such a system is citizens are no longer responsible for their behaviors -- they can blame the rules when things go bad. Or is that such a good thing? Hmm. The down side is that the rules become so twisted that cheating is the NORM. There is no such thing as 98% integrity. As soon as you accept 98% integrity, then you redefine 98% as 100%, and then you start having 96% integrity, which then becomes the new 100% etc. AT some point, we are going to have to admit that we as individuals are responsible for our entire lives and everything we do and say in them, and really be engaged in our society. It cannot work any other way. So yes, scrap the system, replace it with something simpler, I say, and then let's start actually FOLLOWING THE RULES. :-)

Re:Surprising

[wealthychef]

The ability to arrive at different conclusions is fine, that's why we have juries. We need to have simpler laws and let the juries have more discretion, all the time utterly respecting the rule of law.

Re:Surprising

[HeronBlademaster]

The rules are largely irrelevant to people with integrity. That is, most laws have little effect on the majority of the population; murder being illegal has no direct effect on me, personally, because I've never murdered nor do I plan to murder. Would you argue that since murder being illegal has no effect on most of the population we should make it legal?

The whole point of laws is to keep the minority of people - the GP's "army of assholes" - from screwing things up for the rest of us. The only way to do that is to make laws more and more specific as those people try to find smaller and smaller loopholes to get out of taking responsibility for their own actions.

Re:Surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish people would stop abusing the McDonald's coffee case, it's basically the hallmark of people who refuse to fucking pay attention. She didn't sue because there wasn't a warning the coffee was hot, she sued because it caused 3rd degree burns in under 5 seconds, as it was kept 60F _above_ what was industry standard.

Re:Surprising

[spanky the monk]

true dat. Seems to me that PEOPLE are fundamentally the thing that needs to be reformed. This "monster" is really just a sickness of the people themselves.

You are not separate from the world people! you grew out of it and are as connected to it as an apple is to a tree. It's all YOU. Wake up!

Re:Surprising

[SausageOfDoom]

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.

Re:Surprising

[Dragonslicer]

Considering lawyers as the answer is clouding your vision that they are also the cause.

Assholes are the cause. Asshole lawyers just make it even worse. In theory, non-asshole lawyers (and judges, and politicians, and just about everyone else) are the answer.

Re:Surprising

[Thinboy00]

The problem is that such laws need to deal with complex circumstances (e.g. killing in self defense, "manslaughter" by drunk driving, estoppel etc.). The more circumstances need to be dealt with, the more complex the laws need to be (that's ungrammatical, isn't it?).

Re:Surprising

[SausageOfDoom]

Like I said, it's pretty clear you'd have to go into a bit more detail. "Do not kill" would have sub-clauses like "Intending to kill someone is worse than accidentally killing someone", "Killing in self defence may be warranted, depending on circumstances" etc.

The point is that rather than explicitly going into details, morals that the government/judicial system holds the population to are described in simple terms, and the details are decided by the judge and jury. Judgements are based on the facts, a handful of moral points, and what seems right.

Think Judge Judy, only without the attitude, and with a jury to avoid individual bias. Like I alluded to, the challenge would be to figure out how to avoid social bias - but the principle of the idea does appeal to me.

As an aside, I'd never heard of estoppel. I went to the wikipedia page to find out more, and I'm still not much clearer. It seems a perfect example of how the feedback loop in the legal system has made the system too closed to the layman. It seemed to be using very verbose language to lay down the details of a specific circumstance, which could just be handled by saying "Be honest" and "Honour your promises", and leaving the details of a judgement to the people listening to the facts.

Re:Surprising

[pudro]

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.

Re:Surprising

[atraintocry]

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!

Re:Surprising

[fredklein]

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??

Re:Surprising

[SausageOfDoom]

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.

They've gone to the reverse psychology defense

[ravenspear]

Bainwol: Lying? Baseless. We merely "made available" to Congress our statement that we would stop. You have no proof that we actually had intention to do so.

Perhaps...

[rakslice]

... they discontinued initiating lawsuits on August 31st and started right up again on September 1st. Everyone needs a few hours off now and then. =)

No. It CAN'T be true!

[hyades1]

So you're saying the RIAA lied? Is that possible? I thought they always told the truth, and only wanted to protect society from the evils of piracy. I believe they said something to that effect under oath, in court, didn't they?

Oh, god, please let some of those whiny thugs get caught perjuring themselves. They'd make such lovely prison bitches.

They were technically telling the truth

[Anonymous Coward]

While they were in front of Congress, they had stopped filing lawsuits... because their mobile broadband connection wasn't working. As soon as they returned to the office, they started again.

Re:They were technically telling the truth

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Nope. Believe it or not, they were telling the truth, and it still applies. This is possible due to a little-known law enacted in the summer of 1837, which states that lawsuits are not really considered to be lawsuits, if they're brought against defenseless pensioners who have no idea what the charge means, much less how to defend themselves against it.

Thank you so much for the explanation; I never would have known.

And here I thought Mitch Bainwol was a lying, yellow bellied piece of garbage.

Boy did I have him wrong.

Perjury

[Doug52392]

Perjury - n. the crime of intentionally lying after being duly sworn (to tell the truth) by a notary public, court clerk or other official. This false statement may be made in testimony in court, administrative hearings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, as well as by signing or acknowledging a written legal document (such as affidavit, declaration under penalty of perjury, deed, license application, tax return) known to contain false information. Although a crime, prosecutions for perjury are rare, because a defendant will argue he/she merely made a mistake or misunderstood.

So sue the RIAA for perjury (actually, that would be a criminal matter).

Re:Perjury

[Trepidity]

In this case it was lying to Congress, so the body capable of enforcing sanctions would be Congress itself, which would have to cite the RIAA's representative for contempt of Congress. I'll let you guess what the chances of them doing so are.

Lying to Congress

[arizwebfoot]

Lying to congress is just the new sport - remember when the tobacco companies said smoking was "good" for your health and that they swore to congress that they've never put anything into the tobacco that would cause people to become addicted?

Lying to congress - Congress can't handle the truth.

Re:Lying to Congress

[SydShamino]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083001418.html

No *new* lawsuits

[d_jedi]

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..

Re:No *new* lawsuits

[plasmacutter]

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..

Because the laws they bought are "legitimate"?

I hereby propose a law stating D_Jedi may never own a car, see his mother, or use the internet again.

Lawsuits against you will follow.

Re:No *new* lawsuits

[artor3]

I don't think you understand how laws work. Using the word "hereby" doesn't actually make something a law.

For that, you need to donate to a few congressmen.

Er...

[rakslice]

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."

How is that lying?

[pclminion]

The RIAA might be a crew of pirates themselves, but it's not lying. I discountinued sleeping at approximately 8:00 AM this morning. That doesn't mean I won't be sleeping again later...

The RIAA didn't really promise anything...

[Anita Coney]

The sentence "we discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August" really does not mean anything.

First, it doesn't say that the RIAA "stopped" doing anything. To "discontinue" does not mean to "stop," it means "to break the continuity of."

Second, anything it does say about the RIAA is limited to only the month of August. For example, if I say "Best Buy stopped having 10% off sales in August." That in no way means that Best Buy stopped having 10% off sales forever. It only means they stopped for a period, i.e., broke the continuity, for a single period of time, during the month of August.

Third, more ambiguity is added by the word "initiate." The use of "initiate" gives the RIAA a lot of wiggle room to start new lawsuits. If anyone complains, the RIAA can merely say, "this lawsuit was actually initiated sometime ago when we first started investigating it." And of course it gives the RIAA complete freedom to "initialize" new lawsuits after August.

What I don't understand is why the RIAA is conducting these lawsuits in a quasi-stealth mode. I thought the purpose of the lawsuits was to raise public awareness. But when they're "initialized" in secret, that defeats the entire educational purpose. So what really is going on with these reinitialized lawsuits?

Re:The RIAA didn't really promise anything...

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

What I don't understand is why the RIAA is conducting these lawsuits in a quasi-stealth mode.

I'm guessing it's because they promised some politicians they would stop, but they can't get over their addiction to picking on defenseless people.

Re:The RIAA didn't really promise anything...

[khallow]

What I don't understand is why the RIAA is conducting these lawsuits in a quasi-stealth mode. I thought the purpose of the lawsuits was to raise public awareness. But when they're "initialized" in secret, that defeats the entire educational purpose. So what really is going on with these reinitialized lawsuits?

I'd guess that they're hiding the lawsuit until they're sure it'll fall in their favor. You know, advertise the lawsuits that go the RIAA's way and which actually show considerable wrongdoing on the part of an unsympathetic defendant and don't emphasize the lawsuits against tech ignorant grannies.

Re:The RIAA didn't really promise anything...

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

The story isn't about them continuing to bring lawsuits. That would be like the Saturday Night Live bit with Chevy Chase where he would announce that Francisco Franco is "still dead".

The story is about them lying to Congress.

They represented to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees that they had "discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August". That was a flat out, bald faced, lie.

Re:The RIAA didn't really promise anything...

[Swanktastic]

First, it doesn't say that the RIAA "stopped" doing anything. To "discontinue" does not mean to "stop," it means "to break the continuity of."

Quickly! We need to repaint all the octagonal red signs in this country to say "DISCONTINUE MOTION."

Otherwise I predict severe, permanent traffic problems.

The geek in overdrive

[westlake]

They target grandmothers and children.

So do countless other lawsuits. But that doesn't make headlines on Slashdot.

Everyone does it

[Demonantis]

There is not really any severe penalty to lie in front of congress. The RIAA aren't required to do anything they say to congress. Tonnes of businesses have done it. And Presidents

Re:Everyone does it

[PopeRatzo]

There is not really any severe penalty to lie in front of congress.

Unless it's about a blow-job.

Wheat germ and chessboard.

[xigxag]

Poor innocent RIAA-tan will never catch all the piracy scofflaws using this time-consuming serial approach. Hasn't she ever heard of multi-level marketing? Or the classic wheat and chessboard problem? It's simple.

They need to sue the bejeesus out of someone, and offer to settle by forcing the person to buy the rights to a minor song, and then requiring that that person protect their rights by suing two other people. And those two other people will have to settle by each suing two other people, and so on, and so on.

Eventually everyone will wind up being sued, but at least having nice smelling hair.

Is Bainwol a lawyer?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Is Bainwol -- the guy who lied to Congress -- a lawyer? This brief biographical sketch shows him to be a Republican party operative, but doesn't mention any work as a lawyer.

Bainwol not a lawyer

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Here is Bainwol's bio; he's not a lawyer.

Re:Terrorism

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

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.