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UMG v. Lindor Ends, No Fees, No Sanctions
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The 5-year-old case of UMG Recordings v. Lindor (which we've discussed all those years) has come to a close in Brooklyn, without ever reaching the deposition and document production of MediaSentry. The District Judge denied the RIAA's motions for discovery sanctions but granted the RIAA's motion for voluntary dismissal without prejudice and without attorneys fees, adopting the report and recommendation of the Magistrate Judge."
Finally, sanity prevails. I wonder if this is going to the beginning of the end for RIAA suing its own customers, or if they still have more in the pipeline.
So the case is dropped without requiring attorneys fees, adding to the impression that it may be cheaper to pay the recording industry a settlement than have years of legal battle for nothing beyond not having been required to pay the ridiculous punitive damages.
a clear win for the RIAA gameplan, if not the widest possible margin.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Actually Lindor a brand name of Lindt.
Likely you mean Lindt. On the other hand, the Teflon mafiaa "dons" get away scotch free.
I wish you'd crosspost your blogs in a slashdot journal; I open slashdot while on break, and they have you firewalled off. I'd love to read them but will have to wait until I get home.
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grr Lindor *IS* a brand name of Lindt.
The RIAA can refile if they wish (no prejudice), and
Lindor has to pay for his own attorney, UMG is totally off the hook ("no harm, no foul")
They were right: government of the people, by the people and for the people - but in the court system, big business rulez!
Actually, they probably have lots of expensive scotch.
and that ruling probably called for a few rounds.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Likely you mean Lindt. On the other hand, the Teflon mafiaa "dons" get away scotch free.
Likely you meant scot free ;)
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Other than an attorney bill that you need to sell your kidney for.
Yeah, that's going to teach the RIAA not to scare people. :/
I wonder what a *WHOOOSH* sounds like underwater or in this case scotch..?
So that's how they grew the balls to take on the RIAA.
Quitters.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
That's flamebait, sir, and should (and probably will) be modded accordingly. There's no need to call the OP a dumbass.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm really surprised that with all this potential wrecking of lives, no otherwise-innocent person has simply arranged for a meeting with the accusing attorneys and shot them to death.
I'm not advocating this, but I'm surprised that no one has snapped in that manner.
The RIAA's boilerplate says "detected an individual", but they never have any evidence identifying a specific person. Same thing happened here. My condolences to Ms. Lindor for the hell she was put through by the RIAA. Too bad she can't get attorneys fees from the b*stards!
It seems that a person who couldn't math the virtually infinite funding of the RIAA would lose even if they win, having to defend endlessly against such suits.
Alright, I stand corrected then. =D
It's called a Phyrric victory
Oh, what have we come to when fine confectioner's are sued for copy right violation? Then again, maybe it is part of a well thought out plan to transport unauthorized copies of music encoded into the sugar matrix of the chocolate!
TCP/oDC (over Delicious Candy) ?
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Yeah, wonder how that slipped past the judge... Oh, look, it didn't. The Magistrate Judge's piece opined that the case is unlikely to be refiled, and if it were the previous work could be reused.
And right after that we'll boycott all the Chevron stations for 3 days.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
yes but can lindor do the lindy hop?
Reading the judge's decision, he blames most of the court costs on the fact that the Lindors may have had a houseguest in 2004, and that she sold her computers sometime between 2004 and 2008, which was a loss of evidence for the RIAA. If they had disclosed their houseguest then a lot of this could have been averted, according to the judge. Talk about overcompensation for a small discrepancy, you effectively ruin a family because they didn't disclose a houseguest they had for an unknown amount of time. I am not a lawyer, but that seems like a pretty large case of overkill.
Q.E.D.
I thought you just said you were too close to retirement to risk pissing anyone off?
And then you go ahead and do this...
Perhaps someone with better knowledge of the case could comment on the substance of the judge's order, which concerns the apparently incorrect testimony given by the defendant. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think you can recover fees when your own client makes material misrepresentations. I'm surprised that the RIAA's own request for sanctions was denied under the circumstances.
No statement is true, not even this one.
"The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it is theirs. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin."
-Quellcrist Falconer
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
(abridged version)
RIAA: I sue you for $xx,xxx,xxx
Lindor: Ok, here's my attorney. En garde!
(many years and several thousand dollars later)
RIAA: Ok, I was kidding all along. I didn't really mean to sue you, especially since I have no hope of ever winning. Let's call the whole thing off. No hard feelings ?
Judge: Yeah, Beckerman, quit being such an feisty little prick. Oh, and btw you can both go fuck yourselves.
Now I'm not all that well-versed in the letter of the law, but that reeks of fraud. A frivolous lawsuit gone unpunished is what this is. I'd dare accuse the judge of collusion.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Assuming, of course, that the defendants can easily afford a defense (and the attorneys to do so) against a drawn-out lawsuit that, even with precedent like this, could easily be made to last at least a year, if not more.
That's a hell of a big assumption.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
FYI, that would be Pyrrhic... even in the page you liked to.
He's probably right; the case is highly unlikely to be refiled.
However it is still a bad precedent to allow somebody to file a lawsuit, string it out for five years and then withdraw it and not have to pay the other party for their expenses. Five years of lawyer fees x1 is better than five years of lawyers fees x2, but only marginally. A group as well-financed as the RIAA could surely bankrupt people without any bother of actually proceeding to trial and they don't need to continuously re-file the lawsuit to accomplish it.
the best defense is a good offense.
I am wondering when something like a private, mass numbers of people, class action RICO (or similar, anything possible by non governmental folks)** suit is filed, for price fixing and collusion.
What all these places are charging for "legitimate" download songs, for a few megs of transfer, is *ridiculous*. They are out of the ballbark artificially high..way high. If it was any tangibles products out there with such high across the board and across alleged "competitors" prices, compared to costs of making copies of this or that for sale, the howls would be loud and all sorts of prosecutors would be on it.
But tens of thousands of percent markup seem to just fly with no worries in the digital products realm. I am wondering why this is? The only answer I can come up with is collusion, with perhaps a tad of governmental interference in there with "laws" if ya get my point I am "lobbying" for here.
I think if there wasn't collusion and price fixing, and perhaps some other more serious crimes, that we would be seeing five cent download songs today. And even at five cents it would be a hefty markup.
**seems to be the government is in no hurry to look at the prices of digital download "products" and why they seem to be so "coincidentally" high across the various music sites and official purchasing places. That's why I am wondering what possible private civil suits could be brought, an offensive strategy rather than defensive, and I am aware that under some circumstances, private RICO suits can be brought.
I've been so annoyed at that I have never purchased one single download song (nor pirated any, I just don't), I just have been boycotting. I'll byy a used CD for 50 cents or a dollar max, or listen to the radio, that's it. I was a loyal music purchaser from LPs and singles starting in the 50s, going to 8 track, then to cassette, then started getting seriously annoyed with the lack of price drops with cheap plastic disks, only bought a few new then quit, and when it hit download and it was near the same price..which I knew was jacked up outtasite...heck with it, started boycotting. It's tremendous price gouging, and across the industry. Smacks of collusion.
Jacked up RAM prices...feds on it. Jacked up LCD screen prices..they are on it. Jacked up digital products pricing, jacked up to the moon levels pricing...freekin *crickets*, like it isn't even happening.
Judges note, among other things, that record labels didn't dramatically lower their prices for online music as compared to physical CDs despite the fact that they "experienced dramatic cost reductions in producing" it.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I hate the **{IA}A's as much or more than the average Slashdotter, but there's one big problem with your post. Judicial decisions like this are valid only on a per-case basis. Most of what you state is true, except for two items:
That's why we need "corporate death penalties" for this sort of behavior. And payola is/was common, which shows ongoing behavior, or racketeering. And nothing really happens even when they get busted.
Just being able to pay a joke fine, that is just passed on to their next customers, for criminal actions isn't working with these big corporations very well. They need to lose their charters and their stock made worthless. Shareholders are not doing their due diligence and oversight as owners over their employees very well, and they need to learn the hard way that this free lunch just throw money at some companies comes with some responsibility as well as any profits. We could also try increasing whistle blower protections so that honest employees don't have to worry so much about disclosing criminality and shady dealings, and it wouldn't have to get to the point of delisting corporations then (applies to whistleblowers in their government jobs also).
As a side, to the music and movie industry, just for grins and amusement purposes, I dare some agency to do some surprise raids with drug dogs at any of these *AA affiliated outfits big offices and production and recording studios, just for a starter to get their attention. If they can do that to like junior high schools, just lock them down and run the dogs through there, they can do that to these various big money and entertainment places as well. If you are going fishing, why not try the very well stocked pond *first*? muahahahahaha!
Yes, loser-pays works wonderfully in Europe. Their nationalized health care works well too. ;)
I'd support both loser-pays and nationalized health care, but they're both tricky social constructs that must be developed carefully. In particular, the Republicans have clearly pushed a version of loser-pays that discourages lawsuits against companies, vastly different form the European implementation.
Also, European nations have far stronger laws protecting employees and the environment, placing the state more often on the little guys side during litigation. Most loser-pays countries only award compensatory civil litigation damages. Courts and lawyers must become more accounting oriented since loser-pays is implement per motion, i.e. each failed motion costs the loser.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
LOL
I meant pissing anyond in the IT dept off. If I don't work with you I don't care a whole lot.
Free Martian Whores!