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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."
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.
Likely you mean Lindt. On the other hand, the Teflon mafiaa "dons" get away scotch free.
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. :/
No fees is sanity? Shouldn't the RIAA have to pay for bringing what seems to be an essentially frivolous lawsuit?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Where do you work that Slashdot is allowed but recordingindustryvspeople isn't?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
So that's how they grew the balls to take on the RIAA.
This was civil court.
It wasn't "DOJ vs. Lindor".
Let's see here: The RIAA has demonstrated that they can roast you slowly in court for years, costing you many thousands in lawyer's fees, and get a dismissal which costs them nothing and allows them to sue you for the exact same thing all over again! Yep, they're in trouble now...
Shouldn't the RIAA have to pay for bringing what seems to be an essentially frivolous lawsuit?
Yes.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
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.
Can they counter sue? I mean they did ruin this guys life for the past couple of years...
Same boat. Epically sucks.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
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.
I make it a point to never mention my employer, but we have less internet access than the Chinese. Slashdot probably gets through because it is a .org domain.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
It's nice to know that a judge can stick you for doing your job.
What the fuck is "unduly contentious"? Shouldn't a lawyer work harder when up against a more formidable foe than "Joe's Garage and Automobile Recycling?"
"You successfully wore down the representatives of a large monopoly. We can't have that. You and your client must be punished"
--
BMO
Well, true, but MediaSentry doesn't exist in a vacuum. More money paid to lawsuits means either less money to actually spend on artists (and thus, artists leaving to form indie labels), or less money to spend on MediaSentry. Either one is a good thing in the long run.
More importantly, it would mean the defendant wouldn't have to pay those obscene legal fees, they'd just have to waste a ton of time. So it's not quite a win for the defendant, but it isn't quite what it is now, where a defendant is likely to settle just because their legal fees may well outweigh any possible settlement.
Finally, if it set a precedent, it would break this habit the RIAA has of simply suing everyone and asking questions later. Right now, it's actually profitable for them to do so, because occasionally they do get a settlement. If it cost them that much more each time they failed, they might pay a little more attention to who they sue in the first place.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Just because the defendant prevails in a case doesn't mean that the case was frivolous.
No, and I don't mean to imply that...
To say that it was a frivolous case would mean that the plaintiff had no hope of winning from the outset.
The RIAA has sued a 12-year-old girl, an 85-year-old grandmother who never touched a computer in her life (not sure about the precise ages, but about that), a dead person, and a network printer.
I suppose it's possible this case had some reasonable grounds, but in general, they've been litigious bastards, and it seems pretty clear that it was never their goal to win in court, but rather, to pressure the defense (financially, with legal fees) into a settlement.
I'm not a lawyer, and I have no idea whether it was actually frivolous, but it seems to me that this is exactly the reason we have the ability to award legal fees -- to prevent litigious bastards from abusing the system.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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
No it is because the guys in the IT department want to read slashdot.
They spend money on artists? I thought the big costs were promotion and producers. Unless, of course, you had meant the marketing artists and the audio producers who keep adding autotune to everything.
The ______ Agenda
No fees is sanity? Shouldn't the RIAA have to pay for bringing what seems to be an essentially frivolous lawsuit?
Worse: dismissed without prejudice.
In other words the RIAA can rinse and repeat... B-b
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I agree that the decision is dumb, if for no other reason than it punishes the wrong person.
However, you're spinning "unduly contentious" an awful lot. There's a difference between saying "you're wrong" and "you fucking scrub motherfucker, how can you be so fucking stupid?!@" even if both ultimately say the same thing. In other words, you can do your job to the exact same degree and still have multiple possible ways to have conducted yourself.
What, exactly, did NYCL do that was "unduly contentious?" I don't know. I do know it has nothing to do with "working harder" or "successfully [wearing] down the representatives of a large monopoly" like you suggest. It has something to do with the way he went about his business. Maybe the decision goes into specifics (I really don't care enough to bother reading it) or maybe you'd have to delve through all of the filings yourself to get a clue, but there was one party who was there the whole time and heard it all: The judge.
Stupid decision? Yes. Some sort of anti-individual, pro-monopolistic corporation perversion of the legal system conspiracy? No.
What the fuck is "unduly contentious"?
The judge doesn't say, does he? That's because he doesn't know of any instance in which I was "unduly contentious". Because there wasn't any.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
What, exactly, did NYCL do that was "unduly contentious?" I don't know.
Neither do I. Neither did Judge Trager. Neither did Judge Levy.
Stupid decision? Yes.
Let us say an "incorrect" decisions.
Some sort of anti-individual, pro-monopolistic corporation perversion of the legal system conspiracy? No.
Let me put it this way: undue deference have been paid to the corporate plaintiffs on numerous occasions during this litigation.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
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.
The judge doesn't say, does he?
Are the fee awards simply at the judges discretion (as in he could deny them if you wore a purple tie and he didn't like purple), or is there some legal basis that, in the absence of actual contentious behavior, would allow for an appeal on the grounds that the judge committed a procedural error?
Learn to love Alaska
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
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