Actuall[y], it's a brilliant win/win strategy.
Winning one "it's someone else's fault" case is enough to get the client off the hook, and they win one case if the judge comes down in favour of net neutrality, and the other one if he comes down against it.
Of course there's huge collateral damage to the legal system and the internet either way, but that's not the lawyer's responsibility... There would be a lot more collateral damage to the internet by letting the RIAA continue to rewrite copyright law by stomping on the backs of defenseless civilians.
This way some of the big players are all in the same room. Kazaa -- the RIAA's new buddy -- is in the room. Maybe this will refresh Kazaa's recollection that when it made its own sweet deal with the RIAA it left its customers twisting in the breeze.
Kazaa has the money to defend itself. It will have its day in court. If it's innocent, it will win. But clearly Kazaa and AOL have a lot more money than the Santangelo kids do to hire lawyers and present their side of things.
This is not a new idea, by the way. It was suggested by the judge in Interscope v. Duty that this is what the Kazaa defendants should do.
she does have a couple of points:
* the improper blocking of alleged (RIAA) warning messages by AOL and Sharman: This is interesting. If AOL (or, somehow, Kazaa/Sharman Networks) prevented her from receiving warning messages which may have caused her to stop, then any infringement after those messages were sent may be at least partially down to them. If so, they they should take some of the liability.
* the secretive file sharing system of and by Kazaa: This is a goodie! Any normal & reasonable user expects a program to stop running when you click the 'close' button, right? Kazaa kept running in the background ! If a user takes reasonable steps (i.e. clicking that 'close' button) to stop infringing, and yet the program continues on infringing, whose fault is that ? The user has tried, in good faith and to the best of their knowledge, to avoid further infringement - but the program decided that it knew better... It is a fact that Kazaa was full of adware, spyware, viruses, and all sorts of trick devices, and studies have shown that most Kazaa users did not know if they were sharing, or what they were sharing; many of them were sharing every single file on their computer and didn't even know about it. See, e.g., RIAA November 15, 2004, testimony at Federal Trade Commission, exhibit A to reply affidavit of Zi Mei in Atlantic v. Does 1-25 and November, 2006, report to US Patent and Trademark Office, set forth as exhibit B to Answer in Atlantic v. DeMassi.
Does anyone have a name/address/phone number of her attorneys? I'd love to send them a check for $100 to help fund her legal fees. Marilyn D. Barringer-Thomson, Esq.
Post Office Box 54444
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73154
Yes, the higher up they lose, the better the precedent will be for us. For all the other RIAA victims, the best possible scenario would be for this to go up to the Supreme Court.
There is a law against frivolous appeals, and an appeal from this judgment would be frivolous. If anyone has grounds to appeal it would be Ms. Foster, who was awarded only $68,685 even though the attorneys fees and sdisbursements were around $114,000.
Let me clarify. 1. I don't represent Ms. Foster; her lawyer is Marilyn Barringer-Thomson of Oklahoma City. 2. If I were her lawyer I probably could not answer the question anyway, since it is confidential information the RIAA would just love to have. 3. As a general proposition, it would be legally irrelevant how much of the bill was paid and how much unpaid. 4. If I had to guess, my guess would be that Ms. Foster is a poor hardworking person without much dough and she has probably paid only a very small portion of the bill.
Surely it would be better for the RIAA to just pay up and stop all the publicity about the case. While it's certainly an issue on slashdot, I would say the average person on the street doesn't know (or likely care) because there's not a huge amount of mainstream publicity. That hasn't been my impression; it seems to me that almost everybody I've met knows about Big Music's lawsuits against single moms, kids, grandparents, and dead people.
I'm not familiar with the dates/timeline here, but in most if not all jurisdictions -- and definitely in federal court -- you have only 30 days from the entry of an order or judgment to file a notice of appeal (Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)). The order [ilrweb.com] was apparently filed on July 16. Today is August 16, which is the 31st day. BUT Foster is just now asking the court to enter judgment for this amount, which means that Capitol will probably have 30 days from the day that judgment is entered. Issue isn't time to appeal. It's time to avoid paying the judgment. Appeal doesn't stay obligation to pay the judgment. For that you have to post security.
Given that they are fairly stupid in these matters it wouldn't surprise me if they really do try and appeal it, mostly as a delay tactic. It also wouldn't surprise me if the net result is the judgement is upheld, and she gets more money (for the fees incurred during the appeal). Not only wouldn't it surprise me, it seems that that outcome is inevitable. The judge was brutal in cutting down Ms. Foster's fee award. I wouldn't be surprised if the cross-appeal Ms. Foster files wound up increasing the amount of the old award, and no doubt there will be another $100k or so in attorneys fees and disbursements on the appeal.
When in a hole...keep digging?
Surely it would be better for the RIAA to just pay up and stop all the publicity about the case. Of course, that probably wouldn't be the best for its lawyers, which suggests where the real balance of power lies. I wonder when the record companies' shareholders are going to come to that realization. They seem a little slow.
With the RIAA, even if you win, you lose. Not only do they fail to pay their content creators reasonable amounts of money for their intellectual property, but they laugh in the face of the American judicial system by throwing a fit when they have to pay out a relatively small amount of money to someone for a frivolous law suit. Well spoken.
So Mr. Beckerman and Mr. Rogers......how does it feel to be the most-liked lawyers in the world? Now all you have to do is kick Jack Thompson's ass and you're surely starting the lawyer hall of fame or get the Nobel Sticking-It-To-The-Man prize. Well I don't know about the rest of it, and I can't speak for Mr. Rogers, but that "Nobel Sticking-It-To-The-Man prize" would be nice.
Its always great to see pro se defendents actually doing good, so thanks for the article. It does help restore some faith in the legal system in a cynical society. Yes, speaker, it was gratifying to see, especially the Judge's realization that the RIAA was trying to pull a fast one by going for 41, rather than 9, songs.
We need to see more rulings like this, where the judge looks out for the interests of the mostly defenseless people that are being dragged into this nightmare.
Personally, even though I don't feel particularly at risk from an RIAA suit, I find it somewhat comforting to know what they're up to, and how the various suits that they've filed are faring. I continue to hope that our legal system decides not to give in to the RIAA's tactic of sue-first-and-ask-questions later, and that seems to be the case of late. I also appreciate what Ray Beckerman is doing, both with his blog and his submissions to Slashdot. Being informed is a good thing.
Ray: Thank you for your efforts in raising awareness of these issues, you're a credit to your profession. Keep at it! Thank you very much, KURAAKU.
These bullies are trying to (a) distort copyright law, (b) monopolize digital music, and (c) abuse the judicial process. People need to know about it. And the more people that know about it, the more we can do to fight back.
By the way, p2pnet.net came out with an article on this Boston event which gives a little more information about Judge Gertner.
Why is this news? I think it is better served a an example that even the poor are getting a fair shot when defending themselves from huge corporations with tons of money backing their case.
Not only do I see this as promising, I see it as a possible assault to the RIAA style tactics. Most people wouldn't have the money to pay the settlement or the full fine so why not fight it even if you have to learn how to in the process. Worst case scenario, you have lost some time which seems to be a commodity poor people could afford as easily as rich people. If you gave up, your still losing so sweat equity is the best way around. Especially if you have the truth on your side.
Anyways, If RIAA continues picking on people with dirty handed tactics and they keep standing up to them, The costs they cannot recover will mount and maybe even be owed to whoever they are going after. Then maybe they will stop the dirty handed tactics and some rational sense will prevail from the situation. Think of it as a form of grassroots organizing over the internet. It drives the RIAA crazy knowing that defendants and defendants' lawyers all across the country are starting to have almost as much information as they do about what's going on in these cases. It's harder for them to lie about it.
Obviously then it is "news for nerds, stuff that matters" to them. Not going to go into details here or look up links to use, just suffice it to say that the RIAA's efforts in both courts and trying to get laws past to fight "music piracy" has a much greater far reaching effect on the internet and technology people then just whether or not the RIAA gets to grab money from "pirates" or not. Furthermore Ray and other lawyers have gained advice and assistance from these articles as well as Ray's legal blog, so in many ways each victory over the RIAA is a victory for many Slashdotters as they have chosen sides on this as well as participated in helping to achieve a portion of those victories as Ray has acknowledged here in the past. ATM, Ray and Slashdot together are about as close to a Groklaw for the RIAA fight as there is. Thanks.
Point II of the Warner v. Cassin reply brief (at pages 9-10) briefly discusses the impact the RIAA's theories could have on the internet if they were to be accepted by the courts.
no one dies because of 'music and greed'. Sorry, but I don't agree. Lives are ruined in many ways, and living in fear of losing your house and everything else because someone downloaded a few songs through your Internet connection is one of them. Stress kills, and few things are more stressful than a lawsuit from a large, well-funded, company with no morals. Thank you, Nom. I'm really glad you said that. As someone who has to talk to these folks every single day I can tell you that the RIAA has caused great harm and suffering to many thousands of people.
"I was just trying to be funny. Which rarely works for me".
Wow, a soulmate! 8-) So now I've offended you twice in a row! (See what I did there?) I'm not offended. I even made you a "Friend".
"good business" is often evil. What makes you think "duty to their stockholders" supersedes "duty of the actual real human people running the company and making the decisions to their fellow human beings who are being hurt by their decisions"?
So the stockholders stand to lose a little bit of money. The people who are not receiving payment of their bills on time stand to lose a much much larger percentage of the their net worth. Meanwhile, the reality is, the management is killing the shareholders. When will the shareholders wake up and realize how they are being fleeced here?
If they took 2 days to respond to an email of mine I'd know something is up. A response doesn't have to be "OK here's your check" [...] It could also be "Got your email, Marilyn [...]" You go by Marilyn? No, but Debbie Foster's lawyer does.
"So what do you want me to do, only post stories when I'm surprised?" Good grief, no! Nothing that I wrote was intended to criticize or detract from your post in any way. I merely took the opportunity to air some related opinions.
It does look as though the RIAA is well toward one end of the spectrum of corporate behaviour. Not the good end. I know, Archtech, I was just trying to be funny. Which rarely works for me. Those few occasions on which one of my comments has been modded "Funny" are very much treasured by me.
If anyone has communication with Foster's lawyers, ask them to post somewhere an image of Capitol's check in payment of attorney's fees (when they finally get it and they will). Maybe it can be the new logo for RIAA v, World topics. Done.
This is precisely the kind of behaviour to be expected of a big modern corporation. It's not quite accurate to say that they ignore the law completely. It's more that they don't have any of the emotional respect for law that some (I hope, many) of us individual citizens have. Sure, we might cut corners in a few small matters... parking where we technically shouldn't, taking some stationery from the office cupboard, that kind of thing. But we would never dream of defying a court order.
Joel Bakan explains what's going on in his great book The Corporation. Thanks to a framework of laws set up in Britain, the USA and other places in the late 18th and 19th centuries, corporations get treated as people - except that they don't have all the responsibilities of people. You can't imprison a corporation, and if it runs out of other people's money, it can simply declare bankruptcy and leave everyone else holding the bag.
As Bakan explains, while corporations are hard to pin down legally, they are increasingly compelled by law to leave no stone unturned in the search for profits. Not just profits, maximum profits. Not just maximum profits, but maximum profits NOW. That makes them liable to behave, in some important ways, just like human psychopaths. A corporation has no "better nature"; no decency, no innate or learned morality, and very little actual reason to fear the law. To it, "ethics" means a set of showy acts designed to improve its public image.
So it's hard to be surprised when a corporation behaves the way the RIAA has done. It simply compares the upside with the downside, and acts accordingly. Don't expect it to think or act like a decent human being: there's no "there" there. So what do you want me to do, only post stories when I'm surprised?
There is nothing these people could do that would surprise me, as they have shown themselves to be (a) totally irrational (i.e. outside the bounds of behavior that would tend to serve their best interests and survival) and (b) totally indecent (i.e. unrestrained by the sense of conscience that is instilled in most people who are born of a human mother).
So if I can only write about what surprises me, I will be silent.
As you may have discerned, silence is not my strong suit.
Next time RIAA, the plantiff, should have to post a bond for potential legal fees (typically $xx,xxx) to able to continue to abuse the court system, to protect potential victims. I like the way you think, Harvey.
Slashdot Mirror
This way some of the big players are all in the same room. Kazaa -- the RIAA's new buddy -- is in the room. Maybe this will refresh Kazaa's recollection that when it made its own sweet deal with the RIAA it left its customers twisting in the breeze.
Kazaa has the money to defend itself. It will have its day in court. If it's innocent, it will win. But clearly Kazaa and AOL have a lot more money than the Santangelo kids do to hire lawyers and present their side of things.
This is not a new idea, by the way. It was suggested by the judge in Interscope v. Duty that this is what the Kazaa defendants should do.
Is there someone with a gun to your head forcing you to read them?
If you find something "annoying" why don't you just try not reading it?
Like I'm going to do with any future comments from you.
Post Office Box 54444
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73154
Yes, the higher up they lose, the better the precedent will be for us. For all the other RIAA victims, the best possible scenario would be for this to go up to the Supreme Court.
There is a law against frivolous appeals, and an appeal from this judgment would be frivolous. If anyone has grounds to appeal it would be Ms. Foster, who was awarded only $68,685 even though the attorneys fees and sdisbursements were around $114,000.
Let me clarify.
1. I don't represent Ms. Foster; her lawyer is Marilyn Barringer-Thomson of Oklahoma City.
2. If I were her lawyer I probably could not answer the question anyway, since it is confidential information the RIAA would just love to have.
3. As a general proposition, it would be legally irrelevant how much of the bill was paid and how much unpaid.
4. If I had to guess, my guess would be that Ms. Foster is a poor hardworking person without much dough and she has probably paid only a very small portion of the bill.
Surely it would be better for the RIAA to just pay up and stop all the publicity about the case. Of course, that probably wouldn't be the best for its lawyers, which suggests where the real balance of power lies. I wonder when the record companies' shareholders are going to come to that realization. They seem a little slow.
We need to see more rulings like this, where the judge looks out for the interests of the mostly defenseless people that are being dragged into this nightmare.
These bullies are trying to (a) distort copyright law, (b) monopolize digital music, and (c) abuse the judicial process. People need to know about it. And the more people that know about it, the more we can do to fight back.
By the way, p2pnet.net came out with an article on this Boston event which gives a little more information about Judge Gertner.
Point II of the Warner v. Cassin reply brief (at pages 9-10) briefly discusses the impact the RIAA's theories could have on the internet if they were to be accepted by the courts.
There is nothing these people could do that would surprise me, as they have shown themselves to be (a) totally irrational (i.e. outside the bounds of behavior that would tend to serve their best interests and survival) and (b) totally indecent (i.e. unrestrained by the sense of conscience that is instilled in most people who are born of a human mother).
So if I can only write about what surprises me, I will be silent.
As you may have discerned, silence is not my strong suit.