have been in constant communication with them every day for over two (2) years in a multitude of cases, and have never had a single instance that I can recall of any email communication going astray.
Care to post their address here so we can also inquire into the lack of payment?;-) It's a matter of public record. Their email addresses are on their firm's web site, as well as in many of the court filings, and in the court's docket sheets.
The offending party (Capitol Records), has already been notified in an official manner by the court. The follow-up e-mail by Ms. Foster's attorneys is simply a courtesy. They'd be within their rights to pursue collection even without informing Capitol Records first, as it is Capitol's obligation to pay Ms. Foster. It's not just Capitol Records, it's also
-Maverick Recording Company
-Arista Records, LLC
-Sony BMG Music Entertainment and
-Warner Bros. Records Inc.
Surely you overreact. They submitted the email on Sat the 11th and as of the 13th when they filed their request with the courts they had not gotten a reply (probably at 9AM).
I'm all for hammering the RIAA, but it would seem reasonable to give them at least a few business days to cough up a check for almost $100k. If the RIAA filed a complaint on the basis of not getting a response to an email over the weekend we'd all be first in line to complain about that. The order is a month old.
Usually they respond to any email within a couple of hours. 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" or "OK we'll get you check on the 18th"... It could also be "Got your email, Marilyn, and client hasn't decided what to do."
The thing is, this wasn't in the right budget. If you've been telling the boss that "hey, things are going great, we're goin' after 'em", it makes it kinda tough to subsequently go to him and say "oh BTW, you owe these guys 68K"... I agree, Kazoo, I don't think they planned for this eventuality. They are too arrogant to plan on the possibility of something going awry.
I stand corrected. Maybe she can seize the copyrights to some recordings.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the songs themselves are copyrighted by their writers, who are represented by ASCAP, right? There's a lot of possible owners of the song copyrights. There are different possible representatives.
In this case, I'll bet the only reason her lawyer is pushing the judgment is so they can collect the fees for their time. If she were collecting something she'd never see it except for maybe pennies on the dollar from the collection agency. Sorry, but what you said doesn't make any sense. (a) You've got to be kidding if you think six major-label record companies can't satisfy a judgment for $68,685, with 100 cents on the dollar. (b) Ms. Foster doesn't have money to pay her attorney big legal fees. The suggestion that her attorney is doing it for the money is ridiculous.
Question I put up above: how much of the foot-dragging is Capitol not wanting to pay, and how much is them arguing with their laywers about WHO should pay? (You lost in court, YOU pay! It's not OUR case, YOU pay!)
Second, what's the chances of this coming to an asset seizure to force them to pay? Another possible question: As between the plaintiff record companies, who pays how much? Let's remember, we've got a bunch of plaintiffs:
-Capitol Records, Inc. -UMG Recordings, Inc. -Maverick Recording Company -Arista Records, LLC -Sony BMG Music Entertainment -Warner Bros. Records Inc.
That's what the 'post judgment collection proceedings' are all about. The RIAA would be wise to just pay up before things get really expensive for them. Yes and I imagine they will have to pay the defendant's legal costs for the judgment enforcement proceedings as well.
They paid the Sheriff, but they did not pay the deputy... Whoa, watch it there... you might just become the RIAA's newest source of income if you get too close to the original. No problem. It's a fair use.
Here they're spending about $5000 in attorneys fees to try and squeeze $543 out of a 20 year old. I guess -they really do need the money, and -they're really bad businessmen.
According to Ms. Foster's motion papers (pdf), her attorneys received no response to their email inquiry about payment. I have been involved in more cases than I would like, and I can't say that I am aware of any situation in which e-mail was regarded as reliable. If my lawyers wanted to make an on-the-record contact with representation for the opposing side, it was usually by courier, and occasionally by snail mail or fax, with back-up confirmation over the phone. I can't imagine the circumstances in which it would be reasonable to regard delivery of e-mail to a recipient's inbox as reliable. As you know I am in constant litigation with the RIAA attorneys, and I can assure you that email is their primary way of communicating with opposing counsel, and it is my primary way of communicating with them. I have been in constant communication with them every day for over two (2) years in a multitude of cases, and have never had a single instance that I can recall of any email communication going astray.
If you google you will see that the main arguments are:
* Simply having files containing potentially unauthorized copies of music is not a violation: the entity distributing the music is responsible for any copyright violations.
* That the RIAA has not shown that the defendants were aware they they were even potentially distributing the files.
* The only distribution that the RIAA has shown to have been performed by the defendants was authorized by the RIAA and therefore wasn't a copyright violation.
This is actually pretty solid, and while of course there are several things the RIAA can do to cover these gaping holes in their approach there's not much they can do about the current case if these arguments prevail. Your analysis is good. What can they do to "cover these gaping holes"? Spend a few dollars and conduct an actual investigation? Naaaahhhhhh...
The RIAA might find it particularly troubling that the students are coming in armed with substantial expert witness declarations attacking the entire underpinning of the RIAA's case, that the students are finding each other and banding together, and that the Chairman of Boston University's Computer Science Department went to bat -- as an expert witness -- for the BU students. Why would this surprise anyone? They're trying to sue a group of people that are part of a single organization. Not only are they relatively close together, but the organization is going to look over the stuff first, and it would be ripe for them to put together a class action in return. IANAL, but even an idiot should be able to figure that one out. Well, the RIAA apparently never did figure that out.
Google/YouTube hides under the fact that US copyright law puts the responsibility of reporting violation on the copyright holders. YouTube isn't "hiding behind the law". Its very business model was based upon the existence of the law, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
You seem to be under the impression that the "law" exists just to serve the interests of the Big 4 record companies and several major motion picture companies, and that to the extent the law protects anyone else it's unjust. Your dozen or so comments all have that flavor.
In the past, the big publisher could/would only prosecute the violator if they were able to find out about the violations; in essence, if the violations were big enough and actually cost the publisher some honest-to-capitalism bottom line, then they would get stomped with hefty fines. ObDisney: A brick and mortar storefront in Queens selling thousands of VHS tapes of Bambi for a buck a pop would get prosecuted quickly, while it would be very rare for a daycare with a painting of Mickey on its walls to get prosecuted.
In today's world, the big publisher has MORE opportunity to find SMALLER infringements, and wants to continue wielding the big prosecution stick for EVERY one of those piddly-ass violations. Yet they still want third-parties to help them police the world for THEIR property. ObDisney: Not only do daycares that made Mickey murals get shut down under massive legal and financial threats, but so do otherwise perfectly normal teens who post personal lipsync-Beauty-and-the-Beast-songs videos onto community pages.
The huge fines were designed from a time when it was expected that only 0.0000001% of the actual piracy would ever get found to be prosecuted, and found only because it was a real and egregious dent in real sales. Now that the web exposes so much of the casual ways that trivial amounts of copyrighted material becomes woven into the experience that is culture, corporations are all drooling at the chance to win huge fines from thousands or millions of little sources, regardless of actual damages inflicted. Excellent analysis, Speare. As someone who has been working in copyright law since 1974, I agree that what is going on today has absolutely nothing to do with copyright law as it was intended to be, or copyright law as it has historically been practiced. It is an aberration, one that makes no sense.
Isn't there a legal definition of what is and what is not fair use? Or is it so vague that we have to make up rules and hope the **AA's approve? No. It has historically been a vague concept, sort of "you know it when you see it". The problem is that the video maker might not be able to get a definite answer until he's spent a couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees defending a litigation. And the answer might not be the one he was hoping for.
Which is why it is so important that more predictability and certainty be achieved.
It's not university resources that is the cause of this backlash. When the RIAA was prosecuting citizens, these are busy people with little time and tight budgets and generally isolated from other people being pursued by the RIAA.
Students... now... these are groups of young people with common interests and copious amounts of free time, who are looking for worthy causes to fight that can define their generation, and have much less to lose as they don't have mortgages, families, and savings. Except for lawyers, you couldn't target a worse group of people. Trying to come down harder on them will make them come together more and strengthen their resolve to stamp out this persecution, a perceived abuse of their civil and human rights.
Good. It's time the RIAA got it's ass kicked and it's especially humbling that it's students doing it - probably the worst offenders on the RIAA hitlist. I agree with you, Free.
What I would really love to see, in this order:
1. colleges and universities going to bat for the students
2. students banding together, organizing, and pooling their resources to hire a lawyer and fight back, and
3. all university students whose college doesn't go to bat for them and who cannot afford a lawyer going into court and representing themselves, using the publicly available, free legal documents and research tools available online.
Slashdot Mirror
-Maverick Recording Company
-Arista Records, LLC
-Sony BMG Music Entertainment and
-Warner Bros. Records Inc.
Usually they respond to any email within a couple of hours. 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" or "OK we'll get you check on the 18th"... It could also be "Got your email, Marilyn, and client hasn't decided what to do."
(a) You've got to be kidding if you think six major-label record companies can't satisfy a judgment for $68,685, with 100 cents on the dollar.
(b) Ms. Foster doesn't have money to pay her attorney big legal fees.
The suggestion that her attorney is doing it for the money is ridiculous.
As between the plaintiff record companies, who pays how much? Let's remember, we've got a bunch of plaintiffs:
But they do own copyrights in some sound recordings which she can seize.
Here they're spending about $5000 in attorneys fees to try and squeeze $543 out of a 20 year old. I guess
-they really do need the money, and
-they're really bad businessmen.
But I would not be surprised to see any of them go belly up, as they are the most poorly managed businesses I have ever seen.
So draw your own conclusions.
You seem to be under the impression that the "law" exists just to serve the interests of the Big 4 record companies and several major motion picture companies, and that to the extent the law protects anyone else it's unjust.
Your dozen or so comments all have that flavor.
Your points will become part of the discussion of the question of whether trying to assess statutory damages of $750 per song file -- when the lost profit for the song file is about 50 cents -- is unconstitutional.
Which is why it is so important that more predictability and certainty be achieved.
Those who have something to say, do.
Those who don't, bring up off topic meaningless proverbs.
What I would really love to see, in this order:
1. colleges and universities going to bat for the students
2. students banding together, organizing, and pooling their resources to hire a lawyer and fight back, and
3. all university students whose college doesn't go to bat for them and who cannot afford a lawyer going into court and representing themselves, using the publicly available, free legal documents and research tools available online.