LimeWire Antitrust Claims Against RIAA Dismissed

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The antitrust counterclaims imposed by Lime Wire against the RIAA record companies have been dismissed. In a 45-page decision (pdf), the Court relied principally upon the holding of the United States Supreme Court in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly that 'A party's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.' Ironically, the Twombly decision was the authority upon which the RIAA's copyright infringement complaint was dismissed in Interscope v. Rodriguez."

pjwalen sez...

[Creepy Crawler (680178)]

stay off my side? I agree with that LimeWire is saying, and I like LimeWire, but their business model is based off illegally downloading music, for the most part. I don't feel like I want this business model fighting fo rour rights. It doesn't give legitimacy to our side.

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[sm62704 (957197)]

Except that LimeWire is and can be used for indie music thats creators WISH to be heard. Indies don't have radio; until recently they had Internet Radio and P2P, but now don't even have Internet Radio, now that the RIAA and its labels have bought legislation from "your" representatives that effectively killed any US based Internat Radio stations.

I, for one, wish that people would STOP putting the RIAA's crap in their "share" lists. But of course, so long as the average clueless computer user doesn't even kn

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[sm62704 (957197)]

The particular app in use is of no regard to the discussion. The GP used Limewire, but you can substitute any P2P app in the comment and its veracity stands.

Personally, I prefer Morpheus, because you can set it to NOT share downloaded files. If I'm trying to download an indie file and download an RIAA file by mistake, I don't want to have to pay a $4000 fine for clicking on the wrong file.

There's no way to know whether or not any particular file is legit or not until you have DLed it, and then you can only

If you don't like their business model....

[Khyber (864651)]

Then take the source code for LimeWire (since they do offer it,) change a couple flags, and then you have the PRO LimeWire for free. No need to pay them anything. I don't understand that particular little loophole of theirs, but hey, It certainly kills the nag screen and does make my downloads a bit speedier, so I won't complain.

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[beckerist (985855)]

An eye for an eye...

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[Khyber (864651)]

As if most of the whole world wasn't, already?

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[pravuil (975319)]

They already have. It's called Frostwire http://www.frostwire.com/ [frostwire.com]

English Please.

[fsulawndart (860628)]

'A party's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.' Anyone have an English translation? Maybe I just need my coffee.

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[ByOhTek (1181381)]

you aren't the only one. It strikes me that can cover the bulk of evidence in some cases, or at least making it useful.

Reading that increased my desire to take a nap. I need to talk to my boss about getting a cot installed in my cubicle.

Re:English Please.

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

That means, basically, that the party that's suing or countersuing (LimeWire) has to show reasons why they should get relief (usually money) and that those reason need to be more than just name calling and saying "you owe me money, you owe me money!"

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[chitokutai (758566)]

Or in other words:
FIRE....BAD!

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[AKAImBatman (238306)]

BEER...GOOD!
NAPSTER...<ah, heck. you know the rest.>

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[tbg58 (942837)]

Means that the plaintiff can't use boilerplate (form letter) verbiage as a complaint. In other words, the complaint is too generic or abstract and fails to state specifics, and is therefore not actionable. At least that's how it sounds to this layperson - IANAL.

Re:English Please.

[Arnoud Engelfriet (566876)]

When you accuse someone of violating a law, you have to show where and how he did that. You usually do this by copy&pasting the text of the statute and explaining how each element applies to what your opponent did. For example, for the cause of action "copyright infringement" you need to prove three elements: (1) your copyright ownership to the work, (2) defendant's access to the work, and (3) similarity with your original. What the court here says is that you have to do more than say "I own the copyright in the work. Defendant had access to it, and what he has published is very similar to my work." That's a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action. Arnoud

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[MathFox (686808)]

Furthermore, You can not just say "work", you have to specify the work like in "Slashdot comment #21571179"

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[westlake (615356)]

A party's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.' Anyone have an English translation?

The geek in court cobbles together words and phrases he half-remembers from reading the Wikipedia and thinks that is enough. The court has its own dictionaries and encyclopedias, what it needs from you is a clearly reasoned and fully-formed argument for legal relief.

from the order

[nomadic (141991)]

The notion of "antitrust injury" grew from the recognition that a competitor may be injured not only by prohibited anticompetitive activity, but also by competition itself, and that the antitrust laws were not intended to afford the latter injuries a remedy. See Balaklaw v. Lovell, 14 F.3d 793, 797 (2d Cir. 1994). Antitrust injury, then, simply means "injury of the type the antitrust laws were intended to prevent and that flows from that which makes defendants' acts unlawful." Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S. 477, 489 (1977); accord Paycom, 467 F.3d at 290. To demonstrate antitrust injury, "a plaintiff must show (1) an injury-in-fact; (2) that has been caused by the violation; and (3) that is the type of injury contemplated by the statute." Blue Tree Hotels Inv., Ltd. v. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., 369 F.3d 212, 220 (2d Cir. 2004). The antitrust injury requirement thus ensures that a "plaintiff can recover only if the loss stems from a competition-reducing aspect or effect of the defendant's behavior." Atlantic Richfield Co. v. USA Petroleum Co., 495 U.S. 328, 344 (1990).
...
As described above, Lime Wire alleges a conspiracy among counter-defendants to fix prices for licenses at both the wholesale and retail levels. At the wholesale level, Lime Wire alleges that counter-defendants used their joint ventures, MusicNet and pressplay, "to effect a price-fixing arrangement among horizontal competitors" (FAC 36) -- i.e., among the record companies themselves.14 Although such a horizontal price-fixing arrangement is per se unlawful under 1 of the Sherman Act, see Leegin Creative Leather Prods. v. PSKS, Inc., ___ U.S. ___,Lime Wire has not established that it suffered injury-in-fact as a Case 1:06-cv-05936-GEL Document 51 Filed 12/03/2007 Page 14 of 45 omitted). "Restraints that are per se unlawful include horizontal agreements among competitors to fix prices or to divide markets." Id. (citations omitted). Although Lime Wire asserts in 16 its memorandum of law in opposition to the motion to dismiss that counter-defendants have "all refused to grant [Lime Wire] licenses to their catalogs of recorded music even at . . . artificially high prices" (Counter-P. Mem. 6), this allegation does not appear in the FAC itself, and thus cannot be considered by the Court in evaluating counterdefendants' motion to dismiss. See Brass v. Am. Film Techs., Inc., 987 F.2d 142, 150 (2d Cir. 1993) (noting that on motion to dismiss, consideration of factual allegations is limited to those allegations contained in complaint). 15 result of counter-defendants' purported arrangement. See Atlantic Richfield, 495 U.S. at 342 (noting that the "per se rule is a method of determining whether 1 of the Sherman Act has been violated, but it does not indicate whether a private plaintiff has suffered antitrust injury").

Although Lime Wire "actively solicited licensed content" from "independent labels and artists" and "independent retailers/distributors" (FAC 44), the FAC contains no allegation that Lime Wire ever attempted to obtain or purchase a license from any of the counter-defendants or their respective joint ventures.16 Lime Wire's retail competitors may have "faced excessive wholesale prices" for licenses as a result of the alleged price-fixing scheme (id. 36), but Lime Wire itself has not alleged any facts demonstrating that it suffered such harm. Although Lime Wire's attempt to obtain hashes from counter-defendants suggests that it intended eventually to obtain licenses from them, nothing in Lime Wire's pleading indicates that it has, in fact, sought (or imminently will seek) such licenses from counter-defendants. Accordingly, Lime Wire cannot claim that it has suffered injury-in-fact as a result of counter-defendants' wholesale pricefixing scheme.

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[sm62704 (957197)]

Maybe I just need my coffee

No, it's just like my saying to my friend Mike that if he adds RAM and defragments his hard drive his computer may run faster and he says "huh? What's a "hard drive? And what do I have to ram it with"?

And like my cluelessly expecting Mike to know what RAM is, what a hard drive is (I used to talk about someone's hard drive and they'd pull out a floppy and say "this?") and about file fragmentation and seeing their eyes glaze over when I explained it, a lawyer will expect us to under

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[pilgrim23 (716938)]

Money...lawyer...money....lawyer....

    'When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful
tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor
less.'
Lewis Carroll Through the Lookign Glass

"English Please."?

[porpnorber (851345)]

For the life of me (and believe me, I know about needing more coffee, so you hae my utter sympathy on that score) that's a normal English sentence. Some of these words may have technical legal nuances, but 'relief' and 'action' are the only words there that I would not have used in everyday speech in roughly these senses; and these two exceptions are ones that are found in almost every discussion of these matters here on slashdot, so presumably the readership has some familiarity with them by now!

Then agai

Wait, what?

[necro81 (917438)]

A party's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.

Maybe it's the lack of coffee this morning, maybe it's the fact that I didn't get a degree in Legalese Obfuscation, but: What on Earth is this sentence trying to say? Of all the things to say about this motion dismissal, why include this in the summary?

A little further research seems to indicate that the anti-tru

Re:Wait, what?

[The Only Druid (587299)]

Here's a basic legal summary of why Twombly is the active issue here:

Before Twombly, a case called Conley was the dominant SCOTUS case explaining exactly what standards a Plaintiff's court pleadings must satisfy in order to, in our parlance, "state a claim". In truth, Conley was extremely ambiguous, and for years the courts had decried it as a waste of time and money.

Twombly has now established that pleadings must, as a bare minimum, describe enough alleged facts so that - when the court assumes all of them to be true for the sake of a Motion to Dismiss - the pleadings allege a "plausible" claim. This means it has to be slightly more than "possible": for example, it's possible that I am in fact Bill Gates, but it's simply not plausible

Now, the most practical effect of Twombly in district courts around the country so far (it's an August 2007 decision) has been that it is no longer sufficient to simply say "The defendant did X to me", and then simply list the alleged components of X as defined by law. Instead, plaintiffs now have to allege sufficient facts that move it across that fine line.

Here, the Judge has simply stated that the Plaintiff has filed to properly allege his complaint; this is no different than if the Plaintiff had alleged rape but failed to allege forceful sexual assault.

Re:

[NewYorkCountryLawyer (912032)]

Here's a basic legal summary of why Twombly is the active issue here: Before Twombly, a case called Conley was the dominant SCOTUS case explaining exactly what standards a Plaintiff's court pleadings must satisfy in order to, in our parlance, "state a claim". In truth, Conley was extremely ambiguous, and for years the courts had decried it as a waste of time and money. Twombly has now established that pleadings must, as a bare minimum, describe enough alleged facts so that - when the court assumes all of them to be true for the sake of a Motion to Dismiss - the pleadings allege a "plausible" claim. This means it has to be slightly more than "possible": for example, it's possible that I am in fact Bill Gates, but it's simply not plausible Now, the most practical effect of Twombly in district courts around the country so far (it's an August 2007 decision) has been that it is no longer sufficient to simply say "The defendant did X to me", and then simply list the alleged components of X as defined by law. Instead, plaintiffs now have to allege sufficient facts that move it across that fine line. Here, the Judge has simply stated that the Plaintiff has filed to properly allege his complaint; this is no different than if the Plaintiff had alleged rape but failed to allege forceful sexual assault.

And what is most fascinating is that it was this same Twombly decision that led to the demise [blogspot.com] of the RIAA's own, now deceased, boilerplate "making available" complaint.

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[vokyvsd (979677)]

If you'll recall, I brought this up when the RIAA's boilerplate complaints were dismissed: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=297303&cid=20597841 [slashdot.org]

My same arguments apply here - the Bell Atlantic decision is a very bad thing, and using it to dismiss Limewire's suit proves the exact point I raised back then.

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[DragonWriter (970822)]

Here, the Judge has simply stated that the Plaintiff has filed to properly allege his complaint; this is no different than if the Plaintiff had alleged rape but failed to allege forceful sexual assault.

Presuming that rape were, in the jurisdicition applicable to the analogy, defined as, say, "a sexual assault committed through use or threat of force", its more like the Judge saying that the problem is that the Plaintiff alleged "rape" and merely stated in his complaint "On such and such date, Defendant sexu

A first year law student's explanation

[MunchMunch (670504)]

I'll give it a shot,

Basically, before Bell Atlantic, the bar for filing a lawsuit(1) was very low. If you could outline the factors for a 'cause of action' (e.g., for, say, a tort battery claim, you'd say that the Defendant 1) intentionally 2) made contact which 3) caused harm--for the antitrust claim, I'm sure they're much more complicated), that would be sufficient to at least allow the suit to continue. If you fail to assert that those factors were met, or if there was no factual basis for what you st

Re:

[NewYorkCountryLawyer (912032)]

A party's obligation to provide the grounds of his entitlement to relief requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.

Maybe it's the lack of coffee this morning, maybe it's the fact that I didn't get a degree in Legalese Obfuscation, but: What on Earth is this sentence trying to say? Of all the things to say about this motion dismissal, why include this in the summary? A little further research seems to indicate that the anti-trust charges were kicked out not because the judge ruled that the RIAA isn't an anti-trust organization - the argument didn't get that far. Instead, the judge ruled that Limewire hadn't really given much cause (i.e., hadn't provided enough factual argument) to investigate the matter further. Any lawyers on the group want to delve deeper?

Exactly. The Court is saying that the initial claim -- the pleading -- did not have enough meat on its bones. The Court is also saying that, now that Lime Wire has gotten some evidence, if it feels it now has enough meat to put in a good amended pleading, it can make a motion for permission to do so, showing the Judge the new evidence it would be using.

Re:Wait, what?

[The Only Druid (587299)]

You're extremely mistaken: some "lawyer speak", i.e. jargon, is utterly required for the same reason that it's required in engineering, in medicine, etc.

Jargon allows for a specificity that colloquial language simply cannot possess: for example, by having specific meanings of words like "pleadings" or "plausibility", the Courts possess a uniformity across the nation that would be lost if each individual court were permitted to say "well, to me, 'plausible' means X".

Your intuition - that law is complicated - is correct, but you're firmly wrong in light of hundreds of years of debate in philosophy of language. It is firmly settled - with literally no dispute by any philosopher any more - that the specificity of a term is inversely related to the ease of understanding, because the more specific a term is the more collateral information is necessary in order to understand that term's definition. Put simpler, the more narrowly you define a term (e.g. "plausibility" here), the more information any reader must possess in order to understand what is meant by that term.

The side effect of this is that in fields that require a great deal of specificity - e.g. the professions (medicine, law) or the trade fields (engineering, masonry, etc.) - then there is a great deal of collateral information that readers need to understand in order to comprehend what is going on.

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[boris111 (837756)]

As a techy who has complained about lawyer jargon before... after reading your post I'm a little more sympathetic to it now. My coworkers get frustrated with me when I use technical jargon, but I'm just being specific to avoid ambiguity.

Of course I would like my Project Managers to beef up their technical glossary. So many occasions they look at me like I'm speaking Japanese.

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[lubricated (49106)]

unlike a technical manual everyone is expected to follow the law.

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[Tim C (15259)]

Yes, but the basic concepts - don't take stuff that doesn't belong to you, don't hurt people unnecessarily, don't burn down buildings, don't copy CDs or movies, etc - are pretty easy to understand. You do not need to understand all the minute details of what goes on in a court case, you just need to know enough not to do anything illegal enough to get caught and prosecuted.

For example, you don't need to know the difference between say fraud and embezzlement to know that stealing money from work is wrong, or

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[lubricated (49106)]

If it really is that simple neither do the lawyers. How is don't copy CD's in the same league as all that other stuff? Most people don't know enough not to copy cd's from a friend. Not to record a live performance. Not to take pictures of shit they see. etc. . .

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[celtic_hackr (579828)]

So what you're saying is that the word "is" is too specific to be understood by people. That would explain why Bill Clinton asked for a definition of that word. And of course the word female is so specific that no one really knows what it means. Especially nerds, geeks and hackers, who live inside their computers.

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[The Only Druid (587299)]

Ironically, I now must apologize to the AC I was replying to: I somehow misread his tone, and thought he was directly criticizing jargon, when in fact he was guessing that jargon is valuable. My mistake.

LOL, Limewire!

[autophile (640621)]

LOL, Limewire [cristgaming.com]

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[TheVelvetFlamebait (986083)]

Catchy.

Did I see it?

[TheVelvetFlamebait (986083)]

I don't think so. Let me check again...
 
... nope, no "haha" tag. Funny that.

Why Limewire?

[Wolfdan72 (1195161)]

Dam, people still use Limewire, well in that case I fell sorry for those who still use limewire! NOT!

Re:Serves them right

[Ginger Unicorn (952287)]

i rather foolishly followed these links just out of morbid curiosity (i knew it was spam but i thought ff2.0.0.11, adblock plus, noscript, cookiesafe, avg, spybot, spywareblaster, OpenDNS, comodo2 would protect me) and it managed to lock up firefox to the point that i could close it by clicking the close window icon, but the process was stuck running. i killed it in taskmanager and am running avg and spybot checks now but just thought i'd warn anyone who thinks they're invincible to malformed websites that this one might still get through. it might just be conicidence but just thought i'd warn you.

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[Ginger Unicorn (952287)]

it was links in the GGP's post i was referring to

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[Ginger Unicorn (952287)]

thanks for that - i just ticked the "forbid java" option in noscript now so hopefully that will save me from junk like this in future.

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[Ginger Unicorn (952287)]

yeah it was the java, now i can see the "informative" and "insightful" content

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[bidule (173941)]

Thanks a million for the negative moderation. Next time I won't make the effort to track where these come from.

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[charlesbakerharris (623282)]

Well, I'm glad someone has brought some maturity to this discussion.

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[sm62704 (957197)]

And I'm glad someone has a sense of humor! I was about to call for my own comment to be morderated as "flamebait!"

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[charlesbakerharris (623282)]

Morderated? Been reading too much Tolkien?

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[sm62704 (957197)]

You have proven yourself unworthy of being here, Mr. Humorless Coward. Go away or I shall taunt youy again!

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[josteos (455905)]

I frequent slashdot (I've been here since 2000) and love sports and have played them all my life.
I played football in HS and ran XC and ended up getting a science degree and am now working on my PhD.

I was a NCAA wrestler in college, and currently play hockey with a bunch of Microsoft developers. My undergad is in Genetics, one masters is in Biology, and the other MS is in Computer Science. I'm all schooled out now, but once the kids are grown I may want to go back for further schoolin' in AI.

So I think th

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[sm62704 (957197)]

"Nerdy gadgets" do not make a nerd. Everyone uses nerdy gadgets. Nerds invent, repair, and modify (hack) them. Every bozo that ever taunted a kid destined to be the next Niel Armstrong* has a cell phone, a computer, and all the other stuff that would not exist were it not for nerds.

Just as every nerd-wannabe buys gadgets but would never in a million years dare to modify them even if he knew how, every jock wannabe studies scores and player statistics as if they actually somehow mattered, even though they'd

Re:

[Jim_Callahan (831353)]

What if you modify hardware and software for a living, but don't really give a damn with your personal gadgets unless they're actually underperforming, broken, or poorly optimized? What does that make you? Oh, right, an engineer.