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RIAA Defendant Cross-Sues Kazaa And AOL
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Aug 16, 2007 07:03 PM
from the naming-names dept.
from the naming-names dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In what appears to be a first, RIAA defendant Michelle Santangelo, the 20-year old daughter of Patti Santangelo, has made a motion for leave to serve a third party complaint against Kazaa and AOL, as well as against someone who installed Kazaa software, in Elektra v. Santangelo II. Her proposed third-party complaint (pdf) alleges that any injuries plaintiffs might have sustained were the result of the third party defendants' "negligence and breaches... in the defective design of Sharman Network's program, "Kazaa" which was a dangerous instrumentality in its each and every use as it existed in 2002-2004; the trespassing and reckless installation by Matthew Seckler [the person who allegedly installed the software without authorization] of such program; the failure to warn by AOL and Sharman; the failure to block the downloading of such files by AOL; the improper blocking of alleged (RIAA) warning messages by AOL and Sharman; and, the secretive file sharing system of and by Kazaa.""
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RIAA v. Santangelo Default Judgment Vacated 56 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "It was reported last week that at the July 13th status conference in Elektra v. Santangelo II, the default judgment taken by the RIAA against Patti Santangelo's daughter, Michelle, was vacated by Judge Stephen C. Robinson. This has now been confirmed in papers filed by the RIAA's lawyers in which they indicated that the Judge vacated the default judgment because he prefers cases to be decided on their merits, rather than by default (pdf). The papers sought $513 in attorneys fees for (a) procuring the default judgment and (b) preparing judgment enforcement documents. Patti Santangelo is the first RIAA defendant known to have moved to dismiss the RIAA complaint. After two years of litigation, the RIAA dropped its case against Patti Santangelo, leaving open only the question of whether the RIAA will be ordered to pay her attorneys fees."
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It wasn't me, it was the software (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't weasel out by blaming the other guy.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All part of the master plan... (Score:4, Funny)
2) Sue for legal expenses
3) Gouge Elektra for $200,000 due to extra court costs due to motions
4)
5) Profit
Step 4 has something to do with getting the lawyer who just got a $200,000 paycheck to cut you in on the deal
-Rick
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If there wasn't any copyright law to violate, then we could copy and communicate whatever we please. No one would get hurt. All the supposed damages from copyright violations are hypothetical. However much hypothetical damage is caused by disobeying copyright, seems to me there's greater hypothetical damage caused by obeying copyright. People dying because life saving medical techniques, in addition to all the other delays, are being held up until publication and registering of copyrights and the making
Strawman, or misunderstanding of IP (Score:3, Insightful)
See O'Reilly Media, Inc. whose profits on earlier copyrighted works allowed them to expand their scope to the point where profits from protected later works allowed them to re-issue their earlier works to the public for free.
> People dying because life saving medical techniques, in addition to all the other del
I disagree... (Score:5, Interesting)
While I'm not sure what you mean by 'Stand up and declare your rights', I'll let it go and talk about weaseling for a second.
In this case, the defendant claims to have done nothing wrong and to be guilty only of the following:
Taken at face value, I don't see any weaseling going on. The only seemingly weasel-ish aspect is the way that the third party complaint spreads across so many defendants. This, however, is perfectly acceptable in the legal system if, again, you take the original defendant's testimony at face value.
The way I see it, Miss Santangelo is basically saying, "I didn't do it. It's not my fault. I don't know who is responsible, but it's probably one of these guys, let the court figure it out."
It's not that she's accusing aol and Sharman as much as she's saying that they had more to do with any infraction than she did.
Looking at how this looks for precedence, I'm interested to see how this turns out. We currently have laws that hold a bar liable if a patron gets a DUI on the way home. Bars serve alcohol, it's what they do. But they get in trouble if people use their product illegally. By the same token, aol supplies internet access. Should they be held completely harmless if people use their product illegally? If so, why is there a double standard between bars and ISPs?
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Re:I disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 dictates what constitutes a common carrier. Short answer - AT&T the phone company is a common carrier. AT&T the ISP (different company altogether) is not. There's not much practical reason for an ISP to try to claim CC status nowadays - the protections of more recent legislation (the
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Re:It wasn't me, it was the software (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, no. The cops just charge everyone with possession and when they try to pull that communal area crap in court they get laughed at by the judge.
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Re:It wasn't me, it was the software (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:It wasn't me, it was the software (Score:5, Interesting)
In the commotion, the 8ball got tossed onto the floor and everyone got arrested for it. Including me and another friend I was riding with.
It took 10 months of fighting in court and almost 5 grand to get out of it. Evidently, the guy who came in, bought it from a undercover cop and they followed him home instead of busting him there because the two (who were splitting it) were actually talking on the cell phone trying to haggle the price when the one got it from the cops. I had both of them saying I wasn't involved and it didn't matter at all. This was about 12 or 13 years ago during an election year and they were tough on crime.
Sometimes you will be in just as much trouble just being there until you can prove your innocence. The cops kept saying they were going to take my cars and sell them and all that shit. Fortunately, My job easily payed enough to cover my "lifestyle" and they couldn't find anything indicating I was selling drugs to support it. And yes, they had my banking records and frozen my accounts for 2 months when my lawyer was finally able to got them back. They charged me with conspiracy, trafficking, possession with intent (which was part of the conspiracy) resisting arrest (because I wasn't on the floor fast enough), then they attempted to say I could plead out to on charge of possession and get 5 year probation. Of course I refused and fought it but the guy who drove me there took the deal and got hit for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was still out almost $5000 though and had a bunch of checks bounce when they froze my accounts.
My advice, if you see it happening, throw it out or move out yourself. Maybe breaking it a couple of time would force them to keep it locked away. It just isn't worth it if your not doing it "too". Pot alone is a little more relaxed then an 8 ball of cocaine and a few quarter bags. But I could easily see a cop being an ass and trying to make an example or something. My lawyer said if it wasn't an election year when it went down, I would have probably been let go the day it happened.
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Oh, for the love of... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, for the love of... (Score:5, Funny)
To paraphrase, "Sue 'em all, let the courts sort it out."
Parent
WTF??? (Score:5, Insightful)
The speedometer on my Jeep goes up to 100mph. Does that mean that if I get pulled over doing 100mph in a school zone that it's Chrysler's fault and not mine? Did Chrysler take measures to prevent me from speeding in a school zone?
Generally, I'm excited when anyone fights the maFIAA, but in this case, I hope she loses badly so she'll learn about pointing fingers.
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This is the only line I see here that she should get to pursue to the end of time. If Chrysler made it impossible for her to determine that she was in a school zone then yes, she can sue.
Re:WTF??? (Score:5, Insightful)
To use your car analogy (usually a bad idea), Chrysler sells the car with a parental control which they claim will keep your kids out of trouble and your kids are stopped doing 100mph in a school zone, does Chrysler have any liability?
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To use your car analogy (usually a bad idea), Chrysler sells the car with a parental control which they claim will keep your kids out of trouble and your kids are stopped doing 100mph in a school zone, does Chrysler have any liability?
I like bad car analogies. They usually clarify a point that nobody intended to make, while hiding the fact that nobody has any clue what you are talking about. I think the analogy here would be more like:
Chrysler sells the car with a parental control which they claim will keep
Re:WTF??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry if it sounds like mockery, but in this case it's actually the case. We blame MS. We blame the trojan writer. We do not blame the clickmonkey who can't resist double clicking everything he sees. Why is that so? Why is it excusable to use zero brains when accessing a computer, claiming it's "too hard" or "too limiting" to take responsibility and instead blame the manufacturer of the system?
You have no idea how hard it was for me to write this, since I do blame MS for a lot of things, many rightfully, but they are actually only partly responsible for the amoung of malware currently circulating. Until the advent of MPack, nearly all widely spread malware used user stupidity as the key attack vector, requiring user interaction and actual "help" from the user to infect a system. Why is the user not liable for stupidly clicking everything he sees?
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umm, no (Score:5, Insightful)
No, AOL should not block files that I am downloading at all.
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Regardless, the last thing I want from an ISP is them deciding what I get to see on my computer.
This would set TERRIBLE FUCKING PRECEDENT (Score:5, Insightful)
precedent already set? (Score:3, Insightful)
and fast food for obesity?
and gun dealers for crime?
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1) "Big tobacco" arranged a deal where they donate X billion dollars and promote an anti-smoking campaign, and in exchange they would be protected against future lawsuits.
2 & 3) To my knowledge, a lawsuit has never been won against either fast food [wikipedia.org] or guns [overlawyered.com]. I believe there are now Federal protections in place for gun manufacturers.
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Basically, anything that SHOULD fall under common sense is being taken to civil court to avoid personal responsibility during the past several decades.
If you look at civil/liability court cases from oh, let's say 1980 onward, you will find an alarming increase in what I call 'lack of common sense/personal responsibil
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Definition of EULA (from the complaint) (Score:5, Funny)
Rights Based Society (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no motivation to take responsibility for anything since you aren't forced (or even encouraged) to. By freely granting all rights without associating any responsibilities we've created a system that doesn't have enough incentive for good behavior. And we're reaping it with every frivolous lawsuit that bogs down our legal system.
I hope either we eventually figure this out and evolve to a system with a good rights/responsibilities balance, or after our country eventually declines that future generations will take the lessons we've learned to heart and not make the same mistakes.
Re:Rights Based Society (Score:5, Interesting)
As I said, interesting...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [blogspot.com] and November, 2006, report to US Patent and Trademark Office, set forth as exhi
Re:Rights Based Society (Score:5, Insightful)
The average user (who doesn't read
And half the time Windows hides those icons anyhow.
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Re:Rights Based Society (Score:5, Funny)
Holy shit! Those little numbers in the corner are a clock?
Daaaaamn! You're right! The numbers in the corner of my computer are almost the same as the numbers on the front of my cable box! That's neat!
I'm really starting to get into this computer stuff. I learn something new almost every month.
-
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This could be more interesting than it looks (Score:4, Insightful)
If Kazaa was a trojan, it wouldn't be the user. So I'm quite interested in seeing how this turns out. Is ignorance a defense? It is usually in the case of computer malware, where you can act as irresponsible as you want and click on anything and everything. You're not liable for it, whether you become the spamchucker of the week, another drone in a DDoS attack or a launching point for more malware, you're off the hook. You're too dumb to understand it, so you're not liable.
I'll be waiting for that verdict. Is ignorance an excuse? Are you responsible for your computer's actions? I could well see this becoming an interesting turning point in the question who's liable for your computer's actions.
Unlike the previous posters to this thread.. (Score:5, Funny)
Let 'em litigate this for 3 years.
I'm only surprised that they didn't assert that the plaintffs are partially liable for continuing to publish DRM free CDs long past the point when they knew that tools and techniques existed which permitted these tracks to be ripped and shared.
Hmmm...I'm still wondering if that last paragraph of mine is a joke or not.
With lawyers involved, I suppose you never can tell.
She forgot.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is more interesting, though.
RIAA should hire the wench (Score:5, Funny)
She sort of has a point. at least on some of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Second Kazaa as it once existed tended to at least attempt(if you didn't actively tell it not to, which if she didn't install it she didn't get a chance to choose) to share pretty much every music file on your PC. If she had a legitimate music file on her PC Kazaa would have attempted to share it with the outside world leading to infringement. This was always bad design in every program tham implemented it(it's alright in a media player, but not in a file sharing utility, it'd be like having apache automatically make all your documents available.
Thirdly the RIAA is presumably alleging that they sent warning e-mails to this girl or her parents, and the girl and/or her parents are apparently alleging that they didn't get them. The suit against the ISP means that the ISP will be required to prove whether those e-mails got through or not and wether they ever got to them in the first place. If they did block them then there's a case there, if they didn't arrive then the RIAA loses their "she knew it was wrong and kept going" angle and look more like vultures going after a little girl who didn't know what she was doing.
Her suit about the ISP blocking the files is of course bollocks and should and likely will be tossed out(presuming that the ISP wasn't offering some sort of parental filtering service at cost in which case there's a case there too).
I Hope She Gets Sanctioned (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope the Judge dismisses her claim against AOL and sanctions her for making ridiculous claims. She's no better than the RIAA in this case.
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Maybe only after they realize that the machine they have bought isn't in their ownership anymore. For reference, see TCPA, DRM and the DMCA. The first two ensure you don't run what you want, but only what you're allowed, the third ensures that you break the law should you dare thinking about removing the first two.
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This would be the best case scenario, as we would not only keep our few, remaining, rights; we would regain all of those which we've lost in the last several years.
Many people I know, including myself, are waiting for widespread support for just this.
No, ya don't. Elektra is AOL subsidiary (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks like entrapment by AOL. Elektra sues AOL for subscriber records... oh wait, Elektra IS AOL, or was at the time. Elektra is owned by Warner music, meaning owned by Time Warner, which as everyone knows, was bought by AOL during the dotcom boom... So, new business model:
Provide internet access.
Monitor usage.
Allow users to download music freely
Profit!!! (Sue users who download AOL music. Put competitors out of business with illegal downloads)
That's just dirty... By the way, before anyone says Kaza
Re:Oh I get it (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Oh I get it (Score:5, Interesting)
The RIAA, record companies and their distributors get the rest.
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