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Florida Judge Smacks Down RIAA
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 06, 2008 03:11 PM
from the which-part-of-no dept.
from the which-part-of-no dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA is going to have to face the music in Tampa, Florida, and answer the charges of extortion, trespass, conspiracy, unlicensed investigation, and computer fraud and abuse that have been leveled against them there. And the judge delivered his ruling against them in in pretty unceremonious fashion — receiving their dismissal motion last night, and denying the motion this morning. The RIAA's unvarying M.O., when hit with counterclaims, is to make a motion to dismiss them. It did just that in one Tampa case, UMG v. Del Cid, but the judge upheld 5 of the 6 counterclaims. The RIAA quickly settled that one. When a new case came up in the same Tampa courthouse before the very same judge, and the same 5 counterclaims were leveled against the record companies, I opined that 'it is highly unlikely that the RIAA will make a motion to dismiss counterclaims,' since I knew they'd be risking sanctions if they did. Well I guess I underestimated the chutzpah — or the propensity for frivolous motion practice — of the RIAA lawyers, as they in essence thumbed their nose at the judge, making the dismissal motion anyway, telling District Judge Richard A. Lazzara that his earlier decision had been wrong. The judge wasted no time telling the record companies that he did not agree (PDF)."
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RIAA Accused of Extortion & Conspiracy 373 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The defendant in a Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, has filed counterclaims accusing the RIAA record labels of conspiracy and extortion. The counterclaims (pdf) are for Trespass, Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030), Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201), Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523), and Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030 (a)(2)(C); (c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. 559.72 et seq."
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Pfft... (Score:5, Insightful)
Until then, BFD.
Re:Pfft... (Score:5, Funny)
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Opps (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oops (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: Not this shit again.
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Re:Oops (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Oops (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm curious (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm curious (Score:5, Interesting)
The two items - ruling on the motion and imposing sanctions - though fallout from the same act by the plaintiff lawyers, are separate. I'd bet the judge issued the ruling quickly in the interest of justice, to spare the defendant additional delays and lawyer costs. Rule 11 sanctions, if the distinguished jurist decides to impose them, may be along later.
Given that there was a change in one of the counterclaims and an extra pleading by the RIAA, perhaps the judge doesn't think the motion was TOTALLY out-of-line. Or perhaps, now that he's given them some more rope, he's sitting back quietly while the RIAA's lawyers continue to demonstrate a pattern of abuse of process, in case they come up with some clearer examples. Since that's one of the counterclaims, perhaps the judge thinks a better sanction than spanking them early with Rule 11 (and perhaps deter their activities in THIS trial) is to add this (and any future frivolity) to the list of misdeeds when considering the amount to award on that claim.
Wouldn't justice be better served if they have to pay the price of their bullying to the defendant? B-)
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Re:I'm curious (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, look for much crap the SCO legal team has gotten away with without so much as a slap on the wrist (yet). And look how long it took Jack Thompson to get sanctioned for acting like a blatant lunatic.
--K
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Re:I'm curious (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I'm curious (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I'm curious (Score:5, Insightful)
A lawyer spends several decades suffering various forms of abuse and condescension at the hands of the judges he/she faces with every case
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Re:I'm curious (Score:5, Funny)
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Mass mailing don't work (Score:4, Funny)
Defendants not even asked! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Defendants not even asked! (Score:4, Interesting)
As Keith Olbermann reminds viewers of "Countdown" regularly, the technical definition of "insanity" is trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.
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Re:Defendants not even asked! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Defendants not even asked! (Score:5, Funny)
I've seen that quote attributed to Ben Franklin, but I am sure that Olbermann could have very easily been the originator.
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Re:Defendants not even asked! (Score:5, Insightful)
That "definition" has always bothered me, as I would find those considered "sane" under that definition to be extremely crazy themselves.
How crazy would you have to be to think that your previous actions would have no impact on future attempts?
If you swung an axe at a door and made a small chip, which would be more insane: Thinking that the next or subsequent blow would put the blade entirely through the door, or thinking that you could swing the axe at the door all day and do nothing but make small cuts?
It is very rare in real life that a certain event has the "memoryless" property (i.e. the outcome is based only on that event, not on the outcome of any previous events). That's a special case, not the general rule.
Look at this case. They tried the same thing, and got a different result: Their motion was dismissed even more rapidly than before. If they keep trying this, it is highly unlikely that the outcome would be the same each time; eventually they would be found in contempt. Judges in particular do not often suffer from being "memoryless".
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Re:Not unsual at all. (Score:5, Insightful)
And thank you for mentioning me in the same breath as PACER and Groklaw.
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Re:Not unsual at all. (Score:5, Funny)
Well if I'm accused of feeling pleasure over the RIAA's misfortune [wikipedia.org], I am guilty as charged.
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I know it won't happen... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I know it won't happen... (Score:5, Funny)
Too bad it just sits there purring for the most part and is fuzzy, and not so big on the implementation side.
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Pop quiz for you litigation buffs out there (Score:5, Funny)
The facts.
A lawyer just filed a 30-page brief in which he (a) devoted 28 pages to repeating the same arguments he had made in a motion that was decided less than 8 months earlier, and (b) devoted 3 pages to telling the judge that his previous ruling was "wrongly decided".
Question #1
What will happen?
(a) The lawyer will win the motion.
(b) The lawyer will lose the motion.
(c) The lawyer will have to find a new line of work.
(d) Both (b) and (c)
Question #2
If you are the client who pays lawyers to do things like that you are
(a) A smart businessperson
(b) A moron
(c) A fool
(d) Both (b) and (c)
Re:Pop quiz for you litigation buffs out there (Score:5, Funny)
Question #3: You bill your clients
(a) a small number of hours for the three new pages
(b) a huge number of hours for writing the same 28 pages again
(c) cost of copying 28 pages
(d) all of the above?
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Re:Pop quiz for you litigation buffs out there (Score:4, Funny)
(c) cost of copying 31 pages, if the copies had been scribed on gold leaves by tibetan monks
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Re:Pop quiz for you litigation buffs out there (Score:4, Insightful)
The actual answer in all cases is (e).
(e) The lawyer gets to bill an excessive amount for generating some paper work and having lunch with the judge. He then goes to his $2.4 million dollar home in his brand new BMW and sleep with his trophy wife and later on in the week sleep with his mistress.
Lawyer's don't care if their motions are granted or not, they only care if they can bill for the time.
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Re:Pop quiz for you litigation buffs out there (Score:5, Informative)
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Who? (Score:4, Interesting)
Or did you just use "RIAA" in the same (wrong) way that frequently happens around here.
Will this judge get more cases? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Will this judge get more cases? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
IANAL, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
First, I think the RIAA lawyers are probably doing nothing different from any lawyer - trying to get as many suits dismissed as possible, so they only have to argue the smallest subset possible. I can understand such a philosophy, when time is money, there's a pressure to get quick results, judgements are worse publicity than accusations, and so on. That is probably more a function of the legal system and the American attitude to high-pressure living/working than the RIAA.
Second, if a motion is frivolous, the judge should be doing more than just wagging a finger. Abuse of legitimate procedures devalues those procedures for others, as it increases the likelihood of judges in future regarding all such motions in a more hostile light. The judicial system does not just have a responsibility for those who stand before it today, but a responsibility for all who may ever stand before it, which means that there should be subtle encouragement of motions which are plausible (even if they are ultimately dismissed) and an unsubtle discouragement of motions which cannot possibly be construed as reasonable.
It would be interesting if the courts had greater powers (within reasonable bounds) to deal with contempt of court and any other abuse of court procedures, and a greater willingness to use those powers when lawyers or clients go beyond mere over-enthusiasm to being out of control. It wouldn't need to be severe. A compulsary psychiatric evaluation would be interesting, as it conveys all kinds of messages (real and imagined) about those who try to twist things.
I also think that some sort of staggered system, where you have a first round of aggressive fact-finding that feeds into a second round trial system, would help avoid the problem, the idea being that dismissal or whatever doesn't have any meaning until after the facts have been established, and accusatory systems are not very good at establishing facts, they're too busy constructing theories, but fact-finding missions are very bad at establishing context. Hence the need for both in a way that doesn't lend one to distract from the other.
The SCO/IBM case demonstrates a lot of what I'm talking about - a lot of the hold-ups and confusion was caused by wild speculation and insinuation, a lot of the useful stuff was done by establishing the groundwork, and all of this was before any actual trial had taken place. It would seem to follow that tuning the system according to experiences of what has been effective is better than maintaining a multi-millenia-old method that has acquired a lot of cruft and could do with some refactoring and bugfixing.
Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
No, these scum are far worse than terrorists; they are a plague, an infectious disease that destroys all it touches. Unrelenting, incurable. Even the courts are at their mercy. Mercenaries are not enough, here. Entire armies are insufficient. Not even the Spanish Inquisition (which nobody expects), could handle this. No, they must be wiped out from orbit, with nukes. It's the only way to be sure.
Signed,
The RIAA:
Creators of the Culture,
Bearers of the Truth,
Defenders of the Civilization,
Champions of Liberty,
Dearer than Life Itself,
Dread Rulers of the Abyss (in a good way, we assure you),
Awesome Enough to Have Many Many Titles,
Your Beloved Content-Owning Overlords.
Parent
Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
Words to live by.
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Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
from your local friend of thieves always peddling his dubious services here at slashdot, where the people who make the movies we watch are scum, and the people who think the world owes them a living a welcome. Stop fucking stealing and you wont need the services of the ambulance chasing dick who submits all this biased bullshit.
I would submit that all the false positives that the RIAA has ensnared were not protected by being innocent. Defending yourself from a wrongful prosecution is very expensive in this country. A fact that the RIAA uses to its advantage.
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Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently listened to a defense attorney spend considerable time schooling potential members of a jury in the difference between innocence and not guilt. He apparently was going for the not guilty verdict even though his client participated in the car jacking willingly. Most amazing speech I had heard in a long time. I think he was actually going to argue that his client just went along due to peer pressure and wanted to fit in.
I learned a long time ago that in the court room the judge and attorneys involved are not interested in the truth, the facts, or with dispensing justice. They are there to tell a story and put on an act to convince the jury that their side is telling a better story than the other side.
It reminds me a lot of survivor at the end where the remaining contestants tell a story to convince everyone in the jury to vote them the money.
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Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite, the Lawyer and Procecutor are each telling thier side. The prosecutor goes first and tries to make the defendant seem like the most vile person ever to walk the earth. Then it's the Lawyer's turn to make the defendant look like an angel and to make the procesutor look like he doesn't know anything.
Many people at this point would think that this is silly, and nothing more than a show. It was always put to me this way: It's not a lawyers job to determine if thier client is innocent or not, that is the judge/jury's job. The lawyers job is to put the defendant in the best possible light, and to ensure that a fair trial is being conducted.
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Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
One movie that describes this perfectly, is "my cousin vinny". In the movie, Ralph Macchio of Karate Kid interprets a teenager who just happened to buy something at a store where 5 minutes later the clerk was shot.
The district attorney hired a wonderful lawyer that moved the hearts and minds of everyone. Fortunately, the kid's cousin, Vinny, the most inefficient lawyer on earth, happened to save the day by presenting the facts to the jury (and add a lot of fun with his irreverence).
One of my favorite movies, btw.
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Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:More pro-piracy bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:In the End, It Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:In the End, It Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Informative)
The individual record companies have to sue; the RIAA just does the legwork for "finding" who "made files available" and hands it off.
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Re:In the End, It Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, absolutely everything creative is copyrighted, and it would be extremely easy to open a floodgate of tens of millions of copyright trolls. This is why Congress will see the light sooner than later, because the RIAA business model mass adopted could and would literally shut down commerce in the US. Politicians will be exposed to the same liability as consumers.
The RIAA is *losing* because the laws are being fought with laws. And it's utter business suicide to be playing with $150,000 per violation statutory fines against 200,000,000 people who hate your guts.
You know how fucked the RIAA is going to be if they ever mistakenly copy somebody's critical commentary file and attempt to sue for that file? Or it will happen if one of their artists like Bob Dylan plagiarizes lyrics from a novel about the yakuza. All their computers are going to be seized and examined in countersuits. I'm surprised there isn't already a 20 year backlog on examination of RIAA computers from one defense to another. Hell, just routinely make countersuit motion for the seizure and examination of all computers used in the original gathering of evidence. Defense has a right to examine the programs for mistaken identity. And speedy trial requirement will eliminated 90% of the cases due to discovery backlogs on RIAA computer equipment. Governments copying the data of travelers entering the USA are going to have their computers seized for copyright infringement discovery purposes as well. Are you willing to let the US Government copy your files at $150,000 per file copied compensation?
Constitutional immunity for government agencies and businesses like the RIAA will be impossible. Congress will wise up and realize the more they attack the privacy of individual citizens the more they will be attacking their own privacy as well. And people like that have a helluva lot more dirty secrets and a helluva lot more assets to pay fines without declaring bankruptcy.
This is a matter of Civil Law which is already well beyond unconstitutional. Further strengthening unconstitutional law will just hasten the inevitable end, especially when every citizen can privately track isp addresses and embarrass politicians by exposing their children's downloading and internet surfing activities. At that time, such RIAA investigative practices will be shut down faster than you can say how to catch a pedofile.
The internet is a giant P2P program. Nothing can be seen, heard, tracked, or logged without by definition mass copying the entire internet. Allowing suits on weaker evidence will just open trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of legal liability. The only way the RIAA could win is if the internet was shut down. And that's not going to happen when the GDP of business interests not the content industries dwarfs dying businesses like the RIAA.
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Re:chutzpah? (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
> Could anybody actually see the inside of a cell over this?
No.
Not even sanctions. Really. Seriously, people, I know you've all been whipped into a frenzy and want to see the public executions of every spouse and child of every clerk and paralegal of every law firm who's ever done business with the RIAA, but all that happened was that the plaintiffs made a useless motion, and the judge gave it the due consideration it deserved, which was nothing. Trust me when I say that no baby seals were clubbed in the process.
If anything, UMG should be pissed that their legal team phoned it in when it came to this motion. These are pretty serious counterclaims and they don't appear to be taking them seriously. Hubris does that I guess.
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Re:chutzpah? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sanctioned, Yes
Actual misbehavior by lawyers and their clients is decidedly unfunny. That is the message of Rule 11, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This is the law that obligates the federal courts to impose sanctions on lawyers and clients who file and pursue lawsuits in unreasonable ways. Rule 11 breaks with precedent that required proof of bad faith to trigger sanctions. Unreasonableness is a lighter trigger that has proven beneficial to persons burdened by lawyer and client misbehavior. By the way, sanctions is legal terminology for getting your expenses back in some degree from an attorney or party who did you wrong in a lawsuit.
WHAT REMEDY RULE 11 PROVIDES
Rule 11 prescribes sanctions for certain basic misdeeds: (1) the filing of a frivolous suit or document; (2) the filing of a document or lawsuit for an improper purpose; (3) actions that needlessly increase the cost or length of litigation.
Relevant parts of the rule are these:
The signature of an attorney or party constitutes a certificate by the signer that the signer has read the pleading, motion, or other paper; that to the best of the signer's knowledge, information, and belief formed after reasonable inquiry it is well grounded in fact and is warranted by existing law or a good faith argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law, and that it is not interposed for any improper purpose, such as to harass or to cause unnecessary delay or needless increase in the cost of litigation... If a pleading, motion, or other paper is signed in violation of this rule, the court, upon motion or upon its own initiative, shall impose upon the person who signed it, a represented party, or both, an appropriate sanction, which may include an order to pay the other party or parties the amount of the reasonable expenses incurred because of the filing of the pleading, motion, or other paper, including a reasonable attorney's fee (emphasis added).
Sanctions may apply against an attorney, the client, or both; therefore, we have adopted the collective convention, attorney/client.
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Re:Isn't that a reflex amongst corporate lawyers? (Score:5, Funny)
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