Lawsuit Against RIAA Tries To Stop Them All

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Tanya Anderson has filed an amended complaint against the RIAA. One of the more interesting provisions in it is in the 18th claim, which seeks to stop the RIAA from 'continuing to engage in criminal investigation of private American citizens', no doubt referring to the unlicensed MediaSentry investigations. If granted, that could shut down the RIAA lawsuits entirely. Naturally, the RIAA doesn't like this at all. First, they got the judge to agree that the original complaint was too light on the details, so it was amended. Now the RIAA complains that it's too long, because it's 108 pages filled with the RIAA's dirty laundry. You may remember this as the countersuit to the lawsuit where RIAA lawyers tried to grill a 10-year-old girl, only later to drop their case for lack of evidence and have the mother sue them for malicious prosecution."

Tubes

Honestly the RIAA should just stop all this and invest in the Tubes and maybe charge in this way. Artist would then distribute through some RIAA developer method which would not take a cut. Then the RIAA could then just charge for the bandwidth.

Re:Tubes

But but. That would require change. And we can't have that.

Re:Tubes

What they should do is reinvest the 'funds' and get some acceptable talent going so music would be worth buying again. The crap they try to pawn off as music nowadays...

I don't get it...

Where is the April Fool's joke in all of this??

For that matter...where are any April Fools articles?? I hope they're still gonna do them....

Re:I don't get it...

Scroll down the main page, ray tracing will be implemented in DX11, which will be imlemented in Vista SP2 by the end of the year.

Re:Tubes

The thing is, is that the RIAA is just about business. And therefore all they are interested in is making money. They've found the best way to make money is to produce the minimum amount of music that will result in the maximum amount of sales. That's how they maximize their profits. The best way to do that is to promote a small number of artists that most people will buy, because they don't find it terrible.

Re:Tubes

That sound you just heard was the joke going over your head.

Re:Tubes

Honestly the RIAA should just stop all this and invest in the Tubes and maybe charge in this way. Artist would then distribute through some RIAA developer method which would not take a cut. Then the RIAA could then just charge for the bandwidth.

Thats a better idea than the mods are giving you credit for (currently 0). If they took a page from Google's book developed an online site where artists could upload their own music, which is then sold for $1 a song or $10 an album. People can sample it before they buy, Music wold get ranked by downloads and algorithms to determine what you might like based on what other people with similar tastes liked etc...
...
Oh wait...
That's iTunes...

Doubt that's even possible.

seeks to stop the RIAA from 'continuing to engage in criminal investigation of private American citizens.

Like it or not, there's probably a few Constitutional considerations here. Although, what they should be doing is suing in individual states, where it's usually illegal to practice private criminal investigations without a license.

Re:Doubt that's even possible.

There is.

It's called Vexatious Litigation [wikipedia.org]

Re:Doubt that's even possible.

Yeah, let's check with a law dictionary [law.com] on that one:

n. filing a lawsuit with the knowledge that it has no legal basis, with its purpose to bother, annoy, embarrass and cause legal expenses to the defendant. Vexatious litigation includes continuing a lawsuit after discovery of the facts shows it has absolutely no merit. Upon judgment for the defendant, he/she has the right to file a suit for "malicious prosecution" against the original vexatious plaintiff. Moreover, most states allow a judge to penalize with sanctions a plaintiff and his/her attorney for filing or continuing a "frivolous" legal action (money award to the defendant for the trouble and/or attorney fees).

In other words, it has to be shown the the RIAA's lawsuit 1) has no legal basis and 2) that the RIAA and its laywers knew it had no legal basis and sued only to "bother, annoy, embarass and cause legal expenses to the defendant."

Thing is, some of the cases the RIAA has filed do have legal basis (these are the ones you don't hear about in the media and are settled out of court quickly), and while some of the most egregious examples might approach might approach vexatious litigation, I doubt you'll find a judge to agree that all of them do.

Re:

That is dangerious reasoning. This could lead to a lot of bad things. Say for example Civil Rights, If Cival Rights Organizations were banned from Sueing, because say at their time their law suits were inconvient. Then it would put hamer on socicity.

Convic

Cannibals!

tried to grill a 10-year-old girl

Finally we have proof that the RIAA are cannibals!

be sure to read the update at the bottom.

Apparently she has to file a 3rd revision now.

damn right.

Hope this is not an Aprils Fool, its about time somebody tried to roast those fuckers.

And I right that this is one of those situations that she was one of the few people who had a chance of doing this as she already had them in court and could add it in as an amendment?

If Joe Public tried this they would probably be able to block it before they got to court, no?

I just love the irony that they originally tried to block the complaint because it was not detailed enough, and that backfired when it came back as 100+ pages of **AA damming dirty laundry in their faces. Heh Heh.

The first thing a court does...

the more interesting provisions in it is in the 18th claim, which seeks to stop the RIAA from 'continuing to engage in criminal investigation of private American citizens'

The first thing a judge does is strip your case down to its essemtials.

The broader the reach and more fanciful your demands, the more quickly they disappear from view.

- - and never faster then when you try to persuade a court to make policy decisions in criminal law when they are hearing a civil case.

I see no constitutional barriers to the launch of a private criminal investigation. There was, after all, no such thing as a paid, professional, police force in the U.S. before 1845. Police History [realpolice.net]

The Pinkerton Detective - "The eye that never sleeps" - dates from 1850.

Message from music-listening public

You're already dead. [xkcd.com] Please find a grave to lie in already.

I hope the countersuits hold water

I run a web site [ozmp3.com] that provides free hosting to bands that I think have a clue and my site has been banned by many universities because of the RIAA which has resulted in the bands not getting gigs in the US and other countries. From my point of view, the RIAA's actions are purely to prevent additional competition.

Re:I really hope she wins this

However, as someone who's never illegally downloaded or uploaded music or movies or software over the Internet, this case really has no bearing on me personally.

Tell me again why this doesn't affect you. The *AA have shown again and again that the facts of the case really don't matter -- espescially when it comes to the method they use for identifying litigants, IP addresses. If your ISP has floating IP addresses, then this could easily become your problem.

Re:

>> It would be very easy to demonstrate to a judge in a court room that in the case
>> of most ISPs, IP addresses are dynamic and do not stay fixed on a particular PC;
>> I'm sure even the most basic of ISP logs would clearly show this.

And

Re:I really hope she wins this

>>>If everyone chose to steal their music, what would happen then?

Several studies have shown that if "everyone" stole music, then CD sales would escalate higher than ever. I know that sounds strange, but here's how it works:

- A person downloads songs for free.
- He/she likes the songs.
- He/she buys several CDs of that same artist, because they enjoy his or her work.
- The result is a several sales that would not have occured otherwise.

BEFORE: The person bought $0.00 worth of CDs.
NOW: The person bought $30-40 worth of CDs.
NET IMPACT: More money for the company and the artist. Stealing music helps sell more product by introducing people to new artists they had never heard before.

Re:I really hope she wins this

Not the OP, however: I understand the incredulity, but here's one study I was given in a telecommunications economics class. (The link from my school's website appears to be gone, but based on filename this is the same PDF I saw):

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf [unc.edu]

A quick excerpt from the abstract:

Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.

The basic conclusion, if I remember correctly, was: The top 1% of artists in terms of popularity lose sales due to pirated songs, and the rest actually see their sales increase with piracy. Obviously you can fact-check this yourself to see if my recollection is correct.

Re:

So I wonder if effectively stopping the RIAA truly serves justice or just provides legal cover to break laws in a minor way.

Both.

Re:I really hope she wins this

Being innocent of file sharing doesn't mean you won't get sued. I seem to recall a story about a Macintosh using Granny who was accused of using Kazaa (not available on Macs) to download rap music. It was only the publicity of the story that got the RIAA to back down. (And even then they reserved the right to go after her at any time.) It was obvious to everyone (except the RIAA) that she was misidentified. And if you are misidentified, your options are basically:

1. Spend a lot of time and money to fight to prove your innocence. If you are not successful, the fines will drive you into permanent bankruptcy. (If the legal fees don't do that first.)

2. Accept the RIAA's settlement offer to make it all go away. NOTE: Part of the settlement offer is admitting that you are a pirate even if you aren't one. But at least you won't face a long court battle and possible bankruptcy.

Most people chose Option #2 since it is the quicker and easier way to make it all go away. With recent RIAA court losses, though, it seems that more people are willing to try for Option #1. That's a good thing too. The last thing the RIAA wants is to actually fight these cases in court. They just want quick settlements so they can move on to the next victim... er, evil, bloodsucking pirate.

Re:I really hope she wins this

as someone who's never illegally downloaded or uploaded music or movies or software over the Internet

Dial-up sucks