RIAA Caught in Tough Legal Situation 267
JeffreysTube writes "The RIAA's legal fight against a divorced mother has run into trouble, with the judge now telling the RIAA that its only two options are to proceed with a jury trial against Patty Santangelo or dismiss the case with prejudice. If the latter happens, Santangelo officially "wins" and could collect attorneys' fees. The judge is less than pleased with the RIAA, which is now trying to drop the case without giving Santangelo a chance to be declared guilty. 'This case is two years old,' wrote Judge McMahon. 'There has been extensive fact discovery. After taking this discovery, either plaintiffs want to make their case that Mrs. Santangelo is guilty of contributory copyright infringement or they do not.'"
"from the catch-22 dept" (Score:4, Insightful)
So who's gonna extend a helping hand and get the RIAA out of the corner? I guess it's time for another metaphor. The metaphor of the drowning man.
Re:I know you hate the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand your grief, but "it's that simple" is a dead give away that your solution is kinda too easy to work.
And if you read what you wrote couple of times, you may realize the irony of the situation. You refused to sell a CD to a buying customer. Sure, he was going to put the CD on the Internet, and that sucks. But he was there to buy that CD.
In the end, before your intervention you had 1 CD sold, after your intervention you had 0 CD sold. Where do you believe this "punk" will get this album from now? Either another store, or the Internet. You lose, either way.
It takes *one* to copy his CD to the Internet for the entire world to have. You have to simply accept that blacklisting people that talk about copying CD-s *in the store* is a wildly inaccurate way to blacklist all pirates.
Even if you "decide to play safe" and blacklist every single person in US (assuming you're in US), someone will buy this CD in another country and upload it, and adapt your business to this, and you'll be out of customers since you blacklisted them all. It's a lose-lose situation.
Violence against the customers just causes lost customers and bad word spreading about your shop. You can be sure this guy told all his friends about this event, and they told their friends. You'll likely not see then buying from you any more.
Re:Stopping the lawsuits... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, don't underestimate how risk-averse a large and established organization can be.
Re:If there's an out-of-court settlement now... (Score:5, Insightful)
You could add a coupla' zeroes to that figure, and the RIAA might still settle outside court, if it precludes case-law being made. This case will make the law that the mere possession or proviioning of an ip-address does not mkae one guilty of copyright violations over that ip-address. Many IT firms and ISPs will breathe easy once the case-law is made.
Outmoded business model (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Declared guilty? (Score:3, Insightful)
AFAIR that's still the law in this country. You're innocent until proven guilty.
Re:Stopping the lawsuits... (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA makes money on the settlements, loses money on the default judgments, and loses a lot of money on any contested cases.
Re:"from the catch-22 dept" (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine the effect if future victims of the RIAA know that if they try to defend themselves in court, they'll lose money no matter what.
If that isn't a chilling effect, then I don't know what is.
Re:Is that your final comment? (Score:4, Insightful)
[+] mafiaa, haha (tagging beta)
You didn't have to wait long. Am I the only one who finds these damn tags redundant and asinine?
Let me be the one to start a beowulf cluster of them:
[+] haha, fud, defectivebydesign, mafiaaaa, microsoftsucks, itsatrap...
Hmmm, better stop there, otherwise that lameness filter might start earning its keep for once.
RIAA Should Pay. (Score:1, Insightful)
the corporation should pay double or triple the fees back to the individual.
With the Individual actually getting the money.
A woman stands alone against a team of lawyers.
Suffers two years of this legal mumbo-jumbo.
And then RIAA wants to just walk away from it?
No.
Make 'em pay!
Re:Declared guilty? (Score:5, Insightful)
The riaa uses money to stuff their mattress pad. They could care less about paying one person's attourney's fees. The problem here is if they end up paying THIS woman's attourney, this will send a very loud message to all the other future victims that yes you really can win against the riaa and engaging in a court battle is not going to make you lose your house and your job, as the riaa is trying to scare everyone into believing. Once we get a couple Not Guilty chalked up, the riaa will find there are a lot fewer victims willing to just roll over when the lawyers come calling. Then it will not be a matter of paying one woman's attourney - if they sue 100 ppl a year then they will be paying 95 of them attourney fees, and THIS is going to bust their groove. This is the scenario the riaa is desperately trying to avoid by having this case dropped without prejudice.
I would love it but for other reason... (Score:4, Insightful)
Every new sued person is a potential new job for a lawyer.
Re:I know you hate the RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Declared guilty? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Declared guilty? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not clear to me how much truth there is to that in civil cases, though. They're decided on the "preponderance of evidence".
Frankly, I think civil cases and criminal cases should both be decided based on "evidence beyond a reasonable doubt". Why? Because while a civil case doesn't strip an individual of their freedom, it does strip them of their assets. Those assets were usually acquired through a lot of hard work, so in essence taking those assets is the same as forcing that person to do labor for the benefit of the plaintiff. Slavery, in other words. The only difference is that (some of) the work's already been done. In some cases, the amount involved is more than the defendant can pay, which really does make them a slave of the plaintiff.
The bottom line is that in both civil and criminal cases, government coercion is being used to strip someone of something that was once theirs. Government coercion should never be used for that unless the evidence supports it beyond a reasonable doubt.
That only a "preponderance of evidence" is required to invoke that government power is one of the reasons the system in the U.S. is the "legal system" and not the "justice system".
Re:Declared guilty? (Score:3, Insightful)
Paul
Re:"from the catch-22 dept" (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I take this statement from the judge to mean, "You just can't drag this poor woman through 2 years of hell and expect to just walk away from it." I applaude the judge for his stand.
Re:Ruling against the tactic (Score:4, Insightful)
That should be the case as a matter of law. That it's not is a travesty of justice, and makes it obvious that the U.S. legal system is not designed to serve the people, but to serve the lawyers and moneyed interests.
There should be no option of dropping a case without prejudice unless the defense agrees. If you were stupid enough to bring a case against someone else before the court without significant evidence, you should by law be forced to suffer the consequences, either by losing the case entirely or by being forced to pay for their defense, if your case is weak and the defendant is willing to fight to the finish.
And yes, I realize the consequences regarding suing a well-financed opponent. That's why I think any civil judgment rendered, whether it's against the plaintiff or the defendant, should be limited by law to a maximum of some large percentage of that entity's total assets. That way, if an individual sues a corporation and loses, it'll hurt a lot but it won't completely bankrupt the individual.
Re:I know you hate the RIAA (Score:2, Insightful)
Radio has the benefit of a large captive market - radio isn't going anywhere.
There are millions of commuters who spend hours in their cars every day. Aside from yakking on the phone, most listen to the radio.
Enough with the Ad Hominem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Declared guilty? (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought the system working as it should IS the groundbreaking part of this case...
Re:RIAA Steamroller (Score:5, Insightful)
In each case they were asking for more time because they had too many briefs to write in other cases.
I've been practicing litigation law for more than 28 years, and have never in my career requested additional time for such an asinine reason. They have hundreds of lawyers working for them. These people are losing it.
Re:Ruling against the tactic (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately your ideas are worse than the status quo.
There is nothing "obvious" about how the law is constructed in the U.S. The law is, essentially, our ongoing attempt to define what American life is supposed to be like. This is because in the U.S. we do not have a single localized ethnic tribal tradition to guide our behavior, we're a mishmash of lots of those, so we need to rely on law to figure out how we want to behave toward each other. (As other countries experience this move toward "mishmashiness" they'll have to do the same work.) Not only ethnicities: also different modes of living, economic strategies, political leanings, heck even psychosocial schemas have to be accommodated. Over time, U.S. law has actually done a pretty marvelous job at accommodation of widely disparate groups of people with competing agendas, despite some short-term failings.
The point of a civil suit is to bring a case before a (hopefully) learned, equitable judge and a small group of peers so that an unclear situation can be sorted out. If the situation was not debatable, there would be no need for the suit! We only have lawsuits when one party thinks A should be the outcome and the other party thinks B should be the outcome.
Imagine that Farmer Ted sues Rancher Bill because Bill's steer are grazing Ted's land without permission. Ted thinks he's totally right, but Bill claims it wasn't him. During the early part of discovery it becomes less clear that it was actually Bill's cattle doing the grazing. It still might have been, but it's just not clear at this time. The proper course of action is for Ted to drop the suit and possibly bring it again later if better evidence arises. Under your system this would be impossible. You would rather have the judge find for Bill, make Ted pay Bill's legal costs, and then later on we find out it was Bill after all. Is that the kind of justice you prefer?
Your solution for suing corporations is even worse. You would have it so that throngs of impoverished, unemployed morons could mass-sue corporations indiscriminately based on shoddy evidence, or even no evidence at all (they can fish for wrongdoing during the trial), just hoping to score in the "corporate lawsuit lottery." What have they got to lose? 70% of zero? Not so great for the corporations trying to bring a product to market and make some money, but can't, because they've had to defend against three thousand lawsuits alleging the CEO used alien mind-control rays to make your dog pee on the carpet.
Yes, there are abusers of the current system, but that is one reason why we bring these cases before a judge and some peers. As others posters here have said, this is an example of the system working appropriately. The system is fine. In fact, it's working great in this example, because the RIAA is terrified of having this argued in front of a jury of ordinary people, who will almost certainly identify them as the abusers they are, and find against them.
Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
For years and even decades, music companies have managed to milk the talent of skilled performers while at the same time overpumping and burning out mediocre ones. However, those days are gone, and the market has changed. Gone are the days when you needed to buy three tapes if you wanted a proper-quality version for your car, home, and office (there was some loss when copying tapes). Gone are the days when customers could not easily replicate music. Gone are the days when they could milk customers for an entire disc/tape/record when only 1-3 songs were worth bothering with. Moreover, while their models have also greatly depending on screwing over good musicians with draconian contracts. Yes, they still have such contracts, and some fools fall into them, but at the same time more and more are realizing that they don't need to RIAA to further themselves, or that it would be a case of 2 steps forward, 3 steps back in many cases. Lastly, customers are starting to turn away from the pop-performer crud that's been pumped for the last 5-8 years, and going back to music that was based on... well... music (and not some guy dancing on stage in fancy MTV duds). I work in a school district, and I'm very very happy to notice that even the kids are starting to turn away from lip-syncing low-talent hacks and go back to the good stuff.
So they've lost their target market. They've lost their baseline products. Heck, they've even lost their longstanding model of suppliers. The biggest part is the greed of it all, as they still expect the same massively-inflated profits. Keep in mind too, that this is not revenues I'm speaking of, but profits. After all the expenses, it's still a massive money they come ahead with. Perhaps that money might be declining in the future, or they might have to spend some of it developing new infrastructures for a time, but it's still a shitload and they've no right to complain at all.
Re:I know you hate the RIAA (Score:2, Insightful)
Otherwise, check back in a few years, and let us know how that absurd blacklist idea worked out for you.. ok?
Re:Is that your final comment? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is that your final comment? (Score:3, Insightful)
[+] yes, no, maybe
Well, that clears it right up. Thanks Slashdot!