RIAA Wants Agreements to Stay Secret 196
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA is opposing Ms. Lindor's request for discovery into the agreements among the record company competitors by which they have agreed to settle and prosecute their cases together, by which she seeks to support her Fourth Affirmative Defense (pdf) alleging that 'The plaintiffs, who are competitors, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and of public policy, by tying their copyrights to each other, collusively litigating and settling all cases together, and by entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in accordance with a uniform agreement, and through common lawyers, thus overreaching the bounds and scope of whatever copyrights they might have. ...As such, they are guilty of misuse of their copyrights.'"
Should Confidential Contracts be Banned? (Score:1, Interesting)
Indeed... (Score:3, Interesting)
collective heads- I just won't state outright that they are going to lose the things. And, lose 'em they
will do if this gets going where it looks like it's going. They sued someone that was a DOJ case manager-
someone that understands precisely where she's going with this and is making no bones about it either.
Re:Should Confidential Contracts be Banned? (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, let's narrow it down a bit. How's this: Government and corporate contracts go into the database. It's a matter of public policy.
(when secret contracts are outlawed, only outlaws will have secret contracts)
Maybe, but it will be more easily apparent what behavior is not a matter of public knowledge. The government could reward publicizing contracts with tax breaks or whatever.
Re:You just haven't grown up yet (Score:4, Interesting)
In 1970 there might have been a riot. By 1980 you start seeing people being rather self-indulgently restrained worried about how this would affect their future as a lawyer or CEO if it ever came out. That was pretty much the end of it. Were there massive protests against the Iraq war? Not really. Were the police called out in riot gear with people being beaten and arrested? No.
Nobody is going to do anything like "riot". They will sit at home just as they have been trained and keep reading dailykos and other stuff like it and let the world go on around them. Yes, they will be angry and write some really scathing posts for firedoglake but nothing else is going to happen.
Backbone? Commitment? Resolve? Naaa. What we have is a nation of sheep that are being directed by a few sheepdogs. Some of the sheepdogs want to control things through large businesses and some of the sheepdogs want to control things through government. Some confused sheepdogs seem to want to control people through both, even though they are diametrically opposing forces. The problem is that most people can't even identify a sheepdog when they are in their presence, much less knowing when they are being led by one.
Most people seem to want a government that is run by poking fingers in the air and seeing which way the wind is blowing today. Take a poll before any decision. Let the "voice of the people" tell them what to have for breakfast. This doesn't look good because nothing is ever finally decided. If the morning poll says "Raise taxes" and the afternoon poll says "Spend less" government grinds to a halt. In some ways that is a good thing because a uniformly undirected government isn't going to accomplish anything at all, least of all something bad.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
Layne
...did you hear that? (Score:2, Interesting)
public corporation, public court system (Score:3, Interesting)
How else are we to know it isn't fraud?
Have your secret contract if you like... but don't come crying to the courthouse when the other party doesn't follow the contract.
Re:You just haven't grown up yet (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to work roughly six months each year to pay my slave dues.
I think three months should be low taxes. Right now federal income taxes are low.
I agree- taxes are low if you are making under $20,000 or over a half million a year.
Examine the Record (Score:5, Interesting)
I seem to recall that the specific copyright violations have resulted in the specific rights holders (ie. individual record companies) being listed as plaintiff on the cases involving violation of their copyrights, with those violations and rights being specifically listed in the filings. As such, the RIAA, and by extension its other members, are not attempting to sue collectively for the rights violations. This claim contradicts that, which is easily found in the collection of suits and pre-suit collection attempts.
This claim will fall apart based on this evidence. The rest of it will be moot, as it is not illegal to actively pursue settlement collectively as long as specific individual instances of damage are not claimed when they don't occur. This is the basis of class action suits. Suits brought by trade unions on behalf of more than one of its members for a specific complaint similar to each v. a specific company would perhaps be a more apt example.
As to why the RIAA would then attempt to block it: delaying tactic. They are trying to cause this case, as they have with many others, to be as costly as possible for the defendant to pursue. Their collective purse, paying the RIAA's attorneys, is much larger than any defendant's, and they're simply trying to price the case out of existence.
As much as I'd like to see the RIAA and its members hung using their own intestines if not vas deferens, I think there's a gaping hole in the tactic being attempted here. If the agreements the RIAA seeks to block discovery of contradicts this in some way, great. But the individual suits as filed, used as their evidence in defense, indicate the opposite and makes it unlikely those agreements will get examined due to this action. It could even backfire. A request for discovery without the claim that they're tying their rights to each other, perhaps brought separately by one of the RICO countersuit v. RIAA plaintiffs, might have been a better idea. Now the RIAA is warned, can delay, and can alter any agreements that might have supported it by superseding them with newer ones that don't have this problem. The old ones would still exist, but would be evidence of this claim in the past, not of claims that this is how things are being done in the case that resulted in the claims.
No, I'm not a lawyer. But I did work on behalf of some in collecting evidence and acting as witness in some intellectual property cases.
Re:You just haven't grown up yet (Score:3, Interesting)