New Attorneys Fee Decision Against RIAA 144
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has gotten slammed again, this time in Oregon, as the Magistrate Judge in Atlantic v. Andersen has ruled that Tanya Andersen's motion for attorneys fees should be granted. The Magistrate, in his 15-page decision, noted that, despite extensive pretrial discovery proceedings, 'when plaintiffs dismissed their claims in June 2007, they apparently had no more material evidence to support their claims than they did when they first contacted defendant in February 2005.....' and concluded that 'Copyright holders generally, and these plaintiffs specifically, should be deterred from prosecuting infringement claims as plaintiffs did in this case.' This is the same case in which (a) the RIAA insisted on interrogating Ms. Andersen's 10-year-old girl at a face-to-face deposition, (b) the defendant filed RICO counterclaims against the record companies, and (c) the defendant recently converted her RICO case into a class action"
Re:Nitpick grammar check: Attorneys' Fee? (Score:3, Informative)
That's because it is funny. It's a 15th century misspelling of a french word, what do you expect it to look like?
Re:Geez, never heard of precedent? (Score:3, Informative)
Unless the recipient seeks independent legal advice from someone who's actually aware of these cases before settling, the short answer is "Not a lot".
Re:Precedent! (Score:5, Informative)
If the decision is appealed and upheld, then a precendent has been set for the circuit in which it was appealed. All lower courts within that one circuit would be required to apply the appeals court's decision in all subsequent similar cases.
See this article [wikipedia.org] for details.
Re:Precedent! (Score:5, Informative)
2. But it is very very rare that any case is ever determined on the basis of an absolutely binding higher court authority. Almost invariably, where there is such authority available, the attorneys have figured that out long ago and there is no litigation to "decide".
3. Most briefs that are submitted cite plenty of non-binding judicial authorities, and even where they are citing binding higher authority, it is usually based on vastly different sets of facts.
4. There are numerous issues in the RIAA cases that will be decided on the basis of the fact that the RIAA has both brought, and pressed, numerous frivolous cases, with no evidence that the defendant committed a copyright infringement, just as was done in the Andersen case. And in those cases it continues to try to extort a "settlement" from the defendant even though it knows it has no case against the defendant. And in those cases where the defendant hangs tough, and is willing to see the case through to its conclusion and a jury trial.... the RIAA drops the case, as it did here. See, e.g., Capitol v. Foster [blogspot.com], Elektra v. Santangelo [blogspot.com], and Elektra v. Wilke [blogspot.com]. This recurring phenomenon will be relevant to future attorneys fees decisions, to possible sanctions motions against the record companies and their attorneys, to the record companies' claims of a "Noerr Pennington" defense which is not applicable to "sham" litigations, to claims of copyright misuse, and numerous other issues, in all district courts across the country, and will be cited by appellate courts when these cases finally do get to the appellate courts -- an event the RIAA is trying to avoid.
So yes. This judge's recognition of the RIAA's tactics is a very important precedent.
Re:Precedent! (Score:2, Informative)
Magistrate Judges cannot actually do anything: their entire power comes from their parent district court's approval.
Re:Precedent! (Score:5, Informative)
2. They do not serve at anybody's "whim".
3. Magistrate decisions are ctied all the time.
4. There are many instances in which they have binding authority in the matter before them.
5. As the underlying article [blogspot.com] makes perfectly clear, this was not a binding authority, but awaits approval by the District Judge.
6. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but in 34 years of working in the litigation field I cannot recall ever having seen a District Judge reject the Magistrate Judge's findings. Usually Magistrate's "recommendations" -- like this 15-page decision -- are extremely thorough.
Re:A long way towards discouraging the mess (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dupe??? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Precedent! (Score:5, Informative)
2. Defendant's opposition papers in Lava v. Amurao [blogspot.com] and our opposition memorandum in UMG v. Lindor [blogspot.com] give you some others.
3. I can't here discuss with you all of the many reasons the RIAA's attempts to hide behind Noerr Pennington will fail, since the RIAA lawyers seem to read everything I write on the internet, but if you follow the legal documents filed on my blog you'll no doubt see more on the subject.
4. By the way, I doubt that they thought about Noerr Pennington when they started doing the illegal things they do; I think N-P is just an afterthought their lawyers came up with in hopes of preventing the Courts from finding out about their illegal conduct. But it will all come out. In the Napster case they lost their attorney client privilege by reason of the fact that their attorneys had lied to the US Department of Justice team investigating their digital music price fixing scheme. See "Court Finds Reasonable Cause to Believe that UMG and Capitol Deceived United States Dept of Justice" [blogspot.com], Recording Industry vs. The People, April 21, 2006.
Re:One step closer... (Score:1, Informative)
But be aware that it's not supported universally. Otherwise, you can just precede the number with EUR.
Re:One step closer... (Score:3, Informative)
It was only in England (not too coincidently) the home of the industrial revolution 400 years ago this incentive brought about by mass production of copies first came to exist, and it is not too surprising that this is where and when copyright law first emerged.
Playing on the idea of the noble savage not needing copyright law is disingenuous and completely neglects the main issue - mass production or copies at prices low enough to make a creator's work a significant part of the cost of the copy.
Re:yeah, well, you can't have everything (Score:3, Informative)
I.e., they are not measuring it in terms of whether the revenues from the litigation exceed the expenses of the litigation. The primary objective of the litigations isn't to produce revenue; it's to produce terror.
The problem is, the people they're trying to terrorize are laughing at them, and have long ago figured out how to avoid detection.
The people they are terrorizing aren't their enemies; they're innocent folks like Tanya Andersen.
Re:yeah, well, you can't have everything (Score:3, Informative)
-makes a profit on the settlements,
-loses money on the default judgment cases (which make up the large majority of the cases), and
-loses a ton of money on any contested cases.
I think the percentage of cases ending in default judgments and in settlements has diminished, and the percentage being contested has increased, thus moving them from breaking even to losing money.
Re:Precedent! (Score:3, Informative)
2. Correction. File sharing is not criminalized in the U.S.
3. Congratulations. I'm happy for you that file sharing "has been determined to be legal" in your country.
4. Question. Was the "determination" in a "code" or was it a judge's decision interpreting the code?
5. Question. Do you want the judge's decision to be "perpetuated", or would you rather leave it up to other judges to ignore it because it was "misguided"?
6. I am guessing that
-it was a decision by a judge, because the "code" did not specify whether file sharing was legal or not, and
-you would want other judges to follow that decision, rather than for each new case to be a guessing game as to what the judge's personal opinion will be.
7. People need to know, when they wake up in the morning, how to plan their lives so they don't run afoul of the law. They need to know what the law is, and can't have a random system where each judge's personal opinion is all that counts. And no legislator is so much of a prophet that he can write a code that will cover all eventualities. Sometimes one needs a judge to apply the law to the facts. So you see, the 2 systems are not so dissimilar after all. And you are not so different than the people you are attacking. You too, want good judicial decisions to be followed by future judges.
Re:Precedent! (Score:2, Informative)
Of course, magistrate rules are binding within their own courts, but you cannot apply a magistrate ruling to a normal district court; all you can do is refer to the district court having adopted the R&R. That's why a magistrate, on their own, is nothing: their power is fully dependent upon their district court agreeing.
Re:Precedent! (Score:3, Informative)