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"
yeah, well, you can't have everything (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think it would take them a lot less than two years to fabricate the proper evidence. Maybe their "research" team is running a backlog of cases and this one fell through the cracks.
Re:yeah, well, you can't have everything (Score:5, Insightful)
They do think they're the "good guys", which is more of a motive than you might think [slashdot.org]. When you're the "good guy", your own misdeeds can be morally justified (at least in your own mind) because your overall mission is "good", not "evil".
Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To me, it seems they never learn :) (Score:3, Insightful)
Got that right. It's the number 2 reason I haven't bought any music online. Value is number 1. Too much money for too little quality, content and usability. DRM/Copy protected CD tracks are incompatible with my car stereo, living room DVD player, portable DVD/MP3 player and Winamp, PowerPoint, Lights-O-Rama, DigitalPhotoFrame,.... I buy DVD's instead. CSS is broken enough DVD's can be put on both the kids Zen and iPod without buying the media twice, once in each format.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One step closer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they can. Seriously.
See, the value of it is very very low. The asking price is considerably more than that. Therefore, most people wouldn't seriously consider buying it at the asking price, and will simply go without, or wait until it comes onto TV and then record it, or buy it second hand, or whatever.
Digital content provides another option, and one which is quite convenient for many people at that. It's so convenient that many people pay for fast internet connections specifically so they can download things; and many of these people also wear part of the cost of allowing other people to access the content too! Which just goes to show, the content does have some value, it's just much less than the content producers want to charge for it. Also, since the content producers aren't making it available in a convenient and affordable manner, the money is going to those who do: ISP's.
Previously, Big Media have been able to charge whatever they wanted, because it was impractical for anybody else to distribute it. Now, it's cheap and easy to distribute high-quality copies of the content to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Eventually, the content producers will have to accept that they can only charge what the market is willing to pay, but for now they're just throwing a tantrum and calling everyone who doesn't value their content as highly as they do "thieves".
RTFPDF, smile and wait for class action (Score:2, Insightful)
If it can be shown that any significant number of the RIAA's settlements were only settled to avoid lawyer's fees greater then the settlement combined with the RIAA backing down when actually opposed, would it be possible for the court's to order all such activity by the RIAA be stopped, all money collected by them through such activity be refunded with additions to cover costs and interests? The RICO counterclaims are appropriate cause the RIAA's lawyers and their so called experts are doing little more then running protection rackets for the record companies. Considering all that the recording studios pull on artists, the artists really should join in on the RICO claims.
Standard IANAL disclaimer.
Re:Precedent! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yeah, well, you can't have everything (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:yeah, well, you can't have everything (Score:5, Insightful)
A long way towards discouraging the mess (Score:3, Insightful)
(Even better would be to force the RIAA to pay the defendant what they were attempting to collect in the first place - do that only once or twice and all of these cases go away.)
Re:yeah, well, you can't have everything (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Precedent! (Score:5, Insightful)
-leave too much to chance
-heighten unpredictability, and
-wreak havoc on our ability to plan our lives. I.e., it would be a step towards lawlessness.
Re:One step closer... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not theft, because you're not depriving the producer of anything. In your gadget example, those gadgets a) cost money to produce and b) selling them is the only way for the company to recoup its costs.
My downloading a copy of a film or whatever doesn't prevent the producer from being able to sell it to other people. The other big difference is that the outcome, for the producer, is the same whether I choose the legal option (don't buy the content, and therefore never see it) or the illegal option (to download it): they get nothing from me, but I also don't cost them anything.
It's for this reason that it appears "neutral": I'm not directly harming them by downloading something I would've otherwise chosen to ignore.
This of course, depends on the idea that you only download things you truly wouldn't buy if you couldn't download them. This isn't always the case, and I guess this is where an individual's sense of ethics comes into it, and why distributing copyrighted material without the copyright holder's permission is against the law. On the other hand, quite a few people do buy things they've already acquired by downloading them (myself included), and in many cases had they not being able to try it out "for free" they wouldn't have bought it. There's also the potential for increased word-of-mouth advertising: downloaders telling their friends, who go out and buy the DVD because they actually find it more convenient than downloading, or more people watching it on TV resulting in more advertising revenue. And, since downloading and sharing is an "underground" activity (due to it being illegal), it's nigh impossible to track with any kind of accuracy the nett effect of downloading. So, those in favour of it say it actually helps them sell more stuff, and those opposed say it decreases sales. Both sides are just making stuff up, because nobody actually knows.
Back to your gadget analogy, it would be more accurate to imagine that someone finds a way to duplicate the gadget for a tiny fraction of the RRP. So, he buys one from the store at full price (maybe splitting the costs between a few friends), then he uses his gadget duplicator technology to make limitless additional copies and sells them for a pittance to cover his costs. The manufacturer of the gadget, rather than embrace this new copying technology, continues to make their gadgets the old fashioned way and sell them at the same price. Conscientious consumers naturally choose the cheaper option.
Even worse, the manufacturer may in fact embrace the copying technology in order to lower their costs, but sells their now much cheaper to produce gadgets at the same price as before. Or, they sell them a bit cheaper but with built-in self-destruction devices so you end up needing to buy it several times over if you want to keep using it (that's my analogy for certain DRM schemes).
Now, the manufacturer does still need to defray the R&D costs so they can't sell it as cheaply as the guy who merely copied it, but they need to do it in a way that doesn't make the customer feel like they're being ripped off. That's the tricky bit, and the answer may very well turn out to be that spending millions (or hundreds of millions) of dollars making TV shows or movies just isn't a viable use of resources. For example, Prison Break is a reasonably entertaining programme, but is 42 minutes of reasonably entertaining TV really the best use of two million dollars [wikipedia.org] our society can come up with?
Re:Precedent! (Score:2, Insightful)
Fortunately, other, more civilized countries use a civil code system where most situations are formally codified, which essentially prevents rich people from making their own custom-made laws and shove them down the throats of, We, the People, against our will.
Re:Precedent! (Score:4, Insightful)
Louisiana has been using the Napoleonic system since it joined the US. I can tell you from having lived and worked in that state that their legal system is no better or worse than any other state- it is in fact the implementation and administrators that govern the effectiveness of the system. And in Louisiana they certainly have no special competence.
Yes, common law is more chaotic. It is also a far older system which has a much longer track record of success.
Re:Geez, never heard of precedent? (Score:3, Insightful)
The risks of having to pay all costs (which include negative publicity), being sanctioned for bringing frivolous lawsuits, and having additional judgements narrowing the **AA's target area.
The customer is always wrong-or is a crook! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The customer is always wrong-or is a crook! MOD (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd mod the parent Insightful +1 for that point alone.
Re:yeah, well, you can't have everything (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, terrorism (which apparently doesn't always require the application of high explosive, just a certified letter or two) has little to do with specific targets: quite the opposite. The more you can encourage everyone to believe that they are at significant risk (especially if they're not) and to modify their behavior accordingly, the more you have succeeded. But you're right, untold millions of people are laughing at them, and you can still find just about any song you want via any Gnutella client. Whether that will prove to be beneficial for society in the long run is an open question, but it is as great a testament to their failure as any.
Re:One step closer... (Score:3, Insightful)
Playing on the idea of the noble savage not needing copyright law is disingenuous
Pretending that current copyright law is the only alternative, and bring in irrelevant nonsense like "noble savage", is a lot more disingenuous.
and completely neglects the main issue -
The main issue being to encourage the most efficient and cost effective creation, dissemination and use of ideas. Nothing more. Copyright, as it is currently implemented, appears to be increasingly useless in the efficient creation, dissemination and use of large classes of ideas.
mass production or copies at prices low enough to make a creator's work a significant part of the cost of the copy.
A limited argument that becomes increasingly unsustainable in a population of billions where the originator can copy just as efficiently as anybody else and also has the advantage of being the first and being authentic, which a lot of people care about.
There are many reasons why people create art and content. In a population of billions it is a statistical certainty that it will happen regardless of the state of copyright law. People like to create, it is often it's own reward. The copyright distribution cartels like to pretend that copyright is the only reason to create. As usual they're lying.
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Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.