Judge Orders RIAA to Show Cause in DC Case 104
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's 'bumpy ride' in its 'ex parte' litigation campaign against college students just got a whole lot bumpier. After reading the motion to quash filed by a George Washington University student, the Judge took it upon herself to issue an order to show cause. The order now requires the plaintiffs to show cause, no later than November 29th, why the ex parte order she'd signed at the RIAA's request should not be vacated. She's also requested information showing why her ruling should not be applicable not only to John Doe #3, but to all the other John Does as well. p2pnet called this a 'potentially huge setback' for the recording companies."
Orders to Show Cause are routine (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Simplify this legal language (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simplify this legal language (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simplify this legal language (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Potentially huge setback" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simplify this legal language (Score:5, Informative)
What's highly unusual is the judge issuing an order to show cause on her own.
Re:The bigger picture, Mr. Beckerman? (Score:3, Informative)
I do think that the RIAA folding and giving up on protecting its copyrights would be a positive move for everybody. And I do include the labels in that as well. Where things got screwed up was when they expected to sell crap albums to people, because the people couldn't hear the whole thing prior to purchase.
There are a number of albums by artists that I would never have purchased had I not illegally downloaded a few songs first. They just weren't easily accessible to me in other ways.
It's largely a matter of the RIAA having too much protection from piracy that has caused most of their problems in the first place. The whole concept of copyright is one that should probably be largely revoked. It was never meant for a copyright to last more than about 30 years, and even then it originally required people to file paperwork to have it extended.
A lot of what the piracy is about these days is a whole lot of poor customer service. It was for a long time easier for me to crack windows than it was for me to go searching for my legitimate serial number everytime I wanted to reinstall windows. It was horribly inconvenient and significantly more so than pirating the OS. Likewise in the music industry, it is difficult to separate the good music from the horrid crap, because the labels are terrified of piracy. Wrongly equating a full sale for each illicit download.
I won't personally purchase another CD until such a time as they've decided to start playing fair within the generally agreed upon legal principles. There are plenty of other artists out there that put out quality music and do so in a manner which makes it easy to spread word of mouth reviews of them.
I don't think that it makes a whole lot of sense to pretend like the RIAA didn't make their own trouble. The majority of music consumers understand that if nobody buys the music, nobody will make the music. But lied to about the cost of producing the music, and then being expected to pay $18 or so for an album that was recorded in a way that kills nearly all of the nuances and subtleties is absurd.
For a physical copy of an album $5 is more than enough in the volumes that an album that is charting will sell. A platinum album would bring in $5mill, with less than $1000 for a decent recording probably $500,000 for the discs, and an additional $500,000 for promotion $1mill for the artist. That's a pretty huge profit, and depending upon the actual terms, very little risk, only a bit over 100,000 albums reguried to break even with that type of budget.
Re:The bigger picture, Mr. Beckerman? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Commerical Copies (Score:1, Informative)
Where did you get that silly idea? Comercial gain has nothing to do with copyright. Copyright allows the owner to control distribution of the work, whether for fee or for free.
Re:"Potentially huge setback" (Score:5, Informative)
2. If the Judge grants the Does' motion, and does so with sound reasoning, the decision will reverberate throughout the country, and may lead to the end of the RIAA's John Doe litigations, which is where it all starts [blogspot.com].
Re:Simplify this legal language (Score:3, Informative)
The catch is, if you're asking a judge to do something without giving the other side a chance to be heard, you have to be EXTRA SPECIAL fair in the way you present the arguments and evidence.
This judge granted an order trusting the RIAA had not misled her on the facts. But now, after the fact, the other side has had a chance to respond in writing. And after reading those arguments, she's started to wonder if the RIAA was blowing smoke in her face. So she wants the RIAA to come back and make their case again, this time with the other side in the room so they have a chance to say "wait a minute, that's not true!" and explain why.
Re:RIAA does not represent artists (Score:1, Informative)
No, they represent the Recording Industry. The artist thinks up music, then signs a contract giving the recording copyright over to the recording company. The company makes money off the recording, and gives a few pennies to the artist in royalties. So they protect their own copyright and interests, not those of the artist. The busines model of the current music industry is to get a few songs on the radio, on MTV, or wherever it is these youngsters hear their music, and use that to sell the entire album. The recording, if you will, making the Recording Industry the biggest part of the Music Industry. There may be more dollars exchanged in other forms, like performance rights or writing songs for a performer, but album sales pretty much support the business to customer portion of the current business model of the industry.