RIAA Will Finally Face the Music In Court 282
Falstaff writes "Exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen is expected to refile her malicious prosecution lawsuit against the RIAA today. The refiling will mark a significant watershed in the RIAA's fight against P2P users because for the first time, the group's tactics, secret agreements, and fee splitting with MediaSentry are likely to come to light, thanks to discovery. Andersen's attorney says he'll be 'digging into agreements between the RIAA, RIAA member companies, MediaSentry, and the Settlement Support Sentry. Part of that will involve looking at compensation, like how much MediaSentry gets from each settlement. "I'd love to know what kind of bounty MediaSentry got paid to supply erroneous identities to the RIAA," Lybeck says.' The judge has barred further motions to dismiss the complaint, which means the RIAA will have to face the music. 'Unlike the thousands of lawsuits filed so far, the RIAA does not have the luxury of walking away from this case if there's a real chance of embarrassing information being released. "Once discovery happens in the cases the RIAA brings, they run," Lybeck says. "This is our case now, and they can't run."'"
Gentlemen, start your paper shredders (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's NYCL when you need him? (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL, but it sounds like the RIAA is going to want to settle and prevent discovery from happening since they don't want all the sordid details of their dealings brought to light.
But that makes me wonder . . . if they do in fact settle, won't this just embolden all the other lawsuit recipients to file against the RIAA too? They can settle malicious lawsuits to keep them from going to trial to their heartss content (*snicker* we know they don't have hearts), but ultimately they're going to have to either WIN a malicious prosecution suit or stop engaging in malicious suits alltogether, no?
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep Legal Filesharing Legal (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, many Open Source installers are available via BitTorrent. Their use of p2p is crucial to their success, because it reduces distribution costs.
P2P is also crucial to the success of struggling musicians who offer their music online for free, as a way to promote themselves. Direct HTTP downloads can lead to bankrupcy if their songs become sudden hits. I myself offer Bit Torrent downloads [geometricvisions.com] of my piano compositions.
(While I presently work as a software engineer, I'm studying piano with the aim of changing careers into music. You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.)
In your letters to your legislators, please emphasize the legal uses of P2p.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me a pessimist, but her case against the RIAA will not change their tactics because they will buy their way out of the mess.
Now, if some DA or AG were to file criminal charges against the RIAA (God knows the FBI won't), then that would change their ways... But, alas, we live in the Corporate States of America.
Re:Gentlemen, start your paper shredders (Score:5, Insightful)
Which isn't good, if there's one thing which judges don't like it's having their cases tampered with in that manner. I'm just surprised that it's taken as long for the judges involved to start getting cranky about being used.
Swing that fat gut around (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll Just Change Tactics (Score:4, Insightful)
From the RIAA's perspective, this has been a wildly successful strategy because it successfully struck fear into the hearts and minds of consumers.
Re:What y'all cheering for? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not people here illegally download and share copyrighted music isn't the issue. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that most Slashdotters don't file baseless lawsuits against random people who are unprepared to defend themselves from the full force of a massive corporation's legal department realizing most will capitulate and just settle regardless of any wrongdoing as a tragically misguided attempt to strike fear into the heart of someone who gets the latest Britney Spears release from bittorrent.
Big companies are abusing the legal system due to circumstances brought about by new technologies and the Internet. Meanwhile real (and innocent) people are having their lives and livlihoods ruined in the crossfire. So yes, we care a lot about that.
Why wait for a judgement? (Score:4, Insightful)
Though there may be contracts holding them to the RIAA directly or indirectly, such contract will either become expired or after this case, be challenge-able.
Re:Keep Legal Filesharing Legal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What y'all cheering for? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I'd wager that the studio's a one time fee. Pressings are cheap once all the mastering is done; so the more distribution you get, the easier it is to break even.
Re:What y'all cheering for? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll pay fifteen bucks for a CD, no problem. But if someone copies that CD instead of buying it that's only fifteen bucks, not 9,000 times however many tracks are on the CD, which is what the RIAA is demanding. They're better off shoplifting it: the fines are unlikely to be more than a few hundred dollars.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fairly sure we'll soon see lawyers hopping onto it, specializing in counter suits against the RIAA if they simply try to buy their way out of an embarrassing trial. It's easy money for them.
Re:Money will buy this out (Score:4, Insightful)
Chances (Score:4, Insightful)
But from what we have seen from this woman, well... I think it's pretty obvious that she is very pissed and she will not settle for anything less than victory in this.
If I were in this position, I would be recording every phone call and saving every e-mail. I hope they're dumb enough to try to threaten or bribe her, because she seems like the kind of person who is going to make that kind of information public and make the RIAA look much worse than they already do.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Gentlemen, start your paper shredders (Score:4, Insightful)
It is more analogous to telephone conversations. Most telephone conversations are not recorded and kept for any real length of time either (although, they *can* be, and can be used in court also). There is no expectation that IM messages would be logged, whereas it's reasonable to expect email messages to be.
However, if IM is purposely or inadvertently logged... it should certainly be discoverable.
Just my $.02
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What y'all cheering for? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then, being the good little net-citizen we all hope they are, they share it with the rest of the fsking planet and 100,000 people download it from them and sources obtained from them.
$1,500,015 is the total then. Right?
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. If a law is passed with more than a 2/3rds majority, vetoing the law is a pointless gesture of defiance and gains you nothing except a couple of weeks. A law would have to be really heinous for you to piss off Congress by defying a unanimous vote, and the DMCA just doesn't rise to that level. Besides, I think a lot of people assumed the courts would overturn it as having an unconstitutionally long term anyway. They didn't, in large part due to all the Bush Sr. and Reagan appointees on the court.
Clinton didn't give us the DMCA. The predominantly Republican legislature did. He was completely powerless to overturn the law. There's no way to know if he would have signed it had it been passed by a narrower margin. That said, I would love to see every Democrat in Congress who voted for that law sitting on the curb begging for change.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean as opposed to what we have now? Oh, wait...
NewYorkCountryLawyer missed this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gentlemen, start your paper shredders (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not aware of any penalty for the failure to produce discovery evidence simply because a record is not kept (or even mis-filed). Often/sometimes it is a 3rd party that comes in to perform some discovery anyway.
If the company has a written policy that their IM system is not to be logged or cached (other than manual copying and pasting into a separate document, such as Word or an email message, by the users themselves), then I cannot see how they can be liable for not producing IM logs when they don't exist. After all, they are not held accountable for phone conversations they didn't record, office conversations that weren't documented, nor business meeting comments that don't get logged into the minutes. I see IM as no different.
If a log or recording or an email or a piece of paper just doesn't exist, it just doesn't exist. Where you really get into trouble is when you shred after being put on notice for discovery. Bad bad.
Re:If She Doesn't Settle (Score:1, Insightful)
And that still doesn't make copyright infringement legal.
Victory Means Nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
RIAA is a front organization. It is just a way the record companies to use to interface with the legal attack dogs. They have no real assets to give up. They pass all their ill gotten gains back to their masters.
If there is a serious legal setback, then RIAA just dissolves, and comes back tomorrow under another name. The legal pit bulls, and the record companies who control all this carnage will remain untouched. To really make it stop, you need to have the courts pierce the 'corporate veil' to make the operators responsible.
The whole mess only stops when the individual record companies who are sponsoring this blatant attack on their own customers are financially penalized.
Sending a few lawyers and CEO's to prison would also help. But, that isn't going to happen.