Ray Beckerman Sued By the RIAA 725
An anonymous reader writes "Ray Beckerman, known for questioning the RIAAs legal tactics (also for frequent Slashdot contributions), was sued by the RIAA over his blog Recording Industry vs. People. In question is the 'vexatious' claims that the RIAAs legal tactics is a 'sham.' Beckerman is quoted as saying that the litigation against him is 'frivolous and irresponsible.'"
hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
Vexatious (Score:5, Informative)
Yah I didn't know the meaning either:
Main Entry:
vexatious Listen to the pronunciation of vexatious
Pronunciation:
\-shs\
Function:
adjective
Date:
1534
1 a: causing vexation : distressing b: intended to harass 2: full of disorder or stress : troubled
FTA:
The RIAA said Beckerman, one of the nation's few attorneys who defends accused file sharers, "has maintained an anti-recording industry blog during the course of this case and has consistently posted virtually every one of his baseless motions on his blog seeking to bolster his public relations campaign and embarrass plaintiffs," the RIAA wrote (.pdf) in court briefs. "Such vexatious conduct demeans the integrity of these judicial proceedings and warrants this imposition of sanctions."
BASELESS motions? Sure, what lawyer wouldn't want to bolster his PR, but maybe, JUST maybe, the motions ARE baseless?
EMBARRASS plaintiffs? Look, if you are suing someone, you better BE PREPARED. It's as simple as that. There's nothing about getting embarrassed if you are going to sue.
The RIAA really sounds like it's going out on a whim here. Maybe suing your own customers is a bad idea, do they get it yet? Geesh, I wish the RIAA would just GO AWAY!
Dumbasses (Score:5, Informative)
I guess the RIAA decided to take a page from the MPAA's playbook [torrentfreak.com] on this one.
Too bad NYCL can't comment on the suit.
Re:Wow. Though expected. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not really a lawsuit, it's just a motion in a case he's on. Motions for sanctions are actually fairly common.
IIRC, isnt there a ground that a judge can take away "lawsuit powers" when used as a weapon, rather than as to pursue 'truth and justice'?
Yes, but it's very rarely done. If someone is just completely crazy about filing multiple frivolous lawsuits, the court will occasionally order that the frivolous party cannot file lawsuits except through independent counsel; I think they did this to Jack Thompson. The theory is an attorney will filter out the crazy stuff, or face professional sanctions themselves.
Re:My Favourite Part (Score:1, Informative)
how did a scumbag like that get elected as a judge??
holy crap, people in Colorado will elect anyone.
Re:Vexatious (Score:5, Informative)
It sure seems to me as an observer of this ongoing imbroglio that all of the vexatiousness is on the part of RIAA.
Keep up the good work, Ray.
Re:Vexatious (Score:4, Informative)
He's not quite getting sued (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pot, meet kettle? (Score:4, Informative)
Saying it supports drugs dealers is a bit silly since drug dealing tends to be self financing.
If terrorists are making their money from pirating DVD's then we're getting much more pathetic terrorists than in my day! In my day they robbed banks and held people for ransom!
Gangs perhaps but the more torrent sites grow the harder it is for them to sell pirate DVD's. (Fight gang violence! download your pirated movies!)
Re:RIAA = Scientology (Score:2, Informative)
Mexicans are now the largest racial group in California. Would you suggest California should make Spanish the state language? The U.S. decisively does NOT have a national language. If you can't lose your bigotry, then get out of my glorious melting pot of a nation.
Bad summary; wait for facts (Score:5, Informative)
Beckerman has not been sued by RIAA. Instead, RIAA brought a motion for sanctions in a case Beckerman was defending.
The motion is not aimed primarily at his blog. The motion requests sanctions in response to other motions Beckerman filed in the case. It also requests sanctions for the defendant's discovery conduct.
Hate the **AA all you want, but wait until the facts are in on this story. Did Beckerman have any reasonable basis for those motions he filed? Did his client destroy and/or hide evidence? The judge will sort it out.
Re:RIAA = Scientology (Score:4, Informative)
Do you own any bonds? AIG may insure them. Do any of your investments own bonds? AIG may insure them. AIG also backs close to half a trillion dollars in collateralized debt obligations, and more than 10% of that has sub-prime influence. The holders of the CDOs are not just in the US, but also scattered across Europe and Asia as well. If AIG goes under, its backing becomes worthless, and all of those CDOs become almost impossible to move, and the bonds get shaky, and the entire world's financial industry takes a massive hit.
Re:RIAA = Scientology (Score:5, Informative)
Non-mortgage assets worth $1.2 trillion dollars. Their insurance business actually remains profitable.
No. Privilege & the "actual malice" requireme (Score:3, Informative)
No. Accusations in a court of law are privileged communication and have been traditionally recognized as exempt.
Under the common law, an act of libel used to have strict liability on the falsity of one's claims*, with intent only required for the act of publication, so there would have been very serious legal implications if one could've been sued for libel for statements made in court back in the day. If that were possible, then any plaintiff (and many defendants making counterclaims) who lost in court would be guilty of libel -- they would've deliberately published a statement that happened to be determined to be false by a court of law, and their statements would tend to be the sort of thing to harm one's reputation if true.
(* This is no longer true. See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan [slashdot.org] and Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. [wikipedia.org] .)
Lawyers who knowingly press false claims though can be caught be civil procedure sanctions for not acting in "good faith" and related torts for barratry and the like (... like the one the RIAA is suing Mr. Beckerman with). The standard for winning on those can be pretty high, though. Courts disfavor slapping down people for suing over things that there's even the slightest chance they could legitimately win on unless their behavior is egregious.
Not knowing anything more about the body of law he's being sued under, I won't comment further on the possible merits (or lack thereof) of the RIAA's case. However, there's no libel case against them for this. (And even if the communication wasn't privileged, under NY Times v. Sullivan, Mr. Beckerman would have a hard time prevailing as a public figure given the "actual malice" standard for defamation of public figures established there.)
(IANAL. Do not rely on this information in figuring out what you can get away with.)
Re:RIAA = Scientology (Score:3, Informative)
He hasn't been disbarred yet, but it's proceeding that way. He's been recommended for an "Enhanced disbarrment" which would increase the length of time before he can reapply to the Bar from five years to ten years.
Given that Jack is 57 now, if he got that, he'd be 67 before he could reapply, and by then, who knows...
Thanks, folks.... (Score:5, Informative)
It's just an obvious attempt on their part to weasel out of their liability for attorneys fees, after torturing this innocent woman for the past 3 years.
Some folks have indicated an interest in contributing financially.
Anyone who wants to contribute to Ms. Lindor can do so here [paypal.com]. Anyone who wants to contribute to the Expert Witness Defense Fund, which helps people like Ms. Lindor with hiring experts and tech consultants can do so here [fsf.org]. Anyone who wants to contribute to me, to help me with the work I do in my blogging and getting the word out, can do so here [beckermanlegal.com]. Another way to help out my blog is to make purchases through the affiliate ads I post on the blog. (If there are products or services you're looking for that aren't represented there, let me know, and I'll try to get affiliate ads posted for them.
Here [blogspot.com] is my post providing the details of the accusations.
The RIAA's litigation campaign is in its death throes, as are the 4 big record companies who are behind it. I guess this is the way dying hyenas act, they lash out. Not to worry, they will still lose.
Re:RIAA = Scientology (Score:3, Informative)
You read my mind!
Suing to quash hostile opinions is very much a Scientology trademark. Well... that and starting fist fights while wearing Guy Fawkes masks :P Sneaky bastards!
Re:hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
It seems we have the usual thicket of suits and countersuits, so technically, he is being sued for suing in response to his clients being sued. Got that?
If you unravel this, you get to something deeply disturbing. He's being sued for defending his clients too vigorously. It's absurd to consider a counter-suit "vexatious". When a plaintiff with deep pockets goes after your client, you have a duty to keep the plaintiff from bleeding your client into submission. How could that possibly be "vexatious"?
If I read correctly a "vexatious" lawsuit is a matter that shouldn't have come to the courts in the first place, one that is taken to burden the defendant. Once that defendant has been dragged into the courts, most of the damage is done, and a judge is going to have to rule on quite a bit of BS that has been flung against the wall. The defendant's lawyer isn't obliged to fight with one hand tied behind his back while the plaintiff get to keep piling it deeper.
Bad Summary! (Score:2, Informative)
This is not a lawsuit or countersuit. Instead, it is a Rule 37 Motion for Sanctions regarding discovery. (See Fed. R. Civ. P. 37 [cornell.edu].) The claims are an awful lot like a Rule 11 motion, though. I would think they'd try to move for sanctions under Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b)(3) [cornell.edu] (stating that the claims have no evidentiary support). Maybe Mr. Beckerman could comment on whether he's been served under Rule 11(c)(2) prior to filing with the court?
The plus side is that Plaintiffs are moving for dismissal, but they're trying to get the court to order it, probably so that they won't have to pay attorney's fees.
Re:RIAA = Scientology (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps not a de jure national language, but most definitely a de facto national language -- English. All of our laws are written in English. Our Constitution is written in English. All of our road signage is in English.
When my grandfather came here from Greece, he was expected to learn English to the level of being functionally conversant and literate. When he started a family here, he did not speak Greek in the household, he spoke English. Back then, acculturation / cultural assimilation was considered normal and proper.
These days, I see mothers in grocery stores admonishing their children not to speak English -- I now live in Phoenix, very close to downtown. The cultural assimilation is happening anyway with the children of these immigrants, many of whom are illegal, but some of the parents are actively opposing it.
And, oh yeah, "Mexican" is not a racial group, it's an ethnic group. And I would question your demographic data, since what I could find [infoplease.com] shows that hispanics/latinos only make up 32.4% of the population of California, with Mexicans being 25%, while non-hispanic white people make up 46.7% of the population. All of this was derived from the 2000 census.
Re:hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
From my reading of the RIAA's memorandum http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/vexatious.pdf [wired.com]
(1) Their actual complaint itself said NOTHING about his blog. This looks like a bad slashdot summary of a bad article. The blog was mentioned only in background.
(2) They are criticising him and his client jointly for obstructing the discovery process and needlessly dragging out the court process.
(3) The reason they mention his blog is because (in their view) his blog posts substantiate their claim that he and his client have obstructed the discovery process and have dragged out the court process.
It's true that they point out that his motions were posted on his blog. But they're not criticizing these blog-posts at all.
Re:Thanks, folks.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Language isn't the real issue (Score:3, Informative)
We aren't half as nationalist as Mexico; the rest of the world is far more strict on immigration and they expect you to fall in line if you move there, so that's not really a valid complaint.
By the way, not sure about lazy, but the macho thing is in full effect - the ones I knew were all about that, and the mexican parts of town were the places where women don't walk alone. I think the US can do without that part of mexican culture (although half the 'mexicans' in arlington are actually Honduran or Guatemalen)
Re:RIAA = Scientology (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the bar association recommended enhanced disbarment, but the judge who served as the referee of the hearings asked the Supreme Court to go ahead with a permanent disbarment. She cited in part Thompson's bizarre actions during his own disbarment hearings.
Re:It's Time to Give Back Now (Score:5, Informative)
I figure a good donation amount would be the cost of one average RIAA CD. Wouldn't take too many people donating that to cover his legal expenses... All we need is a paypal link
Here [blogspot.com]'s a PayPal link.
Re:Reading between the lines (Score:3, Informative)
Some countries allow people who were not born in a country to become a citizen. Obama was born in Hawaii [dailykos.com] - in the US, making him a natual born US citizen. He then also became a citizen of Kenya automatically [rcbowen.com] when it gained independance from the UK in 1963, due to his father being Kenyan and Obama being 2 years old.
Every person who, having been born outside Kenya. is on llth December, 1963 a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies or a British protected person shall. if his father becomes. or would but for his death have become, a citizen of Kenya by virtue of subsection (1). become a citizen of Kenya on 12th December. 1963.
Then he lost [rcbowen.com] that citizenship of Kenya when he turned 21, as being a dual-citizen, he did not renounce his US citizenship and choose to become Kenyan.
A person who, upon the attainment of the age of twenty-one years, is a citizen of Kenya and also a citizen of some country other than Kenya shall, subject to subsection (7), cease to be a citizen of Kenya upon the specified date unless he has renounced his citizenship of that other country, taken the oath of allegiance and, in the case of a person who was born outside Kenya. made and registered such declaration of his intentions concerning residence as may be prescribed by or under an Act of Parliament.
He does not need to renounce his Kenyan citizenship as he doesn't have one. This meme is getting old and you do yourself no favours by repeating it. It's getting as bad as that horsehit about McCain not being a natual born citizen because he was born on an airbase in Panama, when the Canal Zone was a US territory at the time.
How about you guys elect someone based on his policies and whether they matter to you, rather than spreading bullshit falsehoods to try and win by dirty tricks and character assassination of the other guy? I'm looking at both sides here.