Judge Recognizes That Parents Aren't Liable For Kids RIAA Mis-Adventures
from the it's-about-time dept
For years, we've been asking why so many parents just roll over when the RIAA comes calling about unauthorized file sharing activities of their kids. It was never clear if there was any real liability, but many parents agreed to pay up because they either didn't understand the law (and the RIAA certainly didn't help), or just wanted to protect their kids. This issue has finally been getting more attention lately, as a few parents have started fighting back against the RIAA, raising the question of liability for the actions of others. This came out last week, so we're a bit late on it, but it's worth noting that in at least one such case, a judge has said that the liability cannot be placed on the parent, freaking out the RIAA, who withdrew the case, and then tried to have the judge open up another way to go after the kid -- and the judge refused. This is bad news for the RIAA, especially if more parents begin to realize that they can fight back. However, the one downside to this ruling was denying the mother's request to have the RIAA pay her attorney's fees. For that, the judge said that the RIAA had "taken reasonable steps to try to prosecute this case and litigate against the proper defendants." That seems questionable. We've been pointing out for years that the RIAA and the MPAA seem to send out threatening letters without any effort to actually determine who was involved. They simply determine who owns the connection and go after them, even though it's quite clear at this point, in an age of easy networking, that the owner of a connection is often not the person using it. In fact, in home situations, the owner of a computer may not even be the person using it.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Another liberty eroded
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Another liberty eroded
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Another liberty eroded
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Please read the article
From Digital Music News
1. The RIAA realized it can't sue the parent for what the child did.
2. The RIAA can't sue the child unless a special guardian ad litem is appointed by the Court to protect the interests of the child. This is a major protection for children who are being targeted by the RIAA, and it will be a major problem for the RIAA to contend with.
3. According to one federal judge in Michigan, it is inappropriate to award attorneys fees against the RIAA if they take all reasonable measures to make sure they are suing the right person.
Ray Beckerman
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Please read the article
Does that not apply to step 3, if one argues that the RIAA is not pursuing other options sufficiently that their prosecutions are not proper?
I obviously do not know the law, but there seems to be an overall desire to just set up a stream of people easily giving them $$ to keep their prosecutions going, and no desire on their part to take on individual cases with real attention to those cases on their separate merits.
I wonder if they should not be required to prove in each and every case they file to do more work to prove there was a real infraction, not just some junk records on some site that could have been forged in some manner. It should be on them to prove every step is correct.
What if someone wanted to start polluting peoples systems with data that the RIAA could say showed there was access to sharing, but in actuality was just a list of crap. They would have to actually go and prove that the actual move took place, not that the list of data was present. It is entirely too easy to forge the data that suggests that files are there, and logs from ISP's and so forth do not show a connection to an actual system transfering a file.
This has been at the heart of some other courts ruling that there is not sufficient proof that the transfers took place, especially when ISPs which change IP's and dialups are involved.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Please read the article
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
U COPIED ME IDIOT
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Load of crap
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Load of crap
Please .... tell me you KNOW EVERY LAW ON THE BOOKS :P
Riiiiiiggggggggghhhhhhtttttt..... shut up.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Load of crap
But comparing copyright infringement to armed robbery is a red herring in this context. The number of possible legitimate reasons for a parent to allow a minor to have access to a loaded hand-gun is limited in the extreme (certainly small enough to be considered the exception and not the rule), while there are many perfectly legitimate reasons to allow children to have access to an internet-capable computer compared to a relatively small number of illegitimate ones.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
record and music industry
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: record and music industry
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Stretching the truth
What happened here is that the lawyers for the music companies got caught with their pants down. The RIAA requested a motion for leave to add the daughter, but the Judge concurred only if the RIAA agreed to dismiss the mother with prejudice. The RIAA withdrew the original motion to dismiss without prejudice and subsequently filed a motion to dismiss the mother with prejudice and requested concurrence with the mother. She refused to concur on the basis she should be awarded costs. This response appeared to have caught the RIAA by surprise. They were saying, 'like, wtf, this is exactly what the Judge was going to order and she is not opposed to the dismissal'. During this time the RIAA failed to add the daughter as a defendant. Ooops. In the second order, the Judge reminded the RIAA they had an earlier opportunity to add the daughter as a defendant. So, where is the bit about parent's not being liable for their children? Unless you can point me to some additional information or links that I am unaware of, you are stretching the truth on this one.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You can't have it both ways people..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]