Another Way To Get The RIAA To Drop Case And Run: Hire A Lawyer Who's Beat Them Before
from the the-latest-in-our-series dept
We've had a series of posts lately about ways in which people seem to be beating the RIAA when they're sued without much real evidence, such as pointing out that the IP address does not identify who actually was involved in file sharing. Ray Beckerman, who is the source for so many interesting posts on these types of cases, now has one about how the RIAA is running scared after they discovered that a lawyer who beat them before (and made them liable for the attorney's fees of the person they falsely accused of file sharing). The interesting part here is that they're trying to drop out of the case they already filed, but are asking the judge specifically to have the case dropped "without prejudice." Why? Because in the last case, the case was dropped "with prejudice," which was the reason they are on the hook for legal fees. So, now, when they see the same lawyer, they know they don't want to go through with the case, but they want to make sure they can drop it in a way without admitting they made a mistake and without paying the legal fees for the person they dragged into court incorrectly.
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Re:
RIAA: "We're going to sue you."
the RIAA sees a valid defense
RIAA: "Just kidding!"
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Re:
In this case I wouln't be surprised if the defendant could sue the RIAA for something, harassment, etc., based on thier history of bullying and win.
Any lawyers out there that can shed more light on this issue?
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Re:
Tax payers shouldn't have to bear the brunt of retarded RIAA policies. If the RIAA had to pay court costs when they gave up, this kind of crap wouldn stop after about two dropped cases.
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Re: Force Plaintiffs to go to trial
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.08/start.html?pg=3
http://technocrat.net/d/2006/5/1/3056
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/6466/MPAA+v+Shawn+Hogan:+The+Zeropaid+Interview
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they are so stupid its just not funny !
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one more law
Example: you cry rape when it wasn't, you get 25 years.
Accuse me of file sharing without evidence, you pay the fee you sued me for to me. Hell, even split it with the courts.
It'll stop all this stuff dead before it begins.
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Wouldn't work...
I say let the civil courts sort that out - It worked for OJ. Instead of a few years in a Country-club jail, followed by celebrity and book deals, he is an international laughingstock for the rest of his life.
We don't need another law so much as we need to tear up a heck of a lot of the ones we have....
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Re: Wouldn't work...
I have always liked the middle ground where this is concerned. It uses a sort of reverse golden rule of "do unto others as they do unto you" (distinguished from the former quoted rule by the fact that they have to succeed). Unfortunately this quickly becomes unusable as assigning blame for false conviction is really hard to do fairly (how much is the jury to blame? the plaintiff? the judge?).
So basically all we are left with are lawsuits against those that wronged people. Which doesn't seem fair to me but is better than anything else I can think of.
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start shooting them
another is the Duke Lacross rape case, where it's been shown, with evidence, that the woman is making false claims, the one guy is even on camera at a bank proving he wasn't there. she should be going to jail, not to mention the lives she's destroyed, the coach's, the students, the school. i hope the students and coach sue both her, the school, and the state for this wrongful case.
same with that woman who found the finger in the Wendy's chili. she should be serving jail time and owe Wendy's millions of dollars.
lawsuits in the USA are just out of control and so many are just complete bullshit.
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Re: start shooting them
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,182008,00.html
"Anna Ayala, 40, who said she bit into the digit, was sentenced to nine years. Her husband, Jaime Plascencia, 44, who obtained the finger from a co-worker who lost it in a workplace accident, was sentenced to more than 12 years."
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Re: start shooting them
"Anna Ayala, 40, who said she bit into the digit, was sentenced to nine years. Her husband, Jaime Plascencia, 44, who obtained the finger from a co-worker who lost it in a workplace accident, was sentenced to more than 12 years."
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Re: start shooting them
So we don't need trials anymore? You're going to convict someone without their day in court? Without hearing ALL the evidence?
You'd sing another song if you were on the other end of things.
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Re: start shooting them
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:)
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The Lawyer's Name is
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*Ahem*
FIRE !!!!!!
FIRE !!!!!!
FIRE !!!!!!
I'm just kidding...
Wait, I get fined for that? No really it was just a joke. Oh come on now. The RIAA can do it all the time, I can't do it once?
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...I think it called frivolous lawsuit
I think the way it works is that it doesn't prevent someone from filing a lawsuit like this, but it provides a remedy to the defendant to go after a plaintiff for filing such a lawsuit -- should the defendant choose to do so (but the defendant has to prove then it was frivolous).
C
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Re: ...I think it called frivolous lawsuit
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Punishment still has to fit the crime
Why is there not a way to force the plaintiff to continue the case until a judgment is made?
My understanding is that, if he or she wanted to for whatever reason, the judge could refuse to drop the case.
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yes..
You know as well as I do that public opinion is guilty until proven innocent, and that accusitions are front page news... retractions are last page news.
Murder doesn't really apply here though, cuz you can't get a charge without evidence (or shouldn't be able to)
I'm talking more about rape, or the RIAA cases here. Things where you can get a search warrant based on "he said she said"
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two cents worth
If you take the case to court and then ask to drop it....YOU PAY everything, as it should be.
In fact I believe you should be fined on top of that.
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Re: two cents worth
Whilst this can suck if you are a private individual, it works pretty well because we also have legal aid. But the very good part of it is when a big company like the RIAA loses at least the defendant is not out of pocket, well not too much.
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Lawyer's name
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Bottom Line
They say their bottom line is hurt and sales / revenues are down...
However I don't explicitly remember if the #'s they reveal are net or gross after paying an army of lawyers, retainer fees, court costs, the advert and publicity fees of trying to emphasize their plight while also having an army of PR drones do damage control / management burying the stuff that ended less than advantageously to them...
I bet if you took away all the overhead, and they embraced a newer more dynamic business model, got with the times and offered better, cheaper product there would be little issue on either side of the fence...
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Lawsuit reform
Don't give penalty fees to plaintiffs or their lawyers.
You do something to me. I sue you for 100 Mill. For some reason, I win. I need 50K to pay for damages to me personally, fine. My layer charges 500 an hour and has 100 hours of work in - so he gets 50K. Then there's the 99.95M to deal with - don't give it to the plaintiff! You want to penalize the defendant, fine. But give the money to society. Give a few mill to the homeless shelter, to the schools, to the battered women's shelter, to the parks & rec dept, to the museum, to the library, etc.
Imagine what a better world it would be - and how many less frivilous lawsuits there would be knowing that there is zero chance of winning the lawsuit lottery.
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Re: Lawsuit reform
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Hey, Geoff #16
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/blog/335
sadly, i doubt she could help outside of Oklahoma
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Re: Hey, Geoff #16
Skip Henson
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RIAA the American Disease
It is shitty about what the MPAA/RIAA were doing, and they should be held accountable for the lives that they have destroyed with the bullshit lawsuits.
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"Prejudice" doesn't mean what you think
Someone wrongly sued should insist, when RIAA offers to drop the suit, that the dismissal be "With prejudice" - meaning with prejudice against the plaintiff filing again. When RIAA offers dismissal without prejudice, the defendant should ask the court for "with prejudice," because it's a better defense against RIAA misbehavior in the future.
The reason "without prejudice" dismissals are usually cheaper for RIAA is that they usually occur before the wrongly sued party has had much time to incur a lot of fees.
As to the "hold RIAA's feet to the fire and make them litigate to a conclusion" school of thought - forget it. Judges like to get rid of cases as fast as possible and generally resist allowing cases to go on when the plaintiff has stated it wants to stop.
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Countersuits
I don't understand why outfits like the EFF, ACLU and others don't go on the offensive and sue the RIAA for all they're worth. It would be hard to find a jury that didn't agree that their random lawsuits were anything more than harrassment and bullying by means of superior resources.
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3 strikes you're out
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Another tactic
Technically, if you owned an old LP or cassette, the recording industy is supposed to give you a CD for cost of materials only because you already paid the license fee.
Something they'd rather people not know about.
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The DMCA protects Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from liability for copyright infringement by their users. In exchange, the Act obligates the ISPs to provide copyright holders with the identities of suspected copyright infringers subject to the following safeguards:
The complaining party must swear under penalty of perjury that he or she is a representative of the copyright holder and provide this sworn oath to the clerk of the U.S. District Court.
The complaining party must provide the Court clerk with a sworn statement, again under penalty of perjury, that the information obtained will be used for no other reason but to protect the copyright.
The complaining party must give written notice to the ISP identifying the copyrighted work including sufficient information for the ISP to identify and contact the user.
The notice must contain a statement of good faith that a copyright infringement is believed to have taken place and that the information in the subpoena is accurate.
The clerk of the Court is required to determine that these safeguard criteria have been met before issuing a subpoena directing the ISP to disclose the identity of a suspected user.
The DMCA states that such subpoenas shall subject to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing subpoenas. The rules provide opponents with a means to ask the court to quash the subpoena.
The Act also states that any person who misrepresents allegations of copyright infringement is liable for damages, including attorney’s fees.
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Lots of confusion here...
The one who said, "yeah but why should someone who accused someone of murder get the death penalty!!" err, death penalty is NOT a given. It might be 25 to life depending on previous infractions. Perhaps in the case of major corporations it's a fine equivalent. So for example, if you bring a case against me for grand larceny, and I'm found not guilty, you as a corporation should be fined the equivalent of what you said I stole - if it's grand larceny that's in the millions.
Now, as far as the "without prejudice" clause, I think all of these cases that get successfully dismissed should be with prejudice. Especially the ones where there really is no proof of the theft.
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false accusations
by accusing someone else (falsely), you are subjecting them to potential DEATH!
the punishment DOES fit the crime.
actually, this is brilliant. i suspect we don't have such provisions in the law because it will become precarious in determining who is accusing who of something deceitfully.
jin
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Who is this lawyer?
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Vexatious Litigant
I'm a Brit that works in Law in the U.K. Over here if someone (companies included) continually start false legal actions there is provision to make application to the court to have them declared a Vexatious Litigant. The effect (if successful) is they cannot bring further legal actions of any kind without first obtaining court approval I think on notice to the opponent.
Maybe you guys have something similar.
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riaa
What did the music industry think was going to happen when the double cassette deck boom boxes
were being produced in the late 70's? Black cd's
are being produced nowadays 10 fold over the actual
industry artist made cd's. Why would a young person
who is computer savy want to blow $16 on a new cd.
The music industry is suffering simply because of its
greed and now they are paying for it. If they had
any brains at all the industry would compete with
file sharing and sell their cd's worldwide for only $2 a pop. If they did, they wouldnt be able to keep up with the demand for them. But realistically, I never
knew a Jew to drop prices on anything. lol I hate sounding so anti-semetic but screw the music industry
and all of its avaricious capitalistic assholes.
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Re: riaa
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RIAA
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