RIAA on the hook in Stubbs case
p2pnet.net News:- Online bounty hunter MediaSentry has again scored a negative appearance in an RIAA case, as has corporate download application Kazaa.
Both companies feature in a new debacle where the Big Four Organized Music cartel’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) tries to wriggle out of an unsuccessful attempt to pillory a file sharer.
MediaSentry told the RIAA Tallie Stubbs had distributed music with Kazaa and the RIAA then tried to terrorize Tallie Stubbs, who’d “likened the RIAA’s tactics to extortion’,” into settling.
But Stubbs said she didn’t know anything about the RIAA’s claims, demanding that the ‘trade’ unit provide specific details.
It ignored her, and also ignored a declaration by her lawyer, Marilyn Barringer-Thomson, that her client had had nothing to do with copyright infringement.
But, “Plaintiffs continued to proceed with the filing of a lawsuit against Defendant although Plaintiffs knew or had reason to know that said Defendant should not be a party to any case involving copyright infringement by use of a computer and the internet,” said Barringer-Thomson in a court document.
Now the RIAA wants out of the Stubbs case, and if you’re a regular reader and this all looks familiar, you’re probably thinking of Oklahoma nurse Debbie Foster, also represented by Barringer-Thomson.
Stubbs fought and won, and the last we heard, the RIAA still owed her $50,000.
As Ray Beckerman says in Recording Industry vs The People, in Capitol Records v Foster, “the judge held that the RIAA’s discontinuance of the lawsuit ‘with prejudice’ was the same as a win for the defendant, and made her a ‘prevailing party’ eligible for attorneys fees.”
But when they again ran into Barringer-Thomson, “they immediately sought to discontinue the case” claiming at one and the same time that they wanted to drop it both “with prejudice” and “without prejudice”.
This was no doubt a typo, as was a further RIAA failure when it repeatedly got the name of Paul Wilke, another victim wrong.
Only a typo, but typical of the RIAA whose owners, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Univesal and Sony BMG, use court cases such as these in their mass destruction approach as they try to cow men, women and chldren around the world into buying their grossly over-priced, formulaic ‘product’.
In Stubbs, “Apparently mindful that discontinuing ‘with prejudice’ could subject them to liability for attorneys fees in the Stubbs case, they are fighting to make the discontinuance ‘without prejudice’ rather than ‘with prejudice’,” says Beckerman.
But Barringer-Thomson is fighting against that.
“Should one of the file-sharing cases actually make it to trial, we may get definitive answers on a number of elements of the RIAA’s legal strategy,” says Ars Technica.
“Is an IP address and the name and address of an ISP subscriber enough to make a positive identification of who was doing the alleged file sharing and when? (We were reminded earlier this week that relying on ISP data is not foolproof.) Is a list of music files allegedly discovered by MediaSentry enough to prove infringement? Beckerman doesn’t think so. The RIAA’s actions indicate that they’re not anxious to get a definitive answer either.”
Also See:
specific details – More RIAA file sharing claptrap, August 25, 2006
all looks familiar – RIAA owes Oklahoma mum, August 9, 2006
Recording Industry vs The People – RIAA and Tallie Stubbs Battle it Out in Oklahoma; RIAA Trying to Withdraw “Without Prejudice” So it Won’t be Liable for Attorneys Fees, October 25, 2006
a further RIAA failure – RIAA blows Wilke case, October 14, 2006
Ars Technica – Defendant doesn’t want RIAA let off the hook, October 26, 2006
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