p2pnet.net news:- Oklahoma mother Debbie Foster has beaten the Big 4 music cartel’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

For the second time.

The RIAA, “acted in bad faith in bringing the lawsuit against Debbie Foster,” said her lawyer, Marilyn D. Barringer-Thomson, and the Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG enforcer abandoned the case.

Foster, however, didn’t do the same and became the “prevailing party” under the Copyright Act, meaning she was entitled to her “reasonable” attorneys’ fees. These were $55,000 (and counting), and the judge ruled she can also supplement her request.

Hand over the relevant documents, the RIAA was asked by Barringer-Thomson a year ago. But its out-source lawyer, Holmes Robert & Owens’ Richard Gabriel (right), refused to do so. That’s now over, however. He’s been given an order by the judge:

Deliver the documents to Barringer-Thomson by March 26.

“The order requires the RIAA to produce the attorneys’ time sheets, billing statements, billing records, and costs and expense records,” says Recording Industry vs The People, going on:

“The Court reviewed authorities holding that an opponent’s attorneys fees are a relevant factor in determining the reasonableness of attorneys fees, quoting a United States Supreme Court case which held that ‘a party cannot litigate tenaciously and then be heard to complain about the time necessarily spent by his opponent in response’.”

“Will this cause the RIAA to rethink its litigation strategy?” – wondered Ars Technica’s Eric Bangeman.

“Probably. The industry cartel will have to tread carefully with any secondary infringement claims now that there is case law that owning an Internet account used for infringement does not automatically make the owner liable for said infringement. Attorney Ray Beckerman told Ars that he believes there are huge implications from this opinion. ‘It sends a message to the RIAA… that there are consequences to this ‘driftnet’ litigation strategy,’ Beckerman said.”

“If the RIAA’s going to go around
bringing cases against people, it’s going to have to pay the price when it loses,” he told p2pnet.

Slashdot it! Also See:
acted in bad faith – RIAA times out in p2p case, February 27, 2007
Recording Industry vs The People – RIAA Ordered To Turn Over Its Attorneys Billing Records in Capitol v. Foster, 15, 2007
Ars Technica – Victim of RIAA “driftnet” awarded attorneys’ fees, February 7, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 8:08 am and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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