RIAA: trying to ‘herd’ victims
p2pnet.net news:- Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA has come up with a shameful and derisive, even for the Big 4, new tactic, says Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman.
They want to ‘herd’ cases together, and that’s exactly what they’re trying to do with three of his cases, all of which are completely unrelated.
You can almost hear the whips cracking.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is trying to to get magistrate judge Robert M. Levy to agree to a “joint settlement conference” in Elektra v Schwartz, Maverick v Chowdhury, and Elektra v Torres, all in Brooklyn, New York, says Beckerman, going on:
I’ve also learned the RIAA is attempting to stage a massive ‘group’ settlement conference for many other of its Brooklyn cases.
As the attorney for the defendants in these three cases, I find this latest tactic to be outrageous and offensive.
The RIAA has been improperly designating all of its cases in Brooklyn federal court as “related” cases, in order to remove the random assignment system and make sure that every case winds up being administered by Magistrate Judge Levy. Neither Magistrate Levy nor District Judge Trager have done anything to stop this practice.
As a result, because most of the cases are pro se cases in which
the defendant has defaulted altogether, or has simply forgotten to show
up in court, for the past 4 years, the RIAA lawyers have been spending
an enormous amount of time talking to Magistrate Judge Levy alone -
with no defendant’s lawyer present.
Now they want to herd the defendants together and lead them like sheep to the slaughter, to so-called “settlement conferences”, hoping the prestige of the judge’s position will browbeat and coerce those defendants not inclined to pay the RIAA’s extortion demands into submission.
Also they’re hoping to achieve the massive economy of scale which is available to them, but which isn’t available to the defendants, to further increase the economic imbalance.
If they can have a herded mass settlement conference like this, they can have one lawyer handling dozens and dozens of cases, while the defendants are for the most part represented by many different lawyers, if they’re lucky enough to have a lawyer at all.
The whole tone of the proceeding would be offensive suggesting, as it would, that these greedy, law-breaking, private litigants are some sort of quasi-public agency, and have a special seat at the table in this courthouse – which apparently they do.
What makes matters even worse is the RIAA doesn’t even know what the word “settle” means.
It means, basically, compromise. But my experience with the RIAA has
been that everything is non-negotiable, and everyone either has to pay them the extorted money, or turn in someone else who may have committed a copyright infringement. It’s extortion + investigation and has nothing to do with what lawyers traditionally mean when they say “settlement”.
Ray Beckerman – Recording Industry vs The People
Stay tuned.
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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!
June 5th, 2007 at 11:43 am
If they seriously think they can get away with this, the victims should team up in a class action suit against them.
June 5th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Legal costs must be cutting too deeply into the profitability of the operation.
“Move it people! Step through the doorway and into the shower area! Schnell !
June 5th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Judge Levy has pretty much allowed anything the RIAA wants
in his court.
It REALLY starts to make one wonder about .. things.
Why is it that Judges are completely immune
to any criticism or examination of any kind ?
We haven’t heard about any of Judge Richard Owen’s
cases in a while, since it came to light that he has a
contract with a record label which is ostensibly an offshoot
of Sony. I wonder what ( if any ) Judge levy’s ties may be,
that make him so attractive to the RIAA legal team ?
The RIAA will probably get it’s way.
June 5th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
About the only way a judge can be held accountable for bad or corrupt acts is by being removed from office. About the only way to forcefully remove a judge from office is to remove life from the judge. It is very unfortunate that the U.S. government allows judges to do any thing they want with absolutely no accountability.
June 5th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Giving lifetime appointments for judges keeps them outside of the political sphere. They don’t have to make judgments to make Senators happy in order to keep their seats. They also don’t have to rule in bad ways to please a stupid majority.
June 6th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Gee…. they better be pretty careful about who they are choosing as Judges.
With the whole world changing under this tidalwave of new technology and communication, they need judges who are well versed on the times, the same way our doctors have to keep up to date on health issues.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Why is it that Judges are completely immune
to any criticism or examination of any kind ?
Judges are are not imune. Just visit this page to see how judges can be made accountable. I am sure the judge in this case will one day face the consequences of his actions:
http://rafa_venegas.web.prdigital.com/peer-acemla.htm
What is needed are more persons that can present the facts about judge conduct in the Internet.
BTW, the judge in the refrenced case also took a case that was steered to him even though that was improper.
The Internet never forgets. Ask the search engine.