RIAA meets judge Nancy Gertner
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- It’s virtually unheard for a judge to request an amicus brief. But it happened in 2004, not long after the Big 4 organised music cartel’s RIAA officially launched its sue ‘em all campaign against Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s own customers.
Noted liberal activist judge Nancy Gertner did exactly that in three cases consolidated under the caption Capitol Records vs Noor Alaujan, with Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center responding.
Equally unusually, briefs were handed in by the Motion Picture Association of America, not to mention a group comprising “several of the musician and songwriters’ societies,” as the Berkman Center put it.
One of the other cases consolidated under Alaujan was Capitol Records v Colleen Fanguiaire, started in 2003, and it’s dragging on, as all RIAA cases are wont to do, very much to the benefit of the RIAA.
In it, Fanguiaire is representing herself without the benefit of legal counsel.
Almost exactly three years ago, when the case first came up, “I’ve never had a situation like this before, where there are powerful plaintiffs and powerful lawyers on one side and then a whole slew of ordinary folks on the other side,” said Gertner of other RIAA sue ‘em all lawsuits, as p2pnet posted at the time.
And, unrepresented as she is, Fanguiaire may not even know Gertner has denied the RIAA’s motion for summary judgment.
The Big 4 enforcer had made the demand based upon her alleged failure to respond to the RIAA’s Request for Admissions, says Recording Industry vs The People, going on:
The Court’s decision held that the RIAA had served its requests for admission prematurely, prior to the conduct of any discovery conference. The Court also noted that the RIAA had upped the ante quite a bit, trying to get a judgment based on 41 song files, even though it had originally been asking for judgment based on 9 song files. This would have increased the size of the judgment from about $7,000 to about $31,000.”
Gertner has slated a discovery conference for October 23 at 2:30 pm and ordered everybody to attend.
These kinds of conferences are open to the public so if you’re in or around Boston on that date, there’s nothing to stop you showing up at what’s guaranteed to be an extremely interesting hearing.
UPDATED: August 16, 8:43 AM Pacific
Click the mic on the right to hear David Bannister’s p2pnetcast of this story >>>> 
Also See:
p2pnet - Big Music vs Ordinary Folks, August 20, 2004
Recording Industry vs The People - Judge in Boston Denies RIAA Motion for Summary Judgment; Says RIAA Served Notices to Admit Prematurely, August 15, 2007
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August 17th, 2007 at 9:41 am
It’s obvious why these cases only exist in America. Because the legal system is prejudiced, it favors the party with the greatest resources (money). While the government sits idle as it’s citizens are censured by greedy corporations.