RIAA victims’ new weapon
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- “Conclusory” “speculation” and “boilerplate” is how a California judge described the RIAA’s initial complaint in Interscope v.Rodriguez, potentially the most damaging – to the RIAA – filesharing case since Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG first began suing their own customers in 2003.
Yet the mainstream media, always quick to report press releases issued by the Big 4, have so far completely disregarded this milestone which will force the labels to re-evaluate their approach in their campaign to use copyright infringement claims to try to compel their customers to buy corporate, and only corporate, music downloads.
The Rodriguez case was thrown out last month and significantly, it took the RIAA only six days to file its amended complaint.
In a startling turnaround, it completely abandon its controversial “making available” theory, its main contrivance, and one for which it had fought so hard in Elektra v Barker and Warner v Cassin.
It now remains to be seen if:
The RIAA will to stick to this new form of complaint in future cases; and,
Will get into a different kind of trouble for some of its new allegations, such as the contention that the investigator “detected an individual” (contradicting the testimony of the RIAA’s expert witness that the RIAA’s method does not detect individuals) and the allegation that the defendant was “the individual responsible for that IP address at that date and time”, a phrase which would appear to be meaningless in a copyright infringement context.
Meanwhile, Ray Beckerman, the New York lawyer who was one of the first to represent RIAA victims, is pointing out that lawyers acting for the men, women and children accused of being illegal file sharers by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG now have an effective weapon they can use to defend their clients.
Based on the RIAA’s abandonment of its Making Available position, “I recommend that defendants’ lawyers consider making motions to dismiss complaint or motions for judgment on pleading,” he says.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
Making Available – How to thwart the RIAA, September 12, 2007
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September 13th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
“the Big 4, have so far completely disregarded this milestone”
Of course. The so called mainstream media is owned by the same parasites. But in their skisophrenic llittle world they don’t realise that we get our news from internet right now.
All these parasites will soon be irrelevant and they can not stomach this.