RIAA victim seeks legal fees
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- Are RIAA victims who beat the Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG copyright cop entitled to legal fees?
That’s what a San Antonio man wants to know.
He was accused by the RIAA of using the discredited Kazaa P2P program to, “purloin its members’ music in 2006,” says Wired, going on:
“The RIAA dismissed the case against Cliff Thompson and sued his daughter after concluding he was not the infringer.”
That’s standard RIAA procedure: initially, go after the parent and when you’ve milked that dry, without admitting the case was fabricated, pillory the child, who’s usually the real target in the first place.
Now, “Thompson invoked language in 2002 appellate court decision involving a copyright dispute about T-shirt imprints,” says the story, going on:
“In that case, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that those who prevail in a copyright case generally have a presumptive right to legal fees.
“The Chicago-based appeals court ruled that legal costs ‘may be necessary to enable a party possessing the meritorious claim or defense to press it to a successful conclusion rather than surrender it because the cost of vindication exceeds the private benefit to party.’
“But the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in January that Thompson was not entitled to legal costs because the RIAA ‘discovered substantial copyright infringement of their songs by a file-sharing program attached to an internet account registered to Thompson’.”
Getting payment
Debbie Foster and Tanya Andersen can tell you all about trying to get money you’re owed out of the RIAA.
In a first for RIAA victims, “after having used every trick in the legal book to avoid paying Foster’s attornies’ fees, as they’d been ordered to do, the labels’ RIAA has been told to pay her not $55,000, as she’d originally asked, but almost $70,000,” p2pnet posted last year, going on:
“It’s a major triumph for Foster and her lawyer, Marilyn Barringer-Thomson, who haven’t wavered in their determination to bring the RIAA to book and make then pay what they owe.”
Andersen, an Oregon mother living on disability payments, is still pursuing the RIAA instead of the other way around.
In her case, judge Donald C. Ashmanskas ruled, “defendant incurred substantial fees before the claims against her were dismissed, including those incurred to file her motion for summary judgment and to respond to a motion to dismiss her counterclaims with prejudice”.
Exactly how much she’s owed has yet to be decided, and even then she’ll have to get it out of the Big 4 enforcer.
Also See:
Wired – Supreme Court Asked to Weigh RIAA Legal Fee Flap, March 24, 2008
p2pnet – RIAA must pay Debbie Foster interest, September 7, 2007
pursuing the RIAA – The RIAA vs Tanya Andersen story, March 17, 2008
incurred substantial fees – New win for Tanya Andersen against RIAA, January 17, 2008
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