RIAA schoolgirl victim hearing
p2p news / p2pnet: The Big Four Organized Music cartel’s RIAA and one of its legal team may have erred seriously in its ongoing efforts to use the American legal system to victimize Britanny Chan, a 14-year-old Michigan schoolgirl.
The RIAA is short for the Recording Industry Association of America, although only one of its owners, Warner Music, is actually American. The other three are Sony BMG, Japan and Germany, Vivendi Universal, France, and EMI, Britain.
The RIAA is still trying to convince the world that it’s owners, the multi-billion-dollar Big Four labels, are being “devastated” by people who use the p2p networks to share music with each other online, that its artists are being neglected and that numerous support workers are experiencing extreme financial hardship as a direct result.
It claims file sharers are causing huge losses in sales, the convoluted reasoning apparently being: someone on the receiving end in a file sharing action would have paid $1 or more to buy the song from an online corporate music site supported and supplied by the cartel, or from an offline retail outfit, had she or he not downloaded it from a site not supplied by the Big Four.
It’s a patently ridiculous assertion and neither the labels nor any of their **AA units has ever been able to explain how it works in practice, let alone prove, it. However, the mainstream media consistently report it as factual.
Meanwhile, the RIAA failed to get at Britanny through her mother, so now they’re trying to open a new window of opportunity.
She’s a minor which means they can’t haul her before a judge by herself and they’re trying to have a guardian ad litem, someone named to look out for the best interests of a child in legal proceedings, appointed.
The RIAA initiated a January 5 hearing centering on this demand and, says Recording Industry vs The People, the hearing dealt with such questions as:
- If a guardian ad litem were to be appointed, who’d pay his or her fees?
- Who’ll pay the fees of the guardian’s attorney?; and
- Was it a violation of the court rules for the RIAA lawyer to use the minor’s name in the caption?
Explains Ray Beckeman, the lawyer working with Patti Santangelo, usually the guardian ad litem is someone known to, and trusted by, the judge.
If a copyright infringement case such as this, “were fully litigated, in the manner in which the RIAA litigates cases, I’d expect the guardian ad litem’s fees to be in the tens of thousands of dollars, and the fees of his or her counsel, and expert witnesses, to possibly reach or even exceed $100,000,” he says.
“Since the likely recovery in the case is zero, it being unlikely that the teenaged defendant has any nonexempt assets with which to satisfy a judgment, it’s not clear why the RIAA is proceeding to ask for appointment of a guardian ad litem.”
Normally, “fees are paid from a fund if the case involves a fund of money, or by the party requesting the guardian’s appointment in a case such as this one, where there is no fund, I’d expect the fees of the guardian ad litem and the guardian’s attorneys to have to be paid by the RIAA,” says Beckerman.
The last item – Was it a violation of the court rules for the RIAA lawyer to use the minor’s name in the caption? – is the possible killer.
Working for the RIAA was Matthew Krichbaum, the lawyer who, it’s alleged, tried to get a 15 year old witness to “say something that wasn’t true” in Motown v Nelson.
Britanny is a minor and when someone sues a minor, the case is supposed to be against “anonymous”.
However, she’s clearly been named.
Meanwhile, the case under submission and a written decision will be issued “in due course”.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
through her mother – Big Music wants Britanny Chan, September 27, 2005
Recording Industry vs The People – Hearing Held January 5th in RIAA case against 14-year old: Priority Records v. Brittany Chan, January 8, 2005
Patti Santangelo – Fight Goliath now at $3,678.58, January 6, 2005
Motown v Nelson – RIAA victims sue RIAA, December 30, 2005
January 9th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
‘Britanny is a minor and when someone sues a minor, the case is supposed to be against “anonymous”.’
you appear4 to be forgetting the laws don’t apply to the cartels, they’ll just bribe, I mean lobby someone to have it go away.
January 9th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
It’s a good thing that judges never have to reply to reporters.
Some question for the judges are:
How can a possible loss in profits of a few cents to a record company turn into a lawsuit that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to society (yes, everything is paid by society)?
Is it the the result of the “law” becoming a business?
Has the judiciary gone mad, helping turn kids against parents and parents against their kids or both into mental cases?
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
January 9th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
“How can a possible loss in profits of a few cents to a record company turn into a lawsuit that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to society (yes, everything is paid by society)?”
Judge Luffy: The RIAA has payed out big $$$ to congress. Can’t speak on the issue of judicial bribary; would you like to see my new TV?
“Is it the the result of the “law” becoming a business?”
Judge Luffy: Yes
“Has the judiciary gone mad, helping turn kids against parents and parents against their kids or both into mental cases?”
Judge Luffy: No, see answer to question No. 1 and read between the lines.
January 9th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
“How can a possible loss in profits of a few cents to a record company turn into a lawsuit that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to society (yes, everything is paid by society)?”
Judge Luffy: The RIAA has payed out big $$$ to congress. Can’t speak on the issue of judicial bribary; would you like to see my new TV?
“Is it the the result of the “law” becoming a business?”
Judge Luffy: Yes
“Has the judiciary gone mad, helping turn kids against parents and parents against their kids or both into mental cases?”
Judge Luffy: No, see answer to question No. 1 and read between the lines.
January 9th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
It has always been known that the sue em all campaign was a losing battle from the start. Everyone knows that but the RIAA. The RIAA has no ability to have a conscience anymore than the members it represents. Nor do they have the abilities it appears to tell what is right from what is wrong. Blatently, taking the child from the parent, just for the purpose to sue is wrong in this sense. The RIAA is digging itself a hole in the ground for the music cartels burial. This business of sueing a child can bring nothing to the cartels but trouble.
As is mentioned in the article the RIAA can have no hope of recovery of any sort of fees. Even if everything went according to the RIAA’s wishes and the victim were found totally guilty, there would be no hope of advantage here other than the publicity. That’s publicity that anyone else in their right mind wouldn’t want.
As far as getting any sort of judgement for this, in my mind the RIAA should have to show where it was financially damaged and to what extent. Statutory penalitys are for those selling stuff and no where do I see this accusation being made. Therefore, exactly to what extent was the cartels damaged?
This idioticy of sueing children shows that the RIAA has no shame, no level too low to stoop. You should remember this, everytime you see the member products offered for sale in your town, on line, or on tv. Refuse to finance financial terrorism, for surely that is exactly what this is.
January 10th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
“This idioticy of sueing children shows that the RIAA has no shame, no level too low to stoop.”
After World War II the war criminal’s defense was that they were following orders.
Is there any difference between the war crimes and what is going on here?
After this morally bankrupt lawsuit debacle is over will tha RIAA lawyers say they were following orders of their paying customers?
Will the judges say they were following orders of the law so as to continue in their employment and salary?
They should all remember:
Many of the crimes comitted during Worl War II were legal and required by the law of survival. The criminals either followed oiders or were executed.
Lawyers are supposed to work following a code of ethics. Strangely these ethics codes do not talk about morals, but ethics cannot exists outside a framework of morals. What an incredible loophole!
Remeber Nuremberg.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
January 10th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
“Is there any difference between the war crimes and what is going on here?”
Um… yeah. A huge difference. The claims of the RIAA lawyers are the same, but there’s a HUGE difference between the war crimes and the RIAA lawsuits.
January 11th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
In a sense, the facts are very similar.
Psychologically, the motivations are the same: Fear and greed.
In one case, people were gassed by the Nazis as ordered by feared higher ups. In the current case kids are sued as ordered by by the lawyer’s paying customer, for copying songs. The motivation is greed.
With Jews, the Nazis started by requiring that Jews wear a Star of David and move to a restricted area. That was step one, an attack on freedom. Then cane step 2, the extermination.
RIAA, their lawyers and the participating judges are working on step 1, the extortion, intimidation and economic destruction for the sick purpose of giving a lesson to instill fear of copying in the population. Tomorrow, on step 2, kids and ordinary people will be jailed for the same reason.
Lawyers and lawyer-judges should have the moral guts to quit thier job prior to any participation in lawsuits against a kids or anyone that is charged for such a banal activity as copying songs to a hard disk or a cassette, for the purpose of attacking freedom. If they don’t these lawyers and judges should and may some day have their own Nuremberg.
George Santayana:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
January 12th, 2006 at 7:06 am
There is a good reason most politicians started out as lawyers.