p2pnet - rss feed: Oklahoma Mum takes on RIAA
p2p news / p2pnet: The Big Four Organized Music label’s RIAA has suffered another ignominious defeat, at the same time driving home the message to all RIAA victims, Don’t cave in to the bastards. Fight back!
Fronted by Capital Records, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) had tried to turn an Oklahoma mother and her daughter into file sharing victims.
But Debbie and Amanda Foster, represented by Marilyn Barringer-Thomson, took the labels on. And won.
Faced with the mother’s demand for a summary judgment dismissing the case against her, the RIAA backed down, ultimately abandoning the suit, and because Foster was judged to be the “prevailing party” under the Copyright Act, she’s also eligible for certain costs.
“This is a very important development,” Ray Beckerman, a New York City attorney who’s been representing RIAA defendants and who runs the Recording Industry vs The People blog, told p2pnet..
“The RIAA’s lawsuits are uniformly based on a virtually nonexistent investigation of whether the person they are suing actually committed any copyright infringement.
“Essentially, its uniform practice has been to sue people based on the most tenuous thinking: they sue a person who paid for an internet access account which the RIAA investigators, through a ’secret’ and ‘proprietary’ method, claim to have linked to a dynamic IP address, which a subpoenaed ISP has identified as being paid for by a certain ‘John Doe’ defendant.
“They then sue that person, without regard to whether that person did or didn’t do anything.”
The Foster example is typical of the RIAA practice in which the so-called ‘trade’ unit, owned by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, tries to sue a mother on the grounds that she paid for a Net account, “even though they had no reason in the world to think she’d committed any acts of copyright infringement,” says Beckerman.
Their uniform policy is to maintain the suit against the mother, or any other innocent defendant who happens to be handy, even after learning they couldn’t possibly be liable, the idea being to keep the doors open for another fishing expedition.
“In two cases now, when defendants’ lawyers called the RIAA’s bluff, and hit them with a motion for summary judgment and for attorneys fees, the RIAA chickened out essentially, backing down - and withdrawing their case with prejudice - to avoid a big attorneys’ fee award,” Beckerman states.
The first case involved then 13-year-old Michigan schoolgirl Britanny Chan.
The RIAA had tried one thing after another to nail her and her mother, Candy, calling them file sharing thieves.
But, “With file sharing, nothing has been stolen and no one has been deprived of anything they own or owned, but for the Big Four, that’s a minor detail, just as claiming they’re being ruined by file sharing when in fact they’re raking it in, is considered to be acceptable PR,” we wrote when news of the RIAA screw-up was announced.
“They failed with Mrs Chan, represented by John Hermann, so they turned their attentions to her daughter Britanny, who was 13, at the time. They wanted a Guardian Ad Litem appointed.
“Why would they want that? Their reasons weren’t clear but a guardian ad litem’s fees could have reached many thousands of dollars. Given that the RIAA was also demanding an order to force Brittany’s parents to pay for the guardianship, it may have amounted to yet another terror tactic.
“But all to no avail. The RIAA, which has gone through three law firms to date, blew it there as well. It didn’t bother to provide documents that had been asked for, despite efforts by the court, ‘to work with the Plaintiffs in advancing this case’.
“In that light, the RIAA’s failure to do so was, ‘inexplicable,’ wrote judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff.”
Foster is the second example, and another instance in which the, “RIAA won’t voluntarily do the right thing,” says Beckerman, going on, “but when faced with a summary judgment motion and attorneys’ fees motion, they crawl away,” claiming they did so without being forced into it.
A key aspect of the decision was, in fact, that the Court didn’t accept the RIAA’s specious assertion that they’d pulled out voluntarily and were therefore exempt.
Now, “I’m hopeful that the court will award Ms. Foster all of the attorneys’ fees and costs she was forced to incur by the RIAA’s frivolous lawsuit, and that this will send out an important message to all victims of the RIAA litigation juggernaut and to their lawyers,” says Beckerman.
“It pays to fight back!”
Also See:
blog - RIAA Case Against Mother Dismissed With Prejudice; Court May Award Attorneys Fees Against RIAA, July 13, 2006
ruined by file sharing - RIAA Chan case dismissal, April 21, 2006.
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July 14th, 2006 at 2:35 am
You may fool all the courts some of the time, you can even fool some of the courts all of the time…
but you cannot fool all of the courts all the time.
July 14th, 2006 at 5:13 am
even the king george quote sort of makes sense here since both he and the cartels talk from their asses:
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” — Prezdent Dubya
July 14th, 2006 at 10:34 am
SO PATTI SANTANGELO IS NOT THE FIRST PERSON AND SHE HASN’T EVEN GONE TO COURT. YET WE’VE BEEN TOLD MANY MANY TIMES HERE THAT SHE WILL BE THE FIRST ONE TO GO TO COURT.
WHY HAVE WE NEVER HEARD ABOUT THIS WOMAN IN OKLAHOMA?
WHAT’S THE DEALY?
July 14th, 2006 at 10:45 am
Read this:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191153&cid=15716208