April 24, 2007
Final Post and Conclusion
In a nice event to end on, Judge Lee West denied the RIAA's appeal of the attorney's fees granted to the defendant at the end of the original trial. In addition, it made future use of the RIAA's secondary infringement claim (of which many pending cases are currently based) much more difficult as the judge noted that such claims were "untested and marginal." This was followed by the judge dismissing the RIAA's counter arguments as disingenuous and of questionable motive. This is without a doubt a victory for those fighting the bullying and narrow-minded vision exhibited by the RIAA's legal strategy.
In conclusion, this blog project has been somewhat interesting as it has given me a good excuse to read and keep up with many subjects in technology for which I might not have otherwise taken the time. In addition I have much more appreciation for the professional bloggers, who similar to print journalists, turn out pages of new material each week. To accomplish this in a polished manner with quality content is quite an undertaking which I hadn't previously appreciated. While I am not sure if I will continue this blog, or let it die in the near future depends on my free time and the continued stream of interesting stories. I hope you have enjoyed reading these despite my lack of attention which resulted in the last months worth of postings being posted late due to having merely been saved as drafts and not published originally.
April 19, 2007
Students Push Back
According to an article in the student newspaper (found here: http://media.www.technicianonline.com/media/storage/paper848/news/2007/04/13/News/Riaa-Files.23.Lawsuits.Against.Ncsu-2839394-page2.shtml) students at North Carolina State University are being advised to fight subpoenas from the RIAA after only 1 of 24 students who were offered "discount pre-litigation" settlements accepted. To this end, the Universities Legal Services department is willing to assist affected students unless or until the defendant goes to court.
Not that I advocate media piracy, but it is encouraging to see institutions backing their students if the student believes that they have been wrongly accused by an organization with a growing record of abuse of the legal system.
To go along with these recent lawsuits was the release of sales numbers today for the recording industry which continue to point towards a declining business model as consumers shift from buying entire albums on CD or vinyl to buying singles and tracks they like from they exponentially expanding online music business.
All are trends which make a record executive nervous and should make normal, honest consumers take comfort that things are changing slowly in their favor.
April 11, 2007
Case Update
The first news this week is that of the RIAA's case Elektra v. Santangelo which the judge has dismissed with prejudice. This leaves Patti Santangelo as the prevailing party and allows her to claim attorney's fees for the nearly 3 year long legal battle (supported by the EFF). This is the second copyright case like this (the other was Capitol v. Foster) in which the judge has forced a dismissal with prejudice instead of the RIAA's preferred method of simply dismissing the case, with the RIAA not responsible for lawyers fees and other damages in the latter scenario.
On a somewhat related note, elected officials in California seem to have taken the concerns and best interests of the citizens in mind when voting on a pretexting law this week. The bill failed to include a heavily lobbied for exemption which the RIAA/MPAA wanted to "continue their battle against piracy". This is good news for citizens privacy and respects the recently passed federal law regarding pretexting as well.
April 04, 2007
the MPAA joins the fun
Not much new in the legal realm this week, with one exception.
The MPAA, the movie industry equivalent of the RIAA, has decided to join the fun by publishing its own list of the top 25 offending schools in terms of movie piracy. In addition, the group recently announced its support for the "Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act (2007)," and MPAA head Dan Glickman said that his organization would work with school administrators to put an end to movie piracy on campuses, which Glickman says costs the industry $500 million annually.
Much of the recent attention toward media piracy has been stirred by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) who has been noted in Congress for using substantially flawed studies to support legislation on the issue. We can only hope that the rest of Congress will ignore his ranting on behalf of his industry campaign sponsors and follow a more rational path than forcing universities to spend millions on technology which students will find ways to avoid.
March 30, 2007
A new Tactic
From: http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/03/in-warner-v-stubbs-riaa-now-promises.html
Yesterday, the RIAA pushed their latest tactic in the legal war on file-sharing, dismissal with the promise not to sue the people again. The catch however is that the RIAA wants the lawsuits to be dismissed without prejudice (unlike the case last week), so as not to be liable or set a precedent for the award of legal fees or any other award which might be construed negatively. In this case the judge has allowed the dismissal, but also has allowed Stubbs to pursue her counterclaim seeking a declaratory judgment that she had not infringed on the record labels' copyrights.
All of these cases are beginning to show a worrying trend for the industry, which until now had followed a strategy of filing lawsuits, and later dropping the ones it discovered it couldn't win. If the current trend continues and the industry becomes responsible for legal fees and damages, the latest string of lawsuits could become very expensive indeed.
March 22, 2007
Bring on the Lawsuits
Not much happened on the legal front in regard to file sharing last week, but they sure are trying to make up for it in the last couple days.
First, The University of WIsconsin responded to the RIAA's request that it turn over student names and not pass on individual settlement letters without a subpoena. This is good news as the UW and other institutions are choosing not to act as the legal proxy for the RIAA in their games, forcing the RIAA to use due legal process if they feel they truly have a case.
The second tidbit this week was the judge ruling against the RIAA in Elektra v. Santangelo, arguing that the RIAA must eiher proceed to trial or dismis the case with prejudice (which allows for legal fees and other expenses to be assessed against them). In her ruling, Judge McMahon concluded that "no conceivable interest of justice would be served by permitting this case to be dismissed without prejudice against defendant." Instead, the defendant should have a shot at vindication via a trial or have the case dismissed with prejudice. "This case is two years old," wrote Judge McMahon. "There has been extensive fact discovery. After taking this discovery, either plaintiffs want to make their case that Mrs. Santangelo is guilty of contributory copyright infringement or they do not."
Either way, the RIAA stands to lose and suffer a rebuke for one of many lawsuits which should have never been filed (the one against the dead grandmother comes to mind). This case will also help to establish a precedent for the numerous similar cases currently winding there way through the legal system.
March 06, 2007
RIAA vs. college students round...
Last week the RIAA marked a new chapter in its fight against music piracy by launching the website p2plawsuits.com. This web site represents the RIAA's best effort to date at making an end-run around the judicial system and extract sizable—yet "discounted"—settlements from those it believes are guilty of infringing its copyrights. This action follows the latest round of subpoenas filled by the RIAA in "John Doe" lawsuits based solely upon an IP address, many of them targeted at students in locations that made the RIAA's list of top 25 offending universities for piracy.
It will be interesting to see the responses, both by institutions to the recent list and subpoenas, as well as by normal users and victims of these lawsuits to the new website. I say interesting due to the fact that the RIAA is attempting to cut down on losing court cases and even discovery costs by blackmailing people to settle outside of the normal judicial system.
This sounds like an extortion racket if I ever heard of one.