Saturday, September 09, 2006

RIAA Says That Without Pretrial Discovery, It Does Not Have Enough Facts to Oppose Paul Wilke's Summary Judgment Motion

In Elektra v. Wilke, the Chicago RIAA case in which defendant Paul Wilke has moved for summary judgment, the RIAA has filed a motion for "expedited discovery", alleging that it does not have sufficient evidence to withstand Mr. Wilke's motion. The RIAA's lawyer said

"Plaintiffs cannot at this time,
without an opportunity for
full discovery
present by affidavit
facts essential to justify
their opposition to Defendant's motion.
Motion for Expedited Discovery*
Affidavit in Support of Motion for Expedited Discovery*

In his summary judgment motion * Mr. Wilke had stated that

1. He is not "Paule Wilke" which is the name he was sued under.
2. He has never possessed on his computer any of the songs listed in exhibit A [the list of songs the RIAA's investigator downloaded] He only had a few of the songs from exhibit B [the screenshot] on his computer, and those were from legally purchased CD's owned by Mr. Wilke.
3. He has never used any "online media distribution system" to download, distribute, or make available for distribution, any of plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings.

Mr. Wilke is represented by Daliah Saper of Saper Law Offices 188 West Randolph, Suite 1705 Chicago, IL 60601 312.404.0066 dsaper@saperlaw.com

Commentary and discussion:

p2pnet.net (including profile of Mr. Wilke's lawyers)
p2pnet.net
Slashdot.org
The Inquirer
BoycottRIAA.com
Ars Technica
Heise Online (German language website)
bit-tech.net

* Document available online at Internet Law & Regulation

Table of Cases

Digg!


Keywords: digital copyright online download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs

5 comments:

Alter_Fritz said...

Strange!
The RIAA sues someone because they claim the guy they sue has infringed their exclusive copyrights and they have the evidence to prove that.
Now this riaa lawyer woman tells the judge:
"it is clear to Plaintiffs that discovery is needed [...] to obtain information regarding the
evidence of copyright infringement on Defendant’s computer hard drive, the use of Defendant’s
Internet account to infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings, and Defendant’s
knowledge of and role in the infringing activity.
"

So basicly she is telling they do have no information what so ever regarding the claim!
All that they claim is that their "investigatiors" have recorded some IP addresses!

Who assures the courtsystem that these IP adresses are not just made up?!
And given the fact that millions of americans do fileshare they will have a hit in some cases when their "investigators" play lucky numbers with the 4 bags of tennisballs labeled from 0 to 255.
And because they have not more than this computerprogramm that draws random numbers they for example can not specify what an neutral expert should search for and want to snoop around uncontrolled on the harddisks of defendants!

Alter_Fritz said...

P.S. Thanks Ray that you now publish the RIAA stories yourself on Digg.
Saves others some time ;-)
But if I were you I would post future RIAA abusings, of the US courtsystem and the copyrightlaw as it was once intended, in the section "tech industry news".
IIRC so far only postings regarding your blog in that category made it in the thousands diggs :-)

raybeckerman said...


Dreddsnik said...

Doesn't this show rather blatantly, that they are fishing ???

Have things gotten so bad in our legal system, that the RIAA can come right out and say it, and still not be called to task ??


Answer to first question: yes.

Answer to second question: I hope not.

Tom L. said...

isn't this , in some respects, profiteering using the court system and by default, taxpayer money? How long can they do this before it's considered abuse of the system?

i hate to sound like a simple-minded idiot but I'm completely in the dark about the legal ramifications of what the RIAA are doing.

CodeWarrior said...

If they didn't have sufficient probable cause, they shouldn't have put this guy through having to defend against a case with no reasonable evidence.