Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Judge in Boston Denies RIAA Motion for Summary Judgment; Says RIAA Served Notices to Admit Prematurely

In a Boston case against a pro se litigant (someone who is representing herself, without an attorney), Capitol v. Fanguiaire, the Judge has denied the RIAA's motion for summary judgment. The motion was based on the defendant's failure to respond to the RIAA's Notice to Admit. The Judge ruled that the RIAA had served the notice to admit prematurely, prior to conducting a discovery meeting with the defendant.

The Judge also ordered all of the parties to attend a discovery meeting in October.

August 15, 2007, Denying RIAA Motion for Summary Judgment*

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

Commentary & discussion:

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




6 comments:

Igor said...

We have good judges here in Boston :)

Alter_Fritz said...

Without being able to use PACER myself;
WOW, according to good old aunt google we have here what you might can call a filesharing "war veteran".
Colleen Fanguiaire is one of those 261 first wave defendants ( http://www.g4tv.com/specials/features/45385/You_Are_So_Sued.html ).
I find it noteworthy that RIAA hasn't yet almost 4 years after they started their "driftnet fishing" against the people of the United States managed to simply follow the easy rules that FRCP make mandatory.
As this obviously about people's rights concerned judge (*) noted; " Nothing in the plaintiffs' Statement of Facts (document #373) indicates that they attempted to schedule such a conference with the defendant, a pro se party."

At least Plaintiff's and Plaintiffs counsel live up to their expectations in so far that they managed to change the number at issue from 9 in the complaint to over 40 in their "illegal" request for admission! Typical evil greedy bastards number increasing behaviour that they also tried in Lindor if I remember correctly.

Good that Judge Gertner knows the rules well and is willing to apply them even-handed.

In case you read this Colleen, do yourself a favour don't piss this fair minded judge off and attend at the conference October, 23rd!

(*) http://www.barnard.edu/newnews/news021406.html

raybeckerman said...

alter_fritz, why can't you open a PACER account of your own?

Here is an interesting article by Jon Newton at p2pnet.net

Alter_Fritz said...

I don't know any valid credit card information I could legaly provide while registering. :-(

And while the Policies and Procedures are not clear as to which govenment (yours? theirs? or mines?) this clause applies
" - Deny accounts to requesters who have delinquent debts to any federal government agency, in accordance with 31 U.S.C. § 3720B(a).
I better not mess with US court systems and stay as this little pseudonymus "fritz" away from US governmental databases with personal identifyable data ;-)

AMD FanBoi said...

While I'd expect that a pro se Defendant might makes mistakes about procedure, THERE IS NO EXCUSE for the RIAA having done the same. They're obviously trying to rush this case through before the Defendant realizes that there was an attempt to pull the rug out from underneath them. Thankfully, the judge didn't let this happen.

Jadeic said...

Thanks to earlier prompting from Ray I now have a PACER account. If there is any information required in order to add to the forum debate let me know and I will try to provide it.