Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Amended Answer and Counterclaims filed in Arizona case, Capitol v. Weed

In Capitol v. Weed, the Phoenix, Arizona, case in which the Court has ruled on which counterclaims Ms. Weed may properly interpose against the RIAA, Ms. Weed has filed her amended answer and counterclaims, asserting counterclaims for:

--abuse of process;
--civil conspiracy; and
--invasion of privacy.

Amended answer and counterclaims*

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation



Keywords: digital copyright law online internet 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 intellectual property

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Can anyone explain in plain terms what:


On each of facts alleged at Paragraph 24 of this pleading, and as competitors against one another for sales to consumers of recorded music, each Plaintiff directly and proximately caused all injury, damage, and loss allegedly sustained by each of
the other Plaintiffs, or any of them, which superseding, intervening cause bars each
Plaintiff from recovery herein from Defendant.

-b

Anonymous said...

Furthermore, Defendant denies Paragraphs 15-19 claims of continuing infringement as spurious; they offer no evidence of ongoing or present infringement and show no evidence of continuing infringement; and, they cannot make a good faith claim or prima facie case for continuing infringement.

FINALLY someone has called out the Plaintiffs on the most fraudulent claim of all in their initial boilerplate cases. Any good judge should immediately require the Plaintiffs to give the basis for that outrageous claim of continuing and ongoing infringement, and IMPOSE THE MOST SEVERE SANCTIONS AVAILABLE in the event that the RIAA lawyers cannot substantiate their shameful and disgraceful filing.

Speaking of copyright notices being necessary, where are the copyright notices on digital downloads from iTunes and other authorized digital music stores? How do you look at these files on a hard drive and immediately see that they're copyrighted?

Can Rule 11 sanctions be taken against each Plaintiff listed on the case, or only against the RIAA lawyers?

Plaintiffs are improperly joined as co-plaintiffs. On information and belief and good faith reliance on Exhibit A to Plaintiffs’ Complaint, Defendant alleges that all of the Plaintiffs are neither owners nor licensees of all Copyrighted Recordings described in the said Paragraphs; that Plaintiffs’ allegation of co-ownership of copyrights is knowingly false in violation of FRCP, Rule 11(b);

That's a good new one. This illegal joinder of Plaintiffs, and what such a joinder implies. This should force the RIAA to have to step back from the copy machine and return to the word processor to answer this filing in a responsive manner.

Plaintiffs have failed to join indispensable parties to this litigation without whom complete relief cannot be granted so as to expose Defendant to multiple lawsuits with potential conflicting results and subject this Court to serial litigation of substantially identical claims.

Another good point. The moment they publish the entire contents of a share directory as an exhibit, they have accused the Defendant of having infringed EVERY song present there, even though they have nothing more than a file name and file size to go on. Unless the listed Plaintiffs are in fact the owners of every song in that exhibit, then Plaintiffs are still missing from this case. Of course they publish the much longer list of songs they never even attempted to download – as well as every other file they can possibly find – in an obvious attempt to embarrass the Defendant (porn image file names, etc.) and weaken their resolve to defend themselves at all. Given that they've submitted all these file names to the court, however, the RIAA should now be forced to go forward on ALL of them, or admit (sanction time again) that the share directory contents exhibit is not, and never was relevant, since they don't intend to purse claims against every song listed there. And that's what this filing does demand.

Defendant is informed and believes that Plaintiffs, and each of them, obtained Defendant’s identity by illegal de facto pretexting; by presenting false testimony in a Doe Defendant case without notice to Defendant for the purpose of obtaining Defendant’s protected personal identity information, by means of ex-parte communications in violation of Fed. R. Civ. Pro 11(c); and by illegal use of unlicensed investigators in violation of ARS 32-2401 et.seq, all of which violations of law are a complete bar to any kind of recovery from Defendant.

I would gather that the false testimony is that fraudulent Carlos Linares and his equally fraudulent Declaration. Defense might also wish to point out more directly how the information acquired in one case has now been not used in that case to pursue legitimate goals in court, but taken to be used in this case.

One should point out LOUDLY that all that the RIAA has identified is an ISP account holder. They have never identified an "infringer" with their methods. In the telephone analogy, they know which phone line they believe they've identified, but not how many extension phones may be on it, or who made the call.

I would think that one should be careful when claiming that the RIAA publicized (and distributed in Exhibit B) embarrassing personal information in the sense of file name listings on one's computer. You don't want to admit that they really have found your computer.

One should instead be pointing out that the RIAA publicized embarrassing file name lists and personal information from someone's computer and then blatantly, and with no evidence, tied those embarrassing disclosures to the current Defendant. That should lead to a counter-claim for libel.

XK-E

Rick Boatright said...

reply to anonymous "b"

You asked what On each of facts alleged at Paragraph 24 of this pleading, and as competitors against one another for sales to consumers of recorded music, each Plaintiff directly and proximately caused all injury, damage, and loss allegedly sustained by each of
the other Plaintiffs, or any of them, which superseding, intervening cause bars each
Plaintiff from recovery herein from Defendant.
means...

It seems pretty clear...

We're making a bunch of counter claims here, and will be wanting relief for them (money).

There are a bunch of plaintiffs on the original lawsuit. (Record companies)

They compete against one another for sales to the public, and they all sued me, so they should be treated as a group.

So, any relief that we get from these counter claims (money) each of the plaintiffs are TOGETHER responsible for anything we might get from them,

AND

To the extent that we show that ANY of them caused the defendent harm, (That our counter claims are valid) that bars ALL the plaintiffs from recovery (getting any money) from the DEFENDANT (the end-user who is being sued).