Thursday, March 12, 2009

Good article in p2pnet about Dawnell Leadbetter's ordeal

Another good article by Jon Newton of p2pnet.net about the human equation, the toll the RIAA's litigations take on the lives of the people subjected to them:


Pay up! Dawnell Leadbetter tells RIAA. Again.


p2pnet news view RIAA | P2P:- Regular p2pnet readers will recognize the name Dawnell Leadbetter.

She’s the Seattle-area mother of two teenaged children who sued Comcast for disclosing her name and contact information.

She also features in the ‘We’re Not Taking Any More’ club, an early p2pnet story on mothers who’ve had the courage to stand up to Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music RIAA thugs.

In the Comcast case, an RIAA ‘Settlement Support Center’ used information the RIAA, “obtained in a Philadelphia lawsuit over the illegal sharing of digital music files,” Lory Lybeck, the lawyer representing Leadbetter, said in Reclaim the Media.

“But no court authorized Comcast to release names and addresses of its customers, or notified his client that her information had been given to an outside party.”

Now, “In Interscope Records v Leadbetter, where the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had affirmed the lower court’s denial of Ms Leadbetter’s motion for her attorneys fees, Ms Leadbetter has filed a petition for rehearing, arguing that the Court overlooked certain facts and legal precedents,” says Recording Industry vs The People.
Complete article



Keywords: lawyer 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 portable music player

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This man is so happy to see that a case is being pursued against Ms. Leadbetter's ISP (Comcast) for the release of unsubpoenaed private customer information and hopes that they rip Comcast a new one over this. A big win in this area might put the brakes on the headlong rush of too many ISP's to voluntarily cooperate with the industry to the sidestepping of all those messy court procedures and the determent of their customers. This raises the question of a class action suit against Comcast for all affected customers for whom they turned over private data like this.

This man wishes more students were suing their universities on the same grounds that most universities roll-over far too easily in giving up data instead of fighting these exceptionally questionable subpoenas. The RIAA knows that the third party universities know that this isn't their fight - and a few good lawsuits claiming that the universities weren't living up to their obligations to protect private student information against highly questionable lawsuits might might make it into their fight.

{The Common Man Speaking}

Anonymous said...

"This man wishes more students were suing their universities on the same grounds that most universities roll-over far too easily in giving up data instead of fighting these exceptionally questionable subpoenas."

This very thing may happen as the result of the lack of due dilligence on the part of a Michigan university who failed to realize that Michigan Law prohibits Private investigations without a license, and the university rolled over without a wimper. Time will tell.