Wednesday, April 15, 2009

RIAA seeks summary judgment against Rolando Amurao's daughter in Lava Records v. Amurao II

In Lava Records v. Amurao II, the RIAA's case against Rolando Amurao's daughter, the RIAA has moved for summary judgment.

Defendant's response is due April 30th.

Plaintiffs' memorandum of law in support of motion for summary judgment

Commentary & discussion:

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6 comments:

Alter_Fritz said...

Now what a "curious" argument/math are those RIAA lawyers using in this motion for summary judgement ("mofosuju")?

one sentence they claim that it would not be feasable and would took so much time to download "some high numbers they like to use and throw around like rice on a wedding" of soundrecordings, so their "third party" downloaded "only" 10 files that they claim are their copyrighted recordings.
Yet in extreme hyperbole they mention repeated times that defendant distributed "millions" of copies. And yet their own unlicensed illegal investigator MediaSentry could only download 10 (ten) files?

Question: Is it actionable misconduct by RIAA lawyers to write such contrary nonsense?

And isn't it NOT a matter of equity but willful misbehaviour/misconduct that they throw around four different numbers like aprox. 1300, ~54, ~26, and 10 and then saying they want $750 each for 30 something of files?(*)
Where is the due process and following of law in this?

Have RIAA lawyers watched too much of Graf Zahl's ("Count von Count") number lessons on Sesame Street that they got literally drunken on them, or are they even descendants of this "number-thirsty" vampire?



(*) Watch out tenenbaum team for this number inflating modus operandi by plaintiffs lawyers! 7 songs and statutory maximum of ~1 million might change given that their press gang already mentioned after the oral argument that it is NOT a Prof. Nesson said about "Clicking 7 times on a computer screen" but that they talk about hundreds of songs at issue.

Anonymous said...

When using a P2P program such as Limewire, the user must sign a user agreement; In fact, all users of the program must sign a user agreement. I wonder what the agreement says about using the program to sue individuals with?

Anonymous said...

What precisely is meant by "Mr. Amurao took initially took responsibility for the infringement..."?

Plaintiffs claim defendant never paid for any songs she allegedly downloaded with Limewire. Hypothetically, if she owned a CD and downloaded a song off of Limewire that was also on her CD, would that download be illegal?

When plaintiffs were taking depositions and such in Dad's case, they got evidence to use in Daughter's case. Certainly this shows they improperly brought suit against Dad when they should have investigated better. Is there a way to get such evidence thrown out?

Jay Kay

Anonymous said...

"When using a P2P program such as Limewire, the user must sign a user agreement; In fact, all users of the program must sign a user agreement. I wonder what the agreement says about using the program to sue individuals with?"

I assume you're asking, "Didn't MediaSentry agree not to investigate filesharing when they clicked on the EULA for Limewire?"

Not all clients have EULAs. The EULAs probably don't do what you think they do. Even if the EULAs did, in this case the EULA is an agreement between the user (e.g., MediaSentry) and the software owner (e.g., Limewire). Defendant is not either of these parties, which makes that angle hard to tackle.

Anonymous said...

The April 16, 2009 7:40:00 AM EDT comment was mine, sorry I forgot to sign it.

XYZZY

Alter_Fritz said...

@ the 2 anons,
but your argument is assuming a specific setup (using of regular software) and totaly overlooking one crucial argument of RIAA.

They claim their "investigators" log onto those networks and do what "any other user can do", but they never claimed that they used the regular normal "over the shelf" software version a normal user uses.
In fact they claim their whole methodology is "highly secret" and "proprietary" and no one is allowed to question or check their "pirate catching blackbox thingy".

Even Sony BMG, Lava Records and the other co-conspirators lawyers offered an "Expert" named Douglas W. Jacobson and reports of him and it turned out to be a guy that himself even has absolutely NO knowledge what MediaSentry is/was doing, or what software (over the shelf regular or "investigator self written") they were using in their "investigation" and "catching of infringers"

So if even Plaintiffs own experts have no clue what plaintiffs (allegedly illegaly operating) investigators are/were doing, we commentators should not assume something that we have no clue about either and where our speculation could be used by plaintiffs sneaky lawyers in their courtpapers as "facts that are known and that they don't have to prove".
They do this stuff often enough, and benefit from technology illiterate/ignorant judges when they don't calim something but induce the not outspoken claim into the thinking of the judges by speculations like those at hand here about what software they were using.
Remember the Kim expertreport where he mentioned the flaws with the telephon/ postal service analogy that the plaintiffs lawyers and expert Dr. J. likes to use when explaining IP adresses and the "identification of individuals by their IP adresses" to judges that lack the necessary basic knowledge about a network and its usage of IP adresses to see the misstatement of facts that RIAA lawyers are claiming there.