Recording Industry vs The People: Complaint filed against Brittany Kruger in Michigan; SONY Music Entertainment v. Kruger

Friday, May 01, 2009

Complaint filed against Brittany Kruger in Michigan; SONY Music Entertainment v. Kruger

The RIAA has filed its complaint against Brittany Kruger in the US District Court for the Western District of Michigan, Southern Division. The name of the case is SONY Music Entertainment v. Kruger. The judge assigned to the case appears to be located in the courthouse located in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Ms. Kruger was one of the "John Doe" defendants who filed charges against MediaSentry with Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

The complaint appears to have added a number of song files to the "exhibit A" list, which had not been included in the RIAA's earlier filings.

Complaint

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

9 comments:

Anonymous said...: This complaint is filed 2 years 3-1/2 months after the Plaintiffs say that they detected the infringement. Isn't that past the statute of limitations?

Given that they allege that the infringement was continuous after that point, must they not present credible evidence at this point to justify that position? Or is this enough to allow them to perform a forensic anal exam of the hard drive seeking to prove that files not on their list were added or modified after that time, as well as continue on with abusive depositions?

This man would like to know.

{The Common Man Speaking}; May 2, 2009 at 2:58:00 AM EDT
Alter_Fritz said...: 2 Questions:

1) what's that with this alleged related case?
2) are plaintiffs sure that the few songs are really all they want to sue for? Because they state a number over 1700 and the sheet has so much white space as if they just forgot to correctly print out the sheet.; May 2, 2009 at 2:59:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...: Ray, I should add that the case was filed the week of final exams at Northern Michigan. Just another example of the class of people we are dealing with. RK.; May 2, 2009 at 9:05:00 AM EDT
Eric said...: Common Man Speaking.

Statute of limitation is 3 years unfortunately leading to lots of possible evidence both for and against being lost. My personal feeling it if the plaintiffs own delay in filing causes destruction of possible mitigating evidence then the case should be thrown out.

But that would just be common sense.; May 2, 2009 at 11:04:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...: This is in Michigan?

If memory serves, I believe that some agency of the executive branch of the state government found RIAA's activities to be unlawful, then the law was changed to basically specifically point at what RIAA was doing.

That being the case, this case needs to be dismissed as a matter of law.

-Quiet Lurker; May 2, 2009 at 1:11:00 PM EDT
Anonymous said...: Quiet Lurker:

Yeah it is rather bold of the RIAA to show itself in court in Michigan. There is a seemingly large opening for counterclaims.

XYZZY; May 2, 2009 at 11:33:00 PM EDT
raybeckerman said...: It's easy to be "bold" when litigating against defenseless people who can't afford a lawyer.; May 3, 2009 at 7:19:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...: Xyzzy -

This isn't bold, it's just plain stupid.

Unclean hands, and a civil order from the state government (should) serve to bar their claim.

My concern is whether the judge in the case will find some tortuous argument in favor of RIAA which ignores the cease and desist order, or precedent, or even the plain law of the case.

-Quiet Lurker; May 3, 2009 at 10:52:00 AM EDT
derivative said...: This is, judging from past performance, and extrapolating objectives from behavior, neither particularly bold nor startlingly stupid. As Ray has pointed out, these guys are merely playground bullies. They can keep doing what they've been doing successfully for years, and once they are really called out on it, they will probably argue they didn't realize it was bad to grab Johnny by the neck and keep bouncing his head off the concrete retaining wall.

The RIAA has (probably successfully in their own eyes, or at least in their lawyers' eyes) pursued a scorched-earth policy for, apparently, at least six years. If you oppose them, they will make it really costly for you. Even if you win, they will fight you tooth and nail on attorney's fees. The more publicity they get about how painful it is to deal with them, the happier they are.

This will continue until some judge kicks them so hard they have to pull down their pants to comb their hair. I'm not talking small fines or even a few days in the pokey for contempt of court. I'm talking at least a few months of jail time, and a disbarment of at least a year.

I've seen it before on the playground. All it takes is a single adult with enough courage to assert authority over other peoples' kids, and then, suddenly, all the other adults realize that they have similar authority and a similar moral imperative to use it.

"Stupid" or "bold" (often synonyms IMHO) will be when the RIAA keeps up the strategy after one of the judges finally stands up and gives one or two of these criminals some serious jail time.

But maybe we've lost the moral backbone for that. Just yesterday my wife noted the cognitive dissonance between us sending alleged Nazi war criminal Ivan Demjanjuk back to Germany for trial, and Obama saying that none of the recent CIA "interrogators" would stand trial.

Or maybe it just means that if you engage in abhorrent activity, you need to make sure you wind up on the winning side, in which case it is doubly important to insure that the RIAA loses severely.; May 3, 2009 at 2:43:00 PM EDT

Post a Comment

JUDICIAL QUOTATIONS

"[T]he Court is concerned about the lack of facts establishing that Defendant was using that IP address at that particular time. Indeed, the [complaint] does not explain what link, if any, there is between Defendant and the IP address. It is possible that Plaintiff sued Defendant because he is the subscriber to IP address .... As recognized by many courts, just because an IP address is registered to an individual does not mean that he or she is guilty of infringement when that IP address is used to commit infringing activity." -Hon. Barry Ted Moskowitz, Chief Judge, S.D. California. January 29, 2013, AF Holdings v. Rogers
"The complaints assert that the defendants – identified only by IP address – were the individuals who downloaded the subject “work” and participated in the BitTorrent swarm. However, the assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time." - Hon. Gary R. Brown, Magistrate Judge, E.D.N.Y. May 1, 2012, K-Beech v. Does 1-37
"The concern of this Court is that in these lawsuits, potentially meritorious legal and factual defenses are not being litigated, and instead, the federal judiciary is being used as a hammer by a small group of plaintiffs to pound settlements out of unrepresented defendants."
-Hon. S. James Otero, Dist. Judge, Central Dist. California, March 2, 2007, Elektra v. O'Brien, 2007 ILRWeb (P&F) 1555
"The University has adequately demonstrated that it is not able to identify the alleged infringers with a reasonable degree of technical certainty...[C]ompliance with the subpoena as to the IP addresses represented by these Defendants would expose innocent parties to intrusive discovery....[T]he Court declines to authorize discovery and quashes the subpoena as to Does # 8, 9, and 14" -Hon. Nancy Gertner, Dist. Judge, Dist. Massachusetts, November 24, 2008, London-Sire Records v. Does 1-4
"[C]ounsel representing the record companies have an ethical obligation to fully understand that they are fighting people without lawyers... that the formalities of this are basically bankrupting people, and it's terribly critical that you stop it...." -Hon. Nancy Gertner, Dist. Judge, Dist. Massachusetts, June 17, 2008, London-Sire v. Does 1-4
"Rule 11(b)(3) requires that a representation in a pleading have evidentiary support and one wonders if the Plaintiffs are intentionally flouting that requirement in order to make their discovery efforts more convenient or to avoid paying the proper filing fees. In my view, the Court would be well within its power to direct the Plaintiffs to show cause why they have not violated Rule 11(b) with their allegations respecting joinder. [I]t is difficult to ignore the kind of gamesmanship that is going on here.....These plaintiffs have devised a clever scheme... to obtain court-authorized discovery prior to the service of complaints, but it troubles me that they do so with impunity and at the expense of the requirements of Rule 11(b)(3) because they have no good faith evidentiary basis to believe the cases should be joined." -Hon. Margaret J. Kravchuk, Magistrate Judge, District of Maine, January 25, 2008, Arista v. Does 1-27, 2008 WL 222283, modified Oct. 29, 2008
"[N]either the parties' submissions nor the Court's own research has revealed any case holding the mere owner of an internet account contributorily or vicariously liable for the infringing activities of third persons.....In addition to the weakness of the secondary copyright infringement claims against Ms. Foster, there is a question of the plaintiffs' motivations in pursuing them..... [T]here is an appearance that the plaintiffs initiated the secondary infringement claims to press Ms. Foster into settlement after they had ceased to believe she was a direct or "primary" infringer." -Hon. Lee R. West, District Judge, Western District of Oklahoma, February 6, 2007, Capitol v. Foster, 2007 WL 1028532
"[A]n overwhelming majority of cases brought by recording companies against individuals are resolved without so much as an appearance by the defendant, usually through default judgment or stipulated dismissal.....The Defendant Does cannot question the propriety of joinder if they do not set foot in the courthouse." -Hon. S. James Otero, Central District of California, August 29, 2007, SONY BMG v. Does 1-5, 2007 ILRWeb (P&F) 2535
"Plaintiffs are ordered to file any future cases of this nature against one defendant at a time, and may not join defendants for their convenience."
-Hon. Sam Sparks and Hon. Lee Yeakel, District Judges, Western District of Texas, November 17, 2004, Fonovisa v. Does 1-41, 2004 ILRWeb (P&F) 3053
"The Court is unaware of any other authority that authorizes the ex parte subpoena requested by plaintiffs."
-Hon. Walter D. Kelley, Jr., District Judge, Eastern District of Virginia, July 12, 2007, Interscope v. Does 1-7, 494 F. Supp. 2d 388, vacated on reconsideration 6/20/08
"Plaintiffs contend that unless the Court allows ex parte immediate discovery, they will be irreparably harmed. While the Court does not dispute that infringement of a copyright results in harm, it requires a Coleridgian "suspension of disbelief" to accept that the harm is irreparable, especially when monetary damages can cure any alleged violation. On the other hand, the harm related to disclosure of confidential information in a student or faculty member's Internet files can be equally harmful.....Moreover, ex parte proceedings should be the exception, not the rule."
-Hon. Lorenzo F. Garcia, Magistrate Judge, District of New Mexico, May 24, 2007, Capitol v. Does 1-16, 2007 WL 1893603
"'Statutory damages must still bear some relation to actual damages." Hon. Michael J. Davis, Dist. Judge, U.S.District Court, Dist. Minnesota, January 22, 2010, Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset
"[T]his court finds that defendants' use of the same ISP and P2P networks to allegedly commit copyright infringement is, without more, insufficient for permissive joinder under Rule 20. This court will sever not only the moving defendants from this action, but all other Doe defendants except Doe 2."
-Hon. W. Earl Britt, District Judge, Eastern District of North Carolina, February 27, 2008, LaFace v. Does 1-38, 2008 WL 544992
"[L]arge awards of statutory damages can raise due process concerns. Extending the reasoning of Gore and its progeny, a number of courts have recognized that an award of statutory damages may violate due process if the amount of the award is "out of all reasonable proportion" to the actual harm caused by a defendant's conduct.[T]hese cases are doubtlessly correct to note that a punitive and grossly excessive statutory damages award violates the Due Process Clause....."Hon. Marilyn Hall Patel, Dist. Judge, N.D. California, June 1, 2005, In re Napster, 2005 US DIST Lexis 11498, 2005 WL 1287611
"[P]laintiffs can cite to no case foreclosing the applicability of the due process clause to the aggregation of minimum statutory damages proscribed under the Copyright Act. On the other hand, Lindor cites to case law and to law review articles suggesting that, in a proper case, a court may extend its current due process jurisprudence prohibiting grossly excessive punitive jury awards to prohibit the award of statutory damages mandated under the Copyright Act if they are grossly in excess of the actual damages suffered....."-Hon. David G. Trager, Senior District Judge, Eastern Dist. New York, November 9, 2006, UMG v. Lindor, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83486, 2006 WL 3335048
"'[S]tatutory damages should bear some relation to actual damages suffered'....(citations omitted) and 'cannot be divorced entirely from economic reality'". -Hon. Shira A. Scheindlin, Dist. Judge, Southern Dist. New York, August 19, 2008, Yurman v. Castaneda
"The Court would be remiss if it did not take this opportunity to implore Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer to peer network cases.... The defendant is an individual, a consumer. She is not a business. She sought no profit from her acts..... [T]he damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs." -Hon. Michael J. Davis, District Judge, Dist. Minnesota, September 24, 2008, Capitol v. Thomas
"If there is an asymmetry in copyright, it is one that actually favors defendants. The successful assertion of a copyright confirms the plaintiff's possession of an exclusive, and sometimes very valuable, right, and thus gives it an incentive to spend heavily on litigation. In contrast, a successful defense against a copyright claim, when it throws the copyrighted work into the public domain, benefits all users of the public domain, not just the defendant; he obtains no exclusive right and so his incentive to spend on defense is reduced and he may be forced into an unfavorable settlement." US Court of Appeals, 7th Cir., July 9, 2008, Eagle Services Corp. v. H20 Industrial Services, Inc., 532 F.3d 620
"Customers who download music and movies for free would not necessarily spend money to acquire the same product.....RIAA’s request problematically assumes that every illegal download resulted in a lost sale."
-Hon. James P. Jones, Dist. Judge, Western Dist. Virginia, November 7, 2008, USA v. Dove