Sunday, May 03, 2009

RIAA keeps on filing new cases

I've been receiving reports from around the country of new RIAA cases against individuals being filed. Just for the heck of it I took a look to see whether the RIAA had filed new cases against individuals in April, in the Eastern District of New York and Southern District of New York. I found 1 in the Southern District, 2 in the Eastern District.

So it appears that their representation to Congress that they had "discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August" was a total fabrication.

Commentary & discussion:

TechDirt
Copyrights and Campaigns
p2pnet.net
Ars Technica
Wired.com
Slyck
AmLaw Litigation Daily
Switched
Chronicle of Higher Education
ZeroPaid





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:

Eric said...

Oh, come on, who tell the truth to congress these days. ;-)

But on a more serious note, anyone know if they were sworn in at the time or if they were speaking informally to congress?

Alter_Fritz said...

even if they were, devils advocate will tell you that they are NOT initiating *new* cases.
they just continue Jon doe cases they have in their backlog. And if those already filed Jon doe cases are actually one day refiled with a name for each doe number then of cousre they still have a trillion datasets of IP address/time/files offered from their illegal investigators before they fired them..

By evil4 spokespersons logic *those* are all no new cases of course!

Matt Fitzpatrick said...

Is the RIAA is giving the appearance that they consider cases against individuals continuations of Doe cases, rather than new cases? That's how it looks to me. It could be a good point to bring up in a throwing-in-the-second-towel motion to support ruling an individual defendant to be the prevailing party.

Anonymous said...

To paraphrase:

There's liars, damned liars and the RIAA.

Of course, lying to a Congressional committee is fairly safe. The members of the committee wouldn't know a lie if it slapped them in the face they do it so often themselves.

TomasG

Anonymous said...

Total fabrication.

Just like everything else the RIAA says.

Anonymous said...

Wired is saying "[RIAA spokesperson] Lamy indicated that the lawsuits that Techdirt and Recording Industry vs. the People are talking about this week were started before the RIAA promised to stop suing. The new defendants were apparently first contacted by the RIAA before August, when it says it stopped initiating lawsuits."

But I'm not sure that such contact can really be assumed, given the way they operate with the John Doe filings. Wired should press for more clarification. And the other mainstream press outlets which parroted the RIAA's December announcement should be contacted and encouraged to do the same.

raybeckerman said...

The way I see it, this story isn't really about whether the RIAA is continuing to file lawsuits, it's about whether it lied to Congress.

The qualifications which the reporters seem to be accepting were not contained in the December 23, 2008, letter signed by Mitch Bainwol.

raybeckerman said...

Techdirt points this out.

Ars Technica and Wired do not.

Alter_Fritz said...

and Mr. B.S. is not even NOT pointing that out, but (as would be expected from him I might say) totally ignoring the essence of Mr. R.B.'s post.
That is, the congress thingy, and not the WSJ post!