Monday, September 28, 2009

Massachusetts cases to no longer be consolidated

An order was entered in Boston that the RIAA's Massachusetts cases are no longer to be consolidated:

Judge Nancy Gertner: Electronic ORDER entered: "Because of the number of cases and to facilitate judicial management, these cases will no longer be consolidated. All future filings should be filed in each defendants' respective case and no longer in the lead case." Associated Cases: 1:03-cv-11661-NG et al.(Gaudet, Jennifer)
[Ed. note. IMO this order comes about 6 years too late. IMO Judge Gertner's consolidation order was inconsistent with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and all it ever accomplished was to give the RIAA an even greater economic advantage than it ordinarily enjoyed, give it greater ex parte access to the Court, and give defendants the feeling that they had no chance at all. See Suggestion No. 7 in Beckerman, Ray, "Large Recording Companies vs. The Defenseless : Some Common Sense Solutions to the Challenges of the RIAA Litigations", The Judges Journal, American Bar Association, Summer 2008 Edition (Reprinted by Permission of the copyright owner, The American Bar Association) (PDF). -R.B.]



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

3 comments:

Jadeic said...

Let this order be retrospective and then we will be getting somewhere.

ScrewMaster said...

Jadeic, I suspect you meant retroactive.

Anonymous said...

Wasn't this already ordered somewhere
else, by another judge, and just
plain ignored by the RIAA lawyers ?

Dreddsnik