Thursday, June 14, 2007

Motion to Vacate Boston University Subpoena Filed in Arista v. Does 1-21

In Arista v. Does 1-21, the Boston case brought by the RIAA to obtain the identities of 21 Boston University students, a motion to vacate the ex parte discovery order, and the subpoena issued pursuant to that order, has been made by one of the students.

The student is represented by Raymond Sayeg of the Boston office of multi-state law firm, Denner Pellegrino.

Linares Declaration Submitted by RIAA in support of ex parte discovery order motion*
Consolidation order*
Memorandum of Law in Support of Motion to Vacate Ex Parte Discovery Order and Subpoena*

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

Commentary & discussion:

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Keywords: digital copyright online download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs

17 comments:

AMD FanBoi said...

Hooray! A student is finally fighting back at the point where this should all be challenged in the beginning. I would hope that a win here would set citable precedent and undo the current RIAA tactics right at the start.

I like the way this challenges the "storage without sufficient protection" of music files, instead of the unproven "distribution" of music files. The RIAA has very little evidence of anything at this point in the proceedings.

One might point out in further support of the motion to quash, that Plaintiff's agents, alleged experts in this area, may well be using programs and tactics not employed by regular users, and through these programs and tactics are able to locate and break into computers that the normal public would never even locate, hence these files would never be available to the public at large.

It should also be pointed out that Plaintiff's seek to pierce the legal privacy of Doe defendants in violation of likely federal and state specific laws, and that to do so should require a high certainty of misdeeds that has not yet been demonstrated in this case. This is more than just taking away an average user's right to privacy and anonymity on the Internet. Students are a special protected class when it comes to university records.

I am surprised, and disappointed, that the illegal joinder of Defendants wasn't also attacked at this point. Someone really needs to take the RIAA to task over their repeated violation of this federal court order.

It's highly unfortunate that the university itself didn't file this motion to quash, leaving it up to their students to fight.

Unknown said...

I would have thought that people in the Law department would help students and stand up for them.. although idon't know how things work in america

Yashwanth said...

way to go.....the beggining of the end of RIAA

Sanji Himura said...

I'm willing to say that it will wait until a contempt motion can be filed, amd.

Regardless of wether or not that this issue was addressed now, it does three things:

1. it challenges the methods that the RIAA is using to gather their information for their "John Doe" suits.

2. It will now force the RIAA to "put up or shut up"

3. It will put the RIAA's conduct under a judicial microscope.

Regardless on whether or not this will succeed, this will be a good thing for future "Does" to consider doing in a pre-emptive measure against the RIAA.

raybeckerman said...

dear amd and e-mask,

i agree that bu should have made the motion

but i'm awful glad somebody did

raybeckerman said...

The following is a list of the record company plaintiffs in Arista v. Does 1-21:

Arista Records LLC
Warner Bros Records Inc.
Atlantic Recording Corporation
Virgin Records America, Inc.
UMG Recordings, Inc.
BMG Music, Inc.
Capitol Records, Inc.
SONY BMG Music Entertainment
Motown Record Company, LLP
Maverick Recording Company
Elektra Entertainment Group Inc.
LaFace Records LLC
Interscope Records

Please pass it along so people will know which record companies not to patronize.

Alter_Fritz said...

Off Topic!

Not sure about the terminology, was it "thin skulled"?

Some boardmember from the international/british counterpart of RIAA identified as "Paul Birch of Revolver Records" is a bit pissed about blogs and all those stuff;
His email conversation ended with
"Andrew
It expresses opinion, it’s not factual. If you persist then I shall make a formal complaint to the University.
Your choice.
Paul
"

Interestingly this "Revolver-Man" acknowledges that it IS the RIAA that sues people (If this guy I know nothing about is really capable to speak for them of course?!)
whole conversation here found via torrentfreak.

raybeckerman said...

Had to reject 4 or more comments.

1 from a regular reader was rejected because it had a wordpress link that didn't work, because I couldn't understand what it was about, & because it was off topic.

Another because it made a weird unsupported generalization about the student body of a university.

Another because it made an inappropriate suggestion for action to take.

Also rejected one or more comments in which submitter was just arguing for the sake of arguing. I don't have time for sophistry; I'm too busy fighting bad guys.

Please remember my comment policy:

Comment policy:
1.no comment spam
2.no profanity
3.no RIAA trolls masquerading as something else (if RIAA PR flacks present themselves for who they are, they are welcome to participate)
4.no unsupported accusations
5.no defamation
6.no threats
7.no unsupported anti-lawyer or anti-judge insults (if you know of something specific that a lawyer or judge did, with which you disagree, and you want to comment fairly upon it fine, but I don't want people here denigrating the legal profession with undocumented insults; I think that is a tactic used by RIAA trolls and some other big corporations who are trying to discourage ordinary people from talking to lawyers and learning about their legal rights, or from going to court to fight for their rights, thinking the system is stacked against them; lawyers and judges are the cornerstone of the rule of law, which is the cornerstone of our democracy, and they are the closest thing we have to an equalizer in our society)
8. no misleading pseudo-legal advice
9. comments must be related to topic of the post
10. nothing to detract from the dignity of "Recording Industry vs. The People" as a forum for the discussion of very important issues.

Alter_Fritz said...

it probably didn't work because his page might got slashdotted or digged?

you can try boing boing who puts it:
Record exec to academic: stop criticizing us or I'll tell your university
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/15/record_exec_to_acade.html

or the copy of the whole conversation over at torrentfreak
http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-board-member-threatens-university-lecturer-for-riaa-criticism/

you don't need to publish this off topic post if you don't want to. I just thought to show it at least to you :-)

raybeckerman said...

Alter_Fritz, your "off topic" comment would have been "on topic" if you had posted it to the relevant post to which it referred, "RIAA Accused of Extortion and Conspiracy in Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid"

Alter_Fritz said...

Done :-)

mhoyes62 said...

I was just reading through the declaration of Linares. Looking at it, I have some questions Ray. His statements number 5-7 seem to be his opinion. He is not an expert in the internet, so how is he allowed to make such statements, or is this the trouble with ex Parte motions, there is noone on the other side to flag it? In 8, he starts off fine, with not giving permision, but then he again makes the assumption about the internet usage. In 9, it appears to be a fear tactic. In truth, the scope can not be estimated, much less under or over. Number 10 again is totally his opinion.

Now, in number 11, he is purporting to explain what Media sentry does, and if this is the case, then all they are doing is looking to see what is "available" with no checking to see if the file provided is actually what it is purported to be.

In Number 12, he is again giving a laymans explaination with no information given on how easy it is for people to spoof or mislead using different addresses.

Number 13 is just totally bogus and false, and he has no knowlege of such and he is not an expert.

For number 14, there is still no proof offered for where the file actually came from. In a P2P network, you can not guarantee that a file came from only one location. That is the power of the P2P network, that it works in a distributed mode.

In 15, does this mean he actually listens to each file downloaded? Or is he atesting to the veracity on the say so of someone else?

Number 16 fails to make any of the mistakes that have occureded in this process known, and just makes it sound like you just go to the ISP and they have it all there for easy access. Again, he is not an expert in the Internet so he really can't say how it is done.

Number 17, again leaves out the false identification of persons.

I'm going to skip a few, and go to 21, where he makes this vague statment of loss of revenue, but with nothing given to show that.


In all, it looks like something he has been told, and is just making a declaration to keep from have Media Sentry appear as an expert.

The question is, how can the court system be changed so that ex parte motions such as this can be challanged? With no ability to have the defendants rights protected, it appears that the plaintiff can say just about anything they want. Is this really the case?

meh

raybeckerman said...

As set forth in the memorandum of law submitted by Mr. Sayeg, the RIAA papers are insufficient to support the discovery application.

DreadWingKnight said...

I just hope this motion goes through and stops the RIAA anti-p2p campaign in its tracks.

Alter_Fritz said...

serious question:

reading this newly added ORDER OF CONSOLIDATION,
does this mean, that Mr. Sayeg's Memo will not be accepted?

Don said...

When will the U.S. gov't begin to prosecute the RIAA under the RICO act?

Anonymous said...

Hello Ray. First of all, thanks for a wonderful and informative website. My only question is what is the status of this motion to vacate?