Thursday, September 13, 2007

New Contested Case in Houston, Texas, SONY v. Reese

A new contested case has come up in Houston, Texas, SONY v. Reese.

Mr. Reese is represented by Carl R. Dawson, a veteran litigator with the Ryan & Dawson, which maintains offices in Houston, Weimar, and Cypress, Texas.

Answer*

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

Keywords: digital copyright online 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




2 comments:

AMD FanBoi said...

I would guess that Defendant Answers and Affirmative Defenses to RIAA boilerplate lawsuits are almost boilerplate as well by now. They just need that final tweak to cause the RIAA non-complaint to be tossed out immediately with prejudice. To bring up a case that the RIAA sincerely doesn't want to fight.

(not some ephemeral speculation on the cause of lost CD sales).

That sure puts it nicely. In truth, the RIAA has no real knowledge if they've ever lost a sale to file sharing. They certainly can't justify every download = a lost sale.

I would like to see more of the "Offer" idea, where if they can't win in court more than what you're offered in settlement, they owe you legal bills from the point of the offer forward. Since they're not going to court, and the point is that requested damages are unconstitutionally high, this stopped one case already in its tracks.

26. Defendant further asserts Plaintiffs’ claims are barred by the applicable three year Statute of Limitations.

We know the end-run the RIAA tries to use to defeat this. Claiming "continuous" and "ongoing" with NO EVIDENCE presented to back this up. Plaintiffs should be REQUIRED to show an actual instance of infringement detected within the time allowed by the Statute of Limitations to be allowed to proceed with this case at all!

Virtualchoirboy said...

I see this lawyer plans to force the RIAA to prove that they are the "owners" of the copyrights in question:

32. Defendant further asserts Plaintiffs are not the owners of the subject registrations.

I also like the wording on the Constitutionality of the $750 per song where the claims must be limited to "actual damages". It would be nice to see them forced to provide proof of those actual damages much like AMD said above.