Monday, December 15, 2008

EMI plaintiffs move to dismiss counterclaims and stay discovery in Capitol Records v. MP3Tunes

In Capitol Records v. MP3Tunes, EMI and its affiliates have moved to dismiss the counterclaims which had been interposed against them for serving false and deceptive DMCA notices, and for deceptive business practices, and have moved to stay discovery relating to the counterclaims.

Plaintiffs' Memorandum of Law in support of motion to dismiss counterclaims and stay discovery



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

2 comments:

Matt Fitzpatrick said...

512(f), the DMCA prohibition on bogus DMCA takedown demands, has been one of the few things keeping intellectual imperialism in check.

Courts so far have established a burden on DMCA takedown demanders to first look at content and have a reasonable basis for calling it infringement. In particular, a DMCA takedown demander must consider fair use. (see Lenz v. UMG, the "Let's Go Crazy" dancing baby on YouTube lawsuit)

Here, the court should continue that trend and uphold the 512(f) counterclaim. This will require the EMI plaintiffs to demonstrate their DMCA claim that the MP3Tunes upload "locker" is infringing was made in good faith, and they had a reasonable basis for not seeing it as fair use. (Good luck with that, EMI.) A requirement they cannot avoid with a cut-and-run dismissal.

Alter_Fritz said...

Matt, while your explaination sounds resonable to me, I guess the lawyers taking money from EMI will give a damn about all that.

I guess I figured what this is all about!
The new owner of EMI has no clue what is going on in side the big EMI group, and these lawyers that work for those "best known and well-respected" recording companies are just sqeezing as much money as they could out of the new owner.
These Lawyers are smart. They know that their efforts against technology advancement are futile and they just what every parasite does that gives a damn about his host. Once EMI et al are leeched dry from lawyer fees, they will move on, and the shareholders/owners of the record companies are the losers in this "game"
Unless the new guy in charge at EMI gets a clue and stops these recording industry lawyers, all this stuff will ruin him. And the shareholders are not even realising that it is guys like "the dentist", RIAA-EVE and the other ones in those big lawyer firms that are the problem, not the customer that embraced the new technology!

Jon of p2pnet.net has a nice post explaining this parasitic leeches(lawyers) vs. prehistoric corporation hosts (EMI and Co.)