RIAA Mischaracterizes Letter Received From AOL 287
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In Elektra v. Schwartz, an RIAA case against a Queens woman with Multiple Sclerosis who indicates that she had never even heard of file sharing until the RIAA came knocking on her door, the judge held that Ms. Schwartz's summary judgment request for dismissal was premature because the RIAA said it had a letter from AOL 'confirm[ing] that defendant owned an internet access account through which copyrighted sound recordings were downloaded and distributed.' When her lawyers got a copy of the actual AOL letter they saw that it had no such statement in it, and asked the judge to reconsider."
What can I say... (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably with the judge ruling in favor of RIAA since they most likely have the government in their pocket anyways. =(
lying in court? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there a reason they don't hold lawyers accountable for stuff like this under penalties similar to perjury? If not, why the hell not?
Re:Sure, the **AA are evil... (Score:5, Interesting)
Scary (Score:4, Interesting)
RIAA says, "Muuahhahaha!" (Score:4, Interesting)
Like a dog that has been beat for no good reason, less tech savvy computer users will simply follow the entertainment conglomerates bizarre rules out of fear and never consider that the Doctrine of First Sale still applies to their entertainment media regardless if it's in a downloadable package or not.
I've been thinking I should start a simple parent's guide to the Doctrine of First Sale so smart parents aren't teaching their kids stupid RIAA tricks. Yes? No? Is there one already out there?
Payments (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, AOL only gave a list of names associated with IP addresses, so how does that translate to "This user downloaded music with these IP addresses at these dates"? Some justice.
Re:Can we leave appeal to emotion at the door ? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the other way around. The more terrible they seem the more ground they gain in the PR realm (actually, fear campaign) thereby making it less likely that they will ever protect their IP in anything resembling a reasonable manner. This isn't about justice, it's not about protecting any goddamn artists (who, frankly need protection from that hideous collection of oligopolistic blood-sucking corporations known as "the music studios" much more than they need to be saved from the horrors of copyright infringement via P2P.) To the contrary, it is all about scaring people into a pattern of behavior (i.e., fear-stricken regarding P2P) more conducive to the RIAA's ultimate goal of world domination, er, I mean, regaining total control of media distribution.
Re:Nothing to see here, please move along (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not anywhere near knowing the law well (let alone U.S. law), but isn't there anything bad that can happen to RIAA for what they're doing? I'm speaking about something more than just losing a case. There were dozens of stories describing they're practices... I know that sueing someone every other Tuesday is your national tradition, but there have got to be some ways of scareing those bastards away.
Re:Sure, the **AA are evil... (Score:4, Interesting)
Original quote with sloppy sentence construction (Score:5, Interesting)
"Defendant's Internet Service Provider, America Online Inc., has confirmed that Defendant was the owner of the internet access account through which hundreds of Plaintiffs' sound recordings were downloaded and distributed to the public without Plaintiff's consent. Defendant does not dispute this fact."
Lawyers love to use long sentences that can be interpreted in multiple ways. The above actually contains several "facts" lumped together.
1) "Defendant's Internet Service Provider, America Online Inc., has confirmed that Defendant was the owner of the internet access account "
2) "the internet access account through which hundreds of
3) "the internet access account through which hundreds of
Number 1) is substantiated by the AOL letter, assuming that one accepts that having an IP assigned for a set time period (i.e. a few hours) to an account holder is equivalent to owning the internet access account in question. I doubt that number 2 can be proved, unless the screenshot giving the IP address actually showed the files being downloaded. The defendent could just as easily have uploaded them to her computer from CDs. Number 3 is a pretty straight-forward claim; however, it is not substantiated by AOL's letter.
Of course, the way the sentence is structured, all three claims are lumped together so that the sentence can be construed to mean that either the AOL letter confirms just the account ownership or that it confirms ownership AND downloading AND distributing. Such a sentence structure lets them give the wrong impression to the judge without saying anything that can be proven to be false (at worst, it can shown to be ambiguous). This gives an easy win if the Judge misunderstands and still allows them to claim that they didn't lie if they are caught-only that the sentence was misunderstood.
To top it off, the second sentence quoted above is a claim by the RIAA which basically says the defendant hasn't already said something contradicting the claim in the previous sentence (notice they say claim, not claims). This is bogus because they could claim that the lady committed murder and hasn't disputed it (which would technically be true until the defense hears the claim and can say how absurd it is!) Of course the lady's attorney disputed the misunderstood claim pretty much as soon as they got a hold of the AOL letter (that is what the article is about).
I suppose if the judge gets pissed, he can chew out the plaintiffs for sloppy writing and maybe even censure them for making misrepresentations, but not perjury.
Kinda funny though, how the article doesn't mention that the lady has a teenage daughter with friends who used the computer
(see counterclaim 27 at http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=ele
Re:Sure, the **AA are evil... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes this could definitely fly. The courts routinely consider the health of people before submitting them to a trial and/or prison. Even people in prison are very commonly released when in very poor health.
Re:Nothing to see here, please move along (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to be a law student (so: IANAL) and I agree with this statement. If nothing else, my years studying law made me aware of the cultural influence and importance of a well functioning judicial system and a 'cultural law', as we call it. This is in the Netherlands.
> Respect for law, to my mind, suggests that we should respect the courts
And here is where my beef lies: when a judge upholds a screenshot of an IP address as evidence, I don't think that particular court deserves any respect. It appears that at least some of the judges around need to be visited by the man with the cluestick, if you know what I mean. The big cluestick.
Hmm, after reading this: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060803-741
Re:Nothing to see here, please move along (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm an American living in Switzerland, and I often have this discussion with people. The usual european consensus is American's are lawsuit crazy.
After seeing both sides of the fence, it's my opinion that America does have too many lawsuits, and could use some kind of mechanism or fine tuning to reduce the misjudgements, over-awarding, and frivolous lawsuits. On the other hand, Switzerland at least could stand to move a little more in America's direction in this regard. My impression is this is true of most other European countries.
As an example, a friend of mine (call him T) ripped his achilles tendon from his heel playing tennis, which is apparently an incredibly common injury while playing such sports in his age bracket, and really the doctor should have known better and investigated a little more carefully. But anyone can make a mistake, and the doctor told T he just sprained it and gave him some cream. But T went back one week and three weeks later and told him his leg seemed to be getting worse, not better. The doctor belittled T, told him he was too sensitive to pain, and sent him on his way.
So finally we told T he needed to go to a different doctor. He was properly diagnosed, and had to get some pretty serious surgery. Had he been properly diagnosed the surgery would have been minor. He'd have been off his feet for a few days, maybe missed a couple days of work, and had crutches a few weeks. Because of the time delay he had to get much more involved surgery, spend weeks in bed and away from work, and a couple months on crutches, all because of the incredible arrogance an incompetence of the doctor.
I felt that he should sue the doctor on principle, if only to teach him a lesson. Certainly I think the doctor or the docs malpractice insurance should have paid the incresed medical fees, rather than T's insurance, and perhaps some small punitive fee. But I called around and I was informed that not only was it incredibly difficult to sue doctors (they have a kind of mafia here), but even if we won we would still have to pay our own legal fees, and we would lose money on the deal. So to punish a crap doctor here you have to have deep pockets. I think an ideal system would have rewarded T for taking the time and effort to pursue this. Not millions of dollars in "pain and suffering", but pay the medical bills and pay for time missed from work perhaps.
I completely agree things go too far in the States. BUT I have a lot more faith visiting doctors in America. They listen more carefully, and especially they explain things much more carefully. They know that if they are arrogant sloppy pricks they'll get sued. The suits drive up their malpractice insurance and serve as a warning to other patients. So it can and does have a positive effect.
Basically both systems need some fine tuning, and can probably learn from one another.
Re:Not that I want to defend the RIAA but... (Score:4, Interesting)
1. They don't have anything together before filing their case.
2. They lie all the time to strengthen their case.
Re:Nothing to see here, please move along (Score:4, Interesting)
The other thing I noticed is the connection times are all over the place, most people are more habitual, so my Hockey-meter is reading high here and saying the account is hacked! My wife knows what times her internet buddies come on and go off line. Maybe you should ask AOL if they allow two logins on the same account and if they don't if keep track of failed login attempts.
Re:Nothing to see here, please move along (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually I love it. I'm an egalitarian kind of guy, who comes from a family where there was nothing we enjoyed more than a good argument. So I find it amusing when a Slashdotter tries to tell me I'm wrong when I've been in this field for more than 32 years, and the person telling me has never even opened a law book. And the funny thing is, I wouldn't mind it in the least if he or she were actually right, and could prove me wrong, or teach me something, or could actually back up his or her opinion with authority or information....
But I'll go back to what I said [slashdot.org] after my September Slashdot interview [slashdot.org], and the rough-and-tumble "Q&A" that ensued, where I was viciously excoriated for (a) telling people that there was not yet a definitive answer to their question, (b) telling them that the law was contrary to what they thought it was, and (c) being 'short' with user ID's I suspected of use by RIAA trolls:
Re:Nothing to see here, please move along (Score:2, Interesting)