Teen Accuses Record Companies of Collusion

evilned1 writes "A 16-year-old boy being sued by five record companies accusing him of online music piracy, accused the recording industry on Tuesday of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats."

Re:God bless this little thief

[Anonymous Coward]

God bless this little thief

God bless this alleged little thief...

That's something we've forgotten here in the USA, you are innocent until proven guilty!

We have become sooo complacent with law enforcement, that we automatically believe that they are right. They are not. They make mistakes and on rare occasions, lie to protect their jobs.

an example of when the cops screw up.... [nytimes.com]

Donate to the cause

[Harmonious Botch]

I'm a lookin for this kids web site (if he has one) and I think i'll paypal him a couple of bucks.

Here is his mother's site ( or so I believe - I can't guarantee you that it is not a scam )

http://www.p2pnet.net/goliath/ [p2pnet.net]

Re:Good luck with that

[kfg]

I've just been playing a fiddle tune. Although it is more than 200 years old I had no problem finding either sheet music or recordings of it, because anyone is free to publish and/or record without a license.

Cream rises to the top without a demon to drive it there.

Oh, the name of the tune? "The Rights of Man." I commemorates a little book of the same name. You might want to read it.

KFG

The Five Labels Found Guilty Themselves Once

[chromozone]

"The papers allege that the companies, "ostensibly competitors in the recording industry, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and public policy" by bringing the piracy cases jointly and using the same agency "to make extortionate threats ... to force defendants to pay."

The labels were actually found guilty of this once before:

States settle CD price-fixing case
By David Lieberman, USA TODAY

NEW YORK -- The five largest music companies and three of the USA's largest music retailers agreed Monday to pay $67.4 million and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups to settle a lawsuit led by New York and Florida over alleged price-fixing in the late 1990s...

  Former FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky said at the time that consumers had been overcharged by $480 million since 1997 and that CD prices would soon drop by as much as $5 a CD as a result.

In settling the lawsuit, Universal BMG and Warner said they simply wanted to avoid court costs and defended the practice.

"We believe our policies were pro-competitive and geared toward keeping more retailers, large and small, in business," Universal said in a statement."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-09-30 -cd-settlement_x.htm [usatoday.com]

Maybe some of those jobs being lost should never have been there to start with

It's called unclean hands

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unclean_hands [wikipedia.org]

"Unclean hands, sometimes clean hands doctrine, is an equitable defense in which the defendant argues that the plaintiff is not entitled to obtain an equitable remedy on account of the fact that the plaintiff is acting unethically or has acted in bad faith with respect to the subject of the complaint--that is with 'unclean hands'. The defendant has the burden of proof to show the plaintiff is not acting in good faith. The doctrine is often stated as "those seeking equity must do equity"."

Obviously the kid didn't think this up himself.

Court docs

[FienX]

Fresh from Pacer

14 - Defendant's Answer [PDF] [fienx.net]
14 Exhibit A [PDF] [fienx.net]
14 Exhibit B [PDF] [fienx.net]

Re:Smart kid

[wile_e_wonka]

Here's an article about his lawyer [technewsworld.com]. It is the same guy that represented his mom (and that worked out ok...sort of). It is a one man operation, with a little help from the mom herself.

It sounds to me like their short on funds, and I'm not sure what this lawyer is looking to get out of this--a judgment for attorney's fees? I guess he had to countersue for this kid if he is to have any chance of getting money out of this. It's too high profile to quit, but their is no funding to work with (except for this little fund mentioned in the linked article).

Re:This puts a grin on my face.

[whoever57]

Or in other words, "I didn't do, but even if I did they made me do it, and never told me not to, and it was a long time ago, and, like, even if I had it the music was legal because it was someone else's."
Sorry, but it sounds like he's squirming like a little kid caught with his hand the cookie jar, throwing out every excuse and rationalization he can come up with.

Sorry, but that is the way the US legal system works. Everyone wants to win and they are going to use every argument possible that will help them win. In addition, you can't raise defenses later, if you did not raise them at the proper time.
Anyway, it seems to me that the argument that he did not download the music is not just rationalization. If the RIAA has accused him of downloading and he (or his sister) actually bought the music, what has he done wrong?

SiteAdvisor - p2pnet,net

[westlake]

Here is his mother's site ( or so I believe - I can't guarantee you that it is not a scam )

Red-flagged by SiteAdvisor. Here is the report from McAfee for p2pnet.net:

When we tested this site we found links to warezclient.com, which we found to be a distributor of downloads some people consider adware, spyware or other unwanted programs

After entering our e-mail address on this site, we received 3.7 e-mails per week.

I offer this purely as a suggestion, mind you, not legal advice:

But if the heart of your defense is that know you "nothing, nothing!" about the darker side of the P2P nets, a jury might think that this is a mighty strange place to find you.

Re:Not really that smart of a kid, necessarily

[patio11]

Or you want to apply for credit (credit cards, private student loans, car loans, mortgages, etc) in the next 7 years. They'll be reported to all 3 credit reporting agencies as a Public Record, and you can watch your credit score sink as if you had been previously bankrupt.

Re:Smart lawyer

[wytcld]

Any lawyer who can perfect a way to make the music destroyers (do any of us doubt that the large record companies have systematically destroyed the musical arts over the last few decades?) pay a steep price for their collusion in a case like this will find plenty of courts in which to apply that method for just as long as those firms persist in their thuggery.

Re:This puts a grin on my face.

[GrahamCox]

fundamental aspects of the law such as "accusation is not conviction."

Hmmm, indeed. Two words: Guantanamo Bay.

Re:This puts a grin on my face.

[anagama]

Don't bother. GP is a brainwashed idiot.

Even the Pentagon says only about 10% will face trial because of a lack of evidence: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361740/ [msn.com]

And of course there's Seton Hall Law School's report: http://law.shu.edu/news/guantanamo_report_final_2_ 08_06.pdf [shu.edu] (pdf)
Two notable factoids: only 5% were captured by US forces. Secondly, we were paying a $4285 reward per head. Pakistan delivered quite a few and with a per capita income = $720 [worldbank.org.pk] (that's almost 6 years of pay as a reward for captured prisoners), how likely is it that there was no fraud? Can we talk negative probabilities here? Any realistic person would know there's a 100% chance innocents got nabbed for cash.

Re:This puts a grin on my face.

[smidget2k4]

Well, that would be true if individuals actually had a federal constitutional right to bear arms, but the truth is they don't. The ACLU [aclu.org] interprets the US Supreme Court ruling of U.S. v. Miller (1939) [wikipedia.org] in the popular way, stating that the second amendment applies only to state regulated militias.

So, you are right, the ACLU takes a neutral position on the second amendment because they agree with the Supreme Court's ruling in US v. Miller. That and they do not find any real civil liberty issues with gun control.

Even if they did want to take up second amendment cases they would have a hard time, the one and only time the Supreme Court granted cert to a second amendment case was U.S. v. Miller. They regularly deny cert for second amendment cases.

This has actually been informative for me, I had actually thought the ACLU had argued second amendment (or at least state constitution) cases in the past. I stand corrected, though I agree with the ACLU's stance.

Re:Did you RTA?

[chaosite]

To prosecute in civil court they must be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the plaintiff is guilty of the offense.

NO THEY DON'T!

First, you must realize that copyright infringement is not theft. Its not even a crime - its a civil offense. Which means that they are tried not in a criminal court, but a civil one. And, guess what? the "prove beyond a reasonable doubt" bit doesn't apply to civil courts.

I'm not American and I know that... If parent is American, then he should study his court system.