Source: http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/08/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 23:14:04+00:00

Document:
We have received a copy of the complaint filed with the FTC by the Computer & Communications Industry Association against such content owners as Universal, NBC Universal, the National Football League, Major League Baseball, Dreamworks Studios, and others, for misrepresenting copyright law in their "copyright warnings".
and Morgan Creek Productions, Inc.
practices in or affecting commerce.
and then goes on to provide very specific examples of false and deceptive statements by the content owners, attaching selected examples as exhibits.
Non-pdf versions of the full complaint are available online here at Groklaw (without exhibits) and here at Defend Fair Use (with exhibits).
Came across this great copyright law article on C/Net News. (Tip of the hat to Steve Meyer's DISC & DAT email newsletter for bringing Maura's article to my attention). -R.B.
Qorvis' Maura Corbett says copyright law wasn't intended to serve as a stick for rights holders to wield against the freedom of information.
I'll bet you can recite most of the copyright warnings that appear on your screen when you pop in a DVD, or at the end of football game, can't you?
At the very least, we all know that when the warning signs appear, what follows are a few very-important-sounding sentences noting the dire consequences of unauthorized use of what we're about to see. We don't necessarily understand it, but we know it's bad. And if we were to believe what they tell us, discussing Barry Bonds' homeruns around the water cooler would put us all in jail.
Did it ever occur to you that, in many cases, these serious, ubiquitous warnings may not actually be accurate?
.....For example, warnings on many Universal DVDs state, in part, that "any unauthorized exhibition, distribution or copying of this film or any part thereof (including soundtrack) is an infringement of the relevant copyright and will subject the infringer to severe civil and criminal penalties."
This statement is simply untrue--the federal copyright statutes specifically allow unauthorized reproduction for criticism, commentary and other purposes. Just recently, the NFL threatened the media by withholding press credentials for any organization that showed more than 45 seconds of a game.
Recent reports by Variety and by the Associated Press underscore the potential importance of the class action brought by Tanya Andersen against the RIAA, the record companies, Media Sentry and others, Andersen v. Atlantic.
A lawsuit recently filed against the Recording Industry Assn. of America could ultimately force the org to drop or dramatically change the way it uses its principal weapon in the fight against online piracy, according to experts and observers.
The case -- filed in Oregon and asserting claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act -- details the RIAA's alleged use of "illegal and flawed" methods when investigating people for downloading or swapping copyrighted songs without paying for them.
The plaintiff in the case, disabled single mother Tanya Andersen, claims the RIAA was aware of the faulty methods but has nonetheless filed lawsuits against innocent people in some cases.
Andersen claims she is not the only victim of such tactics and is therefore seeking class-action status for her suit. If the court grants that status, the RIAA could be facing a losing proposition because class-action suits can be extremely risky for defendants, in this case creating the potential for a big payout by the music labels.
"If class action is certified, it's more likely that the record companies would settle," said Ronnie London, an attorney versed in class-action law with the firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, which specializes in communications law.
Settlement could also lead to less aggressive legal tactics in pursuit of online pirates.
An Oregon woman has filed a class-action lawsuit against the Recording Industry Association of America, accusing it of illegal spying and intimidation against thousands of people across the nation to crack down on music pirating.
The lawsuit by Tanya J. Andersen claims the association and a company called MediaSentry "conspired to develop a massive threat and litigation enterprise targeting private citizens across the United States."
The lawsuit also accuses the association of violating state and federal racketeering laws.
The complaint filed August 15 in U.S. District Court in Portland claims that MediaSentry has admitted it has misidentified people suspected of illegally downloading music.
The RIAA has filed papers in Elektra v. Santangelo II, in opposition to the defendants' motion to add Kazaa and AOL as third party defendants.
The RIAA has responded to the defendants' submission of the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Latin American Music v. Archdiocese of San Juan, in Elektra v. Barker, submitting a 3-page single-spaced letter to Judge Karas arguing that the decision does not negate its "making available" theory.
Four years and more than 20,000 lawsuits later, the RIAA’s campaign of suing individual American music fans has failed. It has failed to curtail P2P downloading. It has not persuaded music fans that sharing is equivalent to shoplifting. It has not put a penny into the pockets of artists. It has failed to drive the bulk of filesharers into the arms of authorized music services. In fact, the RIAA lawsuits may well be driving filesharers to new technologies that will be much harder for the RIAA’s investigators to infiltrate and monitor.
Although the RIAA has made several motions to dismiss charges of "copyright misuse" when they had been interposed as a counterclaim, it has now -- for what is believed to be the first time -- filed a motion to strike when "copyright misuse" was asserted solely as an affirmative defense, in UMG v. Lindor.
Although Ms. Lindor interposed no counterclaim, the RIAA's arguments are virtually identical to the arguments it made in attacking the counterclaims in four (4) other cases.
8. The plaintiffs, who are competitors, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and of public policy, by tying their copyrights to each other, collusively litigating and settling all cases together, and by entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in accordance with a uniform agreement, and through common lawyers, thus overreaching the bounds and scope of whatever copyrights they might have.
9. As such, they are guilty of misuse of their copyrights.
Ms. Lindor's opposition papers are due September 18th, and the RIAA's reply papers are due October 2nd.
In its attempt to create a right to sue for "making available", the RIAA has argued, at the oral argument in Elektra v. Barker, and more recently in its opposition brief in Warner v. Cassin, that the term "to authorize" in the preamble language of 17 USC 106 means that merely "authorizing" something is tantamount to "infringement". This argument was recently repudiated by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Latin American Music Co. v. Archdiocese of San Juan.
Defendants' lawyers brought this recent holding to the respective Judges' attention in both the Barker and Cassin cases.
Pro Se Defendant Loses to RIAA in Atlantic v. Howell in Arizona, Judge Holds "Making Available" is a "Distribution"
In Atlantic v. Howell, a case against a pro se defendant in Arizona, the judge ruled in favor the RIAA and concluded that "making available" is in and of itself a copyright infringement.
This is the second time of which we are aware in which, in the context of a summary judgment motion against a pro se litigant, a judge has stated that merely "making available" is in and of itself a copyright infringement. The first was Motown v. DePietro in Philadelphia, where the RIAA's summary judgment motion was nevertheless denied.
"Digital Daily" on "All Things Digital"
Tip of the hat to Jon Newton at p2pnet.net who brought this to my attention.
The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that in Virgin v. Does 1-33, the RIAA's attempt to obtain the identities of students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, "John Doe #28", a student at the University, has made a motion to quash the subpoena which has been served.
According to the News Sentinel, this is the first attempt to attack the challenge to the RIAA's discovery proceedings in Knoxville.
The student is represented by Johnnie Louis Johnson III, of Memphis.
In Warner v. Cassin, the RIAA has taken the unusual step of making a motion for leave to file a sur-reply brief, and the even more unusual step of filing a sur-reply brief without the Court's permission having been granted.
The proposed brief would be in response to the reply memorandum served by Ms. Cassin in response to the RIAA's papers in opposition to Ms. Cassin's motion to dismiss the complaint.
Ms. Cassin opposed the "motion".
Accorting to ZeroPaid.com, the RIAA has targeted 503 additional college students at 58 colleges and universities. We note that Harvard is not among them.
503 "lucky" new students get to start the Fall Semester even deeper in debt.
TheStreet.Com: "Music Labels Might Still be Shorts"
I've been highlighting the idea that content owners and producers will benefit greatly from the collapsing distribution costs provided by the Internet for more than a year. For the last few weeks, I've been trying to embrace even the music labels. Yes, the same music labels that have actually not only been unable to figure out how to monetize free and instantaneous distribution of their content but that have actually been suing those who actively steal their content.
But as the headline of my alma mater's Daily Lobo underscored this weekend, these guys who own the rights to all the quality, popular music from the last century just keep self-destructing. They're supposed to be end-user empowering.
I spent some time during my visit home last week at the University of New Mexico's Albuquerque campus, where I still unofficially hold the record for points per minute average on the Lobo basketball team. While there, I saw the headline on the student paper: "Judge's ruling doesn't dismiss RIAA's case." Seems New Mexico Federal District Judge Lorenzo Garcia denied a request to subpoena the University of New Mexico for the personal information of Internet users suspected of music piracy.
I'm sorry, but what year is it? You're telling me that in July 2007, as industry revenue has fallen double digits this year, as the entire music industry is collapsing into possible bankruptcy, these guys are still actively suing college kids trading music files?

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