Source: http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/06/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 23:02:56+00:00

Document:
In the Boston University ex parte "John Doe" case, Arista v. Does 1-21, where a student moved to vacate the ex parte order granting discovery, and to quash the subpoena issued under it, the RIAA has filed its opposition to the motion.
In Lava v. Amurao, where the defendant had interposed two counterclaims -- one for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement and one seeking forfeiture of the copyrights due to copyright misuse -- the RIAA had moved to dismiss both counterclaims. The Court at oral argument had indicated that the declaratory judgment claim was unnecessary and would be dismissed, but the copyright misuse counterclaim would stand. However, the minute entry in the Court's docket sheet indicated that both counterclaims would stand.
Today the Court corrected the minute entry, confirming what had been said at oral argument: the declaratory judgment claim is dismissed; the copyright misuse claim is not dismissed.
Tanya Andersen, the disabled single mother in Oregon who had been defending herself against baseless copyright infringement allgations by the RIAA for almost two years, until the RIAA finally dropped its case against her, has filed a lawsuit for malicious prosecution, Andersen v. Atlantic. Included as defendants, in addition to the record companies, are the RIAA itself, Safenet (which owns MediaSentry), and Settlement Support Center LLC.
Open Letter to Colleges and Universities, Printable Link.
Make sure it gets to your college's administrators and legal counsel, and if your school has an outside Internet Service Provider, to them as well.
This is an historic opportunity for you to take steps to make the RIAA's litigation campaign more of a level playing field.
Once the RIAA has obtained whatever "settlement" money it can squeeze from students and parents willing and able to pay the money, and to agree to the other extortionate demands in the RIAA's standard nonnegotiable form 'settlement' agreement, it will bring a "John Doe" proceeding against the others. Contrary to the spirit of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, it will do everything it possibly can, in that proceeding, ex parte. It will file the complaint without notice to anyone, and submit the ex parte discovery order application without notice to anyone. Then, once it's gotten an ex parte order signed by the judge, it will give minimal notice to you with minimal notice to your students, of an order which has already been entered.
Typically, "John Doe" will receive only a copy of a subpoena and a copy of the order with a letter from you, and will have just a few days, or at most a couple of weeks, to respond before his or her personal confidential information will be divulged. Meanwhile, if the student were to confer with a lawyer the lawyer doesn't know what to say, because he or she has no copy of the underlying summons and complaint, no copy of the papers upon which the ex parte order is based, and no copy of the judge's rules, all of which a defendant normally does receive in any normal litigation.
What you can do is insist that the RIAA stipulate with you that (a) any motion for an order granting discovery of the students' identities will be on notice, both to you and the students, rather than ex parte, (b) that the RIAA must furnish to you, for each "John Doe", a copy of the summons and complaint and exhibits, a full set of the motion papers, and a full set of all other court documents which are required to be served on the defendant when an action is initiated... for you to distribute to the affected students, before -- not after -- the motion is to be heard. A very, very important decision was handed down in New Mexico, in Capitol v. Does 1-16, 07-485 (WJ/LFG), involving the University of New Mexico, where Magistrate Judge Garcia ruled that the motion should be made on notice rather than ex parte.
Judge Garcia ruled that ex parte applications are the exception rather than the rule, that the RIAA's claims of "irreparable harm" require "Coleridgian suspension of disbelief", that "the harm related to disclosure of confidential information in a student or faculty member’s Internet files can be equally harmful", and that the RIAA should meet and confer with the attorneys for the university to devise a procedure for giving notice both to the university and to the affected students and faculty members. Ultimately, Judge Garcia required the RIAA to provide 40 days notice to the affected students and to provide full sets of papers to the university for transmission to each student, to give them time to review the papers with counsel, and to oppose the discovery if they so chose.
In October, 2007, in Greenbaum v. Google, a New York court has reaffirmed the principle that identity information cannot be disclosed absent (a) prior notice to the anonymous person, (b) affording the anonymous person an opportunity to be heard in opposition to the application, and (c) an evidentiary showing of a prima facie case against the anonymous person. Application of this principle to the RIAA cases would defeat all of the RIAA's ex parte discovery applications.
If the RIAA refuses to stipulate to giving prior notice and an opportunity to be heard in opposition to the motion, you should go to Court yourself and get an order requiring them to comply with these fundamentals which are required by due process. Since the only possible claim of an emergency is that you -- the university -- will be destroying the records, you, as the university, can easily dispel that absurd notion.
In the first place, the very legality of the RIAA's whole statutory theory for getting the ex parte discovery orders is in doubt. In Interscope v. Does 1-7, even though the application was ex parte, it was denied. The Court held that the statute relied upon by the RIAA was applicable only to discovery sought by government agencies. So you should certainly bring that case to the Court's attention; the RIAA lawyers will not.
Since the RIAA has been proceeding ex parte, however, and since they haven't been challenged by the ISP's, judges have usually signed off on the orders even though the applications were supported by conclusory, hearsay, opinion statements of suspect reliability which would never be considered admissible in any court in the United States. (Compare the courts of the Netherlands and Canada, where the ISP's challenged the application for "John Doe" information, and the Courts refused to grant the discovery orders, due to the unreliability of the RIAA's investigative "method").
The lack of reliability of the RIAA's "investigatory" technique is becoming more and more well documented. See, eg. the February 23, 2007, deposition of the RIAA's expert.
Accordingly, we believe you should oppose the RIAA's application for an order of discovery.
Likewise, if you learn of the RIAA obtaining such an order ex parte, you should move to vacate the order.
In fact, the foregoing case specifically enjoined the RIAA to cease and desist from continuing its practice of joinder, an injunction which the RIAA has simply ignored. Opposing the RIAA's deliberate misjoinder of unrelated "John Doe" defendants is another thing you can do to assist your students and their families in achieving a more level playing field.
A third thing you can do is point out to the Court that there is no known cause of action for "making available", which is the basis of the RIAA's suits, in the Copyright Act. See Elektra v. Barker, argued January 26, 2007, and awaiting decision.
In October, 2007, the State Attorney General of Oregon, on behalf of the University of Oregon, moved to quash the RIAA's subpoena on the ground that the RIAA's evidence fails to identify copyright infringers, so that the University -- were it to comply with the subpoena -- would be violating privacy laws by turning over the identity information being sought. The AG's office pointed out that in order to comply with the subpoena without violating privacy laws, it would need to conduct a thorough investigation, including forensic examinations, which it is not required to do under Fed. R. Civ. P. 45.
Suggestions to College Students Being Targeted by the RIAA.
THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. HOWEVER, I DO ADVISE YOU TO GET LEGAL ADVICE, AND NOT TO TAKE YOUR ADVICE FROM THE RIAA, THE MPAA, YOUR SCHOOL, OR ANYONE ELSE WHO IS NOT YOUR LAWYER.
1. Join together with other students who are being targeted, pool your financial resources, and hire an attorney who is ready, willing, and able to (a) advise you of your rights and (b) fight the RIAA's "John Doe" cases when they are brought.
2. Bring to your college or university's attention my "Open Letter to Colleges and Universities"
3. Join or start campus charters of Digital Freedom and/or FreeCulture.
4. Remember that the RIAA does not presently have your identity, and that by calling them or visiting their web site you may be giving them your identity.
Link to printable version of these suggesions.
Dawnell Leadbetter, the successful defendant in Interscope v. Leadbetter, has brought a motion for attorneys fees against the record company plaintiffs, Interscope Records, Capitol Records, SONY BMG, Atlantic Recording, BMG Music, and Virgin Records.
The RIAA's case against her had been dismissed in December, on the plaintiffs' own motion, with the Court indicating that it was retaining jurisdiction over the matter "to hear collateral issues like the imposition of costs and fees at a later date after the voluntary dismissal [of] this action."
The RIAA has asked for more time to respond to the counterclaims which have been filed against it in UMG v. Del Cid, a Tampa, Florida, case in which the plaintiff record companies are accused of, among other things, conspiracy and extortion.
In Atlantic v. Boggs, the RIAA has designated Dr. Doug Jacobson -- the same expert witness that is the subject of an in limine exclusion motion in UMG v. Lindor -- as its expert witness.
It is very unusual -- indeed it is probably a violation of the Court's rules -- to file such a document with the Court, which is what the RIAA did in this instance.
The deadlines for conclusion of pretrial discovery and for the making of dispositive motions (i.e. motions for summary judgment) have been extended in Arista v. LimeWire. Under the new case management order, Summary judgment motions are scheduled to be fully briefed by March 18, 2008.
RIAA Ex Parte Discovery Application Against University of New Mexico Denied!!!
The RIAA's ex parte motion to compel the University of New Mexico to disclose the identities of its students has been denied, in the District Court of New Mexico, by Magistrate Judge Lorenzo F. Garcia, in Capitol v. Does 1-16.
Plaintiffs contend that unless the Court allows ex parte immediate discovery, they will be irreparably harmed. While the Court does not dispute that infringement of a copyright results in harm, it requires a Coleridgian “suspension of disbelief” to accept that the harm is irreparable, especially when monetary damages can cure any alleged violation. On the other hand, the harm related to disclosure of confidential information in a student or faculty member’s Internet files can be equally harmful.
As the Plaintiffs do not presently know the identity of the Defendants, there is no reasonable way to ensure that those prospective Defendants are given notice or even an opportunity to respond in opposition to the request for disclosure. Rather, Plaintiffs seek to obtain information directly from the University of New Mexico. Plaintiffs propose that the University will be able to notify subscribers that a subpoena was served. However, the Court needs to ensure that subscribers actually receive notification and are given a reasonable opportunity to intervene in order to stop the disclosure of sensitive information.
In any event, the Court[...] sees no need to act on an ex parte application. Rather, it would appear appropriate that Plaintiffs and the University of New Mexico confer on an appropriate process to ensure that, if a subpoena is served, the University not turn over information until it has given notice to individual subscribers that a subpoena has been issued and allow those subscribers to intervene in this proceeding to protect disclosure of sensitive information. Moreover, ex parte proceedings should be the exception, not the rule. Accordingly, the Court declines to grant Plaintiffs’ request for ex parte application.
Further, the federal rules prohibit discovery until the parties have met and conferred, formulated an appropriate discovery plan, and made arrangements for disclosure of information. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26. Here, of course, the individual subscribers are unknown, have not been sued and cannot “meet and confer” with Plaintiffs. However, the University of New Mexico, the entity from which discovery is sought, has a right to be heard on this matter.
Accordingly, the Court directs Plaintiffs to contact University counsel, apprise the University that it is seeking discovery from the University, and attempt to agree on a fair and reasonable process that would allow Plaintiffs to identify limited information about the subscribers. If Plaintiffs and the University can agree on a process that includes prior notification to subscribers and a reasonable period of time to intervene or object, a proposed consent order should be submitted. If Plaintiffs and the University cannot agree, the Court will conduct a status conference with Plaintiffs’ counsel and University counsel on the appropriate manner to initiate discovery and provide notice to affected individuals. Once Plaintiffs’ counsel confers with the University of New Mexico legal division, Plaintiffs’ counsel is to notify the Court concerning the status of their agreements, if any.
IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that Plaintiffs’ Ex Parte Application for Leave to Take Immediate Discovery [Doc. 4] is DENIED.
Defendant is represented by Richard A. Altman of Manhattan. Similar motions had been made to dismiss virtually identical counterclaims in two other cases handled by Mr. Altman, Atlantic v. Shutovsky, in which the motion was denied, and Lava v. Amurao, in which the motion was denied as to the copyright misuse counterclaim, and in which the Court's order denied the motion as to the declaratory judgment claim but at oral argument the Judge had indicated he was granting the motion as to that claim.
Thereafter, Download Squad published an article about the filing, which was referred to by a blog, New Music Strategies.
What followed next was pretty amazing. A record company executive who sits on the board of the UK version of the RIAA got into an email exchange with the author of New Music Strategies, threatening to report him to the university by which he is employed if he did not delete the link to the Download Squad article. The author, in turn, published the entire email exchange on his blog, generating a lot of comments.
Shelly Palmer interviews Ray Beckerman for Podcast. June 11, 2007, Santa Monica, California, outside DCIA P2P Media Summit LA.
In Arista v. Does 1-21, the Boston case brought by the RIAA to obtain the identities of 21 Boston University students, a motion to vacate the ex parte discovery order, and the subpoena issued pursuant to that order, has been made by one of the students.
The student is represented by Raymond Sayeg of the Boston office of multi-state law firm, Denner Pellegrino.
The transcript of the May 18, 2007, oral argument, before Hon. Charles L. Brieant, in Lava v. Amurao, is now available online. The judge indicated he was denying the RIAA's motion to dismiss the copyright misuse counterclaim but was granting the motion as to the counterclaim for a declaratory judgment.
A subsequent court order indicated that the Judge Briant was denying the motion as to both counterclaims, so there is an inconsistency between the argument and the order. We do not know at this time whether the order was mistaken, or whether the Judge changed his mind subsequent to the oral argument.
The RIAA has filed its reply to the copyright misuse counterclaim.
The dismissal relates merely to the RIAA's claims against Ms. Andersen, and does not relate to her (a) claim for attorneys fees or (b) counterclaims against the RIAA.
Ms. Andersen is represented by Lory Lybeck of Mercer Island, Washington.
In a new tactic, the RIAA has attempted to "herd" three (3) unrelated cases to a joint settlement conference before Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy in Elektra v. Schwartz, Maverick v. Chowdhury, and Elektra v. Torres, all in Brooklyn, New York.
Another oddity is that, although the Court's order denies the motion in its entirety, this "Opposition" document states that the motion was denied only in part. Apparently they are making this contention based upon Judge Brieant's having stated at oral argument that he was inclined to grant the motion as to the Declaratory Judgment counterclaim.

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