Posted on 06/25/2007 7:50:08 AM PDT by TChris
"A Washington woman sued by the RIAA has asked the Court to award her attorneys fees, after the record company plaintiffs (Interscope Records, Capitol Records, SONY BMG, Atlantic Recording, BMG Music, and Virgin Records) dropped their case against her after two years of litigation, in Interscope v. Leadbetter. The brief submitted by her attorneys (pdf) pointed out the similarity between Ms. Leadbetter's case and Capitol v. Foster. In the Leadbetter case, as well as Foster case, the RIAA sued the woman solely because she had paid for an internet access account, and then later in the case attempted to plead 'secondary liability' against her without any factual basis for doing so. This tactic had been repudiated by Judge Lee R. West in Capitol v. Foster as 'marginal' and 'untested' in his initial decision awarding attorneys fees, and in his later decision denying the RIAA's motion for reconsideration."
Good for her!
DO I hear RICO?
The government has enabled these thugs with special laws to protect them and RIAA have abused it.
The great secret of these RIAA lawsuits is that if your computer is anywhere on a WIFI network, you can make the simple argument that “An IP number is not a human being”.
If you do so, the RIAA immediately drops the case, as they absolutely DO NOT want any legal precedent that establishes this glaring exception in the law.
Since huge numbers of computers and businesses are now WIFI, about the only people left that the RIAA could pick on are those limited to a single dialup connection, and even then, it would be almost impossible to prove *who* had been downloading off that system, or if that system or its dialup number and password had not been hijacked.
So they are winning their court cases only by bullying people, almost at random, trying to silence their critics, and getting anti-competition laws passed in their favor.
Precisely.
The RIAA's tactics seem to be on very shaky legal footing, IMO.
Sounds like a good reason to buy a wireless router, even though all my computers are wired. No laptops here(yet).
Jack
Yep. If you leave it unsecured, so anyone can access it, you'll have no idea who might have used that IP. AFAIK, the law doesn't require a home user to keep any logs of wireless access, so it would be entirely unknown.
But that's just me.
It certainly is risky, but some people might like to open their wireless up just to spite the RIAA, if for no other reason.
That’s what I was thinking, just to piss them off. Besides, who said it has to be wide open?? One more thing, Linux works very well, no big worries about someone breaking into my system if the router WAS wide open.
This is all just wishful thinking anyway, would never spend the money if not needed.
Jack
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