Court rules against RIAA

[Urban Ranger]

A Massachusetts court has sided with two universities, ruling that the RIAA cannot run a centralized subpoena sweatshop from Washington D.C. and expect to attack all 50 states. The court has called on the RIAA to file subpoenas against file-traders in their respective jurisdictions.

"Today's ruling requires the recording industry to file subpoenas where it alleges that copyright infringement occurs, rather than blanketing the country from one court in D.C.," said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer, in a statement. "The court ruling confirms that due process applies to Internet user privacy nationwide."

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Excellent news.

[geeslaka]

I don't know the number of districts but that should drain those bastards of manpower like nothing else.

[H Tower]

There are ~90 Court districts plus assorted territorial districts.


All this ruling really means is that the lawyers will be getting a lot of airplane time as they fly from one court district to the next. It may slow them down some, but they've got the bucks to get the manpower needed to do this. A minor setback for the RIAA only

[Skanky Burns]

The way we win this is by draining the RIAA cash reserves. This is a very good thing.

[Dr. A. Cula]

You're wrong. They'll just increase the CD prices and blame it on recession or something and for some reason people will buy that.

[Skanky Burns]

Some will, more will not.

[SpencerH]

The RIAA are fighting a losing battle. They're just too stupid to understand the point. When companies like the baby-bells start suing them in order to protect their interests you know its all over but the crying (although that may still take some time to finish).

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dr. A. Cula
You're wrong. They'll just increase the CD prices and blame it on recession or something and for some reason people will buy that.

Fewer and fewer people will buy the crap, ending up in a downward spiral.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dr. A. Cula
You're wrong. They'll just increase the CD prices and blame it on recession or something and for some reason people will buy that.

Fewer and fewer people will buy the crap, ending up in a downward spiral.

[Lefty Scaevola]

It is an igsignificant ruling, other than the embaressment to the attornies. Their large multistate law firms with have attornies admitted to practice in most of the federal jusidictions, and they willl just mail or fax the applications.

[mrmitchell]

Well...every ruling counts, even the smallest ones.

Unfortunately, however, with the massive markup already on CDs, this should not hurt their earnings for a while.

[Dinner]

They'll just refile in the new district and instead of having one lawyer file they'll just farm it out to a different lawyer in each district. They'll still have one lawyer per case and they're costs probably won't go up very much.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by SpencerH
The RIAA are fighting a losing battle. They're just too stupid to understand the point.

Actually, they are legally required to fight in order to protect their copyrights. They have, however, gone about this very stupidly. They should have responded by lowering prices, diversifying their offerings, and embracing the technology in a way like iTunes.

Prices now are as expensive as DVDs. Forget it.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Dr. A. Cula
You're wrong. They'll just increase the CD prices and blame it on recession or something and for some reason people will buy that.

Since CDs of new recordings are a State-supported monopoly business they are already as high as the market will bear. Increasing prices will directly lead to decreasing sales, and decreasing profit. Especially when an alternative exists (the alternative that they're trying to shut down).

The fact is that the recording industry is getting poorer, plain and simple. Eventually they will start to run out of money. This is a step in the right direction.

[SlowwHand]