In the News

The music industry's lawsuit crusade against defenseless college students and housewives appears to have hit the skids lately. That might mean it's almost time for socially responsible investors to start looking at music publishers again, after their long industrywide hiatus from research lists.

Sympathy for the devil

Warner Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music, and EMI, the main movers behind the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), may have expected easy victories when they began their much-maligned campaign to sue alleged illegal music downloaders. But instead of settling their cases for a few thousand dollars each, many defendants decided to fight back -- with great success.

Calling the RIAA's case unjustified "as a reasonable exploration of the boundaries of copyright law," a federal magistrate judge late last week awarded former RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen attorneys' fees for her nearly two-and-a-half-year fight against a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Andersen is a disabled single mother living in Oregon with her now 10-year-old daughter. In February 2005, she was sued by the record labels, which accused her of using KaZaA to distribute gangster rap under the handle "gotenkito." From the outset, she denied all wrongdoing, and in October of that year, filed a countersuit against the record industry, accusing it of racketeering, fraud, and deceptive business practices.

The RIAA sent a new wave of 403 pre-litigation settlement letters on behalf of the major record companies to 22 universities today. The labels also filed 24 copyright infringement lawsuits against individuals who previously received letters but did not settle the claims.

The letters are part of the education and deterrence campaign the RIAA launched earlier this year, which focuses on illegal file sharing on college campuses. The program gives students the opportunity to resolve infringement claims against them at a discounted rate before a formal lawsuit is filed. Each letter informs the school of the forthcoming infringement suit against one of its students or personnel who used the school's computer network, and then requests the university administrators to forward the letter to the appropriate user.

The German Bundesrat has passed new legislation that will strengthen Germany's copyright laws further in favor of the entertainment industry. Sometimes called the "German DMCA," the newly-revised legislation is a hair superior to the anti-consumer DMCA legislation on the books in the United States in that it more clearly defines the rights of end users over the materials that they own. Nevertheless, the legislation is yet another price of pro-industry work, as it and puts "private use" in the hands of corporations. When a levy/tariff system is wedded with anti-circumvention laws, the industry in effect gets to double-dip in a pool of revenues.

Last year Pirate Parties were formed all over the world. Their main goal is to protect privacy, culture, and knowledge. The MPAA is not happy with politicians they can’t fund, and labels them as illegitimate thieves.

Dean Garfield, director of MPAA’s anti-piracy department, was interviewed by ZDNet recently. When he was asked whether the Pirate Party’s attempts to battle organizations like the MPAA through democratic means is legitimate, he responded: “There’s nothing about what the Pirate Bay does or what the Pirate Party does that is legitimate. There’s nothing philosophically principled about it. They steal copyright content and accept advertising dollars based on taking other people’s work. There’s nothing noble about it.”

It's common to see reports that stress the economic importance of copyright and the content owners who benefit from it; the Copyright Alliance says that "core copyright industries" generated $819 billion in the US in 2005, for instance. What's less common is to find studies that look at the economic impact of fair use. That was the goal behind a new report (PDF) from the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA). Their provocative finding? "In 2006, fair use-related industry value added was $2.2 trillion, 16.6 percent of total US current dollar GDP."

Contents of an email received by the United States Pirate Party, Pirate Parties International would be grateful if you could assist this gentleman with his research.

In the over 20,000 file-sharing cases filed so far, the RIAA has relied on a simple procedure: scour P2P networks for shared music, file a John Doe lawsuit to learn the identity of the account-holder responsible for the IP address flagged by the RIAA's investigative arm, and, if the account-holder doesn't agree to the RIAA's settlement terms, file a lawsuit using a boilerplate complaint. A federal judge in California has now refused to grant the RIAA a judgment based on just such a complaint, forcing the RIAA to draw up a new complaint containing specifics.

Yolanda Rodriguez was sued by the record labels for copyright infringement in November of last year. Apparently, Rodriguez is of the "ignore the problem and hope it will go away" mindset, as she never filed an answer to the complaint, and a search of the case history shows no action on her part to fight the lawsuit.

The over 20,000 file-sharing lawsuits that have been filed over the past few years share a single distinction: not one of them has made it to trial. The RIAA is trying to keep Virgin Records, et al v. Jammie Thomas from a jury trial, filing a motion for summary adjudication on some specific aspects of the case.

What the RIAA is after is a ruling from the judge that some of the facts of the case are not in dispute. If that is the case, then there are no issues of material fact that exist to be decided, and therefore no need for a trial by jury. It's the same scenario in Novell v. SCO: all the material facts were decided by the judge last month, so there's nothing left for a jury to decide.

The long-running drama between the RIAA and Debbie Foster is about to come to an end, but not without an additional bit of fighting about the attorneys' fees. After Debbie Foster triumphed in the copyright infringement case brought against her by the record labels, she sought and obtained an award for attorneys' fees. After the RIAA exhausted its appeals—and after some further prodding from Foster—it finally cut Foster a check for $68,685.23 on August 30.

Case closed, right? Wrong. Foster subsequently filed a motion to amend the attorneys' fees award citing two major factors: the amount of the payment and the way in which it was paid. Although the RIAA paid in full up to the time that the amount of the award was finalized, it neglected to include fees incurred by Foster's attorney pertaining to a hearing on July 5. It also neglected to include the interest that had accrued since the date of the award.