In a decision which is devastating to the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) campaign against file sharing, both parties in Atlantic v. Andersen case have agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice. This means that Tanya Andersen, a disabled single-mother of a nine year old daughter, is the prevailing party and the door is now open to recovering attorneys fees.

The Oregon woman was accused of sharing gangsta rap music using the KaZaa P2P client. She completely denied involvement in distributing tracks like "Hoes in My Room" using the P2P network and filed a countersuit accusing the record industry of racketeering, fraud, and deceptive business practices in October 2005. The RIAA alleged that she shared the songs with the handle "gotenkito."

Last month, Andersen filed a motion for summary judgment, saying that the plaintiffs have "failed to provide competent evidence sufficient to satisfy summary judgment standards" to show that she was guilty of copyright infringement. A forensic expert hired by the RIAA also completely failed to find any evidence whatsoever on her hard drive to support the RIAA's allegations.

The RIAA had no choice but to dismiss the case "with prejudice". This effectively exonerates Andersen of the crime. In the past, the RIAA has moved to dismiss cases "without prejudice" which ends the lawsuit without a winner. The RIAA could now be forced to cough up an attorneys' fee award.

Andersen's counterclaim is still "standing on its own," according to Tanya, which means she still has the opportunity to argue her counterclaims before the court while the RIAA cannot pursue its copyright infringement claims any further.

Most recording artists are indentured servants anyway... everyone should just record their own stuff and sell it on the internet. Do you really need a company to distribute CDs for you anymore?

See, my problem is, I have an assload of Discs and the old ones are deteriorating to the point that I can nolonger access some of the sings since the foil on the top side is bubbling up, wearing off, etc.....so I download to replace what I've lost.

which is why the mpaa will never be able to stop companies from breaking their copy protection. they may have succeeded a few times with some upstart companies by running up the legal fees, but they've never won a legal case that i'm aware of that revokes the rights of fair use.

"They couldn't afford to do business and fight all the legal fights. They essentially got sued out of existence."
"It's really unfortunate that we can't get one of (the lawsuits) to an appellate court and get (the court) to look at the DMCA issues," Page said.

a case like this really needs to either go to state supreme or supreme to really make a difference, piss on what a small time district judge has to say about the matter. she's probably so out of touch with technology that she hasn't even heard of the dmca.

I always thought that if you owned the disc/tape/record/8-Track that you could make "backup copies" without problem? Is that not true?

Oh, and I know this isn't true of most popular artists but my friend, who has a few CDs out, told me that he didn't care about people copying his music as long as the music got out there. That sounds like the cool answer but deep down I know most musicians would love to keep the lights on.

it is indeed not true. making any copy of any form even if you own it is basically illegal. Changing it's format it also illegal. I've done exhaustive research on this, being a musician and home recording producer/engineer.

Whoa.

Well I'm all for this.

and "Hoes in My Room"

In what appears to be the first such occurrence, the recording industry must foot nearly $70,000 in legal bills incurred by an Oklahoma woman whom it unsuccessfully accused of "vicariously" aiding copyright infringement.

Until Monday's ruling in this case, called Capitol v. Foster, the Recording Industry Association of America had never been ordered to pay attorneys' fees as part of its ongoing battle against allegedly illicit file swapping, according to attorney Ray Beckerman, who has been tracking such suits at the blog Recording Industry vs The People.

The RIAA, for its part, said in a statement sent to CNET News.com Tuesday: "We respectfully believe that this ruling is in error and is an isolated occurrence."

Lawsuit targets have been unsuccessful in recovering such fees in at least five other recent cases.

The RIAA's suit against Deborah Foster began in November 2004, when it claimed evidence that an IP address associated with her Internet service provider account was engaging in illegal file sharing. Foster repeatedly asserted she had no knowledge of such activity, and in 2005, the RIAA expanded its complaint to include her adult daughter, Amanda. Because Amanda failed to defend herself against the complaint, the RIAA won a judgment against her by default.

The RIAA continued to pursue its claims against Deborah Foster until U.S. District Judge Lee West in Oklahoma City dismissed them last July. The judge went on to find Foster was eligible for attorneys fees, but the RIAA called for further proceedings to determine the amount.

Foster requested $105,680.75, but the judge concluded in a lengthy 14-page analysis of her itemized expenses and other billing materials that she was eligible only for $68,685.23.

The case was only one of thousands of lawsuits filed against university students, teenagers and grandmothers by the recording industry in its multiyear campaign against peer-to-peer file sharing. But Foster's quest for attorneys fees after her case was dismissed drew a friend-of-the-court brief from advocacy groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union and Public Citizen.

The groups argued that the RIAA has effectively bullied innocent parties into settling by offering "a carefully chosen sum that is substantially smaller than the legal fees required to fight the accusations." The organization has also been known to get the identity of its targets wrong in the past.

"A fee award would encourage innocent accused infringers to stand up and fight back against bogus RIAA claims, deter the RIAA from continuing to prosecute meritless suits that harass defendants it knows or reasonably should know are innocent, and further the purposes of the Copyright Act by reaffirming the appropriate limits of a copyright owner's exclusive rights," they wrote.

The RIAA on Tuesday defended its handling of the Foster case.

"Our interest in these cases is enforcing the rights of the record companies and artists, while fostering an online environment where the legal marketplace can flourish and the music industry can invest in the new bands of tomorrow," the group said in a statement. "In the handful of cases where the person engaging in the illegal activity in the household is not the person responsible for the ISP account, we look to gather the facts quickly and do our best to identify the appropriate defendant."

Despite RIAA lawyers' brilliant legal argument that they shouldn't be required to pay the victim of a lawsuit they brought without evidence because they were still pretty sure she was pirating music has come to its logical consclusion. Today an appeals court upheld both the decision to force the RIAA to pay Tanya Andersen's legal bills and another dismissing her counterclaims against the organization without prejudice.

Although not as sensational, the status of her claims of RIAA harassment could have a longer lasting impact on the future of such litigation. After the RIAA's suit against her was dropped with prejudice, meaning they may not sue her over the same incident, Andersen decided to continue her claims against the RIAA in a separate suit that she hopes will qualify for class action status. By affirming the decision to drop her original counterclaims without prejudice, they may be included in future lawsuits, such as the one she has pending against the RIAA right now.

Her suit charges the RIAA with malicious prosecution and includes, among other allegations, that they tried to gather evidence against her by attempting to contact her eight year old daughter without her permission. She's also accusing the RIAA of violating Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisation (RICO) laws, although this tactic seems unlikely to succeed as no violence or threats of violence are claimed.

Wow, cool.

I read something the other day about how EMI may pull its funding for the RIAA...

I hope the RIAA burns in the firey pit of record industry hell.

26 June 2008 13:06 by Rich "vurbal" Fiscus | 1 comment

It's been nearly 3 years since the RIAA brought a copyright infringement suit against Tanya Andersen accusing her of sharing files illegally on KaZaA, and nearly a year since she was awarded lawyer fees related to the case after it was dismissed with prejudice. Recording industry lawyers characterize Ms. Andersen's claims against them as an attempt to game the system, but the facts simply aren't on their side.

What really happened should be an eye opener for anyone who believes the labels are actually looking for justice, rather than simply trying to show they can bully people because they have the resources to do so. The RIAA spent nearly two years getting through the discovery process. When the investigation was complete they actually had a weaker case than when they started, and still they claimed the moral high ground, even going so far as to assert their lack of evidence shouldn't be held against them.

According to US Magistrate Judge Donald Ashmanskas, the damages awarded to Ms. Andersen were primarily based on the fact that recording industry attorneys didn't even pursue evidence which clearly suggested someone else was actually responsible.

In his original decision awarding damages Judge Ashmanskas stated "both plaintiffs and defendant at some point identified a man residing in Everett, Washington, who has no connection to defendant, as a user of the screen name gotenkito@KaZaA. When contacted by plaintiffs in April 2007 (almost two years after initiating this action), this man made similar denials to those consistently made by defendant. Declaration of Amy Bauer, Ex. F to Plaintiffs' Response Brief, pp. 2-3. Inexplicably, plaintiffs credit his denials and discredit defendant's."

He goes on to say "they appeared to readily accept the denial of infringement by a third party tied to the user name at issue even though the record discloses no reason to do so, nor any reason to wait so long to contact him after plaintiffs had evidence that implicated him as the actual infringer."

In describing the case's conclusion he summed it up with a simple analogy "In poker terms, defendant didn't call; plaintiffs folded."

So how did the RIAA respond? Not surprisingly they chose to ignore the relevant case law addressing the award of lawyer fees, most notably the 1994 case in which John Fogerty was granted a similar judgement after successfully defending himself against a copyright infringement suit from his former label. Instead they argued that the judge should take a case of trademark violation into account.

In his latest ruling Judge Ashmanskas responded by saying simply "In that case, the Ninth Circuit addressed the calculation of attorney's fees under the Lanham Act, not the Copyright Act."

No doubt the RIAA will call the decision a miscarriage of justice, just as they have every other loss in this case. But in reality they're probably scared of the consequences. They have a consistent record of dropping cases when it looks like an important ruling will go against them. This time they were too late, and the defendant was too determined.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has fully paid $108,000 USD restitution to P2P defendant Tanya Anderson for lawyer's fees incurred during Tanya's year long winning case against the group.

Over the years, the RIAA has sued tens of thousands of file sharers and many have settled for, on average, $3000 USD. However, a few accused file sharers have fought back and let the cases go to court. Recently the RIAA has suffered a few setbacks in their quest to stop piracy through lawsuits however, including the case of Tanya Anderson. Andersen was accused of downloading hundreds of rap songs under the username "gotenkito" but the RIAA failed to prove that she had any of the files or that she had even downloaded any of them at all.

Although Ms. Anderson won the case, and got paid for the RIAA's waste of the court's time it is important to note that Ms. Anderson's lawyer fees exceeded $300,000 USD and the $107,834 paid back by the RIAA will obviously not fulfill all her requirements. It does however set a precedent that will hopefully push more lawyers to take on cases for accused file sharers, seeing the amount of possible fees that can be had.

"Together with the $117.03 off accumulated post-judgment interest, the total amount of the $107,951.03 has been fully paid and satisfied by the Judgment Creditors," reads the judges statement.

Anderson will now move on the offensive, suing the RIAA as part of a civil suit over "malicious prosecution" of innocent citizens.

I fully believe that $108,000 USD could have been better spent by the record labels to find new talent or a better business model, but I guess losing a court battle over a few downloaded tracks is okay too.

She completely denied involvement in distributing tracks like "Hoes in My Room" using the P2P network