RIAA hit with legal fees in P2P case: related news

RIAA hit with legal fees in P2P case...

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will have to pay $107,834 in legal fees as a result of a failed lawsuit, a US federal judge has ruled. For two years, running until June 2007, the RIAA pursued a case against Tanya Andersen, accusing her of illegal file sharing; that case was dismissed with prejudice however, and Andersen and one of her lawyers were allowed to seek compensation for their defense. At points in the case, as many as six attorneys for Andersen were present in court.

Woman Wins $108k Legal Fees from RIAA

Ha! Another person has been awarded attorney fees in their fight against the RIAA. Tanya Anders was awarded $108,000 after defeating the RIAA and another $68,685 in attorney fees was awarded to two other women in a separate case. At this rate, if the courts keep ruling against them, we might see an end to all these lawsuits filed by the RIAA.

Judge upholds $107,834 in attorneys' fees award against RIAA

One of the most closely-watched file-sharing cases is a step closer to an end. A federal judge has awarded exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen $107,834 in attorneys' fees, a figure that isn't exactly what either party wanted. Andersen, a single mother in Oregon, was accused by the RIAA in 2005 of sharing music over KaZaA. Andersen denied the charges, filed a countersuit, and the RIAA finally dismissed the lawsuit last summer. Once the RIAA dismissed the case, she sought and won an attorneys' fees award as the prevailing party.

RIAA Drops Case That Hinges On 'Making Available' Issue - Is RIAA giving up on these cases or just trying to avoid precedent-setting loss?

In the lawsuits that RIAA has filed against P2P users in the past, one of the major questions that has come up has been whether or not it’s illegal to simply make copyrighted files available for others to download. The argument of users is that there has to actually be something stolen, some proof that the file was downloaded, or there was no violation but RIAA has said that the violation takes place when the file is made available online. A New York court recently agreed with users on this issue which has caused other cases to go back to the courts for further review. Perhaps RIAA plans to stop fighting this particularly battle considering that they just voluntarily dismissed a case that had been pending for nearly a year in which the major issue was the “making available” point.

RIAA's Throwing In the Towel Covered a Sucker Punch

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA threw in the towel, all right, but was only doing it in preparation for throwing a sucker punch. After dropping its 'making available' case, Warner v. Cassin, before Judge Robinson could decide whether to dismiss or not, it was only trying to do an 'end run' (if I may mix my sports metaphors) around the judge's deciding the motion and freezing discovery. The RIAA immediately, and secretly, filed a new case against the family, calling this one 'Warner v. Does 1-4.' In their papers the lawyers 'forgot' to mention that the new case was related. As a result, Does 1-4 was assigned to another judge, who knew nothing about the old case. The RIAA lawyers also may have forgotten that they couldn't bring any more cases over this same claim, since they'd already dismissed it twice before.

RIAA hits major setbacks in two P2P cases

RIAA hits major setbacks in two P2P cases Today, the Recording Industry Association of America was ordered to pay $107,834 as a result of a failed lawsuit against Tanya Andersen that accused her of illegal file sharing. The ruling marks what it is said to be the highest awarded compensation against the RIAA in terms of legal fees.

RIAA Wants To Throw In the Towel On 3-Year-Old Case

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "After three years of pursuing a home health aide in Brooklyn who has never even used a computer, the RIAA has announced it's ready to throw in the towel. Only thing; it wants the dismissal to be 'without prejudice' so it won't be liable for attorney's fees. The courts have been saying that where a copyright plaintiff gives up, the defendant is presumptively entitled to an attorney's fee award. So, Ms. Lindor says 'no way.' She wants the dismissal to be 'with prejudice,' and she wants her attorney's fees." We've been discussing this case and Ms. Lindor's fight against the RIAA for quite some time.

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Legal Temps and Legal Secretary Positions Online At LawFuel.co.nz - Legal Jobs Site

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Judge Orders Legal Fees in RIAA v Andersen

A federal judge is awarding Tanya Andersen, who defeated the Recording Industry Association of America's file sharing lawsuit, $108,000 in legal fees to compensate for defending herself against the RIAA.

Verizon, Comcast Say They Are P2P Friendly

An anonymous reader writes "Verizon and Comcast announced they will not 'block or throttle Internet traffic delivered via peer-to-peer networks' — essentially proclaiming that they are now P2P friendly. The decision came as a result of a test conducted with Verizon and Pando Networks, testing the benefits of a P2P/ISP partnership. During the test, the amount of P2P content delivered to Verizon subscribers from inside its network grew from 2 percent to 50 percent. This shows ISPs need to work with P2P companies to improve content delivery and manage traffic. Verizon also announced it will be looking at ways to use P2P technology to deploy new features on FiOS TV." Just the same, read on for one approach to mitigating likely tightening restrictions on P2P network use.

RIAA Throws In Towel On "Making Available" Case

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has thrown in the towel on one of the leading cases challenging its 'making available' theory, Warner v. Cassin, in which the defendant had moved to dismiss the RIAA's complaint. We have just learned that the RIAA submitted a voluntary notice of dismissal before the judge got to decide the defendant's motion to dismiss the complaint. It will be of interest to see if Ms. Cassin pursues a claim for attorneys' fees in view of recent court rulings that successful copyright defendants are presumptively entitled to an attorneys fee award, even if the dismissal came about from the plaintiffs' having 'thrown in the towel.'"

RIAA doubles settlement cost for students fighting subpoenas

Challenging RIAA subpoenas can be costly, and not just because college kids have to dig deep into the sock drawer to pay lawyers of their own. Ars has learned that the RIAA's legal campaign against students is now built on escalating penalties; if you force the RIAA legal team into action, then end up settling, you could end up paying more than that initial $3,000. A lot more.

RIAA suddenly walks away from old, contested P2P case

One of the oldest contested file-sharing cases has come to an abrupt and unexpected end. In a motion filed last month, but only uncovered today by Ray Beckerman, the RIAA has dismissed a two-year-old lawsuit filed against Joan Cassin. The dismissal is without prejudice, which means the RIAA could sue Cassin once again, but Cassin's attorney would likely argue that the label's recent dismissal is a final adjudication on the merits; more on that below.

Jammie Thomas, RIAA cross swords in final briefs to judge

The RIAA and Jammie Thomas both filed their briefs with the Minnesota District Court court this week, bringing yet another phase of the drawn-out file-swapping case to a conclusion. Not surprisingly, Thomas thinks she deserves a new trial; the RIAA disagrees, saying that the jury instructions in the case were accurate. What's more, even if the "making available" theory turns out to be wrong and the jury instructions were therefore bad ones, Thomas is still guilty of "massive, deliberate infringement," says the RIAA.

Judge Recommending Legal Fees in RIAA v. Andersen

A federal magistrate is recommending that Tanya Andersen, who defeated the Recording Industry Association of America's file sharing lawsuit, be awarded $108,000 in legal fees.

MediaDefender Makes Both Legal and Illegal Downloads Available - Approaching the piracy issue from both ends makes things confusing

MediaDefender is an anti-piracy business that is known primarily because it’s hired by organizations like RIAA and MPAA to put illegal downloads online in order to trap people who are engaged in illegal filesharing. However, that’s not all that MediaDefender is about. They’re also in the business of offering legal P2P downloads. They’ve done this for awhile (they paired up with Sprint and Atlantic Records last year to offer branded P2P song downloads) but they appear to be getting more aggressive in moving forward with this part of the business. Perhaps that’s because their recent efforts at anti-piracy have taken down legitimate sites and placed them in a lot of hot water. Still, you have to wonder, how is a user supposed to know if a file placed online by MediaDefender is legal or illegal to download?

ISPs Experimenting With New P2P Controls

alphadogg points us to a NetworkWorld story about the search by ISPs for new ways to combat the web traffic issues caused by P2P applications. Among the typical suggestions of bandwidth caps and usage-based pricing, telecom panelists at a recent conference also discussed localized "cache servers," which would hold recent (legal) P2P content in order to keep clients from reaching halfway around the world for parts of a file. "ISPs' methods for managing P2P traffic have come under intense scrutiny in recent months after the Associated Press reported last year that Comcast was actively interfering with P2P users' ability to upload files by sending TCP RST packets that informed them that their connection would have to be reset. While speakers rejected that Comcast method, some said it was time to follow the lead of Comcast and begin implement

Judge Denies RIAA Motion in Columbia University Case

The RIAA sure doesn’t seem to be having very good luck lately in the courts. A judge today has denied an ex parte motion and is requiring that the RIAA serve the unidentified Columbia University students first before moving forward with the case.

Third time's the charm? RIAA tries end run around old case

Earlier this week, we reported that the RIAA had decided to drop a long-standing copyright infringement case against Joan Cassin. Now we know why: in an e-mail to Ars, the RIAA revealed that it no longer believes Joan was the person on the PC that was allegedly sharing copyrighted music, but that it was someone in her house.

P2P Traffic Shaping For Home Use?

An anonymous reader writes "My housemate uses an aggressive P2P client, that when in use makes the Internet unusable for everyone else connected to the network. After hearing about various ISPs shaping traffic to reduce P2P traffic, I was wondering if there was a solution for managing P2P traffic on a home network. I have a Linksys WRT54G available for hacking. Can Slashdot recommend a way to reduce the impact of P2P on my network and make it usable again?"

RIAA Wins First Federal Music Copyright Trial - Jail time, fines and restitution are expected

A young man has just been convicted of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement for his role in administering a music filesharing server. The man was a member of Apocalypse Production Crew (APC), a "release group" for pirated music. Others in the group have paid fines related to these charges but nobody else had taken the case to trial. RIAA says that this is a landmark case because it is the first federal trial for online copyright infringement in which a majority of the filesharing charges were for sharing music. And of course RIAA is pleased with the verdict which will require the man to make full restitution to the record labels from which he stole music. The man also faces up to five years in prison and a quarter million dollar fine.

Inside the RIAA and MediaSentry

bsdewhurst sends along an interesting article about how MediaSentry and the RIAA identify file sharers. Since 2003, while the RIAA has been filing 28,000 lawsuits, the percentage of US Internet users using P2P for downloading music has dropped from 20% to 19% (there is no knowing how much of a factor the lawsuits have been). The list the RIAA uses for ISP takedown notices is about 700 currently popular songs that are updated based on the charts, so not liking the top 40 could save you. The list of songs tracked for the user-litigation program is said to be larger.

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SCOTUS To Hear Small ISPs' Case Against AT&T

snydeq writes "The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an antitrust case that alleges AT&T squeezed out small ISPs by charging too much for wholesale access to its phone network. The case, originally brought to US District Court in 2003, had been appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. But AT&T requested the case be heard by the Supreme Court on the grounds that prior conflicting appeals court decisions in this area should be resolved at that level. As part of the case, the Supreme Court will likely also ascertain whether AT&T could be held to violate antitrust law without setting its retail prices below its own cost."

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