All Things News

Straight from Ars Technica: “Between $50 million and $6 billion may be owed to musicians and artists in Canada, but not from your run-of-the-mill file sharers. The Canadian recording industry itself is being accused of massive copyright infringement, and the list of miffed artists just keeps getting longer.

Given how aggressively the recording industry likes to pursue file sharers, one would assume that the industry itself is in the clear when it comes to copyright infringement. But that assumption has been put to the test in Canada, where a massive infringement lawsuit is brewing against some major players. Members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, including the Big Four (Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada), face the prospect of damages ranging from $50 million up to $6 billion due to their use of artists’ music without permission. That’s right: $6 billion.

The lawsuit in question goes back to October 2008, but continues to be dragged up in the news because new plaintiffs keep joining the case. Most recently, jazz musician Chet Baker’s estate has joined the growing list of musicians and artists who are getting on the music industry’s case for their abuse of a certain aspect of Canadian copyright practices—something that the labels themselves don’t even deny doing.

As University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist pointed out on his blog, the issue stems from a change to the law in the 1980s that eventually produced something known as the “pending list.” Essentially, record companies no longer had to get a compulsory license every time they wanted to use a song for, say, a compilation album. Instead, they went ahead and used the song without waiting for authorization or making payment, adding the song to a list of music that is pending authorization and payment. If you’re questioning whether you read that right, that basically means the record industries could use songs as long as they pinky swore they would get authorization and pay the artist for it eventually.

As you can imagine, the business didn’t quite work that way. Instead of keeping up with its tab on the pending list, the recording industry just kept adding songs—without obtaining any rights. The pending list among the lawsuit’s defendants has topped 300,000 songs from both large and small artists alike—300,000 songs that the labels are openly admitting that they have not secured the rights for. In the complaint, the plaintiffs claim that the record companies have been unjustly enriched by the use of their unauthorized music (they have, after all, been selling the music without permission and not paying out).

The plaintiffs also show that they are painfully aware of the hypocritical stance the industry has taken in regard to copyright abuse. One part of the complaint says the companies have shown “reckless, high-handed and arrogant conduct aggravated by their clandestine disregard for the copyright interests of the class members in contrast to their strict compliance enforcement policy and unremitting approach to consumers in the protection of their corporate copyright interests.” Ouch.

The recording companies targeted in the suit acknowledge that the pending list reflects unpaid royalties “in excess of $50 million,” but the real extent of the damage could go far higher—possibly to the tune of $6 billion. This is because the class is asking for both statutory and punitive damages for the labels’ behavior (as Geist points out, the same standards being used to go after individual file sharers), meaning that the labels could be asked to pay up to $20,000 per infringement.”

AAAARRRRRRRRGGGHHHH!

Straight from Torrent Freak: “Earlier this week TorrentFreak reported that there had been objections over one of the proposed lay judges set for the Pirate Bay appeal. Now there are yet more claims of possible bias, this time with two of the main judges who have both been members of pro-copyright groups.

On April 17th all four defendants in the Pirate Bay trial were found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of $905,000. Despite this verdict The Pirate Bay continued to operate while the defense filed for an appeal.

A few weeks ago the Court announced that it has two weeks set aside for the Pirate Bay appeal, starting in November. The appeal will be handled by three judges, and according to defense lawyer Per E Samuelsson, two of them could be susceptible to bias.

“It is profoundly inappropriate that even in the court of appeal we have judges who are or have been members of organizations closely related to the copyright industry,” Samuelson wrote, objecting to the appointment of two of the three judges.

The appeal will be handled by judge Ulrika Ihrfelt who was previously removed from the bias investigation of Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström, because she was linked to pro-copyright groups herself. Now she is facing the same allegations together with judge Christina Boutz.

Ihrfelt has been a member of the Swedish Copyright Association (SFU) and Boutz is a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (SFIR).

It is doubtful whether the objection will have an effect. After the initial trial Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström’s objectivity was called into doubt by the defense lawyers because of his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups, but the Appeal Court later ruled that this had not influenced the verdict.

Earlier this week we reported that one of the planned lay judges in the appeal could also be disqualified from participation, since he is an employee of Swedish music outfit Spotify – a company partly owned by the plaintiffs. However, there could be more to this lay judge issue than initially meets the eye.

TorrentFreak has been informed that the man in question is a bright programmer who co-owns a streaming technology patent along with the original developer of uTorrent, so there can be little doubt that he is somewhat of a BitTorrent expert. So far the defendants haven’t objected to him but there is speculation in Sweden that IFPI could be more afraid of this lay judge than their opposition is, partly since his background is at a technical university where support for Pirate Party values is strong.”

The Pirate Bat Signal

Straight from Torrent Freak: “After The Pirate Bay Four were found guilty earlier this year they appealed, and the date for the new trial was set for November. Now it seems that one of the planned lay judges could be disqualified from participation, since he is an employee of Swedish music outfit Spotify – a company partly owned by the plaintiffs.

Following the revelations that judge Tomas Norström from the original trial had connections with pro-copyright lobby groups, there had been hopes that the trial of the Pirate Bay Four could go to a retrial.

However, that eventuality was denied after the Appeal Court investigated the bias issue and ruled that the judge’s ties to these groups did not influence his judgment.

Instead of a retrial an appeal has been granted which will take place in November. The case will be handled by judge Ulrika Ihrfelt who was previously removed from the bias investigation of judge Tomas Norström, because she too was linked to pro-copyright groups.

Today there is yet another question mark hanging over the head of another judge scheduled to play a major part in the appeal.

Launched as an answer to the file-sharing problem and the possible savior of the music industry, Sweden’s Spotify music service has been widely well received by both the industry and hardened pirates. But there is a problem.

According to an SR.se report today, one of the lay judges in the case has been revealed as an employee of the fledgling streaming music service.

“If the man is not judged to be biased he will be part of the court’s team at the right time,” said judge Ulrika Ihrfelt.

“I would not say there is a problem, but we definitely consider it a factor to which we must draw the attention of the parties, given that Spotify is a company that provides online music,” Ihrfelt added.

But of course, the problem goes just a little bit further than Spotify simply being a provider of online music. It also counts the major music labels – the absolute arch-enemies of The Pirate Bay – as shareholders.

Both the plaintiffs and defendants in the appeal have been notified of the lay judge’s affiliation with Spotify and it will now be down to the court of appeal to decide if there is a conflict of interest.”

Boycott Sony!

Straight from Slashdot: “Daily Tech brings us a story about Sony’s run-in with the Mexican police. (Billboard picked up the story as well.) It seems that they raided Sony’s offices and seized 6,397 music CDs after a protest from the artist, Alejandro Fernandez. Fernandez had signed a seven-album deal with Sony Music; he completed that commitment and then left for Universal. During the time with Sony, he recorded other songs that did not make it into the agreed-upon seven albums. Sony Music took it upon themselves to collect that material and release it as an eighth album. Fernandez claims that he fulfilled his contract with Sony, and residual material belongs to him. Hmm. Precedent from the Jammie Thomas infringement and distribution case gives us $80K per song. Sony vs. Joel Tenenbaum gives $22.5K per song. So 6,397 CDs at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51,176 infringing songs, with (IMHO) intent to distribute. The damages to Fernandez should be $1,151,460,000 using the Tenenbaum precedent or $4,094,080,000 using the Thomas precedent. Seems very straightforward to me.”

Straight from Electronista: “RIAA member Universal Music Group this past weekend was forced to settle a music file sharing lawsuit it had filed against New Hampshire resident Mavis Roy. The label dropped its case after evidence provided by anti-piracy snooping firm MediaSentry was successfully challenged by the defense’s expert witness Dr. Sergey Bratus. Among other key problems with the data, the defense pointed out that Roy didn’t own a computer at all at the time of the supposed infringement and that it wasn’t until a letter appeared that she was aware of any possible action.

Universal is likely to have settled the case to avoid creating a legal precedent that could be used to shoot down other MediaSentry-derived evidence and defeat the RIAA in similar cases.

Opponents to the RIAA’s lawsuit tactics have argued that MediaSentry is not only an unauthorized investigator but that it has regularly misidentified file traders by making assumptions about the accuracy of IP addresses that have targeted the deceased, young children and those like Roy who didn’t have computers. Such tracking systems can only see file sharing accounts used by certain IP addresses and doesn’t account for those using others’ connections, mistaken physical addresses or the person actually using the computer.

The RIAA has claimed it will stop suing individuals in favor of trying to force Internet providers to monitor and flag pirated material, but questions have been raised why new lawsuits have appeared and why other, sometimes questionable lawsuits have persisted since the formal change in policy.”

Judge Tomas Norström

Straight from Torrent Freak: “To determine if the verdict in the Pirate Bay case was biased, the connections of Judge Tomas Norström to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups will be reviewed by another judge. However, the judge that was initially appointed has already been replaced because she was linked to the same organizations as Norström, and her replacement is not exactly unbiased either.

Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström’s objectivity has been called into doubt because of his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups. Furthermore, one of the defense lawyers claimed to have evidence that Norström was handpicked and not assigned to the case randomly.

To investigate these accusations of bias, the appeal court appointed a judge, Ulrika Ihrfelt. Her task is to decide whether or not Norström’s verdict could have been biased since this issue must be resolved before they will look into the appeal request. If it’s determined that Norström was indeed biased, the case will be resubmitted to the district court for retrial, meaning that an appeal is not needed at this stage.

However, soon after the appointment of Ulrika Ihrfelt, it became known that she too had been a member of the same pro-copyright organizations as the ‘biased’ judge. The appointment was criticized by several judicial analysts who said she wasn’t fit either. Judicial praxis dictates that the court must not only be unbiased, but also be BELIEVED to be unbiased, which is clearly not the case here.

As a consequence and in order to avoid more negative press, the appeal court sent out a press release today in which they announce that Ihrfelt has been taken off the case. She has been replaced by three new judges from a separate division of the court.

In the press release, the appeal court writes: “The reasons for this is that the question of whether the original judge was biased needs to be tried by other judges other than those that later may have been given the case. Furthermore, because of the content of the claim of bias, it has been deemed proper that the question should be answered by a division that is not specialized in copyright.”

“None of the three judges are or have been members of the [pro-copyright] organizations in question,” the appeal court announced. But is this really the case?

With a simple Google search Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde has already discovered that one of the replacements, Anders Eka, is connected to the The Stockholm Center for Commercial law, together with movie industry lawyers Monique Wasted and Peter Danowsky who represented the music industry in the Pirate Bay trial.

Nevertheless, the appeal court does not intent to replace the new judge(s). “The group Anders Eka is member of has no connection to copyright issues and the interests that are present in the case. I cannot see how this specific connection could lead to that Anders Eka isn’t suitable to try the question of bias,” Fredrik Wersäll, the president of the appeal court said.

The court will not look at the appeal case before the question of Norström’s bias is settled. The bias issue will be given priority and should be settled “in a few weeks at the maximum”, according to the appeal court president.

With all the commotion and judicial incompetence displayed after the Pirate Bay trial it seems almost unthinkable that a retrial won’t be granted. It is therefore no surprise that the entertainment industries try to get some cash off the defendants before it’s too late.”

The RIAA Sucks

Straight from TorrentFreak: “It’s been almost a week since the verdicts of one year in prison and heavy financial damages were passed against the four accused in the Pirate Bay trial. The sentence seemed surprisingly tough to many analysts, with the court chosing to judge on intent only, dismissing all technical evidence.

But did The Pirate Bay Four receive a fair trial? Today, an event on Swedish national radio SR threw everything into doubt – and it’s barely believable, like something straight out of Hollywood.

The copyright industry likes to have the outcome of processes clear before engaging them so it’s perhaps unsurprising that SR today revealed that the judge Tomas Norström is in league with it on many fronts. The judge has several engagements – together with the prosecution lawyers for the movie and music industries.

The MPAA Sucks

Swedish Association of Copyright (SFU) – The judge Tomas Norström is a member of this discussion forum that holds seminars, debates and releases the Nordic Intellectual Property Law Review. Other members of this outfit? Henrik Pontén (Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau), Monique Wadsted (movie industry lawyer) and Peter Danowsky (IFPI) – the latter is also a member of the board of the association.

Swedish Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (SFIR) – The judge Tomas Norström sits on the board of this association that works for stronger copyright laws. Last year they held the Nordic Championships in Intellectual Property Rights Process Strategies.

.SE (The Internet Infrastructure Foundation) – Tomas Norström works for the foundation that oversees the .se name domain and advises on domain name disputes. His colleague at the foundation? Monique Wadsted. Wadsted says she’s never met Norström although they have worked together.

The Pirate Bay vs Hollywood

Commenting on the revelations, Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde brokep said, “Spectrial Cliffhanger in S01 with the verdict – S02 started with the judge being biased. Reality beats fiction yet again!”

There are several renowned lawyers and judicial commentators that are attacking Tomas Norström’s decision to take the case, in spite of having a clear conflict of interest.

“I wouldn’t have taken the case,” says former judicial ombudsman Rune Lavin.

Former Director of Public Prosecution Sven-Erik Alhem said, “You cannot hide controversial facts. The attention this gets only leads to unnecessary questioning of bias in Swedish courts. Of course the judge should have informed people of the situation prior to the process and thereby allowed the involved parties to decide if it was suitable or not.”

Lawyer Leif Silbersky made a comment all Pirate Bay supporters want to hear, “If the lawyers [for the defense] act on this immediately, this could mean a re-trial.”

Peter Sunde’s lawyer Peter Althin says he has already put in a request for a re-trial. “In my appeal, I will claim the court was biased and that the appeal court should cancel the verdict and re-submit the case to the district court,” he said.

And the judge himself? “Every time I accept a case I make an assessment on whether I am part of it or not. But I have not felt that I am biased because of those commitments,” he said.

During the trial it was the judge, Tomas Norström, that was responsible for ensuring that the trial was fair and that the lay judges did not act in their own interests.

Previously one of the original lay judges in the case had to step down when his involvement in a music rights group became known;

“Three lay judges were appointed,” said Judge Norström one week before the trial. “On a question from me to the lay judges on whether they had any involvement in copyright associations or similar, or if they are or have been artists one of them answered Yes.”

That lay judge was removed. It’s anyone’s guess why the judge didn’t think the same should apply to him.

Whether or not Tomas Norström allowed his personal interests to get in the way of a fair verdict is open for debate, but there can’t be an intelligent human being reading this news that doesn’t feel that it would’ve been better for everyone if he simply backed away from this case and let someone else take over. He has compromised the entire case and verdict.

Rick Falkvinge of Sweden’s Pirate Party said the revelations were indicative of “corruption on a completely unforgivable level.””

President Obama

Straight from Slashdot: “The Recording Industry of America’s favorite courtroom lawyer, Tom Perrelli, who has sued individual file swappers in multiple federal courts, is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for the third in line at the Justice Department. CNet’s Declan McCullagh explores the background of the man who won the RIAA’s lucrative business for his DC law firm: “An article on his law firm’s Web site says that Perrelli represented SoundExchange before the Copyright Royalty Board — and obtained a 250 percent increase in the royalty rate for music played over the Internet by companies like AOL and Yahoo,” not to mention Pandora and Radio Paradise.”

Straight from Wired: “A federal judge on Wednesday set aside the nation’s first and only federal jury verdict against a peer-to-peer file sharer for distributing copyrighted music on a peer-to-peer network without the labels’ authorization.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Duluth, Minnesota, declared a mistrial in the case of Jammie Thomas, a Minnesota mother of three, setting aside the $222,000 penalty levied by a federal jury last year for copyright infringement — $9,250 for each of the 24 infringing music tracks she made publicly available on the Kazaa file sharing network.

Davis’ decision means the Recording Industry Association of America’s five-year copyright infringement litigation campaign has never been successful at trial.

Most of the 30,000 cases have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars and have never broached the hot-button legal issue that ultimately prompted Davis to declare a mistrial.

Thomas was the nation’s only RIAA target to take her case to trial, which last year ended in an RIAA victory. The case emboldened the recording industry’s resolve to continue its public relations effort against file sharing through a nationwide litigation campaign.

The legal brouhaha prompting Davis to declare a mistrial focused at the heart of all file sharing cases: What level of proof was necessary for the RIAA to prevail.

Davis had instructed (.pdf) the jury last year that the recording industry did not have to prove anybody downloaded the songs from Thomas’ open Kazaa share folder. Davis read Jury Instruction No. 15 to jurors saying they could find unauthorized distribution — copyright infringement — if Thomas was “making copyrighted sound recordings available” over a peer-to-peer network “regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.”

But Davis had second thoughts and, without any urging from the litigants in the case, summoned the parties back to his courtroom in August, writing in a brief order that he may have committed a “manifest error of the law.”  He heard arguments from both sides and said he would issue a ruling soon.

With Wednesday’s opinion, Davis made his revised position official and ordered a retrial — one with different jury instructions.

“Jury Instruction No. 15 was erroneous, and that error substantially prejudiced Thomas’ rights. Based on the court’s error in instructing the jury, it grants Thomas a new trial,” the judge ruled (.pdf).

The RIAA, which is the music industry’s lobbying and litigation arm, fought hard to keep Jury Instruction No. 15 in play. The group told the judge that copyright infringement on peer-to-peer networks is implied, and that it shouldn’t have to provide proof of an actual transfer — because it’s impossible.

“Requiring proof of actual transfers would cripple efforts to enforce copyright owners’ rights online – and would solely benefit those who seek to freeload off plaintiff’s investment,” RIAA attorney Timothy Reynolds said in a court filing (.pdf).

It was the third time a federal judge had ruled against the RIAA on the making-available claim. The decisions in the other two cases were in a pretrial stages, one case of which was dismissed in the RIAA’s favor because a judge concluded the defendant had tampered with evidence and ordered him to pay $40,000.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “How much does sharing “Waiting For A Girl Like You,” “Money For Nothing,” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” on P2P networks cost defendants if they end up in court? Arizona resident Jeffrey Howell has just found out the hard way. While Jammie Thomas came in for more than $200,000 of statutory damages in her Minnesota trial last year, Howell escaped with a (mere) $40,850 fine. Perhaps he should be grateful, though we doubt that’s the emotion he’s feeling today.

Few of the RIAA’s thousands of cases against individual file-swappers ever make it to trial; fewer still reach a judgment, making these awards quite unusual. Howell, who served as his own counsel throughout the trial, did himself no favors by intentionally destroying evidence of his computer activity after being ordered by a judge to preserve it. According to the RIAA, Howell uninstalled KaZaA and deleted everything in the shared folder, reformatted his hard drive, downloaded and used a file-wiping program, and then nuked all the KaZaA logs on his PC. Anyone who has seen even a single episode of Perry Mason knows that this is a huge no-no.

Ruling last week that Howell had acted in bad faith, the judge was forced to call the case to a premature close and issue judgment against Howell. Howell’s punishment was to come at a later date, and the judge has now issued his ruling.

Howell is ordered to pay $350 in court costs—an incredible bargain when set against a whopping $40,500 in statutory damages. In addition, he will pay 2.12 percent interest on the unpaid balance until the entire amount is paid off; in essence, Howell has just taken out a pricey new car loan, except that instead of a car, he gets a big pile of nothing to park in his driveway.

The judge also ordered him to stop infringing copyrights, “including without limitation by using the Internet or any online media distribution system to reproduce (i.e., download) any of Plaintiffs’ Recordings, or to distribute (i.e., upload) any of Plaintiffs’ Recordings.”

And, just for good measure, Howell is instructed to “destroy all copies of those downloaded recordings transferred onto any physical medium or device in Defendant’s possession, custody, or control.”

Given that Howell didn’t have the cash even to pay a lawyer, the RIAA may never see all of this money. Not that it matters; the PR value of winning these sorts of cases is no doubt reward enough.

The RIAA takeaway from the case will surely be a lesson about how the group will hunt down and then win cases against file-swappers. The lesson that EFF staff attorney Fred von Lohmann takes from the case, though, is a different one: get yourself a lawyer.

“He never had an adequate opportunity to explain what happened on his PC, while the RIAA had forensics experts and lawyers to tell the story,” von Lohmann told us last week. “I think if Howell had an expert and lawyer to speak for him, he would have told a different story.”"

Straight from TorrentFreak: “If you read a mainstream media news report about file sharing or talk to a reporter about (illicit) filesharing, you would think that the only case involving the RIAA was Capitol V Thomas, a case that made news nationwide for the size of the fines. However, there are a number of cases going on around the country, cases where the RIAA did not win.

One of the most under-reported is Atlantic V Anderson, which has taken over 3 years from start to finish. The RIAA eventually dropped it with prejudice, meaning they accept the fault was theirs in this case. A similar thing happened in the case against another alleged filesharer, Foster, but both cases were relatively under-reported in mainstream media.

Copyright law, like most other aspects of civil law, allows for the prevailing party to recoup legal fees and costs incurred in the case. This is exactly what Foster and Anderson did, with success. The Foster case was awarded over $68,000 in attorney fees and costs. Likewise, the Anderson case was awarded fees and costs but of a substantially greater amount; $107,834 to be precise, in an order dated July 28th 2008.

It is encouraging to finally hear that last night, the RIAA and the member companies that were involved in the case finally paid the fees (they refused first), putting an end to this protracted legal wrangling. The amount paid was not, however, $107,834 but a figure of $107,951 – a figure which takes into account interest accrued due to delay.

It should be noted that while this is the end of Atlantic V Anderson, it is not the end of Anderson V Atlantic, the case where Ms Anderson is taking her former accusers to task over their practices in this field. It is a heartening victory, and one that is spurring the tide.

So, with Thomas looking to head to a mistrial, making the $222,000 judgment null and void, the two largest decisions in the RIAA’s ‘war on downloading’ have been against them. In both cases the RIAA admitted it was wrong, and ordered to pay the fees.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Stephanie Lenz’s YouTube video of her tot dancing to an old Prince song was pulled down at the request of Universal last year after the music label said that the clip infringed on its copyright. Not content with simply having Universal retract its claim, Lenz and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are out to put the squeeze on Universal for issuing a bad-faith DMCA takedown. But Universal told a judge this week that, even though the clip may in fact be “fair use,” it was still “infringement” and therefore the initial takedown notice was made in good faith.”

Straight from Slashdot: “For the past 2 years, the RIAA and its attack dog SafeNet (formerly known as MediaSentry) have been trying to avoid disclosure in UMG v. Lindor by telling the judge that MediaSentry is NOT an expert, that it does not use any technical expertise to get the ‘evidence’, and that it does only ‘what any other Kazaa user does’. We have just discovered that in administrative proceedings in Michigan, attacking it for engaging in the business of investigation without a license, MediaSentry has taken the exact opposite position, comparing itself to chemical engineers, surveyors, physicians, geologists, and other expert witnesses who rely on their technical expertise. Today we went public with some of the contradictions. Now let’s hope Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth finds out about it.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Exonerated P2P defendant Tanya Andersen should be awarded $107,834 in court costs and attorney fees, a federal magistrate judge ruled yesterday. It’s the largest attorneys’ fees award to date against the RIAA, but a far cry from both the $298,995 sought by her attorney and the RIAA’s reckoning of just under $30,000. Of course, all the RIAA needs is for 27 college kids to settle at $4,000 a pop and it’s got the award covered.

The RIAA dropped its case against Andersen in June 2007 after over two years of litigation. Not long after, the judge ruled that, as the prevailing party, Andersen was entitled to attorneys’ fees. Just how high that award should be quickly became a point of contention. Andersen’s attorney Lory Lybeck argued that he was entitled to a multiplier of double the fee amount because of his “high-risk, successful” defense.

The RIAA argued that the nearly $300,000 sought by Andersen was “excessive” in numerous respects. The case was merely a “straightforward copyright infringement claim,” argued the labels in a brief filed in March.”

Straight from Slashdot: “On January 2, 2008, the Massachusetts State Police ordered MediaSentry, the RIAA’s investigator, to cease and desist from conducting investigations in Massachusetts without a license. Based on what appears to be irrefutable proof that MediaSentry has been violating that order, the Boston University students who tentatively won, in London-Sire v. Doe 1, an order tentatively quashing the subpoena for their identities, have brought a new motion to vacate the RIAA’s court papers altogether, on the ground that the RIAA’s ‘evidence’ was procured by criminal behavior.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Tanya Anderson has filed an amended complaint against the RIAA. One of the more interesting provisions in it is in the 18th claim, which seeks to stop the RIAA from ‘continuing to engage in criminal investigation of private American citizens’, no doubt referring to the unlicensed MediaSentry investigations. If granted, that could shut down the RIAA lawsuits entirely. Naturally, the RIAA doesn’t like this at all. First, they got the judge to agree that the original complaint was too light on the details, so it was amended. Now the RIAA complains that it’s too long, because it’s 108 pages filled with the RIAA’s dirty laundry. You may remember this as the countersuit to the lawsuit where RIAA lawyers tried to grill a 10-year-old girl, only later to drop their case for lack of evidence and have the mother sue them for malicious prosecution.”

Straight from TorrentFreak: “When EMI, Universal Music and Warner music reached settlement agreements with the likes of Napster, KaZaA and Bolt, they collected hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation – money that was supposed to go to artists whose rights had been allegedly infringed upon when the networks were operating with unlicensed music.Now, according to an article, the managers of some major artists are getting very impatient, as it appears the very people who were supposed to be compensated – the artists – haven’t received anything from the massive settlements. They say the cash – estimated to be as much as $400m – hasn’t filtered through to their clients and understandably they’re getting very impatient.”

Straight from Slashdot: “A federal judge in Connecticut has rejected the RIAA’s ‘making available’ theory, which is the basis of all of the RIAA’s peer to peer file sharing cases. In Atlantic v. Brennan, in a 9-page opinion [PDF], Judge Janet Bond Arterton held that the RIAA needs to prove ‘actual distribution of copies’, and cannot rely — as it was permitted to do in Capitol v. Thomas — upon the mere fact that there are song files on the defendant’s computer and that they were ‘available’. This is the same issue that has been the subject of extensive briefing in two contested cases in New York, Elektra v. Barker and Warner v. Cassin. Judge Arterton also held that the defendant had other possible defenses, such as the unconstitutionality of the RIAA’s damages theory and possible copyright misuse flowing from the record companies’ anticompetitive behavior.”

Straight from TorrentFreak: “The Flashbulb, aka Benn Jordan, became so outraged when he discovered that iTunes was effectively pirating his music, that he uploaded copies of his latest album to BitTorrent. TorrentFreak caught up with Benn to learn more about the decision to stop distributors and ‘coked-up label reps’ from getting all the cash.

…

Luckily, my record contracts were always negotiated well. Once things started moving with small labels I was approached by some larger ones, but there was always some seedy stipulation that prevented me from ever signing.

Still, with a 50/50 contract, I’d be selling 2,000 albums and would get $250 for it somehow. Many people that i’d meet at my shows would say that they bought my music on iTunes, yet I’ve never signed any sort of agreement allowing iTunes to host my music, and I’ve certainly never seen a dime of money for my albums hosted there.
So I started investigating the numbers from the label, which led me to some shocking revelations about how little the artist and label was getting in comparison to the retailers. When I got around to asking about iTunes, the owner of Sublight Records pleaded with me to “leave it be”. Everyone else made an extraordinary effort to ignore my calls and emails.

When I finally got a hold of the digital distributor (I must note that “digital distributor” is the most pathetic job title I’ve ever heard), I was told that once the files are in the iTunes system, it literally couldn’t be removed or taken down for a year. So, either Apple has created a self-aware doomsday machine that cannot be stopped or reasoned with, or everyone involved is just enjoying the gravy train of ripping off artists like myself and using Apple’s backbone of attorneys as an intimidation factor.

Even after having a lawyer working for me on this matter, this is the one and only response we’ve EVER been able to get from Apple:

Dear Benn,
I understand that you are writing to the iTunes Store because you are upset about finding your own album “The Flashlight” and some of your other album as well on the iTunes Store, and that you feel that you are owned royalties for this music that his being purchased. I am sorry that you have to found this upsetting. My name is Wendy, and I would be happy to link you to right people to talk to about this issue.

So, who’s the pirate I should go after? A kid who downloads my album because it isn’t available in non-DRM format and costs $30 on Amazon? Or a huge multi-billion dollar corporation that has been selling thousands of dollars worth of my music and not even acknowledging it?

I’m not disillusioned, I’m outraged, and anyone who ever spent a dime on buying music through these distribution methods should be outraged too. Here we are pleading with people to not steal music, and then we hand them dog shit when they go out of their way to buy it.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Not content with current statutory damages, the RIAA is pushing for higher damages for infringement, damages that would total $1.5 million for copying a CD with ten songs. It’s all part of debate over the proposed PRO-IP Act. William Patry, a lawyer who wrote the seminal seven-volume reference on US copyright law, called it the most ‘outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.’”