It seems relatively few people find this sort of thing important, what with all the water bottles being banned from airplanes, the Mideast in a perpetual state of turmoil, Bush (possibly) on his latest bender, but I'll post it anyway and note that for all of you who talk about the distractions in the MSM, focusing on all this stuff while the country itself digs itself deeper into that handbasket ... this is one of the things that has implications far beyond what the face shows.
In a landmark legal document, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen, the ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation, and the American Association of Law Libraries have submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the motion for attorneys fees that has been made by Deborah Foster in Capitol Records v. Debbie Foster, in federal court in Oklahoma. This brief is mandatory reading for every person who is interested in the RIAA litigation campaign against consumers. I tried to edit the brief, and to pick out selected passages, but found it such compelling reading that I decided to reproduce it in its entirety. So here it is.
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II. SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
This is an important case. While it may appear to many as just one woman defending herself against several large corporate copyright plaintiffs, as the court is undoubtedly aware, this lawsuit is but one battle in the broader war the RIAA is waging against unauthorized internet copying. As a result of this war, the RIAA has wrought havoc on the lives of many innocent Americans who, like Deborah Foster, have been wrongfully prosecuted for illegal acts they did not commit for over a year despite their clear innocence and persistent denials. Using questionable methods and suspect evidence, the RIAA has targeted thousands of ordinary people around the country, including grandmothers, grandfathers, single mothers, and teenagers. In its broad dragnet of litigation, the RIAA has knowingly entangled the innocent along with the guilty, dragging them through an expensive and emotionally draining process of trying to clear their names.
In deciding whether or not to grant defendant Deborah Foster’s Motion For Attorneys Fees, the court should consider the broader context of the RIAA lawsuit campaign—especially the positive effect that a fee award would have on encouraging the RIAA to be more diligent in conducting its pre-suit investigations, more prompt in dismissing suits when a defendant asserts substantial claims of innocence or mistaken identity, and more responsible in asserting its legal theories. Moreover, 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.
MoreTo summarize the summary, what the point of all this at this stage is to give private citizens the tools they need to combat and multi-billion dollar industry with teams of lawyers at their disposal. RIAA usually wins its cases by forcing people to settle, because those people can't afford the legal fees necessary to defend themselves properly. In short, a positive ruling would level the playing field, at least somewhat and potentially force RIAA and similar organizations to bring an actual case to court, not one based on half-truths, suppositions, and flat-out lies just to "make an example" of someone.
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