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[ced1106]

RIAA Fights to Avoid Attorney Fees in Dismissed Piracy Lawsuit

By David Kravets 10.18.07 | 4:00 PM

The Recording Industry Association of America taketh away, but must it also give?

The music-industry lobbying-and-litigation arm is protesting a federal magistrate's recommendation that it cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for an Oregon woman. Tanya Andersen, 42, says she racked up the expenses defending against an RIAA infringement lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed for lack of evidence.

The RIAA dropped the case this summer against Andersen, months after concluding her hard drive didn't contain any purloined music tracks. The RIAA sued her two years ago, alleging a Kazaa shared directory that linked to her internet-protocol address was unlawfully distributing thousands of songs -- a case Andersen's lawyers decried as "frivolous."

The RIAA is arguing in court documents that the association shouldn't have to pay defense counsel fees, because Andersen is probably guilty anyway. "It would be an extraordinary coincidence indeed if this defendant had nothing to do with infringement at issue in this matter," RIAA attorney William Patton wrote in opposition to the payout.

Andersen's lawyers said Thursday their legal fees could surpass the $222,000 that a Duluth, Minnesota, jury recently ordered Minnesotan Jammie Thomas to pay the RIAA for pilfering 24 songs, the first such case to actually reach trial.

The defense tab in the case they dropped "may exceed the amount the RIAA is publicly crowing about in the absurd verdict against Jammie Thomas," said Ben Justus, one of Andersen's attorneys. "It's not appropriate to sue somebody without evidence they had done anything illegal."

A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for Oregon is reviewing the motion for fees and could rule any time.

Patton wrote in court records that the RIAA dropped the Andersen case because "the computer inspection was inconsistent and inconclusive insofar as digital evidence of the infringing sound recordings could not be found." The RIAA added that it "agreed, in good faith, to dismiss their claims against defendant."

If awarded fees, the payout would help fuel a countersuit Andersen is pressing against the RIAA, Justus said.

That countersuit, also in the Oregon federal court, seeks class-action status to represent "those who were sued or were threatened with suit by defendants for file-sharing, downloading or other similar activities, who have not actually engaged in actual copyright infringement." The lawsuit alleges "the class is comprised of many thousands of individuals."

In the last four years, the RIAA has sued more than 20,000 people alleging copyright infringement. The majority of them have settled for a few thousand dollars.

Since the RIAA launched its first lawsuits targeting individuals in September 2003, it has been ordered just once to pay defense costs to someone falsely accused. On Aug. 16, a federal judge ordered the RIAA to pay $68,685 in litigation costs to two Oklahoma women whose case was dismissed.

*****

I'd like to hear other people's comments before I say anything. Anyone here received an RIAA letter or know someone who did?


aka. Washu! ^O^

[ced1106]

Man faces third strike in dog's death

FELONY CHARGE FILED IN SAVAGE KILLING
By Brandon Bailey
Mercury News
San Jose Mercury NewsArticle Launched:10/19/2007 01:30:29 AM PDT

Alex Castro didn't like his girlfriend's dog. The 10-year-old cocker spaniel named Copper would bark and whine, neighbors told police, and the 46-year-old Milpitas man responded by kicking the dog, choking it and throwing it into the air.

Late one night, a woman in his trailer park said she saw Castro carrying the dog's lifeless body by the neck. "I finally did it," Castro told another neighbor, who relayed the statement to authorities, according to court records. "I kicked him and he was yelping so loud I had to kill him, so I took my hammer and put a hole in his head."

What happened to Copper has outraged pet lovers and drawn the attention of a nationwide animal-rights group. What happens to Castro may prompt a debate: Prosecutors have invoked the state's "three strikes, you're out" law because Castro has prior convictions for violent crimes. He now faces a possible sentence of 25 years to life in prison.

The sometime construction worker is scheduled to appear in court today on a felony charge of animal cruelty on suspicion of killing the dog July 31.

"People in the community are clearly going to have an emotional response to this kind of case," said Castro's attorney, deputy public defender Ross McMahon. "The real question, however, is: Do we as a society feel that this alleged conduct merits a life sentence?"

A judge will decide the penalty if Castro is convicted. But prosecutors in the Santa Clara County district attorney's office said the crime and Castro's prior record meet their criteria for seeking a "three strikes" sentence.
Castro's record includes felony convictions, in separate cases, for assault with a deadly weapon and battery resulting in serious injury. He served three years in prison and a series of shorter stints for six parole violations from 1999 to 2004.

Court records detailing those cases were not immediately available. But Castro's girlfriend, Joanie Gonzalez, said he told her one case stemmed from a bar brawl in which he used a metal pipe to crack the skull of a man fighting with Castro's father. The other supposedly occurred when Castro severely choked a man who made unwelcome comments to a former girlfriend.

Gonzalez, 47, said she's horrified by what happened to Copper, the dog she raised since it was a puppy. Still, she said, she isn't sure Castro should spend the rest of his life behind bars.

"I loved my dog like my kids," she said, "but that's a long time."
Gonzalez said she met Castro in 2005 and thought he was turning his life around. But after her neighbors found the dog's body and called police, Gonzalez said she told Castro she didn't want anything more to do with him.
"It's hard because I cared about him," she added. "We had planned to spend our life together."

A local animal-welfare official, without endorsing a specific penalty, said the dog's death should be treated as a serious crime.

"It's been clearly documented that with this kind of thing, there's a very strong correlation with future or current violence against people," said Jon Cicirelli, deputy director for San Jose's Animal Care & Services agency, which works under contract for the city of Milpitas and helped police investigate the case.

Gonzalez declined to say if Castro was abusive to her, but police said she told them he was verbally abusive and that she had "physical confrontations" with him last year.

The case first drew attention when the weekly Milpitas Post published a story about the dog's death. The activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals posted a summary on its Web site and urged readers to contact District Attorney Dolores Carr.

"This strikes me as one of the more cowardly attacks that I've read about," said Martin Mersereau, a PETA spokesman. "We're talking about an elderly, defenseless animal who had his head bashed in."

Though prosecutors received e-mails from people who saw the PETA posting, Assistant District Attorney David Tomkins said that didn't affect their decision.

As with every "three strikes" case filed by his office, Tomkins said a committee of senior prosecutors reviewed Castro's file. He said the decision to charge Castro with a felony, which made him eligible for a "three strikes" sentence because of his record, was consistent with similar cases of animal abuse.

The committee looked for any extenuating circumstances that would justify dropping one or both "strikes," Tomkins said. "We decided there wasn't."
Prosecutors can revise the charges against Castro if they get new information, Tomkins noted. "Perhaps there's a side of him that we're not aware of, some type of mitigating circumstances that the defense will make us aware of, and if they do we'll certainly consider that."

Castro is being held in lieu of $950,000 bail in the Santa Clara County Jail.

*****

Hmm... Multiple issues on this one... Three strikes law... Animal cruelty... but I'd also like to know what sort of person has a *boyfriend* like this. Anyway, I'll post my opinion later on today. What's yours?

[ced1106]

RIAA steps up legal attacks

The Recording Industry Association of America has found a new target for one of its copyright lawsuits: the Usenet network communications system. In a complaint filed on October 12, the RIAA says that Usenet newsgroups contain "millions of copyrighted sound recordings" in violation of federal law.

Only Usenet.com is named as a defendant for now, but the same logic would let the RIAA sue hundreds of universities, Internet service providers, and other newsgroup archives. AT&T offers Usenet, as does Verizon, Stanford University and other companies including Giganews.

What makes this lawsuit important is that if the RIAA can win against Usenet.com, other Usenet providers are at legal risk, too.

Meanwhile, 19 students at George Washington University are about to become the next targets of the recording industry's wrath. A federal judge on October 11 approved subpoenas to uncover the identity of the 19 "John Does" listed as defendants by the RIAA.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted the RIAA's request to serve the university with an immediate subpoena. She required that George Washington University tell its students--or faculty or staff, if they're the ones behind the IP addresses in question--about the existence of the subpoenas in five business days.

She also gave the school and any of the John Does 25 days to respond with a legal motion opposing the subpoena. The RIAA had suggested only 15 days.

However, if GWU has deleted its logs of who was using what IP address back then, the RIAA is going to be out of luck. So this becomes an important question: how long do universities keep logs showing who's been assigned a particular IP address? And why won't they say what the duration is?

The RIAA seems to be stepping up its campus crusade of late, dispatching a new round of "prelitigation" letters--411 in all--to 19 U.S. universities this week from coast to coast, alleging that campus networks are being used to commit copyright infringement. The RIAA sent more than 400 letters to 22 universities last month.

As usual, each of the 411 letters reveals that a student or employee of the school is about to be sued for copyright infringement. The letters also offer the opportunity for those targeted to settle out of court at a "discounted rate," touting a special Web site that allows targets to settle their claims online.

Here's a sample letter sent to an alleged illegal file-sharer (PDF), courtesy of Educause, a nonprofit group that represents higher-education institutions and oversees the .edu domain.

The RIAA has come under a great deal of criticism following the verdict against Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two who was ordered to pay the RIAA $222,000 for making songs available for download. Cary Sherman, the president of the RIAA, responded by trying to explain the recording industry's side.

"This was never a step we wanted to take, and we recognized that it would generate criticism in some quarters," Sherman wrote in a perspective piece published by News.com. "It's tough love--for the first time, despite years of educational efforts and the availability of plentiful legal alternatives, we are holding people personally and financially accountable for the theft of creative works."

[Diki]

Stuff like this makes me glad that I am Canadian.

[ced1106]

Gives new meaning to "going in the car"

TOKYO (Reuters) - If you're stuck in traffic when Mother Nature calls, Japan's Kaneko Sangyo Co. has developed the loo for you.

The manufacturer of plastic car accessories drew back the curtain on Tuesday on its new portable toilet for cars.

The toilet comes with a curtain large enough to conceal users and a plastic bag to collect waste.

"The commode will come in handy during major disasters such as earthquakes or when you are caught in a traffic jam," a company official told reporters, according to Kyodo News.

Japan is situated on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

Drivers stranded by tectonic movements or stuck in tailbacks simply assemble the cardboard toilet bowl, fit a water-absorbent sheet inside and draw round the curtain.

The product is small enough to fit inside a suitcase, the company said.
But prospective customers will have to hang on until November 15, when the firm begins selling the new product online.

[Sanouske]

lol, you woould think someone would have already invented that. XD

It seems to make sense for some people people to have one, but I think I will pass. =p

[whiteday26]

I would have one of those, but hide it good, since I would feel embarrassed if I had it.

[Waltz168]

You would need that when you expect the least
I remembered once when I really urgently desperately needed to empty my bladder...stucked in a traffic jam

[ced1106]

A nonprofit developing a low-cost laptop for poor children said that a production delay will cause a shortage of computers available in the United States and Canada as part of a holiday-giving program.

The $188 string-pulley-charged XO laptop was scheduled to go into production at a Chinese factory in October, but it is now slated to begin by November 12, said Mary Lou Jepsen, chief technology officer for the One Laptop per Child Foundation.

"We had some last-minute bugs. We've resolved them," she said in a recent interview, adding that the group expected to produce 100,000 laptops this year.

An October launch would have given the group time to produce and ship tens of thousands of laptops to Peru and Uruguay, the first two countries to order the laptops.

It will now be tough to get those laptops to South America by December, in time for kids to use them over their summer vacation, and also meet orders for the foundation's Give 1 Get 1 program for people in the United States and Canada, she said.

For $400, Give 1 Get 1 provides buyers with a laptop of their own plus a second machine to a poor child overseas.

The laptop features a string-pulley to charge its battery, a keyboard that switches between languages, a digital video camera, wireless connectivity and Linux open-source operating software tailored for remote regions.

The display switches from color to black-and-white for viewing in direct sunlight--a feature unavailable in laptops at least 10 times more expensive.

It needs just 2 watts of power compared with a typical laptop's 30 to 40 watts, and does away with hard drives, relying instead on flash memory and 4 USB ports to add memory devices. The group is experimenting with a device that uses cows to generate power to charge its battery.

The fourth quarter is the busiest time of the year at computer plants in China, which produce the bulk of PCs from companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple.

Jepsen said some laptop customers in the United States and Canada would be able to get their PCs before the holidays, but they would be shipped on a first-come, first-served basis.

The foundation will accept orders on its Web site, from November 12.

The foundation's goal has been to sell the laptops for $100.

*****

My opinion soon enough. Click on the One Laptop per Child Foundation link if you're not already familiar with this issue.

[skysongfan]

if you like to post news, you can open a thread of your own, just posting news you find interesting to that thread.