RIAA Slapped Around By Judge

The RIAA's war against the consumer of its music suffered a setback as the judge rejected the RIAA's motions, rumors and propaganda that it one a case in which it was ordered to pay the defendants legal fees. Apparently in an effort to avoid payment, they tried to fudge the truth hoping the judge wouldn't look any deeper. However he did:

The plaintiffs stress that they "they are not aware of a single reported decision where a Court has found none of the Fogerty factors but still awarded fees ... ." See Plaintiffs' Reply in Further Support of Their Motion for Reconsideration of this Court's Feb. 6,2007 Order at p. 3, (emphasis in original). The Court has made no effort to canvass all such cases. Its cursory research has, however, uncovered a number of unpublished cases where courts granted record company plaintiffs, including several of the plaintiffs herein, awards of attorneys' fees without so much as a passing mention of Fogerty or its factors. See e.g, Capitol Records, Inc. v. Lyons, 2004 WL 1732324 (N.D. Tex.); Elektra Entertainment Group. Inc. v. Bryant, 2004 WL 783 123 (C.D. Cal.); UMG Recordings, Inc. v. Davito, 2005 WL 3776349 (N.D. Ind.).

Long story short, the RIAA has to cough up some money to buy some expensive legal fees. The bonus of this story is there is no legal precedent for all future defendants from the RIAA to get back money for legal fees as a result of their war. Until the RIAA learns to embrace technology, work with instead of against consumers, I say don't buy their major studio labels stuff.

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