RIAA Drops Lawsuit After Judge Refuses To Continue Case

[GhostShip]

A judge recently told the recording industry that without a defendant being present no case was going ahead.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090109-riaa-drops-atlantic-v-brennan-defendant-never-showed-up.html

2008 was a rough year for the recording industry's case against one Christopher Brennan, a student at Boston University. The RIAA believed that Brennan was responsible for sharing at least five copyrighted songs on the P2P network i2Hub—terrible stuff like Smash Mouth's "Beer Goggles"—but the group had trouble actually finding the guy. They wrote letter after letter, with no response. They tried to call, but could find no phone number. They tried to serve him with a copy of the suit, but couldn't hunt him down. And when they filed suit, Brennan didn't show up in court. Frustrating.

So RIAA lawyers filed for a default judgment in light of Brennan's failure to appear. On Valentine's Day of 2008, the judge denied the request, saying that it could only be granted if the failure to appear was willful, if the defendant had no "meritorious defense" available to the charges, and if the RIAA would be harmed without a default.

The judge's rejection was also notable for raising the possibility that merely making files available to the world might not count as copyright infringement, unless actual distribution could be shown.

So in short the judge made the correct decision to disallow the case as its hardly fair to grant a judgement against someone who has not even been notified of the case let alone been given a chance to be present to defend themselves agianst the RIAA claims, thus the judges words equal simply, "if you cant find a defendant you have no case" against him.

[ñòóKýçrÕôK]

Well you know I was thinking about it the other day and I remembered back to when they were about to close Napster down and I had sent several letters to congressman. His reply as to the actual definition of copyrite enfringement was that it was downloading an artists material in order to make a monetery gain from it, and it struck me as funny how that definition has seemed to have changed since then, but this judge pretty much confirmed the old definition is still pretty much the current. And I guess if you can say nothing else all they succeeded in doing in the case against Christopher Brennan was prove that if you ignore them long enough they WILL go away, lol.