More good news folks, instead of being able to claim your infringing their members copyrights and try to obtain a judgement based soley on their claim, the RIAA has had to supply some evidence of its claims, this is a new and welcome avenue laid open by a federal judge in a ongoing case.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070910-judge-deals-blow-to-riaas-boilerplate-copyright-infringement-complaints.htmlIn the over 20,000 file-sharing cases filed so far, the RIAA has relied on a simple procedure: scour P2P networks for shared music, file a John Doe lawsuit to learn the identity of the account-holder responsible for the IP address flagged by the RIAA's investigative arm, and, if the account-holder doesn't agree to the RIAA's settlement terms, file a lawsuit using a boilerplate complaint. A federal judge in California has now refused to grant the RIAA a judgment based on just such a complaint, forcing the RIAA to draw up a new complaint containing specifics
Drawing on the recent Bell Atlantic v. Twombly case decided by the Supreme Court, Judge Brewster held that the RIAA's complaint wasn't sufficient to merit a default judgment. "- ther than the bare conclusory statement that on 'information and belief, Defendant has downloaded, distributed and/or made available for distribution to the public copyrighted works, Plaintiffs have presented no facts that would indicate that this allegation is anything more than speculation," wrote the judge. "The complaint is simply a boilerplate listing of the elements of copyright infringement without any facts pertaining specifically to the instant Defendant."
Judge Brewster vacated the entry of default but gave the RIAA 30 days to refile the complaint and serve Rodriguez with it. It took the RIAA little less than a week to file an amended complaint. In contrast to the original complaint, which was extremely short on specifics, the RIAA's latest filing offers more in the way of details. Those details include the date the RIAA spotted the PC it believes was used by Rodriguez on Gnutella, the IP address, and a list of recordings in the user's shared folder.
This is a welcome and common sense addition to the requirements to gain a judgement, not making any specific claims at the outset of their extortion efforts was unfair and underhand activity against those least able to defend themselves against the billion dollar fat cat music mafia.
