It seems The RIAA wanted to claim a " case win " as usual against a defendent who was not even in the court to fight then, luckily a savvy Judge was to ruin their dream
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080225-riaa-fails-again-to-get-default-judgment-in-uncontested-case.htmlYou'd think that if you filed a lawsuit and the defendant failed to show up, getting a default judgment entered would be a slam-dunk. That hasn't been the case for the RIAA, as a federal judge has denied a default judgment motion filed by the labels in a case involving a Connecticut resident.
In her decision, Judge Arterton found that while Brennan was negligent in not answering the complaint, the other two factors worked in his favor to the point where a default judgment was out of the question. The judge slammed the RIAA's boilerplate complaint and the "nonexistent factual record" of the complaint, saying the plaintiffs being merely "informed and believed" that Brennan committed copyright infringement was not sufficient.
Judge Arterton also cited the wide range of defenses raised by other targets of the RIAA's legal campaign, noting that the "viability of these defenses has largely yet to be conclusively determined." Those include the constitutionality of the statutory damages sought by the RIAA and whether the RIAA is engaging in anticompetitive behavior with its legal campaign.
The judge also had harsh words for the RIAA's argument that making files available on KaZaA equates to copyright infringement. "At least one aspect of Plaintiffs’' distribution claim is problematic, however, namely the allegation of infringement based on 'mak[ing] the Copyrighted Recordings available for distribution to others,'"
So lets see what the Judge said in a short summary:
1) The RIAA need to provide evidence of a
valid case whether or not the defendent is present.
2) That offering files on your machine for sharing is not a cut and dry offence of infringing copyright as no actaul copys have been proven to have been made.
3) Its not yet been legally decided by the courts that the RIAA are not acting in an uncompetitive manner with their suits
4) And lastly they Judge was not satisfied the amounts claimed are constitutionally valid as litigation is pending over this matter.
It is clear in this case at least that the RIAA had sought to mislead the court by having no evidence of an offence that they wished to claim damages for, whilst they can re-file their claim in the future this may deter them from making a large quantity of false and baseless claims to extort "easy money" , some work will be required form them in future.
