the beginning of the end for RIAA

[screwballl]

there have been multiple stories all over lately... RIAA is slowly losing ground and I hope someday soon they get shut down.

DailyTech - RIAA Slapped Down Again in Piracy Counterclaims

A Florida judge denied an RIAA attempt to dismiss counterclaims filed against it in Atlantic v. Boyer yesterday, allowing five out of the six complaints against it to proceed.
Last month, defendant Eva Boyer filed six counterclaims in response to a standard RIAA copyright-infringement suit filed against her by Atlantic, Warner Bros., UMG, and Sony BMG. She accuses the RIAA of civil conspiracy, computer fraud, trespass, deception, extortion, and abuse of process – and each claim was upheld by United States District Judge Richard A. Lazzara.

DailyTech - RIAA Sucker Punched: "Making Available" Theory Shot Down

Arizona District Court Judge Neil V. Wake dealt a heady blow to the RIAA last Monday, striking down its popular “making available” theory as insufficient grounds for accusations of copyright infringement.
Wake’s ruling (PDF) set a higher burden of proof for the RIAA’s campaign of litigation: RIAA investigators – not third party agents, like those at MediaSentry – must download files from a defendant’s hard drive in order to accuse them of unlawful distributing copyrighted materials.
The decision comes from the ongoing case of Atlantic v. Howell, in which the RIAA alleges that Jeffrey Howell and his wife pirated music by making it available for download via KaZaA’s Shared Folders feature. Its claims were supported by screenshots of Howell’s shared folder, as visible to other KaZaA users.
In his ruling, Wake wrote that infringement of copyright owners’ rights “requires an actual dissemination of either copies or phonorecords.” Making the music available, which Wake referred to as “an offer to distribute,” does not necessarily constitute actual distribution and therefore inapplicable to the RIAA’s claims. Further, wrote Wake, the court disagreed with the RIAA’s claim that the terms “distribution” and “publication” are alike, as the “publication” of a good is merely the “offering” to distribute copies of a copyrighted work “for purposes of further distribution.”

DailyTech - International Charity Seeks to Warn Children of Music Filesharing


DailyTech - Some Colleges See Massive Spike in RIAA Copyright Notices

Universities Baffled By Massive Surge In RIAA Copyright Notices | Threat Level from Wired.com

[azianai]

good riddens, RIAA's even worse than homeland security it seems @_@

[Quakindude]

The thing is, the RIAA has absolutely no governmental powers for search and seizure. Yet early after its formation, the RIAA was grabbing up personal information about people like the Nazi party in 1933. I'm not saying the RIAA are the Nazi party, but they were being granted search and seizure rights and accumulating power to invade people's personal privacy like no other non-governmental group I've seen over the last few years. It was scary, to me anyway, how quickly the RIAA initially drew power to persecute people. I've been very happy to track how the justice system is collaring the RIAA and their extremely invasive techniques.