RIAA still plugging away

I really haven't been paying much attention to this because it just seems routine now that the RIAA sues music uploaders every month. But it's still going on, along with a new development -

754 lawsuits this time, all over the U.S. Meanhwile, a woman targeted by the RIAA is suing Comcast, her ISP, for revealing her identity.

Via TheDigitalMusicWeblog.

An interesting development in the RIAA file-sharing lawsuits, which Cardozo Professor Justin Hughes has written up as financially self-sustaining (in a law review article that doesn't appear to be available free online), is that there is now one woman challenging an RIAA lawsuit. This is a first.

Her lawyer claims he can and will defend other RIAA suits as well (he has a blog here too). If even a few defendants challenge the RIAA, it would quicky change the RIAA's legal efforts against music uploaders from self-sustaining to very costly. In addition, this is very dangerous for the RIAA because once they lose one of these cases on a "someone else put the music on my computer" defense, then it'll basically open that (totally legitimate) defense up to all RIAA defendants.

Via Boing Boing.



By the way, I keep saying "uploaders" because that's who is actually sued by the RIAA. Those who make the music available to downloaders, not downloaders themselves. If you didn't know that already you deserve a smack. (See part 3 of this article, or here, if you don't believe me.)