The RIAA's legal campaign against file sharers ran into another obstacle today, as the judge in the case of *Elektra v. Santangelo *dismissed the record label's case with prejudice -- apparently because the alleged infringement was done by her children instead.
The organization argued that property manager and mother-of-five Patricia Santangelo (the first RIAA lawsuit victim to take a case to trial) was guilty of encouraging infringement anyway, because she should have known what her children were up to online. The judge disagreed, and now the RIAA might have to pony up Santangelo's legal fees as a result of their blunder.
This new trend of the RIAA having to pay wrongly-accused defendents'
legal fees is a big fat fly in the ointment for the organization,
especially because it's becoming harder to tell who is sharing theinfringing files (not only in the case of a parent who doesn't knowwhat their kids are doing with the home's internet connection, but alsobecause so many Wi-Fi networks are unsecured, and shared throughoutneighborhoods).
A judge in a similar case ordered that the RIAA pay legal fees to Debbie Foster in the case of Capitol Records v. Debbie Foster. As part of that case, the RIAA could be forced to disclose how much it pays its own lawyers -- something the RIAA is resisting (for some reason, they don't want their artists, the public, or both to find out how much they're spending on the campaign).
(via ars technica; image from blackmoor vituperate)
