In a move the Recording Industry Association of America is considering part of its new approach to battling online copyright infringement, the tradegroup is dismissing many of its John Doe lawsuits in the earliest stages of the legal process. However, the RIAA will continue to move forward with lawsuits for which it has received identifying information about the individuals accused of illegal downloading or file sharing.
The RIAA declined to give an estimate on the number of cases it has dismissed since it implemented its new method.
“We are, by and large, dismissing all Doe cases where we either haven’t received a discovery order or a subpoena response,” RIAA spokesperson Liz Kennedy said in a statement. “… Within the parameters of moving forward to a new day, cases have been dismissed in the earliest stage of the legal process.”
The RIAA said its latest move will have no affect on the University students whom record companies targeted for alleged illegal downloading. In October, under a subpoena order, the University turned over the education records of 17 students whom the RIAA had identified only by their Internet Protocol addresses.
Kennedy said nine University students have settled with the record companies, but no individual name suits have been filed against the other eight students.
In December, the RIAA announced the end of its mass-lawsuit-filing effort, during which more than 30,000 lawsuits were filed. The organization said it is now working closely with several undisclosed, leading U.S. Internet service providers, developing a “graduated response program” of increasing sanctions against alleged infringers who receive multiple copyright violation notices. The RIAA also has stopped sending prelitigation letters to university students.
In a statement the RIAA provided the Emerald in January, its chairman and CEO, Mitch Bainwol, said the litigation program was the organization’s “least preferable, but only option” to fight online infringement, and developments in the digital marketplace have now enabled the RIAA to end its litigation program.
However, Lory Lybeck, a copyright lawyer from the Lybeck Murphy law firm in Seattle, said he thinks the RIAA is ending its litigation program because the benefits of the program didn’t exceed its costs.
“This has sort of been an economic bust for them all along. It’s also been extremely ineffective,” Lybeck said. “My thought is that to stop the economic bleeding, they’re probably not going to pursue litigation against individuals at a cost much greater than can be covered by the $3,000 to $8,000 settlement.”
Matt C. Sanchez, a law student at Harvard University, also said the RIAA likely ended its lawsuit program because of the high costs of litigation. Sanchez is one of the students in Harvard law professor Charles Nesson’s Internet law class helping Nesson argue that the RIAA’s former litigation process is unconstitutional.
Sanchez is still skeptical of the RIAA’s new approach.
“What it is basically doing is allowing the recording industry to blow the whistle on anyone who it has some impression might be file sharing, and allows it to basically get that person booted off their Internet service provider,” he said. “That is scary in itself.”
Lybeck, who said he has worked with some of the University of Oregon students accused of infringement, said the students who settled with the RIAA were frustrated they paid just before the program was discontinued.
The University initially fought the subpoena order because it argued the subpoena was overbroad and the University would have had to act as an investigator to provide the RIAA with student information. After the RIAA redrafted the subpoena, the University complied with it, releasing the education records of the 17 students.
However, Lybeck said he thinks the University could have continued to fight.
“If I put the new subpoena next to the order given by Judge (Michael) Hogan, the new subpoena was still too broad to comply with Judge Hogan’s order,” he said. “Had they actually objected to that subpoena, I don’t know if the students at the University of Oregon, the ones that had to pay up to $8,000, would have had to pay that.”
Randy Geller, the University’s deputy general counsel, did not reply to interview requests.
Kennedy said the RIAA will continue trying to settle with the remaining eight University students who haven’t settled. Lybeck and Sanchez both said it is too soon to predict how the RIAA will continue to handle its pending and ongoing cases and how it will move on with its new approach.
“It’s really too early at this point to have a good idea of what they’re angling for,” Sanchez said. “I find it very hard to see any way this can be a good outcome, so I am just hoping for the idea that it will be a better outcome than litigation. We’ll have to wait and see what they come up with next.”
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