Tuesday, November 21, 2006

RIAA Subpoenas Ms. Lindor's Son's Computer

In UMG v. Lindor, a case against a home health aide who has never used a computer, the RIAA has now subpoenaed the computer of Ms. Lindor's adult son, who lives four (4) miles away from her. Ms. Lindor's son, a paralegal in a law firm, has hired counsel to make a motion to quash the subpoena:

November 21, 2006, Letter of Richard A. Altman to Magistrate Robert M. Levy (Quash Subpoena)*
Attachment to Letter of Richard A. Altman (Subpoena)*
Attachment to Letter of Richard A. Altman (Objections to Subpoena)*

Ms. Lindor joined in her son's application:

November 22, 2006, Letter of Ray Beckerman Joining in Application of Woody Raymond to Quash Subpoena*

Ms. Lindor's son is represented by Richard A. Altman, Esq., of Manhattan, one of the first lawyers to take on the RIAA's ex parte "John Doe" subpoena process, back in 2004, in Elektra v. Does 1-9.

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

Commentary & discussion:

p2pnet.net
digg
Digital Music Weblog


Keywords: digital copyright online download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs

5 comments:

Alter_Fritz said...

quote: "[...]and/or music listening devices including iPods and MP3 players in your possession, custody or control."

A) This guy is NOT the defendant but a noninvolved party in this civil action against Marie Lindor.
B) An mp3 player (Hello RIAA the iPod IS an MP3 player so why are you specifying it extra!) could not have had the IP address the RIAA is claiming their investigators downloaded copyright soundrecordings from, so it is totally clear that what the RIAA is trying to do here is a fishing expedition!!

Lets hope the judges sees that the RIAA is continuing here their driftnet fishing expedition against everyone they can get in their crosshairs, and stops them.


Hey RIAA are you aware that President Bush has on his personal iPod sound recordings from the Beatles that he could NOT have optained a licence for in the itunes music store?! Why are you demonized guys are not trying to subpoena HIS iPod?! At least it "could be possible" that -not only the unlicensed Beatles songs he already admitted to have and that must be copied in an unlawful act according to your RIAA own informations you are [falsely] spreading on your website- but all the others also were all copied from the IP address you are claiming were used for the alledged copyrightinfringements by Marie Lindor! It could be Mr Bush visited Miss Lindor and connected his personal ipod to this strange computer that she did not own with your named IPaddress according to the courtpapers.
Are you RIAA-Guys afraid that Mr. Bush has more power that the Poor, the average working People, the Sick, the underage Children, and finaly even the dead?

Please Mr. President Bush; since the RIAA is 3/4 nonamerican companies give the CIA guys a call to take care of them! RIAA is not only a terrorising danger for your country, but also to you Mr. President personly since if I understand it correctly you are not protected against lawsuits for stuff you do in your president sparetime (I guess listening to the Beatles is sparetime) ;-)


(serious question following)
Ray, please explain me in 2-3 sentences: What are the differences between Judge Levy and Judge Trager in this cases. Is one of them the "boss" from the other or why does some stuff related to one specific case (here Lindor) is handled by different judges?

raybeckerman said...

alter_fritz, take a look at the p2pnet.net article on the woody raymond subpoena... it has a photo of your favorite lawyer...

Judge Trager is the "Article 3" judge... which means he has life tenure. The Magistrates are appointed for a term of years; they are "statutory" judges.

It is customary in the federal courts to assign some of the legal workload to the magistrate. Typically, magistrate judges handle the following:

discovery;
settlement conferences;
criminal arraignments;
hearings on service of process;
default judgments;
trials where both sides have consented to have the trial handled by the magistrate rather than the article 3 judge; and
any other kind of matter where the judge wants to refer it to the magistrate for "report and recommendation".

In this case all discovery issues were raised before the Magistrate Judge. This particular issue, since it related to "preclusion", he felt should go to the Article 3 judge. The Article 3 judge has now bounced it back for the Magistrate to give his "recommendation". Sometimes the judge will accept the Magistrate's recommendation, sometimes he'll reject it, sometimes he'll modify it.

Alter_Fritz said...

Thanks Ray for this explaination regarding the judges system.

(I already was aware of the photo. RIAA-Richard1 was so nice to provide the original on their site to share it with the world) ;-)

Alter_Fritz said...

not that the CIA comes after me!
I didn't made it up, the President admitted on TV to have the Beatles on his Ipod.
The US-president a CD ripping Pirate?

Anonymous said...

Isn't it true that the RIAA gets the money from internet downloads? How much do the Artists get? I don't think that the RIAA gives a hoot about how much the Artists get because they don't care about the artist! Now we have to be policed on the internet for music? Why don't they go after the sex offenders instead? I think the RIAA are all a bunch of greedy losers who don't care about Artists.