Free Culture @ NYU

In a victory for college students who are also file-sharers (at last count, nearly all) and the American justice system, a judge in New Mexico has issued a ruling that blocks the RIAA’s usual method issuing subpoenas to identify file-sharers. Basically, the RIAA would usually file ex parte applications to reveal the identity of the anonymous sharers, and this new ruling says that they can’t do that anymore (at least in New Mexico.) Ars Technica explains why the current system is a bad thing:

The problem with the approach is that it allows the RIAA to do an end-run around the legal process, as the would-be defendant never gets an opportunity to answer during the John Doe lawsuits and fight the RIAA’s subpoenas.

Now that the file-sharers are being given something of a fighting chance, the RIAA hasn’t pushed the lawsuit any further, even though it’s been a month since the ruling. Not surprising, considering that the RIAA is perfectly content churning out settlements, and probably don’t want to see this escalate in a fair struggle.

From a local standpoint, the article mentions that this defense has been unsuccessful in New York courts so far, but a decision like this could turn everything around. In a best-case scenario, this ruling could spell the beginning of the end of the current RIAA MO: if this precedent were picked up in other places, and they couldn’t count on open-and-shut settlements, the flagrant abuse of the American legal system might have to come to an end.

Judge deals blow to RIAA, says students can respond to John Doe lawsuit [via Digg]

(Incidentally, this is my first post. Hello, I’m Parker.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 11:06 pm and is filed under News, RIAA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.