What is Digg?94 Comments
- KevinRoseMustDy, on 03/26/2008, -7/+96The losing party should always pay the attorney's fees, especially by corporations who can afford. Such a move would cease frivolous and irrational lawsuits
- Cubedude04, on 03/26/2008, -5/+50Anyone using KaZaA in 2006 deserves to be sued.
- coheedcollapse, on 03/26/2008, -1/+42I think it'd make more sense to make the losing party pay attorney's fees only if they initiated the lawsuit in the first place. It's ridiculous that the RIAA can go around and accuse whoever they please, but just drop a case and never give anything back if it turns out they're not going to win it.
- willski, on 03/26/2008, -2/+32Yes, but that would work both ways too. What if you're the little guy suing a huge corporation? If you lose, you'd be liable for millions in legal fees, which would probably weigh heavily on your decision to file suit, whether you're in the right or not.
They can't just make the rule "The party with the most money shall pay legal fees" - carpespasm, on 03/26/2008, -0/+30not on their part. Large companies can easily write off a big lawyer's bill as part of doing business if that legal action earns or saves them more money than it costs. It does wonders to stop normal people from suing an entity that has a seemingly bottomless pit of money though.
- inactive, on 03/26/2008, -3/+20FAR more often lawsuits are the other way around. Little people suing large corporations.
Making that a be all, end all law that the losing party pays legal fees would pretty much guarantee that the little guy would NEVER stand up for themselves and sue a large company. - Needles13, on 03/26/2008, -1/+17I don't think legal fees should be paid by the losing party if there is a verdict. But when you bring someone to court, make them hire a lawyer, waste their time, then drop the case because of a blatant ***** up, then you need to pay their legal fees. Especially if it's the RIAA ^_^ ,***** em'.
- humanerror, on 04/03/2008, -0/+12ATTENTION: Corporations are not people. Corporations are not people. Corporations are not people.
You can make a law that applies to corporations and not to individuals. You can do that because corporations are not people. - tonzophunn, on 03/26/2008, -0/+12One must be pretty damn stupid to use the only client in which the RIAA is actually tracing people through
- zbeast, on 03/26/2008, -0/+11I think that the riaa should pay...
They can pull it out of that pool of cash they have been collecting but
not forwarding on to the recording artists. - Chaoticfist, on 03/26/2008, -1/+11I applaud your use of the words *****, *****, and *****. However may i change that to ***** THE ***** ***** AT THE ***** **AA. (Add in BMI, IFPI, as well as your local copyright *****.)
- inactive, on 03/26/2008, -0/+10Agreed. So the answer should be in the type of lawsuit. The RIAA is clearly in the legal business, second only to Scientology for making legal claims against people. So if you file more than X suits in a year, then should you drop and run, you must pay the defendants legal fees. This would make both the little guy AND the big guy reconsider constantly filing suits frivolously.
- coheedcollapse, on 03/26/2008, -0/+9Of course! Not many people are going to fight back just because they know that even if they do fight and win, they're going to be out more than the $3000 fee that the RIAA usually "settles" on out of court. That and the fact that completely circumstantial evidence seems to hold up quite well in court when it comes to digital crime.
Also, I'm not saying a majority of people DO win, I'm just saying that it's crap in this single situation where the guy DID win that the RIAA can just be like "whoops" and go on their way. - coheedcollapse, on 03/26/2008, -0/+91) I never said anyone was innocent or guilty, I was just stating a fact.
2) So tell me, if you were in that position and COMPLETELY innocent, you would rather spend countless thousands of dollars on something you're not even guaranteed to win rather than spend the $3000 or whatever on a settlement? I'm sorry, but even in a world of $500,000 condos, not many people have the balls to put up their life savings to fight against the RIAA's best.
You can think what you want of the innocence or guilt of those prosecuted, I'm just saying that most people, no matter how innocent, don't have the money to go out fists flying against the RIAA. I don't know if you're playing devil's advocate or what. - Shaman760, on 03/26/2008, -2/+11No wonder the SCOTUS can't start prosecutorial proceedings against BushCo.....they are inundated with *****-for-brains lawsuits brought about by these whining bitches known as the RIAA.
***** THE RIAA - mtdaugherty, on 03/26/2008, -1/+9Dugg for correct capitalization of KaZaA.
- scbysnx, on 03/26/2008, -1/+8yeah this is the one scary thing about it, it would do a lot to stop frivolous lawsuits by people looking to sue a bus company because the bus hit a lamp post but it would be horrible for someone who had a legitimate claim that the company would spend a fortune on defending then "punish" the person for even trying with mountains of legal fee's
- Jenadae, on 03/26/2008, -0/+7For stupidity?
- JcbAzPx, on 03/26/2008, -0/+6Please, this is the RIAA. Not only are they likely already suing his daughter, they're probably suing his dead grandmother and his cat, Mittens, too.
- coheedcollapse, on 03/26/2008, -0/+6Completely true. I should have thought about it both ways before I went straight to that conclusion.
it's always hard for me to get it out of my head that people sue for REAL reasons in this day and age of frivolous ***** and staged lawsuits. - inactive, on 03/26/2008, -2/+8Dugg for 'fom' only one letter from FROM!!!!
- WoollyMittens, on 03/26/2008, -0/+6Oh noes! Not Mittens!
- inactive, on 03/26/2008, -4/+9At least SOMEBODY on Digg has some common sense and is not hypocritical. And what you said is not only 100% corect, but it is the more common situations. LArge wealthy corporations are sued by the average person far more often than the reverse.
Any law that made it automatic that the losing party had to pay the winner's attorney's fees would do FAR more harm to the "little guy" than it would help him. No one would ever risk it. - DarkerMaster, on 03/26/2008, -1/+6BURN YOU *****, BURN!!!
- Langford, on 03/26/2008, -0/+5A different IP system would cure the RIAA. I think the problem is that copyrights last for too long. If they were far shorter, there would be no profit in the RIAA dragnetting for kids to sue.
- kanabiis, on 03/26/2008, -0/+4I think alot of people here have a grave misunderstanding of tort law. Common tort law does have the loser pay attorney fees. If you sue me, and I win, you pay for my attorney.
This situation is not that case, in this situation, the RIAA sued, and after the defendant came back with a solid defense and the RIAA legal team realized that taking the case to court they would loose they dropped the case, however the defendant had amassed a large debt in attorney fees paying for his defense. Had the case gone to court and the defendant won, the RIAA would have had to pay his legal fees in addition to any other monetary judgment, but since the RIAA said we give up, the case was never heard, and a judgment never entered. Thus, the defendant technically 'won' however he was also still in debt to his attorney.
Now, he could sue the RIAA for wrongful litigation and attempt to recoup his expenses, and continue to dig deeper in debt to his attorneys for this new lawsuit, but how fair is that really, he was innocent to begin with? Its not, and is contrary to the entire concept of justice.
There is an interesting article on Pointoflaw.com regarding the inconsistencies in the application of the 'loser pays' principle in American tort law, which this appeal to the SCOTUS is looking to have clarified:
http://www.pointoflaw.com/loserpays/overview.php - MentalHazard, on 03/26/2008, -2/+6The easiest solution here would be a mixture of things.
1) If there was any fault in the losing party beyond an honest mistake, they should have to pay the the fees.
2) We need to stop the mandatory liscence requirement of lawyers and let the free market decide who is god enough to do the job.
3) Overhauling our present IP system for a much less invasive one is the only thing that's going to stop all this copyright/patent nonsense.
Of course I'm probably going to be buried for offering anything other than a kneejerk, politically polar reaction. - daborg, on 03/26/2008, -0/+3Dude, honestly. Stop trolling and get a life.
- davidzet, on 03/26/2008, -6/+9dugg for SCOTUS -- only a few letter from SCROTUM
- thomas, on 03/26/2008, -1/+4SCOTUS is mainly an internet term it isn't something you would see in formal writing or when someone is talking about the Supreme Court.
- WoollyMittens, on 03/26/2008, -0/+3no
- DestroyFascism, on 03/26/2008, -0/+3To allow a serial litigant to get away with this is crazy!
- Wartz, on 03/26/2008, -0/+3the Supreme court is the Supreme Court.
The others are State Name Supreme court. - Netrilix, on 03/26/2008, -2/+5In my case, no, never. Heck, I wasn't even sure what SCOTUS was until I saw your post. I just call it the Supreme Court.
- cawpin, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2"It isn't a "blatant ***** up" They have good reason to beleive it was him."
The ONLY reason they thought that is because they are getting away with finding evidence after they bring it to court. Get your evidence and THEN sue. - LALDET, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2Good, take every penny from those bastards that you can.
- lerker, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2Is this true? You guys actually refer to your Supreme Court as SCOTUS?
- inactive, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2this i want to see !
- cawpin, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2"Let's see..in the case of the "grandmother" it was becuase her grandkids were using it."
And the dead woman? Yeah, didn't think so. - inactive, on 03/26/2008, -1/+3There shouldn't be a limit to the number of times. It should be like it is now. IF the judge rules that your lawsuit was frivilous or malicious, then you pay. But not just to lose. That is like the stupid NFL replay rule. You get 2 chalenges. That is stupid. So, if you have a ref make a lot of bad calls in a row against you, you are screwed. Yes, if you win both challegnes, you get another, but if you miss just one, you get only 2, no matter how terrible the calls are afterward.) They could just make the definition of malicoous or frivilous less strict. But again, that could scare off the little guy from suing a large corporation too.
And in this case, the RIAA had every reasonable reason to believe it was this guy. A computer at his house, using his IP was doing the sharing. It was not malicious - ThndrShk2k, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2"That and the fact that completely circumstantial evidence seems to hold up quite well in court when it comes to digital crime."
That totally incorrect. It only holds up when the people explaining it explain it in a certain way to their favor, and the people listening to them have little knowledge about how computers work.
They use the suceptability of ignorance to sue both the people who know nothing, as well as convince those who decide to rule in their favor of such a suit. When argued against correctly, their evidence doesn't hold much weight at all, unless they prove it was the person they're sueing.
How do you think the some cases that did come to trial get turned into the accused's favor? - Netrilix, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2Little guy sues big company in a decently legitimate suit, with a roughly 75% chance of winning it. He hits some back luck, the case falls through, and he pays his cheap lawyer. Then he has to pay a whole team of multi-million dollar lawyers, and ends up going bankrupt just because a legitimate case falls through?
- OrangeSoda31, on 03/28/2008, -0/+2First I have ever heard of it.
- Murdats, on 03/26/2008, -1/+3thats what we do in australia, and how many people have been sued over here by our equiv of the MAFIAA?
next to none. - Nerys, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2Sure I can answer that. They never identify a person. They only identify an IP and then SUE that IP OWNER.
YOU fail to realize IP does not EQUAL PERSON. - dlowder, on 03/26/2008, -0/+2Lerker: Many Americans refer to the Supreme Court as SCOTUS. It sort of makes sense when you realize that in the U.S. each state has its own state Supreme Court, so it's a good way to make sure people know you're talking about the big one in Washington, DC.
- cawpin, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1Keep thinking that.
- malingo73, on 03/26/2008, -1/+2There is a law that says companies can not drag unions into arbitration on every grievance simply to bankrupt the union. The company will be in trouble if that is the case. The same should apply to major corporations that figure you will just settle because they have vastly greater resources than you do. That intimidating factor should not be allowed to decide the outcome of any lawsuit via a settlement. The corporation should be liable since they are the ones trying to intimidate you into settling.
- diggydougie, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1I think that the government should pay all the legal bills. It's their court system which necessitates them in the first place. And what the hell are "court costs"? Don't our taxes pay for the courts!
- Nerys, on 03/26/2008, -1/+2Actually niku THATS whats so ***** up in this country today. CORPORATES ARE PEOPLE in the eyes of the law! They have LEGAL personhood. Thats a BIG reason we have so many PROBLEMS today.
To me this law is simple. Make it so it ONLY applies when its a corporation suing an individual or small set of individuals. Thats it. -
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