Judge halts RIAA 'illegal' activity

THE RIAA'S CAMPAIGN against students in New Mexico has been stalled after a federal judge forbade the anti-piracy body from getting private data from university networks.

The RIAA had put up a case against 16 people it claimed were file sharing. It wanted to use the court's powers to get the university to provide the names and addresses of the file sharers so that it could threaten the students' careers if they didn't cough up several hundreds times more than it is alleged they stole.

This strategy has stood the RIAA in good stead for ages, but Judge Lorenzo Garcia is not having any of it.

Garcia said that the approach is an abuse of the legal process, as the would-be defendant never gets an opportunity to answer during the John Doe lawsuits or fight the RIAA's subpoenas.

The RIAA claimed it would suffer irreparable harm unless immediate discovery was allowed. Judge Garcia said that while the Court does not dispute that infringement of a copyright results in harm, it requires a Coleridgian 'suspension of disbelief' to accept that the harm is irreparable.

The RIAA claims that monetary damages can cure any alleged violation which probably means it was pretty repairable after all.

Meanwhile the getting the university to hand over a student's data to the RIAA definitely would be harmful to them. Mostly because the RIAA is making the threat to damage their future lives with the data, the Judge said.

The judge has ordered the record labels and the University of New Mexico to work out an "appropriate process" to ensure that individual knows a subpoena has been issued and allows those targeted will be able to respond to such requests to protect their own interests.

Ars Technica points out that, while it will not stop RIAA prosecutions, the ruling, if adopted elsewhere, could cost the recording industry a bomb. The litigation process will become a lot more expensive and time-consuming for the RIAA, as the John Doe lawsuits would no longer be simple open-and-shut cases. µ