RIAA forced to pay defendant's legal bills

THE RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA (RIAA) has had to pay a woman it alleged shared music on a P2P network over $68,685.23 in lawyerish fees and costs.

In this case they threatened Debbie Foster when it appeared that the person who was file-sharing was her daughter Amanda. But rather than call off the hounds, the RIAA carried on with the case against the mother.

The case in Oklahoma, has proved to be a rout for the RIAA and its methods proving that a person did any file-sharing.

Later when it was fairly clear that the file sharing was nothing to do with Debbie Foster, and there was a huge amount of negative publicity, the RIAA wanted to just walk away from the case, saddling Debbie Foster with a hefty legal bill.

The RIAA wanted Foster to be stuck with paying her legal costs because it technically dropped the case against her. However Judge Lee R. West said that was "disingenuous" and that the RIAA's factual statements about the settlement history of the case were "not true."

He found the RIAA's case against Foster "untested and marginal". He found its "motives to be questionable in light of the facts of the case".

It is the first time that the RIAA has had to cough up in a case of this kind. More here. µ