You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world . . .
You say you’ve got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We are doing what we can
But if you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is, brother, you’ll have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright?
-John Lennon
Perhaps John Lennon said it best: if you push people hard enough and long enough, they will revolt. The question is, has the RIAA gone too far for too long? A recent motion filed in their case against students at the University of Maine may very well answer that question.
The RIAA named numerous “John Doe” students in their complaint in Arista Records v. Does 1-27, as is their practice in all of their lawsuits. The RIAA’s purpose of naming the John Doe defendants is so that they may obtain an ex parte (i.e., without the other party being notified) order from the Judge requiring the targeted university to provide the various students’ name, address, and, particularly, their IP address.
Student lawyers at the University school of law Cumberland Legal Clinic have filed a motion for Rule 11 sanctions against the RIAA claiming that this practice improperly seeks to circumvent the student’s rights under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, §1232g(b)(2)(B) (“FERPA”), gain publicity for its cause, and coerce students into settling for “nominal” amounts in the $3-5000 range.
Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allows sanctions against an attorney who signs a pleading without properly investigating the facts and the law and does so with an improper purpose.
The motion also questions whether the joinder of plaintiffs and defendants under the RIAA-type lawsuits is proper because the actions do not, in fact, arise out of the same transaction. Rule 20 of the Federal Rules of Procedure provides that multiple plaintiffs can join in one action if “they assert any right to relief jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences…and any question of law or fact common to all plaintiffs will arise in the action.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 20(a). Similarly, multiple defendants can be joined in one action if “any right to relief is asserted against them jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transaction or occurrences . . . and any question of law or fact common to all defendants will arise in the action.” Id. The student motion alleges that the RIAA does not, in fact, believe that all of these copyright infringements arise out of the same facts, but join together against multiple defendants for the sole purpose of trimming litigation and discovery costs.
In this case, the student lawyers are seeking more than just monetary damages under this Rule 11 motion: they also seek dismissal of the complaint and a permanent injunction preventing the RIAA from filing “fishing expedition” type complaints against “unconnected” defendants in the future. These types of injunctions may be applied in jurisdictions other than the one in which it was issued, so in theory such an order may be applied to thwart lawsuits in other Federal courts across the country.
This in one ruling that should be very interesting.
