RIAA Wins Round One in P2P End-User Lawsuit

Interscope Records v. Duty (D.Ariz. April 14, 2006)

“[P]laintiffs-various recording companies (‘the Recording Companies’)-allege that Lindsay Duty (‘Duty’) used a peer-to-peer network called Kazaa to download and distribute copyrighted music in violation of federal law.”

Duty moves to dismiss the Recording Companies' copyright infringement claim . . . contending that A) the Recording Companies failed to satisfy the pleading requirement . . . and B) the Recording Companies provide no evidence of dissemination. Duty also moves to dismiss the claim . . . for the failure to join an indispensable party. We disagree with all three contentions, and accordingly deny Duty's motion to dismiss.

The court found that the evidence submitted by the Recording Companies sufficient enough to meet the pleading requirements. On the second issue, the court also found that dismissal was not appropriate:

“Distribute” is not defined under the Copyright Act, but the right of distribution is synonymous with the right of publication, . . . , and “publication” is defined under the Copyright Act. “Publication” is defined to include “[t]he offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display.”17 U.S.C. § 101 (emphasis added). Moreover, the Court of Appeals has stated that “Napster [a peer-to-peer file sharing company] users who upload file names to the search index for others to copy violate plaintiffs' distribution rights.” . . . . Therefore, the mere presence of copyrighted sound recordings in Duty's share file may constitute copyright infringement.

With regards to the last argument for dismissal of the copyright infringement claim, the court did not find it necessary to include the owner of Kazaa, Sharman Networks, Ltd., as a party to this lawsuit. The court did note, however, that Duty might have a valid defense in the position that “to the extent copyright infringement took place, it was not caused by her because Kazaa has an automatic upload feature which causes any user to unknowingly distribute computer files over the internet.”

Duty also counterclaimed “A) seeking a declaratory judgment that she did not commit copyright infringement; B) claiming that the Recording Companies are liable for the invasion of privacy in accessing her computer files and C) publically identifying her as a file-sharer; and D) claiming that the Recording Companies are liable for the abuse of legal process.” The Recording Companies’ motion to dismiss all these counterclaims was granted by the court.

While the court dismissed the first counterclaim as essentially unnecessary and redundant, the second counterclaim required a tad more consideration. Duty’s counterclaim relied on the tort of intrusion upon seclusion, which would hold the Record Companies liable if they had intentionally intruded “upon the solitude or seclusion” of another’s affairs or concerns and where such intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person. Duty was arguing, in essence, that “the Recording Companies committed this tort by accessing her Kazaa share folder . . . .” However, since the share file was publicly available, regardless of why it was public, Duty could not “show that the Recording Companies intruded upon her private affairs.” As a result, the court saw no reason to object to the dismissal of this second counterclaim.

On the third counterclaim, Duty had failed to respond to the Recording Companies’ motion for dismissal, so it went out the courthouse door on a legal technicality.

The final counterclaim argued that the Recording Companies were abusing the legal process in pursuing alleged infringers like Duty. Once again the court granted dismissal of the counterclaim, but not without comment:

Here, Duty claims that this is one case in thousands where the Recording Companies are suing individual users of peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa in an effort to frighten users away from the networks, thereby putting the networks out of business. This might be true. In fact, the Recording Companies state in their briefings that “they face a massive problem of digital piracy over the Internet” and accordingly they have “sustained and continue to sustain devastating financial losses.” It is not, however, an abuse of the legal process to organize a large-scale legal assault on small-scale copyright infringers that together cause devastating financial losses. Moreover, it is not an abuse of the legal process if the Recording Companies' goal in bringing these actions is to scare would-be infringers into complying with federal law, and thereby prevent the networks that allegedly facilitate the alleged infringement from doing so. It may be an abuse of the legal process for a collection of large corporate entities to use their substantial financial and intellectual capacities to prey upon less capable individuals and unfairly pressure them into settlement. However, while Duty sets forth general allegations with regard to the Recording Companies' overall strategy, she sets forth no allegations with regard to such heavy-handed tactics in this litigation. Therefore, the Recording Companies' motion to dismiss Duty's abuse of process claim is granted.

Holding: Duty’s motion to dismiss the Recording Companies’ claims are denied, while the Recording Companies’ motion to dismiss Duty’s counterclaims is granted.