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August 14, 2006, 12:56 PM ET
Pay Us Off, Dead Man
The Recording Industry Association of America seemed to hit the bad-PR jackpot months ago, when an official with the trade group allegedly suggested that a student drop out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to settle an antipiracy lawsuit. The student wrote about the incident in The Tech, MIT’s student newspaper—and her account was gobbled up by bloggers and peer-to-peer advocates who were only too happy to bash the RIAA for its apparent insensitivity.
Now, though, the trade group may have done itself one better. After the death of the defendant in Warner Bros. v. Scantlebury, a run-of-the-mill antipiracy suit, industry lawyers have evidently moved to stay the case for 60 days before they start taking depositions of the defendant’s children.
The motion—reported in Recording Industry vs. the People, a blog run by lawyers who have opposed the RIAA—is, at the very least, another piece of questionable public relations from a trade group that doesn’t exactly seem to have a sensitive touch. A number of popular Web sites, including Ars Technica, Boing Boing, and Slashdot, have already jumped on the story, and commenters on those sites haven’t exactly rushed to the RIAA’s defense. —Brock Read
Categories: Legal-Troubles, Campus-Piracy
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