RIAA Decries Attorney-Blogger as 'Vexatious' Litigator

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/riaa-decries-at.html

The article I’m reviewing deals with the issue of the “recording industry vs. the people.” It focuses on a specific attorney, Ray Beckerman, who is accused of being a “vexatious” litigator, or in other words he has been fighting his cases without sufficient evidence purely to cause aggravation. Beckerman has written an “anti-recording industry blog” that has post about all of his “baseless motions.” The RIAA (recording industry association of America) argues that these blogs “demeans the integrity of these judicial proceedings and warrants this imposition of sanctions."
Other attorney’s like Ray Beckerman who are fighting against the record companies are saying it is the RIAA that should be accused of vexatious conduct. One specifically, Lory Lybeck, argues that the RIAA has been participating in using “sham” litigation tactics to sue about 30,000 people in the past five years, some of whom were falsely accused and all using unlicensed investigators. Lybeck feels the accusations against Beckerman are “like irony and irony and irony.” He believes that the 30,000 lawsuits against the people were all just part of a “PR campaign based on a fundamental starting place of an illegal investigation by unlicensed investigators and then a threatening letter.”
I personally am on the side of the RIAA. I think people should have to pay for music. If you really like an artist and the work they produce the best way to support that is to buy their album and give money to all the people who put their work into making that album happen. Regardless of whether the lawyers are using vexatious methods to win his cases or not people who make copyrighted music available for free using file sharing systems should be punished. I understand that Ray Beckerman is just doing his job and defending his client to the best of his ability, but for him to use unethical ways to defend his clients is wrong.

-- ryan wettlaufer