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Comment by Judgmentality | Hacker News Reader

IANAL, but I'm curious if you are. In my experience, lawyers tend to get a lot done by intimidation. Remember all those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA over downloading illegal music? Well, it turns out when people actually took them to court they won every time. But people settled out of fear.

Sure, if the lawyers are actually trying to do things legally first and adhering to the letter of the law, I'm sure they're happy to have their efforts challenged. But I have never, ever, in my life encountered a lawyer who worked this way (and I have lawyers in my family, I've been to court, I've personally hired several, blah blah blah). I am not saying they don't know the law, but they use their greater knowledge of the law to their advantage. Their goal isn't transparency, it's submission.

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> Remember all those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA over downloading illegal music? Well, it turns out when people actually took them to court they won every time. But people settled out of fear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thoma...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_v._Tenenbaum

These were widely covered because most people just settled, and there were high hopes for something putting a damper on the lawsuits... from the page about the second case " It was only the second file-sharing case (after Capitol v. Thomas) to go to verdict in the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) anti-downloading litigation campaign"

So 2 for 2 there were found in favor of the RIAA, for huge damages even after appeal.

More recently, even ISPs are getting hit hard: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/1-billion-piracy...

As I remember those times, they didn't go after people for simply downloading music, they were going after the people who were actively distributing music on file sharing services.

There's a much harder burden of proof for the RIAA when they sue people over simply downloading songs or albums when the user can easily make the case for fair use. I mean, how many albums, 8-tracks, cassettes and CD's did you buy of the same artist and album? I know I did it thousands of times.

The burden gets a lot easier when you can show the person was actively distributing essentially pirated music to other users - propagating what is by legal definition, illegal activity.

> As I remember those times, they didn't go after people for simply downloading music, they were going after the people who were actively distributing music on file sharing services.

As I remember, at least some cases were complete BS. Some people hardly knew what file sharing was.

Actually people lost. But it doesn't matter anyway because the RIAA can't collect it, and the debt was basically the lowest priority.

Do you have a link? I'm trying to dig up stories on it, but it's so stale. As far as I can tell almost everybody settled, and the few that fought in court eventually won.

https://www.wired.com/2010/05/riaa-bump/

This woman did.

https://www.wired.com/2007/10/riaa-jury-finds/

I am not. I work with lots of them.

I think we're talking about two different things. Yes, the RIAA was running an intimidation campaign. By and large they didn't care about any particular case.

That's quite different than a plaintiff coming at a car manufacturer over sketchy click-wrap agreements.

Your comment was about lawyers. I gave a random anecdote. We're not talking about different things at all, unless your comment was only about specific lawyers which you failed to mention.

Anyway, I don't care enough to comment anymore.

I'll remember not to care to reply in the first place.

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