RIAA Loses Big in Captiol v. Foster, Forced to Pay Attorney Fees

It's been a while since we have talked about RIAA's legal strategy of suing folks for alleged infringement, but this week brough some good news. Ray Beckerman reports on his block hat the Judge in Capitol v. Foster has awarded the defendant legal fees to the tune of $68 thousand dollars after tossing out the RIAA's case with prejudice, and subsequent appeal.

ArsTechnica has a good article about it with all the details.

ArsTechnica also recently wrote about the case of RIAA v. Terri Frye in which the RIAA has spent thousands to ultimately win a $300 judgment:

The RIAA's prelitigation settlement letters say that defendants are liable for costs of $750 per song. MediaSentry flagged 706 songs on the computer that became the basis for the lawsuit, and at $750 per song, that works out to a total of $529,500. The RIAA settled for a minuscule fraction of that number, one curiously close to the 70¢-per-track figure a record industry attorney said is close to the labels' share of each track sold. File-sharing defendants have argued that the $750-per-track damages sought by the RIAA are excessive, and here we have them accepting a judgment for about 40¢ per track. The RIAA appears willing to extract even a miniscule settlement from a single mother on federal assistance who was willing to help them discover the true identity of the alleged infringer rather than walk away emptyhanded.