Judge deals blow to RIAA, says students can respond to John Doe lawsuit
A federal judge in New Mexico has put the brakes on the RIAA's lawsuit train, at least in the US District Court for New Mexico. The case in question is part of the RIAA's campaign against file-sharing on college campuses and names …
Context & Ripple Effects
The New Mexico ruling lands mid-campaign: days earlier, the RIAA had begun filing suits specifically against students who declined its discounted settlement offer, part of the same push that has a Boston University student challenging the group's attempt to unmask names behind IP addresses. The John Doe structure is what lets the RIAA sue first and identify targets later — and this judge just insisted defendants get to respond before any of that proceeds.
First-order effects
- Students sued as John Does in the US District Court for New Mexico now have standing to answer the lawsuit directly, instead of facing a choice between an early settlement and a default judgment.
- The RIAA's volume-litigation model takes a procedural setback in that district: cases it filed expecting fast resolution will now require individual responses from each defendant.
Second-order effects
- Other student defendants and their lawyers gain a working template for contesting the sue-first-identify-later tactic, raising per-case legal costs across the campus campaign.
- Colleges forwarding RIAA notices to students face more pressure to warn recipients they can litigate rather than treat the letters as settlement-or-default ultimatums.
Third-order effects
- If courts broadly require due process before identification, the economics of mass John Doe litigation deteriorate — a problem for a campaign whose deterrent effect NPD data cited in May suggested was already failing to stop campus file-sharing.
The trend: Music-industry copyright enforcement is shifting from bulk lawsuits against unidentified file-sharers toward individually contested cases as courts push back on expedited John Doe procedure.