As I've mentioned here many times before, the Recording Industry Association of America has been suing people it believes have been downloading and sharing music for nearly a decade. They have received some money from settlements, but also lost nearly every decision made in court. They owe a lot of money in attorneys fees to the defendants who successfully fended off the RIAA legal claims, and the RIAA is not paying that money.

In the case of the RIAA vs Deborah Foster, the defendant was awarded $68,000 in attorney fees by the Court. That money has not been paid by the RIAA, and they have not responded to requests for that money. Ms. Foster has requested a judgment from the Court in the matter.

Plaintiffs are required to pay the attorneys fees awarded by the Court to the defendant. The RIAA has not contested the decision or the amount of the fees, they have just ignored the ruling by the Court.

These facts should be considered by the Court in future cases involving the RIAA versus individuals accused of sharing digital music files. Those defendants would have to pay damages if the Court ruled against them, or a collection agency would take the amount of the damages from them. The RIAA apparently thinks that it is immune from Court decisions against them. Collection agencies should be dispatched immediately to seize assets of the RIAA equal to the amount they owe from Court decisions, and future Court rulings on similar matters should consider that only one side of the case plans on following the letter of the law, and it's not the side with billions of dollars in its pocket.
Recording Industry vs The People

Some interesting studies have shown that American lawyers are about as dissatisfied with their profession as any lawyers in any other part of the world. A whopping 40% of American lawyers would like to leave their profession. 25% of British lawyers want to end their legal careers.

What makes American lawyers so unhappy? I think the major factor is the hours. I know lawyers who are at work before 6am, and they might not come home until 7 or 8 at night, sometimes much later. Those hours are beyond long, they're downright vicious. After going through college, several years of law school, and the BAR exam, lawyers end up working hours just as long as their two-jobs-at-once, high school dropout counterpart.

Sure, lawyers tend to make a lot of money. The problem is that they have little time to spend it. Any basic economics class teaches us that there is a delicate balance between wage and free time. At some point, wages cannot be raised enough to cause someone to decrease free time and increase workload. Would you work for $1,000 an hour if you had to work 22 hours a day? Not if you had to do it every day.

Lawyers also face a lot of really boring work. They might spend 8 hours of their day pushing paper, working their way through our bureaucratic legal system. They are the small print writers, putting legalese to paper that no one will ever look at but needs to exist to "protect" their clients.

Perhaps something needs to be done to curb the dissatisfaction among those in the legal profession. Or maybe the world is better off with fewer lawyers. It would be nice if more young people pursued a medical profession, because I'm not getting any younger.
Law Blog - WSJ.com : British Lawyers are Unhappy, Too

It turns out you can't say whatever you want on the internet. Bloggers are finding that out the hard way, as more and more of them are being sued for defamation, among other things.

Although bloggers are not given the same rights as journalists in most states, they are still subject to laws regarding libel. The perceived anonymity of the internet makes it more likely that the average joe will run afoul of laws that they might not even know exist.
Courts Becoming Busy With Blog Lawsuits | WebProNews

A law professor is making an example of the NFL and show her students how content owners are exaggerating their own rights. Wendy Seltzer recently posted a clip of the copyright message the NFL aired during the Super Bowl telecast. The NFL responded with a DMCA takedown notice through YouTube, where the video was hosted. The professor responded with a counter-notice, and the video reappeared on the site.

The NFL then made a mistake they will likely regret. Instead of responding to the counter-claim with court proceedings, they ignored it completely and sent another takedown notice for the same clip. This is considered a known misrepresentation that the clip was infringing, as stated in DMCA section 512(f)(1). The NFL could be held liable for legal fees incurred along with damages to the alleged infringer.

By the way, Wendy works for the EFF. In other words, she is not going to just let this issue be dropped. The NFL tried using its lawyers to control its content, and now they are going to face a tough legal face because of it.
NFL fumbles DMCA takedown battle, could face sanctions

The former prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case is in the battle of his legal career, and it's against the North Carolina State Bar. Recently released documents revealed that the Bar believes Nifong skirted the system and twisted words in an attempt to make it appear that he acted appropriately in the Duke case.

At the center of the allegations against Nifong is the way he released information to the public and to the defense. He did not reveal that DNA tests came back negative for what most people would consider an extraordinarily long time, and even when he did he was deceitful. He released the results to the defense in the form of 2,000 pages of raw test results, without any summary result telling them what it all meant. They had to hire their own experts to interpret the results that the prosecution already had. That's not just skirting the law, that's acting like an ass because a case is not going your way.

Nifong should be tossed from the NC bar, and the law school that approved him for the bar should be investigated. First year law students are writing 100 page papers detailing the ways Nifong acted unethically. I'm sure some pre-laws are doing independent research on the topic just to kiss up to some teacher. That's how obvious this whole thing is, and Nifong thought he could pull it off in front of a national audience.
State Bar Says Nifong Skirted System in Handling of Duke Lacrosse Case :: WRAL.com