Music Festival Producer Pre-emptively Files John Doe Suit Against Potential Bootleggers

Posted by LawRiotAdmin on August 12th, 2010

Has Minority Report become a reality? In Tom Cruise’s movie, the DC police department harnessed the powers of a few gifted children who can predict future crimes, and then capture the criminal before the the act even takes place. Here, a music producer is kinda trying to do the same thing.

Recently, the internet caught wind of a Music Festival Producter (AEG Live — Rocky Mountain) who is pre-emptively suing potential bootleggers of his summer music festival. Instead of waiting for the crime to happen, he’s suing the unknown criminal. Though most student of law might ask if this is even procedurally permissible, techdirt.com assures that it is. Since no one is coming forward to protest the suit or defend themselves, the lower court has allowed the plaintiff to file the suit. In fact, since the music festival producer filed the suit, his company has now been able to procure US Marshalls to secure the intellectual property of the festival, by scoping out potential bootleggers.

Could this be a new trend among the music industry? See below for the embedded court document:

cod-03902958132 –
Source: [Techdirt]

Posted in Legal News

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TruthFighter

Wow. This is sort of horrific, especially once it becomes precedent and inevitably gets extended beyond IP litigation. The Minority Report comparison is closer than you might think. If it becomes acceptable to pursue a cause of action before a violation exists and then use that complaint as a basis to screen potential violators, what is to stop creative prosecutors from doing the same?

I have a friend who is involved in law enforcement as a consultant, and this friend often complains that everyone in New York should be forced to do time, because chances are they did something to deserve it anyway. This person's mindset isn't unique in the law enforcement and prosecutorial community. If you combine an attitude of “everyone's guilty of something” and a mechanism for creating a crime before it's been committed, my friend's dream of putting everyone in prison “just because” could become a reality.

Obviously, it would never happen to that extent, but it would certainly be easier to put people in prison based on things like racial profiling, prior records, economic or community status, etc.