Photo Credit: Scott Graham
One week back, stream-ripper Yout appealed the dismissal of its years-long defamation and DMCA lawsuit against the Recording Industry Association of America. Now, the RIAA is officially demanding that the Hartford-based plaintiff cough up $250,000 in attorneys’ fees.
The RIAA today called on Yout to foot the “conservative” bill, which reflects 364.2 hours of work calculated at a “discounted” $875 per hour for the lead attorney and “a blended associate rate of $630/hour,” a memorandum in support of the legal-fee motion shows.
For background, the underlying complaint made its way to a Connecticut federal court a little over two years ago, when Yout first alleged that the RIAA had violated the DMCA by targeting it with false takedown notices.
These allegedly false takedown notices compelled Google to delist Yout from search-results pages and, on the defamation front, inflicted material harm upon Yout’s reputation, according to filings from the marathon dispute. (“PayPal has shut down Yout’s account—likely due to the RIAA’s notices,” the plaintiff wrote in one of the filings.)
But as initially mentioned, the RIAA says that the sought “fee award is appropriate and justified here” because of Yout’s allegedly “objectively unreasonable, if not frivolous” claims.
“Evidence further suggests that Yout brought this lawsuit, not in good faith, but to prolong and advertise its stream-ripping business,” the motion for attorneys’ fees reads. “In doing so, Yout caused RIAA to incur significant legal fees to defend this lawsuit and protect its members’ rights. The purpose of the Copyright Act, as well as the need for compensation and deterrence, strongly favor awarding fees.”
Meanwhile, the memorandum in support of the motion further criticizes Yout’s allegedly “implausible” lawsuit and claims that the RIAA’s lawyers “tried numerous times to reach out to counsel for Yout to discuss resolution of this motion and matter.” However, the professional at hand “responded that he no longer represents Yout and has since filed a notice of appeal,” per the document.
From there, the remainder of the straightforward text elaborates upon Yout’s purported effort to obtain media coverage (and, in turn, additional users) by spearheading the allegedly “meritless suit,” the plaintiff’s allegedly “baseless” arguments before the court, and related factors that are said to “favor awarding attorneys’ fees.”
“Yout knows very well that its service is illegal,” the firmly worded memorandum drives home. At the time of this writing, Yout didn’t appear to have commented on the RIAA’s pursuit of legal fees on social media. Back in March, FLVTO.biz appealed an $83 million damages verdict as part of its own courtroom confrontation with the RIAA.