RIAA gets it’s own Judge
We’ve written about judge Beryl Howell a few times before. She’s the recently-appointed judge whose immediate job prior to that was as a lobbyist for the RIAA. Before that, she worked for the Judiciary Committee and was apparently a key player in drafting the DMCA. It seems pretty damn clear that she holds a strong viewpoint on the nature of copyright law and copyright infringement — but that hasn’t stopped her from taking those cases, even when her rulings appear to be exactly the opposite of nearly every other court. For example, while most courts have been throwing out copyright trolling lawsuits for improper joinder, Judge Howell had no problem with the practice and ordered various ISPs to cough up names based solely on IP addresses.
RIAA just bought a court.
