RIAA Strikes Back After Spinrilla Accusations of False DMCA Takedown Notices

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is firing back against claims that it falsely issued DMCA copyright-infringement notices. 

About one week ago, Digital Music News reported that Spinrilla had filed suit against the RIAA over a series of allegedly baseless DMCA copyright-infringement notices. Spinrilla claimed that said notices distracted employees and ate up valuable resources, in addition to harming some innocent users (whose profiles were accidentally suspended or banned as a result of the orders). 

Now, in a new court filing, the RIAA stated that it didn’t issue false DMCA notices to Spinrilla, and that the infringement inquiries were entirely warranted. Besides attempting to dismiss Spinrilla’s case―by saying that the argument “fails to allege the bare minimum fact” demanded under the cited law―the RIAA attempted to cast doubt upon several of the most significant facets of Spinrilla’s argument. 

Specifically, the RIAA indicated that Spinrilla’s suit centers on a single DMCA notice of the “over a thousand infringing files” it took issue with, and that this pillar of their case “is insufficient to state a claim because it is based on nothing more than pure conjecture.” 

The RIAA also pursued the dismissal of Spinrilla’s case because the company never “removed or disabled access to the sole audio file it identifies” or suffered the damages associated with doing so. In other words, they never complied with the DMCA notice, so they couldn’t have lost money or resources from it. 

Finally, the filing emphasized that Spinrilla and the RIAA are engaged in another, entirely separate lawsuit and alleged that this newest filing “is an obvious and baseless attempt to draw the Court’s attention” from the initial case. 

Filed in 2017 by the Big Three record labels (with support from the RIAA), the legal complaint pertains to alleged large-scale copyright-infringement on Spinrilla, and an alleged willingness on the part of the company’s executives to let users freely post protected works.

Assuming that a judge allows Spinrilla’s false takedown notice lawsuit to proceed, the matter will likely require more time than usual to make its way through court, given the widespread legal-system delays stemming from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.