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RIAA Sues Stroke Victim in Michigan
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has now brought suit against a stroke victim in Michigan in Warner v. Paladuk. The defendant John Paladuk was living in Florida at the time of the alleged copyright infringement, and had notified the RIAA that he had not engaged in any copyright infringement. Despite the fact that Mr. Paladuk suffered a stroke last year (pdf), rendering him disabled, the RIAA commenced suit against him on February 27, 2007. Suing the disabled is not new to the RIAA. Both Atlantic v. Andersen in Oregon and Elektra v. Schwartz in New York were suits brought against disabled people who have never engaged in file sharing, and whose sole income is Social Security Disability. Both of these cases are still pending. The local Michigan lawyer being used by the RIAA in the Paladuk case is the same lawyer who was accused by a 15 year old girl of telling her what to say at her deposition in Motown v. Nelson. In the Warner v. Scantlebury case, after the defendant died during the lawsuit, the same lawyer indicated to the court that he was going to give the family '60 days to grieve' before he would start deposing the late Mr. Scantlebury's children."
It is times like this that I wish America would switch over to a system where blank media is taxed and they don't prosecute piracy. Sure it might stretch the bottom line for the Mafiaa, but wouldn't it be beneficial to society at large? Hopefully in a decade or so it will be a big enough hot-button topic to spur actual political change. Until then keep it up RIAA... if you stop being the stereotypical evil corporation all we will have left to overthrow when the revolution comes is Microsoft :-)
The more I hear "RIAA" the more I wonder what it's really for. It seems like whenever stuff like this happens, we say the RIAA is suing a stroke victim. The RIAA sues dead people. It seems like the RIAA is doing a great job redirecting all of the bad press for this campaign. To me it looks like Warner is suing this guy, not the RIAA. Let's at least identify who is calling the shots here. Maybe if more people heard about Warner's actions, they would buy CDs from other record labels. (Yes, I know other labels sue people just as much, but it'd be nice if there was some bad press to come with stuff like suing disabled people.)
Frankly, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We continue to purchased $21 CDs with two good tracks because we dont have the principles to really boycott the industry.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/05/riaa_sues_ the_dead/
At this point, I doubt it would matter. If we stopped buying the cds they would claim it as proof of pirating.
Then let them. Claims don't keep their business afloat, money does. They can't make you buy CDs, they can only stop illegal copying. If all this anti-piracy crap doesn't increase their sales numbers they'll run out of options sooner or later.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
As someone who speaks to the victims of the RIAA lawsuits on a daily basis, I can definitely say that this stuff causes extreme anxiety and stress, and I'm sure it has contributed to depression and even to deaths.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful