RIAA Accused of Extortion & Conspiracy

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The defendant in a Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, has filed counterclaims accusing the RIAA record labels of conspiracy and extortion. The counterclaims (pdf) are for Trespass, Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030), Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201), Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523), and Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030 (a)(2)(C); (c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. 559.72 et seq."

Comments

Re:No!

[Lead Butthead]

Sarcasm aside, who didn't see this coming?

The RIAA, aparently.

Despite what we all like to think of RIAA, they have on staff some of the best lawyers money can buy. Surely they have contingency plan layout just for this?

Re:more likely to get struck by lightning

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for fun I decided to test this theory when someone like you said this to me four years ago. I videotaped some fratboys playing drunk soccer, and then copied and pasted the clip repeatedly until I had an hour and a half long video. I then called the video "Shaolin Soccer.avi", put it in a Gnutella share directory on my computer that I connected to the university network (there were no other files in the share directory) and within three days the university had forwarded me a letter from the MPAA stating that I was sharing the movie "Shaolin Soccer." I had a good laugh with the residential networking guys about it. Together we told the MPAA to go fuck off. I haven't been struck by lightning yet.

Re:About Time!

[Eivind]

It's different because there is an actual law against copyrigth-infringement, and most of the people threathened are actually guilty of breaking that law. Now, this doesn't make it rigth. It just means current copyrigth-law is bad law.

Copyrigth-law, as currently written, makes everyone a criminal. But only the ones that RIAA (or other large copyrigth-holders) choose to go after, get punished. Which means essentially, that *THEY* are the ones who decide, by criteria dictated by them, who gets punished and who not.

That's not how it's supposed to work; elected politicians are supposed to decide what is legal and what not. But by deciding that "everything" is illegal, they've efficiently handed the keys over to RIAA et al

"Everyone" is very sligthly pushing it, but it's not far from the truth. I was at a lecture about IT and law, and the professor asked those people who have ever willingly broken copyrigth-law to raise a hand. Literally 95% of all hands went up. IT-students have more reason and more expertise, so may be sligthly over-represented, but I'm willing to bet that 95% of current 25-year-olds are guilty of breaking copyrigth-law atleast once in the last year.

We should remove or change laws which we do not intend to uphold. Otherwise we hand over the power of defining de-facto law to those deciding what and whom to investigate. (because if everyone is guilty, by deciding to investigate someone you are de-facto deciding to punish that person)

Re:The RIAA Has This In Their Pocket

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

While underestimating your opponent is always bad, so can overestimating them. Why would a company have thought out legal action any better than they think out IT infrastructure, employee health care, etc.? How many times have you seen a company completely blow a truly big decision before? Why assume the legal department is any better? Don't forget that the RIAA isn't just using employee lawyers, they've hired litigation firms. And, just like any good contractor, those firms certainly have glossed over any pitfalls of their strategy in order to convince the RIAA to pay them lots of money to do what they do. And do you think the RIAA lawyer who rubber-stamped this process had the time and the background to realize that there might be something wrong with the way they were proceeding? How many data center managers and CIO's have you seen rubber-stamp a great IT idea that turned out to cost the company 10-times the original estimate, and result in lost productivity and higher maintenance costs? Why assume lawyers are any different? Certainly the RIAA lawyers have not done a good job for their clients. Their strategy decisions seem calculated to increase the total amount of legal fees expended, and nothing else.

E.g., in Capitol v. Foster, at a time when the defendant's attorneys fees totalled $55,000, and the judge was preparing to calculate how much of that was "reasonable", the RIAA served a raft of motions and other dilatory requests. The result of this boatload of litigation activity:

-in 2 1/2 months the RIAA's exposure leaped from $55k to $114k

-the judge issued a new decision attacking the RIAA lawyers' motives, veracity, and intellectual integrity, and

-the judge ordered the RIAA to turn over its own attorneys billing records, which will no doubt be described in detail in the judge's order.

I'm estimating the RIAA paid $100,000 for those "additional services".

You tell me if that was money well spent.