RIAA Drops Tanya Andersen Case

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "After 2 years, the RIAA has finally dropped its longstanding case against disabled single mother Tanya Andersen in Oregon, Atlantic v. Andersen. The dismissal (pdf) relates merely to the RIAA's claims against Ms. Andersen, and does not relate to her (a) claim for attorneys fees or (b) counterclaims against the RIAA, which are presently before the Court on a motion to dismiss. The counterclaims were first interposed in December 2005. This is the same case in which the RIAA insisted on taking a face to face deposition of a 10 year old girl. Prior to the case, neither the mother nor the child had ever even heard of file sharing."

Comments

two years

[uolamer]

two years to drop a case that should have never been filed to start with. The civil court system in the US really needs an update.. maybe vista?

Re:two years

[GreyPoopon]

The civil court system in the US really needs an update..

I don't think so... at least not yet. I think the judge needs to deny the motion to dismiss the countersuit and, depending on the evidence, not only award the fees requested in the countersuit, but also an extremely stiff penalty. Basically, you don't want to make your court system less open, but you want to scare the living daylights out of any organization that would abuse the court system by harassing innocent people. If it's clear that the defendant was innocent and that the RIAA did not take proper measures to make sure they had the right person, then they ought to pay attorney fees, emotional stress, fees for any efforts related to the case that the family had to take, ongoing fees for counseling for the 10 year old, any medical bills that might have been related to the stress they put the family through, fees to cover any libel that the family may have suffered for their treatment, and then a huge penalty on top of that for abusing the court system. After that, the FBI should investigate the RIAA for participating in organized crime. ;)

Yeah, it's just a pipe dream; I know. But seriously, before we call for changes to the court system, let's see how it plays out.

Re:two years

[Heir Of The Mess]

So what do you reckon 30? 40 billion $$$? Afterall doctors get sued for millions for making an honest 5 second mistake. This has been a 2 year campaign of deliberate persecution of an innocent minor and her disabled mother.

Re:two years

[mstahl]

You're right, sort of. What really needs to happen here is that Atlantic Records needs to get taken to the cleaners on penalties, they must reimburse the defendant appropriately, and just as importantly their lawyers must be held accountable for bringing this case to court. Filing a lawsuit on false grounds and wasting two years of these people's and the court's time is grounds for disbarment.

Re:two years

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

You're saying that if you don't see that stop sign and cause me ten million dollars of medical bills that since it's an honest mistake you (or rather your insurance company; the same company that insures doctors) shouldn't have to pay?

When we drive cars, cross the road, ride an elevator, eat a meal, we all accept a certain level of risk. These are the risks that somehow, through no deliberate fault of anyone, something will go wrong. There will be an oil slick on the road, you will trip on a stone, a sensor will fail, there will be a chicken head in your nuggets.

It's one thing if someone deliberately avoids their responsibility and in so doing cause an accident. It's quite another when an accident occurs through no real fault of a diligent and responsible person. In the first case, their actions escalated the danger of the situation beyond the level of risk most people would be willing to accept. In the second, the accident that occurred was one that any honest person would accept was a reasonable possibility, and furthermore, one which people so accept as a possibility every single day.

Accidents happen. They are erratic events which we cannot predict, but nonetheless accept the possibility of. Of course, deliberate misfortunes also occur, which were indeed quite foreseeable and avoidable. It is the latter event that people should be held to account over.

Re:two years

[Maxo-Texas]

No that's just goofy.

I think $750 per day is a reasonable amount tho.

Surely a day of a person's life is worth as much as a copy of a song.

So 547,500 for two years.

how the RIAA beat me

[Anonymous Coward]

The most effective tactic they used to make me stop pirating music was to produce music that wasn't worth listening to.

Re:how the RIAA beat me

[Ilex]

The most effective tactic they used to make me stop pirating music was to produce music that wasn't worth listening to.

Sshh thats their new DRM tm. Make the music sound so intolerable that no one will want to listen to it hence no will download it much less share it.

Of course to safeguard their profits they'll just buy legislation which will tax the production of music. Anyone found accidentally bashing a stick against another object will have to pay the RIAA royalty tax.

Unfortunately that will also include bashing A clue stick against hollow objects like the heads of Industry executives. It looks like they've finally found their uncrackable DRM system.

Re:Obligatory

[theTrueMikeBrown]

you forgot to welcome our ten year old prate girl overlords!

The Trifecta!

[Himring]

Harrassing a handicapped mother, her child and disrupting the child's education (by wanting to depose during school hours). Congo rats RIAA! You've pulled the trifecta!...

Seriously, the devil is going to be in serious need of something to do the way these fookers are going. I think even he sits back, looks at these cases and says, "dayum...."

People vs. The Child

[packetmon]

RIAA Attorney: Did you know that by downloading music you were doing something illegal?
Little Girl: wots eleegul?
RIAA Attorney: Don't play dumb missy. I'll ask again. So when you download Bratney Spears did you think you were doing something wrong?
Little Girl: I love my Bratney neener neener
RIAA Attorney: ANSWER THE QUESTION
Little Girl: *sobs*
RIAA Attorney: DID YOU KNOW THAT BY SHARING MUSIC YOU HEAR FOR FREE ON THE RADIO YOU WERE DOING SOMETHING WRONG
RIAA Attorney: DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU COULD GO TO JAIL FOR A VERY LONG TIME
Little Girl: DID YOU KNOW THAT AL CAPONE DIED IN JAIL
Girl's Attorney: OBJECTION YOUR HONOR
Little Girl: *sobbing
RIAA Attorney: FINE YOUR HONOR (looks at little girl) YOU'RE GOING AWAY FOR A LONG TIME MISSY
RIAA trolls/employees: This guy is good!

Re:poor girl

[clickclickdrone]

>Isn't the girl suffering enough from having a boy's name?
You mean you people call kids Chad? I thought Randy was bad enough and don't get me started on Randy Vanwarmer or whatever his name was (70's singer).

We need some personal accountability

[spazmonkey]

We always talk about the RIAA as an entity, but there is probably only a relatively few individuals that are heading up all of this nonsense. Who are they PERSONALLY. They need to be outed, so that maybe when they are revealed as to who they really are, their personal lives will become as unbearable as they try to make their victims. No more hiding behind a corporate front. I want to know who these people are and everything about them made public so that decent citizens can avoid these pariahs.

Re:We need some personal accountability

[SQLGuru]

http://www.riaa.com/about/leadership/default.asp

Mitch Bainwol
Chairman And CEO

Cary Sherman
President

Board of Directors
http://www.riaa.com/about/leadership/board.asp

Member labels (you can look up their leadership individually)
http://www.riaa.com/about/members/default.asp

Layne

Re:I really hope...

[Rogerborg]

Oh, did you spot the best bit? They reserve the right to continue to pursue her to recover their lawyers' fees and costs. Goddamn them.

Yes, but did she steal songs?

[Henry V .009]

Do handicapped mothers not download Kazaa or something? The RIAA seems to have dropped this case because of bad PR, not because she was innocent so far as I can see.

Re:Yes, but did she steal songs?

[Paradise Pete]

Yes, but did she steal songs?

I don't think there were any missing.

Re:Yes, but did she steal songs?

[UnknowingFool]

Do handicapped mothers not download Kazaa or something? The RIAA seems to have dropped this case because of bad PR, not because she was innocent so far as I can see.

I would say that Ms. Anderson appeared to be innocent all along, but that doesn't matter to the RIAA. Only the bad PR may have mattered to them. This case, like many others, shows the RIAA's inaccurate and despicable driftnet techniques can harm the lives of the seemingly innnocent. When she received her settlement notices from the RIAA, she tried to reason with the settlement center even offering her HD as proof that she did nothing wrong. The only options they gave her were to pay their settlement or face a lawsuit informing her that they had accessed her computer to gain all the evidence they needed.

Living on a fixed income (because of her disabilities) she simply could not afford to pay the RIAA to go away. So the suit began. During discovery the HD was examined and no evidence of P2P software or illegal songs were found. Her lawyer also brought to the attention of the RIAA that P2P username that they targeted belong to someone else in the city when they googled for it. That other person openly talked about stealing songs via P2P on his myspace page.

To me it appears that she was innocent all along. Yet the RIAA still pressed forward wanting to depose her minor daughter in person. I hope that she wins big in fees because of all the anguish they have inflicted over the past 2 years. BTW, if she was innocent, then the RIAA either illegally accessed her computer (she did not have P2P software) or lied to obtain a false settlement. IANAL but wouldn't the latter be considered a crime?

Typo in Article, Title, and Summary

[canajin56]

The article and summary repeatedly use the term "RIAA", which is a typo. It should really read "Atlantic Records, a wholly owned Subsidiary of Time-Warner-AOL drops Yanya Andersen Case", and so on. The RIAA is like a guild. The big labels belong to it, they pay their dues and the RIAA acts like a mouth piece. But it doesn't own the music, Sony and Warner and maybe a few other companies own the music. The RIAA isn't suing, and can't sue. They may have provided the "experts" that will testify that they tracked down these evil pirates, but that is the full extent of their involvement. But I suppose people like to blame it all on the RIAA since if they blame the RIAA and not Atlantic Records and Warner Music, they don't have to stop buying stuff like Led Zepplin and Snoop Dogg and The Stones (Well the early stuff from them) as well as any stuff from matchbox twenty, Sugar Ray, Ray Charles, and hundreds of others.

Re:Typo in Article, Title, and Summary

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

You, and others who have offered similar comments, are right that the record companies are to blame, and that it is important to name them so people will know whose music not to buy. The only reason I don't name each of the 5 or 6 plaintiffs in each case, in addition to the RIAA, is just laziness. I just don't have the time.

But it is not inaccurate to say the RIAA is bringing these cases; the RIAA is actually commencing and administering the lawsuits day-to-day. The record companies have nothing to do with it except on those rare occasions -- such as pretending for the Attorney General's sake that they do not know each other's prices in UMG v. Lindor -- where they have a strategic reason to pretend to be working independently of each other.

So when I say "RIAA" please accept it as shorthand for the litigation cartel of the "Big 4" record companies and their affiliated labels. And if you have the time to dig down into the court papers and supply the names of the culprits in any particular cases, please accept my sincere thanks for doing so.

What can constitute adequate evidence?

[rajkiran_g]

A screenshot of limewire running on the RIAA's computer showing some files being shared from some IP address? Can that be sufficient evidence? Cannot such a screenshot be artificially generated?

If I manage to capture a screenshot of the RIAA homepage containing false adverse remarks about me, can I sue them for defamation, given that it is trivial to produce such an image?

Suppose RIAA victims who are being subjected to blackmail just reformat their hardisks, destroy any cd's they might be possessing containing any infringing material and claim they never had anything to do with any p2p downloads, what then? What evidence is there to incriminate them?

Re:Swing... and a miss...

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Good post, Unknowing Fool.

By the way, she offered them the opportunity to examine her hard drive
before the lawsuit. They turned her down, and just sued her.