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RIAA, Safenet Sued For Malicious Prosecution
DaveAtFraud writes "Tanya Anderson, the single mother from Oregon previously sued by the RIAA — which dropped the case just before losing a summary judgement — is now suing the RIAA and their hired snoop Safenet for malicious prosecution. (Safenet was formerly known as MediaSentry.) Anderson is asserting claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act. A reader at Groklaw has already picked up that she is seeking to have the RIAA forfeit the copyrights in question as part of the settlement (search the page for '18.6-7')."
at least not on the music.. Perhaps we should stop playing their game and NAME THE MUSIC COMPANIES who are suing these people.
How we know is more important than what we know.
whatever the reasons, i hope she wins. if she wins the case, the riaa is done for. if she settles out of court, they will be bled dry by similar cases. either way, wethepeople win, and the evil empire begins to crumble. yes, i called the riaa an evil empire. and here comes the corporo-fascist trolls to flame me to death... (see below)
"Luke, you've switched off your targeting computer, what's wrong?"
Hope she sets up a place where people can donate cash for the fight.
I'll give $10.00 to anyone that sues the RIAA about their mafia tactics.
I am sure another 10,000 people would do the same and yes a hundred grand will go a long way in fighting organized crime like the RIAA.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Every time I read something like this I cant help but roll my eyes. 4000 dollars may sound like a lot of money to the average guy on the street, but think about how much they are spending running this whole legal operation. You have to pay people to investigate it, people to organize contacting everyone involved, and then hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in legal fees for anyone who doesnt immediately settle. Any quick back the envelope math calculation should immediatly reveal that this operation is running deep in the red. They cannot possibly be doing this to make a quick buck from 'extortion'.
As many have already said this will be very expensive. What if the idea is to start the suit with lots of publicity and then get others to join and gain class action status? The more that the tactics get exposed to the public the better chance of an outcry getting relief for everyone. It really boils down to a publicity fight. If people believe that the RIAA is defending artists they like then the real issues won't matter. Convince them that making a mix tape of any music might get you prosecuted and things change. Education of the masses is the only way to solve the problem.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Well, when a system is as corrupted as the justice system is, sometimes the only way to beat it is to use it. If we can be sued and forced into a settlement, why can't we do the same to the jerk-offs who do did it to us? Imagine the dollar signs in lawyers across the country when they learn that they can be part of a settlement with a major record label.
Which also puts the RIAA on the spot to provide a "reasonable" valuation on copyrights for the purposes of settling. Watching the RIAA place one value on copyrights for defending a legal action and a different value for prosecuting could prove entertaining.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
I just read through the filing. The RIAA is in big trouble here.
Most of the facts in the case have already been litigated, and the RIAA lost. The counterclaims arise from facts already on the record. The RIAA's actions are a matter of public record. And they did a whole range of things ranging from really dumb to possibly criminal.
First, their investigation unit, SafeNet/MediaSentry, isn't a licensed private investigator. So they don't have any of the immunities a private investigator does. Normally, law firms use licensed private investigators for their investigations, but the RIAA didn't bother. Bad move.
Second, there's a clear case for fraudulent debt collection. It's already been established in court that the RIAA's claims were false, and that they knew they were false, yet they continued collection efforts.
On the harassment front, the RIAA's representatives apparently attempted to contact a 10 year old child's elementary school under false pretenses, pretending to be a grandparent. The court had to issue a protective order prohibiting the RIAA from contacting the kid. That's going to be tough to explain to a jury.
There's more, but the RIAA is going to have a very tough time in court on this one.
Who predicted, when the RIAA began their lawsuit strategy, predicted that it would backfire in the long run? Please reference your previous slashdot posts as evidence.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
Why wasn't Doug Jacobsen listed as a defendant? He was the computer "expert" behind media sentry's bull**t testimony.
Your point is well taken.
Consider that the way that the US is set up, the President of the United States will not make money, e.g., when you only consider the salary, the office operates at a loss because it takes hundreds, if not thousands of times as much money to get elected.
The positions are all about power and influence. For as long as the music industry survives in its present configuration, having the RIAA on one's resume makes for excellent connections, and not only in the actual part of the American music industry that produces and distributes music. It's an excellent springboard to lobbying and other high-paying gigs.
Further, I'm pretty sure that the positions in the RIAA map pretty well to positions in the Federal Government: the higher-ups are already wealthy, and the grunts are the ones who actually take risks. If this woman's case makes a difference, it's not the RIAA executives who'll pay the price. It'd be the people who'd be looking for a job who would be inconvenienced.
Something tells me that the hedge that the RIAA's power and influence will win out include lucrative speaking fees for the potential winners, and book deals in case the whole thing falls apart. Kind of like the way that the loser of a professional boxing match still comes out of it with millions of dollars--unless he misbehaves and is fined and/or sued.
I think they didn't seriously consider the risk of countersuits; they almost certainly thought they'd be greeted as liberators.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
Easy solution: sneaker net. Sneaker net may have been floppies in the old day.. but now people have CDs, DVDs, usb keys that can hold up to 10GB, external harddrives, and even freaking laptops. Sneaker net, it's the only way to share things.
I could be wrong (insert obligatory "not a lawyer" here), but what it sounds like to me is that her lawyer is smart and is going for them in every way they exposed themselves, including the perceived lack of enforcement on their IP. The objective being, as you noted, settlement. In other words, bend over RIAA, here comes some of your own treatment.
Nope. Her asking for every claim under the sun sounds like a seriously pissed off lady whom has been accused of crimes without (sufficient) evidence, threatened, and who fought back. In doing so, the was close to having the court rule in her favor and the other side quited the case. Now she's doubly pissed off thinking the other side is going to walk away without having to face up to their false claims and have it stated in court that the was innocent. Some times people do things for reasons OTHER than money. Not often, and in this case payback might not be motivated just for face (and I'm sure her attorney at this point is on contengency), but give her some credit for wanting the RIAA to have to lose for once, not just to plump up her retirement fund.
Evidence, please. I have actually been working on experimental measures of the impact of erroneous or irrelevant information, and no singly study I am aware of has shown general education level to factor in at any significant degree. In fact, most of those that have conclusively shown irelevant information to have an effect have been performed on undergraduate and graduate college students (say, Zillman, D., Gibson, R., Sundar, S. S., & Perkins, J. W. Jr. (1996). Effects of exemplification in news reports on the perception of social issues. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 73, 427-444).
This is not to say that eventual studies may find an effect for educational level, but on the absence of such evidence nor any adequate conceptual ground, your statement is just an expression of prejudice. In other words: what you say makes you a snob, and I don't care for what you say that you're saying.
And, BTW: I have no sympathy for trial by jury. I prefer a professional judge to deal with the inevitable subtleties, but that is because having people serve in jury duty requires society to train them each time in the specifics, not because they are mentally or emotionally inferior for lacing a degree in Law.
Jesus saves. Real gods just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the deities mirror it