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Granny Sues RIAA Over Unlicensed Investigator
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "An elderly, non-file-sharing grandmother from East Texas, who had been sued by the RIAA after being displaced by Hurricane Rita, has sought leave to file counterclaims against the RIAA record companies for using unlicensed investigators. In her counterclaims (PDF) Ms. Crain claims that the record companies 'entered into an agreement with a private investigations company to provide investigative services which led to the production of evidence to be used in court against counterclaim plaintiff, including the identification of an IP address on the basis of which counterclaim defendants filed their suit... [They] were at the time of this agreement aware that the aforementioned private investigations company was unlicensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas specifically, and in other states as well... [T]hey agreed between themselves and understood that unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part of a mass litigation campaign... [T]he private investigations company hired by plaintiffs engaged in one or more overt acts of unlawful private investigation... Such actions constitute civil conspiracy under Texas common law.'"
I'm happy for the RIAA to get anything and everything that's coming to them, but I don't think it will change their litigation-happy behaviour at all. The problem is that the RIAA is just a faceless body representing the big labels, and until people start bitching about Sony, Universal Music, EMI etc, then what does the RIAA care if people hate them? They're not selling the products, they exist solely as a trade group, and if they take all the flak that rightfully belongs to the labels, they'll still do it.
It's the puppeteers, not the puppet, that needs to be demonized.
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
YOU yourself can do this sort of thing, legally, even in Texas.
What isn't legit is hiring someone without a proper license to do this professionally
on your behalf. The same thing goes for providing security services of any kind (incl.
cybersecurity...)- YOU can do it for yourself, but if you hire someone, you need to hire
someone with a license or operating the umbrella of one to make it legit if something
goes wrong.
Where your analogy falls apart is that you make the assumption that a consultant doing
the work is analogous to your doing the same work. It's not as far as the civil and
criminal laws are concerned. Since the RIAA or the Labels themselves did not have direct
hire employees doing this work, it's not the same thing as what you present- they hired
a an outside professional (or group thereof) that didn't have a Federal
license for the work being done or a Texas state PI's license. This makes it all subject
to litigation like what's now happening to them.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Lawyers aren't the real problem, and getting rid of them isn't a solution. The underlying problem is that some people are anti-social jerks who have discovered that they can get their way by bullying others. Under our current system, the jerks hire lawyers to do their bullying for them. If you eliminate the lawyers, the jerks will just find a new set of bullies to do their dirty work.
The real solution is to give ordinary, decent people a way of striking back when the bullies get on their case. Counter-suits, like the one mentioned in this article, are a good way of doing that. If everyone who was wrongly accused by the RIAA decided to launch a nasty counter-suit rather than caving in, the litigation strategy would grind to a halt- or at least focus on the worst, most obvious real offenders rather than people chosen at random.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.