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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.'"
Wrong Pasadena, I know, but... still.
you don't have to be a techno wiz to fight against the RIAA. just need some money to fight them with.
It seems like every other day we either find out that the RIAA used some illegal practice or lost a case against a so called music pirate though they keep dishing out lawsuits. The RIAA train has derailed but it doesn't seem to be slowing any time soon.
Well, if it is a case of a broken record, are they going to sue themselves for using the backup copy they made? :)
Jimmy
> Well, if it is a case of a broken record, are they going to sue themselves for using the backup copy they made? :)
Nah - it's handled by the automatic deduction off the royalties for breakage.
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
If the actions of the RIAA's members are anything to go by, the layers are probably composed of something that was formerly inside a male cow.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Apparently, you don't have to know anything about technology in order to work as a lawyer for the RIAA....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
- Living a little inside
- Living a little outside
- Living a lot inside
- Living a lot outside
- Dying a little outside
- Dying a lot outside
- Dying a lot inside
It all depends on what you want to reverse...
I think it's great that people are fighting back against the RIAA. I completely support what the RIAA are meant to stand for (I.E. the anti-piracy thing) but their attitude, methods and motives are terrible.
My blog - This link wouldn't be interesting even if we set fire to
RIAA et al have learned a valuable lesson here.
In Texas, old ladies SUE YOU!
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
Karnal
Its the little old lady who got a subpoena
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
She got a mean nasty letter after fleeing hurricane Rita
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
It said "Hey, we caught you downloading our garbage,
so we've hired a bunch of lawyers to sue you to Dodge!"
And everybody's saying theres nobody meaner
Than the mean nasty lawyers from the RIAAaaahhhh
They sue real fast and with no good reason
They're like "Grandmas should be in open season!"
Its the little old lady who got a subpoena...
You can see her on the stand telling the truth now
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
With her four lawyers and her bi-focal glasses now
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
"Them lousy RIAA jerks hired an investigator
who would be better occupied as my personal masturbator!"
You can see her on the stand her kickin' RIAA ass now
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
With her four salivating lawyers and her beehive hair now
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
She's gonna have an RIAA executive as her waiter
cause they cant help being evil vindicators
And everybodys saying theres nobody meaner
Than the little old lady who got a subpoena
She counter sues real fast and packs a punch
They say She's out to eat some asshole's lunch...
Its the little old lady who got a subpoena
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Look, I'm all for the RIAA burning in hell. But I really hate the idea of having to use a "licensed" investigator. The following *is not* to be taken for a RIAA analogy:
Let's say your laptop is stolen. Let's say you had a program that reported IP addresses. Someone buys your laptop from the thief for a stupid low price and hooks it up. It reports their IP. You turn the evidence over to a cop who goes to get your laptop.
1. You were not licensed to be an investigator.
2. The program author was also not licensed.
3. The cop obtained evidence from you.
The person who bought stolen property cannot be charged with a crime. All because you didn't have a "license".
Instead, the law requiring a license should be replaced with a "suspects' bill of rights". Anyone can investigate, but if his/her rights are violated, then the evidence becomes poisoned fruit.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
when they're supplying your side.
But of course they're supplying the other side as well, and making a profit from all conflict.
The US is in the crappy state it's in because of lawyers. The fact that that granny's lawyer happens to be fighting an evil cartel of blood-sucking music industry parasites sounds nice, but it's just business as usual for a profession predicated on causing misery so that they can defend against it.
Just for the record, there are grannies that haven't crossed the 30 y.o. barrier in my neighborhood(s),... ....... hey, it wasn't me!
... and the lawyer stampede has begun.
= andersen_riaa_070622complaint">found a number of grounds on which to countersue. One of those was using an unlicensed private investigator to get the IP number of alleged private-party infringers.
Well, her lawyer knew enough to discover this information and file this anyway...
You'll recall from an earlier article that Tanya Anderson's lawyer (in Oregon) http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDFfull.asp?filename
Texas has a similar requirement for private investigators to be licensed. So THIS granny's attorney is filing a copycat countersuit. This is the second buffalo in the stampede.
I expect we'll shortly see television ads from the law offices of James Sokolove asking whether you have received a settlement request from the RIAA, which is about to be nibbled to death by ducks. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You don't even need to know anything about technology to be a technology expert for the RIAA.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
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
Let's say your laptop is stolen. Let's say you had a program that reported IP addresses. Someone buys your laptop from the thief for a stupid low price and hooks it up. It reports their IP. You turn the evidence over to a cop who goes to get your laptop.
In addition to the objections others have pointed out, the situations are not analogous. Stealing your laptop is a criminal offense. Despite their propaganda, unlicensed copying of a RIAA member organization's content is a civil matter AND not theft.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
Just to let you know, there's no such thing as a male cow. See, we people from Wisconsin aren't so useless!
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshs.shtml
first result on google, dude! it's not like filing a legal counterclaim or anything
www.purevolume.com/martyd
...and when were done with that wheel torcher them with speling lesons!!
Yarr!
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
The problem isn't the RIAA going around sueing innocent people (well not the big problem), the problem is corporate interests buying never-ending copyright and increasingly stricter punishments for doing anything that might possibly be used to violate said purchased perpetual copyright. The question becomes, what the bejesus can those of us who care (the nerdy minority) do?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
We own that song. You are an Evil Content Pirate(TM). Please pay us <PINKY-TO-MOUTH>ONE MILLION DOLLARS!</PINKY-TO-MOUTH>
Signed,
The RIAA
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
FirstGov.gov is the U.S. Government's official Web portal to all Federal, state and local government Web resources and services.
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is a 1-5 rating based on the hurricane's present intensity. This is used to give an estimate of the potential property damage and flooding expected along the coast from a hurricane landfall. Wind speed is the determining factor in the scale, as storm surge values are highly dependent on the slope of the continental shelf and the shape of the coastline, in the landfall region. Note that all winds are using the U.S. 1-minute average.
Category One Hurricane:
Winds 74-95 mph (64-82 kt or 119-153 km/hr). Storm surge generally 4-5 ft above normal. No real damage to building structures. Damage primarily to unanchored mobile homes, shrubbery, and trees. Some damage to poorly constructed signs. Also, some coastal road flooding and minor pier damage. Hurricane Lili of 2002 made landfall on the Louisiana coast as a Category One hurricane. Hurricane Gaston of 2004 was a Category One hurricane that made landfall along the central South Carolina coast.
Category Two Hurricane:
Winds 96-110 mph (83-95 kt or 154-177 km/hr). Storm surge generally 6-8 feet above normal. Some roofing material, door, and window damage of buildings. Considerable damage to shrubbery and trees with some trees blown down. Considerable damage to mobile homes, poorly constructed signs, and piers. Coastal and low-lying escape routes flood 2-4 hours before arrival of the hurricane center. Small craft in unprotected anchorages break moorings. Hurricane Frances of 2004 made landfall over the southern end of Hutchinson Island, Florida as a Category Two hurricane. Hurricane Isabel of 2003 made landfall near Drum Inlet on the Outer Banks of North Carolina as a Category 2 hurricane.
Category Three Hurricane:
Winds 111-130 mph (96-113 kt or 178-209 km/hr). Storm surge generally 9-12 ft above normal. Some structural damage to small residences and utility buildings with a minor amount of curtainwall failures. Damage to shrubbery and trees with foliage blown off trees and large trees blown down. Mobile homes and poorly constructed signs are destroyed. Low-lying escape routes are cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the center of the hurricane. Flooding near the coast destroys smaller structures with larger structures damaged by battering from floating debris. Terrain continuously lower than 5 ft above mean sea level may be flooded inland 8 miles (13 km) or more. Evacuation of low-lying residences with several blocks of the shoreline may be required. Hurricanes Jeanne and Ivan of 2004 were Category Three hurricanes when they made landfall in Florida and in Alabama, respectively.
Category Four Hurricane:
Winds 131-155 mph (114-135 kt or 210-249 km/hr). Storm surge generally 13-18 ft above normal. More extensive curtainwall failures with some complete roof structure failures on small residences. Shrubs, trees, and all signs are blown down. Complete destruction of mobile homes. Extensive damage to doors and windows. Low-lying escape routes may be cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the center of the hurricane. Major damage to lower floors of structures near the shore. Terrain lower than 10 ft above sea level may be flooded requiring massive evacuation of residential areas as far inland as 6 miles (10 km). Hurricane Charley of 2004 was a Category Four hurricane made landfall in Charlotte County, Florida with winds of 150 mph. Hurricane Dennis (pdf) of 2005 struck the island of Cuba as a Category Four hurricane.
From NOAA.gov
Category Five Hurricane:
Winds greater than 155 mph (135 kt or 249 km/hr). Storm surge generally greater than 18 ft above normal. Complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings. Some complete building failures with
There is a war going on for your mind.
Oops, WinMX is down.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Amen!!!!! Imagine one week if Sony sold absolutely nothing across the whole US. Ouch! They'd freak out, and Howard Stringer's head would be served to shareholders on a platter. Hey, you don't even need to boycott them all. Pick them off one by one. Causes division in the ranks: While one suffers the others shrug.
In the past consumer boycotts have rarely if ever worked, because most consumers either don't know or don't care, or think what's the use. So form a message and target it. Spread it on Myspace and Youtube: The sort of people where those that buy SONY guy congregate. Reach out. Let them know why to hate the RIAA, no, call them by their real names Sony, Universal Music, EMI etc. Better yet, list the artists since most kids won't know which artist _belongs_ to which record company. Sure some won't go along with it, but so long as SONY see dropping sales, the message will get across.
To the SONY web watcher reading this: eat me
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
against the members of RIAA? Are the members of RIAA shielded from any responsibility for actions the organization takes, presumably in their interests? Do the members have a sufficient quantum of control over RIAA (either explicit in the membership agreement, or de facto) that they could be sued for its activities? Sort of analogous to "piercing the corporate veil" and going after a corporation's owners, which can be done in limited circumstances? As long as the RIAA members can live comfortably above the fray, absolutely nothing will change. If they can be reached, even just to be served and brought to court, with some non-zero probability of losing a large judgment against them, it would help put the brakes on this out of control train.
Grannies From Texas. I know, I'm married to one.
> [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.
Just so. Also, as noted in the p2p article their actions "amount to extortion". If someone says "If you do/do not do X, then I will/will not do Y", that's extortion. When it's done across state lines, it's a federal offense, and none of the plaintiffs are Texas corporations.
I'm looking forward to the day someone manages to get charges filed rather than just filing suit, and someone from the MafIAA gets arrested. My money's on a state's attorney general doing it, and Texas is a very likely place for that to happen. In any case, KICK ASS, GRANNY!
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
No kidding. These people are scary.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Lawyers are like guns. They're not good or evil by themselves, whether they are depends on how you use them. Just because most use them for evil doesn't mean that the lawyers themselves are.
Sure, there are the crooks that jump in joy every time they found a loophole in a law so they can milk some unsuspecting victim and basically collect protection money, due to his victim not understanding the law. They're basically the legal (as in "law world" not as in "allowed") equivalent of malware writers. Using the lack of knowledge on their victim's side for their benefit.
The other ones, the "antivirus lawyers" do exist. They're fewer, as the general drive to become one seems to stem from the urge to get more money rather than actually helping people with their legal needs, but they do exist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So stop swallowing it.
I kid, I kid.
Basically I wonder why there ain't more lawyers jumping that train. I mean, think of it:
1. The RIAA peppers the legal apparatus with lawsuits. It's a given that a fair lot of those won't stand a minute in court and pretty much beg for a countersuit.
2. The RIAA has deep pockets that are ripe for picking. They can pay whatever sum you can convince the judge to grant you.
3. Most people who got into a mess with the RIAA just want those suckers off their back. I.e. it's easy to get them to sign over not half, but all of the settlement just to get out of the hassle.
The way I see it, if there's a get-rich-quick scheme in the legal world, it's defending people against the frivulous RIAA suits.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In XP, it's under the file/directory window's Tools->Folder-Options... dialog, on the General tab. Select "Single click to open an item (point to select)".
IIRC, this was called "Web View" when first introduced; it was supposed to make the computer interface more consistent with that of a web browser. I'm not sure that many people use it... except me.
For some reason, I tried it out when I was learning 95, and kept it that way. This didn't strike me as being strange until right now, when I consciously thought about it. Although I like web-view in some ways, it's also a nuisance when you're trying to select multiple files, particularly from thumbnails- incorrectly hovering can lead to files being deselected (and so on). Not sure why I didn't change back- habit, I guess.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
should read:
"My right to walk the streets unmolested by the police outweighs your right not to get blown up."
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
If they had a paypal account, I'd throw them some cash for helping her fight the forces of evil.
Lawrence Lessig goes further. The ultimate problem isn't that the RIAA is bullying people with lawsuits. The lawsuits are enabled by the likes of the RIAA being able to buy the laws they think they want. And that in turn is enabled by our broken political system that can ignore the will and the good of us all in response to slick but wrong (even obviously wrong) PR campaigns or for the sake of a few measly campaign dollars.
These PR campaigns and dollars come from a bunch of extremely short-sighted legal hustlers with no sense of civic responsibility. Swarm intelligence works when the individuals of the swarm actually think, but many of these special interests are too narrowly focused on getting handouts. The AARP is an example of this. Some years ago the AARP was pushing hard for more expansion to Social Security, Medicare, and so forth. The AARP was pushing for more than even a majority of their own members wanted! Had they got everything they asked for, the US might've gone broke during the dotcom burst. They only saw it as their "duty" to get everything they could for their "clients", and what that might do to the country wasn't even on their radar. That was someone else's problem. And that was only part of the game-- they ask for the moon, and hope when they get "cut" back, they'll be left with about what they really wanted. Sometimes however, they score bigger then they expected, and when that happens do they back off? Give some back? Heck no, take the money and run! And push for even more! It's be nice if our system was robust enough that they could push as hard as they like without fear of breaking anything, but our system doesn't seem to be quite up to that. When the AARP was pushing, Big Pharma was only too happy to help get a fat drug benefit "for seniors". And they got that part, most unfortunately. Now we all get to foot absolutely outrageous bills for drugs. Many other countries took the much more sensible approach of forcing Big Pharma to lower their prices.
As Lessig said, it is totally against the public interest to have the extreme Intellectual Property laws we have these days, with copyright lasting 95(!!!) years, and our current berserk and broken patent system. Same goes for our crazy health care. Big Pharma is in many ways even more extreme than the RIAA/MPAA. Don't know what Lessig can do about it, but I suppose he's got something in mind.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Ok, I admit, I'm not familiar with the situation in the US. Here, no money exchanges hands (besides the initial payment, which is nominal and usually less than 500 bucks) before the case is settled. Furthermore, we have a rather simple "loser pays all" system, where whoever loses the trial gets to pay for everything. His lawyer, his opponent's lawyer, court cost. The whole bill is footed by the party that doesn't win the trial. In case they reach an agreement, that bill is usually split somewhere (most of the time in the middle), but we're talking trials here that are already won.
So far I thought it's the same in the US?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
General rule: each side pays his or her own fees.
Generally lawyer gets paid by the hour.
Lawyer works for "contingent" fee usually only in certain specialized, well-understood areas of the law. E.g., personal injury, tax certiorari, workers compensation, collections.
"Malicious prosecution" cases don't arise until after the earlier case was won by the defendant, which would take years. The malicious prosecution case would then take a number of additional years to play out. Any lawyer who tried to make a living defending cases and doing "malicious prosecution" cases after winning them would be bankrupt very quickly.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful