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RIAA Will Finally Face the Music In Court
Falstaff writes "Exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen is expected to refile her malicious prosecution lawsuit against the RIAA today. The refiling will mark a significant watershed in the RIAA's fight against P2P users because for the first time, the group's tactics, secret agreements, and fee splitting with MediaSentry are likely to come to light, thanks to discovery. Andersen's attorney says he'll be 'digging into agreements between the RIAA, RIAA member companies, MediaSentry, and the Settlement Support Sentry. Part of that will involve looking at compensation, like how much MediaSentry gets from each settlement. "I'd love to know what kind of bounty MediaSentry got paid to supply erroneous identities to the RIAA," Lybeck says.' The judge has barred further motions to dismiss the complaint, which means the RIAA will have to face the music. 'Unlike the thousands of lawsuits filed so far, the RIAA does not have the luxury of walking away from this case if there's a real chance of embarrassing information being released. "Once discovery happens in the cases the RIAA brings, they run," Lybeck says. "This is our case now, and they can't run."'"
Second, what does it matter if we have committed copyright infringement? We are still a member of society who has an interest in seeing the innocent not being railroaded by the Music Industry. We still have an interest in stopping the Music Industry from illegally violating our rights, hacking into our computers (Federal crime by the way, much worse than copyright infringement), and extorting people for large sums of money.
My girlfriend worked for Judge Brown last summer as a law student, and she had a consistently favorable opinion of her. Judge Brown is a Clinton appointee and is on the more liberal side of the bench compared to a couple of the other federal judges working in the same building.
She's fair and doesn't put up with bullshit from lawyers or defendants. If she finds in favor of the RIAA, it's going to be on the basis of the law and not because of pressure on her. At the very least, she's going to be very suspicious of their arguments and have some critical things to say about them and their tactics in open court--even if they do win in the end.
So we outbid them.
Get a million people together (shouldn't be hard if all the torrent sites make note of the campaign) to chip in $1 or $10 each to make a matching offer: "We'll pay you to take this to trial."
Even if the RIAA outbids The Internets, it's still a PR coup -- "Look at what they were willing to do in order to hide stuff..."
Less we forget that she can still get that $2 million+ at the conclusion of the trial? If the RIAA thinks that a mere $2 million will cut the trial short and hide their dirty laundry, then they have seriously under estimated the wrath of a woman who has been royally PISSED OFF. Knowing what they put her through I can't imagine her settling before the RIAA's bag of tricks are all spread out on the table for everyone to see. Can you just imagine what a jury would think? Thats when the real music (that they don't own) begins to play.
It wouldn't be about selling justice to the highest bidder, it would be about offering someone who was wrongly accused and maliciously prosecuted by the RIAA an incentive to take a gamble and see justice done. If all the RIAA has to do is flash some large bills and have their legal problems go away, then justice isn't served.
The proposal to raise money to encourage the plaintiff to not settle her case and let the courts decide the matter would create a nice hedge for the plaintiff just in case the RIAA makes her a better offer than what a jury might award. It's important for this case to proceed, because without taking the RIAA to task on its methods in a case that forces it to come clean on everything, it's basically a corporate sniper, shooting down one individual after another, bamboozling courts with technobabble, and in most cases the individuals don't really have the resources to take their cases to court even if they may have been wrongly accused. Ever notice how they've been picking on mostly lower-income people, students, the elderly, young families, children, single parents-- the very folks who are the least likely to have the resources to wage a court battle and are most likely to settle whether they're guilty or not?
Airing the RIAA's dirty laundry in regards to its methodology is the only way to help individuals who are being picked-off one by one. And getting together and pooling resources in order to defend the collective of internet users who may find themselves in the RIAA's crosshairs is really our best hope of having a fighting chance to defend ourselves against false, nebulous accusations that could cost any one of us thousands of dollars whether we shared anything or not. If their methods are really that sloppy and inaccurate, nobody should assume that just because you PERSONALLY didn't share, that you're immune. I don't lose sleep over my former roommate's filesharing over my network (my house, I paid the bills for everything, and shared it under the rent), but if the RIAA's methodology isn't airtight (and it obviously isn't), I want the world to know...just in case.