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RIAA Pays Tanya Andersen $107,951
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Well, Phase I of the RIAA's misguided pursuit of an innocent, disabled Oregon woman, Atlantic v. Andersen, has finally drawn to a close, as the RIAA was forced to pay Ms. Andersen $107,951, representing the amount of her attorneys fee judgment plus interest. But as some have pointed out, reimbursement for legal fees doesn't compensate Ms. Andersen for the other damages she's sustained. And that's where Phase II comes in, Andersen v. Atlantic. There the shoe is on the other foot, and Tanya is one doing the hunting, as she pursues the record companies and their running dogs for malicious prosecution. Should be interesting."
Way to go, Ms. Andersen!
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
I think that could be a fitting charge as well.
Interesting bits to note:
ilovegeorgebush
oh, this has the making of a beautiful class action suit against RIAA and the record companies. Can you imagine the beautiful, beautiful damanges?
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
Tell me, Ms. Anderson... what good is a counterclaim... if you're unable to speak?
Monetary damages against corporations will never be enough. Since they are fictitious legal persons we need the equivalent of prison time for them. In the information age it's perfectly possible to 'lock up' a company, suspending their trading and seizing all assets for 60 days would REALLY HURT.
It may even collapse the company. Well, if they can't take the heat they shouldn't be doing the crime. This is the only way to give society and the courts that represent us any teeth against corporations.
Vote for corporate jail time.
David has slain Goliath, once more.
Not quite. David has kicked Goliath squarely in the testicles but he isn't dead.
Trolling is a art,
I haven't RTFAs (or not all of them anyway - have you?). But I'm struggling to see why she is described as "innocent, disabled". Does the validity of the case or the settlement depend on her being disabled?
Wow, did I slip into a paralell universe or something? I'm hoisting a glass to the esteemed Mr. Beckerman tonight at JW's as I listen to a local band cover the Grateful Dead.
I hope you can afford that new tie now, Ray ;)
Whatever you're getting out of this, it isn't enough.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Here are the documents pertaining to her counter-suit,
Anderson v. Atlantic.
One of the claims cites the RICO Act, which I can only imagine spells bad news for RIAA & mediasentry...
www.purevolume.com/martyd
this was on hackaday first... And this isn't the first time that Slashdot has essentially copied their posts
I can see where you might think that, because the Slashdot post was not released until after hackaday. But the reality is that the story was on p2pnet.net before it was on hackaday, and it was on Recording Industry vs. The People first of all. Just because the Slashdot post comes out after it was published on hackaday doesn't mean it was 'copied' from hackaday; it just means the post was in the Firehose and on the editors' screens at Slashdot for awhile, before it was published.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Something tells me the movie industry won't get behind this story like they did for Erin Brockovich.
*whoosh*
Slashdot is a news aggregator - Every. Single. News. Story. is a copy of a posting somewhere else.
In the David and Goliath story, David knocked out Goliath with a stone from a sling, then took Goliath's sword and beheaded him with it.
If the RIAA gets beheaded this will indeed be a David and Goliath story in all respects! As it is, the RIAA is just stoned.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
First, congrats to Ms.Andersen for making the RIAA pay for its mistake. But compensation of her legal costs does not count as proper compensation, for several reasons:
For all these reasons, Ms.Andersen deserves a lot more compensation than just legal fees. It's too bad she has to start her own proceedings to get those. It would be better if that were automatic. Get proven wrong in a 'big corp vs. little guy' lawsuit, and be ordered to compensate legal fees plus an automatic percentage for related damages. Otherwise it's just too easy for corporations to bully on ordinary folks (like we see all the time).
The entire civil legal industry is based on the fact that it costs far more to defend yourself against whatever the plaintiff claim (lie) than to pay what they ask. Plaintiffs are almost never forced to pay the legal fees of the defendant, unless the case is very public AND black and white. It is all a sham and a huge subsidy for sleazy attorneys that know how to work the system, often at the expense of an insurance company, but not always. I found this out the hard way when I made the mistake of selling my home to a sleazeball attorney. They can fuck with you based on the most flimsy of reasons and it costs them very little to ruin your life. The defense attorneys, that burn through their client's life savings by over billing and accomplishing nothing, but still make costly mistakes, are no better. "Justice" is only for the rich. Far worse than the money, is the stress, the fear that my children may not be able to attend college because of it. It should be a crime, but it never will. Who runs the court system? Judges, that are also attorneys. Who makes the laws? Elected attorneys.
oh look, it's mr. fancy pants lawyer.
I think Ray actually prefers jeans.
Wait, you mean /. doesn't have a crack team of reporters writing all these summaries?
I've been duped!
this, because it is not a matter of debate. It is a matter of personal values.
There are some people who feel that the suffering and hardship caused to these defendants is strictly irrelevant, and that it is irrelevant whether their ability to defend themselves is impaired by disability or poverty.
As to those of you who feel this way I can only say this:
1. You are not my kind of people.
2. If you are lawyers, you are not my kind of lawyers, and in my opinion you are violating the Code of Professional Responsibility by exhibiting an indifference to the harm you cause.
3. The phrase that 'justice is blind' does NOT mean that it is indifferent to the suffering of those it affects, or that little people can be squashed by the wealthy in court; it means that the justice system has an obligation to protect the poor and the defenseless from the predations of the wealthy and powerful in court.
4. Those of you who are making these remarks about how Ms. Andersen's circumstances are irrelevant are probably the same people who love to dump on lawyers all the time. In point of fact, all good lawyers are compassionate, and will refrain from causing unnecessary harm to others with whom they come in contact. No good lawyer would have pursued the Tanya Andersen case.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
"The facts of the case do not in any way hinge on the defendant...
- being disabled
- a single mother
- on Social Security."
Really? If you're on Social Security, you probably don't have a particularly big income. If you have a child, a chunk of it will go to that child. If you're disabled, you'll probably have additional expenses for that as well. Granted, she may be compensated for the child / disabilities to some extent in terms of money, but how's that going to compensate for all the hours lost that could be spent with her child instead? I haven't checked what disabilities are in play here - but it seems reasonably likely to me that she will be forced to deal with her disabilities more often than without the case. Now you may claim that "that's life, life sucks", but I'd argue that the RIAA made her life suck in that regard.
But let's take the heart out of it, and focus only on the money aspect and your statement "the case [does] not in any way hinge on"; if that were true, don't you think that there would be a greater portion of cases that would go to arbitration / court, rather than being settled? A great number of cases are settled not because the target knows they're guilty anyway (in which case, settling might be the wise thing to do - but I'll leave that for future cases on whether awarded damages to the RIAA are fitting to the 'crime'), but because the target simply does not have the resources (specifically: money) to bring a solid defense - mounting one leading to debts far greater than a settlement does.
Ray, although what you say is true, it should be your 3rd answer, not your first. Here are the first two:
1) Because the defendant's precarious personal situation directly determines the direct damages suffered by the defendant.
2) Because the RIAA campaign of intimidation and extortion relies on the weakness of their targets making them settle under pressure.
These two points are much more important than the fact that the RIAA lawyers are rat bastards. 1) and 2) support the case directly.
Keep on plugging away at them, Ray. They must suffer personally and professionally for this, not just in the form of business losses.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
If the RIAA gets beheaded this will indeed be a David and Goliath story in all respects! As it is, the RIAA is just stoned.
As far as I can see, they were stoned from the start.
morcego
<paroody>
II knoow yoou probbably doon't speeak Engglish nattively, buut thhe veerb "loooose" meeans "too seet frree". Soome tiimes aa misssspelling altters thhe meanning oof thhe senntence. Oftten iit iss juust aa typoo, buut yoou ussed thhe saame spelllling twiice.
Iis thhis commment haard too reead? Weel, ssee?
</paroody>
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Well, as long as we're talking about the David and Goliath story, once David grew up to be a general, he was pretty much as bloodthirsty and savage as any other.
Specifically, he would cut off his enemies' foreskins as proof of how many he killed.
Yes, you read that right -- their foreskins.
I know this mostly because my name is David, and I used to be proud of this guy -- until I read the actual story (and not the sugarcoated kids' version, which is still pretty bad.)
To avoid being completely offtopic, I guess I wonder how much we should really be cheering the "little guy"? I love to see the RIAA writhing in agony on the ground, holding its testicles, but this isn't combat. Do we really want to support an "emotional distress" charge?
It will be interesting to watch, regardless.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
When I was in elementary school oh so long ago, one teacher found a way to stop the bullies from doing disruptive behavior.
They punished the whole class and let the bully go free. It was done in class, and very publicly, so that EVERYBODY was suffering from the act of one person. Peer pressure from everybody works wonders.
Apply this idea to a company: Your assets are froze for 10 days, stocks cannot be traded in their name, and the workers MUST be paid. The ones responsible for this would be outed rather quickly.
Yes. David was a man of war.
However, you make a grave mistake of taking one example out of its context in casting it in ours. David was more or less ordered (specifically challenged) to bring in foreskins as proof of body counts. Yes this would be rather gross today. But back then it was very likely a rather simple way to ensure a Jewish force was killing non-Jewish males. You know, they didn't have embedded journalists back then. Nor did they have the Geneva convention for rules of war and return of combatants' (unmolested) bodies.
So yes, it was "savage" from our point of view. But it isn't appropriate to make it appear that David had a weird bloodthirsty foreskin fetish. There are much more reasonable criticisms you could correctly make of David if you wish to do so.
Hopefully the dead rising from the grave won't happen or else the RIAA might start a more vigorous lawsuit campaign in suing even more dead people http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/05/riaa_sues_the_dead/
Actually, the undead are working for the RIAA, as its attorneys.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I've been duped!
s'okay - so have most of the stories around here. ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Do we really want to support an "emotional distress" charge?
Why on earth wouldn't we want to support Ms. Andersen's countersuit? After all, the RIAA has structured its campaign to extort the populace while inflicting maximum emotional distress.
And anyway, Tanya Andersen's not claiming emotional distress; she's claiming civil conspiracy, wrongful initiation of civil proceedings, abuse of process, negligence, and seeking an injunction.
If she can get that injunction, that's a bigger victory than anything we've ever dreamed of.
BRICK TO THE JUNK!
>>> When I was in elementary school oh so long ago, one teacher found a way to stop the bullies from doing disruptive behavior.
>>>They punished the whole class and let the bully go free. It was done in class, and very publicly, so that EVERYBODY was suffering from the act of one person. Peer pressure from everybody works wonders.
I've seen that kind of thinking in action. The result was that everyone totally lost any faith in the administration and the lesson they learned was that the only path to success was being an outlaw.
I was very fortunate to go to a school (40 years ago) where disruption was not allowed. The disruptive 'students' were suspended. If they didn't shape up, they were permanently removed. The school administrators there believed that the taxpayers had built the school and were paying their salaries so that students could learn, and any students who were not there to learn had no place in the school.
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
Her child was being researched by the RIAA. They would call about Ms. Anderson's daughter at work and at child's school, looking for her. Now, I am no parent, but, that would really scare me and fear for my child. As such, her mental state was suffering from these court cases, and she took leave from work and skipped court days sometimes.
Pigs, the lot of the MAFIAA.
Anderson has a lot of guts to stand up to them even after that. Cheers to her and her courage. Hope this helps put an end to the music and movie court cases.
In the "grand scheme of things" you mention, we all (in the US) operate under a very elaborate regime of exploitation fondly known as capitalism. (Pick your favorite scheme - they all amount to one form or another of exploitation.) Fact.
People decided that an organized way of dealing with this (i.e courts) was preferable to the alternative - which is pretty much to not deal with it.
The "grand scheme" and the court system are both full of people like you and me, who are in no way perfect. Ergo, you will have corruption.
It is idealistic bordering on crazy to think that it's even possible for people to not attempt to exploit anything and everything they can. Especially those with the resources at their disposal to do so.
The brainy thing (which I've seen lots of folks here and elsewhere allude to, so this isn't just me thinking!!) to do as citizens and as a civil government is to be aware of this reality and to be prepared for it. In terms of the government, that's supposed to mean regular elections (i.e. turnover) for the participants and checks and balances in the power held by them. Our two-party political system has worn down these safeguards to the nubs though, so big abuses (like Enron, Katrina, Microsoft and the RIAA) have a lot better chance of growing than they should.
If you need a good example, use the Founding Fathers. They had this good sense to implement checks and balances. At the same time they were acting with perfect human nature in their combined vision of Manifest Destiny. This is the trend that's basically been on repeat ad infinitum since the dawn of man, I suppose. Very seldom if ever does the fix come before the abuse.
It's also interesting to look at this from the point of view of the concentration of power and the corrupting influence that phenomena can have.
RIAA is obviously the best example here. On the face of it, there's nothing wrong with these record companies' position - that people who are taking their things for free that are only offered for sale should be stopped. If they were to go about that individually, it's unlikely a major abusive effort could result even if they were wrong. However, they strategically pooled thier resources and power in the RIAA.
power+resources+corruption=today's reality for the RIAA
Keeping in mind that the RIAA is still relatively a very very small group, it's not hard to imagine the results of larger concentrations of power and resources such as those which happen all the time in both government and business.
That's all for now.
-Matt
Temperatures in hell will continue their plummet well below the freezing mark.
Spoken like a true /.'er!
Thanks for keeping us up to date and this breath of fresh, sweet air. *inhales deeply* Ahhh...fresh flowers and.. OMG!! Ponies!
Now let us hope that phase two works in Ms. Anderson's favor also, then we may be able to start seeing the RIAA monopoly crumble, or at least a better business model from them. Both for our sakes, and especially for the artist's sakes.
One of my best friends is a professional musician in a band, and they checked out signing with RIAA affiliated labels.(about four years ago) It would actually have cost them money to sign instead of make them money.(unless by some miracle they became popular overnight) Being smart guys,the band finally started their own distribution in addition to signing with an independent label that allows them to continue to do so. They are making a decent living with their music now instead of paying some label to be musicians.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Spoken like a true /.'er!
Thanks for keeping us up to date and this breath of fresh, sweet air. *inhales deeply* Ahhh...fresh flowers and.. OMG!! Ponies!
Now let us hope that phase two works in Ms. Anderson's favor also, then we may be able to start seeing the RIAA monopoly crumble, or at least a better business model from them. Both for our sakes, and especially for the artist's sakes.
One of my best friends is a professional musician in a band, and they checked out signing with RIAA affiliated labels.(about four years ago) It would actually have cost them money to sign instead of make them money.(unless by some miracle they became popular overnight) Being smart guys,the band finally started their own distribution in addition to signing with an independent label that allows them to continue to do so. They are making a decent living with their music now instead of paying some label to be musicians.
New book just came out on that very subject: how musicians can make more money by NOT using record labels.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I would suggest that first, fines that result from misbehavior on the board level be paid for out of the pockets of the board and it's shareholders at the time of the crime and not out of corporate funds. (IMHO C*O's should be held accountable for the consequences of their polices, none of this futz the company and then bail on the golden parachute like we saw with
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
To me, the whole analogy is useless. When I went to school, bullies did not operate under the noses of the school's teachers and administrators. They preyed on their victims before school, after school, off of school premises, on lunch breaks off of the school premises, and on weekends. If they ever did anything in schools it was in lonely stairwells. I never received any assistance or even notice of any kind from any teacher or administrator.
So to talk about some school administration coming in deus ex machina and helping the victims with some form of "discipline". The bullies I knew could care less about the school 'punishing' them; the worst thing the school could do would have been to expel them, which is what they would have wanted anyway.
Those of you who are talking about the 'school' punishing 'bullies' don't even know what a real bully is. Talk to someone who grew up in the mean streets of one of our big urban centers, and they'll tell you that this thread is nonsense.
When I talk about bullies I talk about vicious sociopathic vermin, who hunt in packs. And when I talk about fighting them, I always assume (a) you are overmatched, and (b) you will receive no help from anyone.. I make that assumption because that's the way it is when dealing with real bullies.
And there are basically 2 answers to how to deal with them. One is to run, if you are fast.
I'm not.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful