RIAA getting sued...

[mattbiernat]

The scene at RIAA headquarters this week must have been fascinating. The group yesterday announced that it has finished sending out a new batch of 503 "pre-litigation letters" to 58 different universities around the US, generously offering to let students settle copyright infringement claims "at a discounted rate" before those claims go to trial. The letters blanketed the country, going everywhere from the University of Hawaii to Swarthmore, from Boston College to Tulane, from Emory to Chico State. And then the RIAA learned that its aggressive litigation tactics have placed it on the receiving end of a class action lawsuit.
Single mom Tanya Andersen, a defendant in a previous lawsuit brought by the RIAA, was one of the first to have her case dismissed with prejudice (it cannot be refiled at a later date). Throughout the court battle, she maintained her total innocence, a claim given even more plausibility by the fact that she was charged with downloading numerous gangsta rap tracks.

After the case was dismissed, Andersen then sued the RIAA for malicious prosecution, and her attorney filed court documents in an Oregon federal court on Wednesday that seek to elevate the case to class action status.

The development, first reported by p2pnet, hopes to make a class out of those "who were sued or were threatened with sued by Defendants for file-sharing, downloading or other similar activities, who have not actually engaged in actual copyright infringement." In other words, a class of the innocent. In the complaint, Andersen alleges that the RIAA "has engaged in a coordinated enterprise to pursue a scheme of threatening and intimidating litigation in an attempt to maintain its music distribution monopoly."

source:ttp://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070817-riaa-faces-first-class-action-suit.html

[The Spirit of X21]

Hopefully those creeps at the RIAA get what they deserve. Their reign of terror has gone on for far too long.

[mattbiernat]

it just makes me wonder where they gonna get impartial jury. they've made too many enemies...

[jdhurst]

Hopefully those creeps at the RIAA get what they deserve. Their reign of terror has gone on for far too long.

I am roughly halfway or a little more through life. So I make this claim:

I have stopped purchasing anything these turkeys represent (and did so some years ago), and never again in my life will I purchase anything they represent.

They are so bloody greedy that they think no revenue is better than some revenue, and I am only too happy to obliget them.
... JDH

[mattbiernat]

hehehe here is another one from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA

After learning that one alleged copyright infringer has died, the RIAA offered the deceased man's family a period of sixty days to grieve the man's death before they began to depose members of his family for the suit against his estate.[20]

The RIAA also brings lawsuits against children, some as young as 12.[21]