I first caught this story on digg.com- a 41 year old disabled woman in Oregon is countersuing the Recording Industry Association of America under the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization Act. Her countersuit claims some 65 violations of both RICO and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, illegally gathering information from her personal computer and basically trying to extort thousands of dollars from her. Tanya Anderson allegedly downloaded gangster-rap at 4:24 am (no date is given) under the Kazaa user name “gotenkito.â€? She claims that she doesn’t like gangster rap, she doesn’t know who or what “gotenkitoâ€? is, she’s not awake at 4:24 am, and she doesn’t download music at all. The countersuit states that the RIAA uses a company called MediaSentry to harvest information from computers of individuals named in any of the 13,500 John Doe lawsuits the RIAA has filed. This information is then passed along to Settlement Support Center which is responsible for collecting debt. There are a lot of strange and weird things going on with this case. There’s the fact that she was supposedly an “unnamed defendantâ€? in a suit in D.C. Or the fact that she was “’viewed’ downloading and distributing over 1,000 audio files for which it sought to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars.â€? Or the fact that “despite refusing Ms. Andersen’s offer to allow an inspection of her own computer, the record companies wrongfully continued their improper debt collection activities against her…..â€? She also alleges that
“51. An employee of Settlement Support Center admitted to Ms. Andersen that he believed that she had not downloaded any music. He explained, however, that Settlement Support Center and the record companies would not quit their debt collection activities because to do so would encourage other people to defend themselves against the record companies’ claims.�
If you check out the Wikipedia article on the RICO Act, you’ll notice something mentioned called the Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) Act, which “can be applied in an attempt to curb alleged abuses of the legal system by individuals or corporations who utilize the courts as a weapon to retaliate against whistle blowers, victims, or to silence another’s speech.â€? Tanya Andersen is my new personal hero. I hope she wins her countersuit and that there are a thousand more just like it. I hope more of these lawsuits get thrown out in court We’ve been told that file sharing hurts artists, but you know record labels were already hurting artists on their own. The record companies are hurting themselves, badly. CD sales are down, while legitimate downloads are up 350%. Now they want to change the iTunes price model and charge more money. I’ve long been of the opinion that the easiest way to make more money is to actually sell products for less, because you’ll end up selling more of them. Steve Jobs has taken the firm stance that the record labels are greedy, and that “”If the price goes up, they (consumers) will go back to piracy and everybody loses.” Makes sense to me. The fact is that 99 cents really isn’t that much of a bargain, but it’s much easier to buy music at home in my boxers than to go to the store. Of course, the iTunes songs aren’t of the greatest quality. And, at the end of the day, Apple Computer only gets about 4 cents after the labels take their cut and bandwidth and other costs are factored in. So in conclusion, we should all just stop listening to music all together. It’s become way too much of a hassle, and most of it isn’t even good.
