MESSAGE
| DATE | 2008-03-14 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] RIAA Ghestapo
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RIAA Racketeering Lawsuit Revived; Will it Survive? By David Kravets
EmailMarch 14, 2008 | 7:26:13 PMCategories: RIAA Litigation
Commy
A racketeering lawsuit against the Recording Industry Association of
America was revived Friday, a month after a federal judge dismissed the
case seeking to represent those falsely sued for copyright infringement
by the record labels.
The lawsuit, filed in Oregon U.S. District Court on behalf of an
Oregon woman who was wrongly accused of pilfering music via the
Kazaa file-sharing network, seeks to represent thousands of people the
woman's attorneys claim have been wrongly targeted by the record labels'
lobbying organization.
The suit (.pdf) claims that the RIAA and MediaSentry -- the RIAA's
private investigative arm that discovers file sharing by looking into
peer-to-peer users' public files -- "conspired to develop a massive
threat and sham litigation enterprise targeting private citizens across
the United States."
Last month, U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown tossed virtually the
entire case. The judge set Friday as a deadline for the lawsuit to be
amended. In February, she ruled that the 42-year-old plaintiff, Tanya
Andersen, "has not adequately stated claims for relief."
The judge said the new, amended complaint must demonstrate the RIAA has
been initiating "sham" litigation unsupported by any evidence. The RIAA
sues those whose IP addresses were detected sharing copyrighted music,
meaning its cases likely are rooted with enough support that they might
likely pass the "sham" smell test.
The case's survival
This past week, the blogosphere had been howling over how the suit could
expose the RIAA's allegedly illegal tactics. Ars Technica and Wired.com's
Listening Post suggested that the judge might automatically initiate
what is called discovery, meaning the RIAA will have to turn over its
internal records about its litigation operation, which has pursued more
than 20,000 cases.
When the suit was dismissed, THREAT LEVEL cautioned and cautions again
that there is no such thing as a legal slam dunk. Discovery is not
a given.
So far, there's been no ruling if the case can proceed. There's no ruling
demanding discovery.
Also, the judge has not decided whether the case could proceed as a class
action or solely represent Andersen. That's important, and weighs heavily
whether Andersen could pursue the case on her own at a cost likely to
reach hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.
What's more, when Judge Brown dismissed Andersen's lawsuit last month,
she cited a 2006 case in which the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
tossed a class-action lawsuit representing thousands of individuals who
were sent pre-litigation letters from DirecTV. The letters, falsely or
not, accused people of unlawfully hijacking the satellite carrier's
signal and sought thousands of dollars in recourse. At the time, the
appeals court noted that DirectTV did not engage in so-called "sham"
litigation because it had reason to believe those it sent letters to
were pilfering DirectTV's signal.
The allegations stemmed from DirectTV coming across a list of people
who had bought the technology to unlawfully intercept the signal. The
satellite carrier had no knowledge of whether its litigation targets
from that list actually pilfered the television signal. Many innocent
parties paid several thousand dollars to avoid litigation.
It's too early to say whether Andersen can survive that 9th Circuit
ruling. The circuit is based in San Francisco, is the nation's most
liberal federal bench, and covers the nine western states, including
Oregon.
Andersen's suit seeks class-action status to represent "those who
were sued or were threatened with suit by defendants for file-sharing,
downloading or other similar activities, who have not actually engaged
in actual copyright infringement." The lawsuit alleges "the class is
comprised of many thousands of individuals."
In the last four years, the RIAA has sued more than 20,000 people
alleging copyright infringement. The majority of them have settled for
a few thousand dollars. Only one case has gone to trial, and a jury
concluded the infringer should pay $222,000 for 24 songs shared on Kazaa.
The racketeering case was an outgrowth of an RIAA suit targeting Andersen.
The RIAA dropped the case against Andersen last summer for lack of
evidence after concluding her hard drive didn't contain any purloined
music tracks. Andersen countersued.
Photo chazlarson
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