ATLANTIC V. ANDERSEN
This is the case peer-to-peer file sharers have been waiting for. Tanya Andersen, a 41 year old disabled single mother living in Oregon, has countersued the RIAA for Oregon RICO violations, fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation, the tort of "outrage", and deceptive business practices.
Ms. Andersen's counterclaims demand a trial by jury.
Ms. Andersen made the following allegations, among others:
1. For a number of years, a group of large, multinational, multi-billion dollar record companies, including these plaintiffs, have been abusing the federal court judicial
system for the purpose of waging a public relations and public threat campaign targeting digital file sharing activities. As part of this campaign, these record companies retained MediaSentry to invade private home computers and collect personal information. Based on private information allegedly extracted from these personal home computers, the record companies have reportedly filed lawsuits against more than 13,500 anonymous “John Does.”2. The anonymous “John Doe” lawsuits are filed for the sole purpose of information farming and specifically to harvest personal internet protocol addresses from internet service providers.
3. After an individual’s personal information is harvested, it is given to the record companies’ representatives and the anonymous “John Doe” information farming suits are then typically dismissed.
4. The record companies provide the personal information to Settlement Support Center, which engages in prohibited and deceptive debt collection activities and other illegal conduct to extract money from the people allegedly identified from the secret lawsuits. Most of the people subjected to these secret suits do not learn that they have been “sued” until demand is made for payment by the record companies’ lawyers or Settlement Support Center.....
5. Tanya Andersen is a 42-year-old single mother of an eight-year-old daughter living in Tualatin, Oregon. Ms. Andersen is disabled and has a limited income from Social Security.
6. Ms. Andersen has never downloaded or distributed music online. She has not infringed on any of plaintiffs’ alleged copyrighted interest.....
7. Ms. Andersen has, however, been the victim of the record companies’ public threat campaign. The threats started when the record companies falsely claimed that Ms. Andersen had been an “unnamed” defendant who was being sued in federal court in the District of Columbia. She was never named in that lawsuit and never received service of a summons and complaint.
8. Neither did Ms. Andersen receive any timely notice that the suit even existed. That anonymous suit was filed in mid-2004. Ms. Andersen first learned that she was being “sued” when she received a letter dated February 2, 2005, from the Los Angeles, California, law firm Mitchell Silverberg & Knupp, LLP. The LA firm falsely claimed that Ms. Andersen had downloaded music, infringed undisclosed copyrights and owed hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ms. Andersen was understandably shocked, fearful, and upset. ....
9. After receiving the February 2, 2005 letter, Ms. Andersen contacted the record companies’ “representative,” which turned out to be Settlement Support Center, LLC. This company was formed by the record companies for the sole purpose of coercing payments from people who had been identified as targets in the anonymous information farming suits. Settlement Support Center is a Washington State phone solicitation company which engages in debt collection activities across the country.
10. When Ms. Andersen contacted Settlement Support Center, she was advised that her personal home computer had been secretly entered by the record companies’ agents, MediaSentry.
11. Settlement Support Center also falsely claimed that Ms. Andersen had “been viewed” by MediaSentry downloading “gangster rap” music at 4:24 a.m. Settlement Support Center also falsely claimed that Ms. Andersen had used the login name “gotenkito@kazaa.com.” Ms. Andersen does not like “gangster rap,” does not recognize the name “gotenkito,” is not awake at 4:24 a.m. and has never downloaded music.
12. Settlement Support Center threatened that if Ms. Andersen did not immediately pay them, the record companies would bring an expensive and disruptive federal lawsuit using her actual name and they would get a judgment for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
13. Ms. Andersen explained to Settlement Support Center that she had never downloaded music, she had no interest in “gangster rap,” and that she had no idea who “gotenkito” was.
14. Ms. Andersen wrote Settlement Support Center and even asked it to inspect her computer to prove that the claims made against her were false.
15. 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.
16. Instead of investigating, the record company plaintiffs filed suit this against Ms. Andersen. F. The Record Companies have no Proof of Infringement.
17. Despite making false representations to Ms. Andersen that they had evidence of infringement .... plaintiffs knew that they had no factual support for their claims.
18. No downloading or distribution activity was ever actually observed. None ever occurred. Regardless, the record companies actively continued their coercive and deceptive debt collection actions against her. Ms. Andersen was falsely, recklessly, shamefully, and publicly accused of illegal activities in which she was never involved.
Ms. Andersen further alleged:
20. Entering a person’s personal computer without their authorization to snoop around, steal information, or remove files is a violation of the common law prohibition against trespass to chattels.
21. The record company plaintiffs employed MediaSentry as their agent to break into Ms. Andersen’s personal computer (and those of tens of thousands of other people) to secretly spy on and steal information or remove files. MediaSentry did not have Ms. Andersen’s permission to inspect, copy, or remove private computer files. If MediaSentry accessed her private computer, it did so illegally and secretly. In fact, Ms. Andersen was unaware that the trespass occurred until well after she was anonymously sued.
22. According to the record companies, the agent, Settlement Support Center used the stolen private information allegedly removed from her home computer in their attempt to threaten and coerce Ms. Anderson into paying thousands of dollars. ....
Under the provisions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030) it is illegal to break into another person’s private computer to spy, steal or remove private information, damage property, or cause other harm.
26. Ms. Andersen regularly used her personal computer to communicate with friends and family across the country and for interstate e-commerce. Ms. Andersen had password protection and security in place to protect her computer and personal files from access by others.
27. The record company plaintiffs employed MediaSentry as their agent to bypass Ms. Andersen’s computer security systems and break into her personal computer to secretly spy and steal or remove private information. MediaSentry did not have her permission to inspect, copy, or remove her private computer files. It gained access secretly and illegally.
28. According to the record companies’ agent, Settlement Support Center, used this stolen private information in their attempt to threaten and coerce Ms. Andersen into paying thousands of dollars. ....
31. According to the record companies, Ms. Andersen’s personal computer was invaded by MediaSentry after she was identified with a nine digit code (an Internet Protocol Address (“IPA”)) obtained from the anonymous information farming lawsuits. MediaSentry did not have permission to inspect Ms. Andersen’s private computer files. It gained access only by illegal acts of subterfuge.
32. The record companies’ agent has falsely represented that information obtained in this invasive and secret manner is proof of Ms. Andersen’s alleged downloading. Ms. Andersen never downloaded music but has been subjected to public derision and embarrassment associated with plaintiffs’ claims and public relations campaign.
33. The record companies have used this derogatory, harmful information to recklessly and shamefully publicly accuse Ms. Andersen of illegal activities without even taking the opportunity offered by Ms. Andersen to inspect her computer. .....
36. Despite knowing that infringing activity was not observed, the record companies used the threat of expensive and intrusive litigation as a tool to coerce Ms. Andersen to pay many thousands of dollars for an obligation she did not owe. The record companies pursued their collection activities and this lawsuit for the primary purpose of threatening Ms. Andersen (and many others) as part of its public relations campaign targeting electronic file sharing.
37. The record companies have falsely represented and pleaded that information obtained in this invasive and secret manner is proof of Ms. Andersen’s alleged downloading and distribution of copyrighted audio recordings. Ms. Andersen never downloaded music but has been subjected to public derision and embarrassment.....
40. The record companies knowingly represented materially false information to Ms. Andersen in an attempt to extort money from her.
41. For example, between February and March 2005, the record companies, through their collection agent Settlement Support Center, falsely claimed that they had proof that Ms. Andersen’s IPA had been “viewed” downloading and distributing over 1,000 audio files for which it sought to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars. This statement was materially false. Ms. Andersen never downloaded or distributed any audio files nor did the record companies or any of their agents ever observe any such activity associated with her personal home computer.....
49. Despite having never observed any downloading or distribution associated with Ms. Andersen’s personal home computer and 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.....
50. The record companies pursued debt collection activities for the inappropriate purpose of illegally threatening Ms. Andersen and many thousands of others. This tortious abuse was motivated by and was a central part of a public relations campaign targeting electronic file sharing.
51. An employee of Settlement Support Center admitted to Ms. Andersen that he believed that she had not downloaded any music. He explained that Settlement Support Center and the record companies would not quit the debt collection activity against her because to do so would encourage other people to defend themselves against the record companies’ claims.
52. The record companies were aware of Ms. Andersen’s disabilities and her serious health issues. Settlement Support Center knew that its conduct would cause extreme distress in Ms. Andersen. As a result of defendant’s conduct, Ms. Andersen suffered severe physical and emotional distress and health problems.
53. The record companies’ conduct resulted in damages, including harm to Ms. Andersen’s health and property in an amount to be specifically proven at trial......
55. Oregon’s Unlawful Trade Practices Act prohibits those in trade or commerce from engaging in unfair or deceptive practices in the course of business with consumers. ORS 646.605 et seq.
56. The record companies’ agent, Settlement Support Center, is a company doing business in Washington which was established to engage in debt collection activities in manystates, including Washington and Oregon.
57. Settlement Support Center acting as the record companies’ agent made false and deceptive statements to Ms. Andersen in an attempt to mislead, threaten, and coerce her into paying thousands of dollars.
58. Settlement Support Center acting as the record companies’ agent has made similar false and deceptive statements to many other residents of Washington and Oregon, and across the country. The public interest has been and continues to be directly impacted by plaintiffs’ deceptive practices.
59. The record companies’ conduct resulted in damages and harm to Ms. Andersen and her property in an amount to be specifically proven at trial. ....
61. The Oregon Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act prohibits companies from engaging in organized racketeering or criminal activities. ORS 166.715 et seq.
62. As fully set forth above, the record companies hired MediaSentry to break into private computers to spy, view files, remove information, and copy images. The record companies received and transmitted the information and images to Settlement Support Center. As the record companies’ agent, Settlement Support Center then falsely claimed that the stolen information and images showed Ms. Andersen’s downloading and distributing over 1,000 audio files. The record companies falsely claimed that Ms. Anderson owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in an attempt to coerce and extort payment from her.
63. The record companies directed its agents to unlawfully break into private computers and engage in extreme acts of unlawful coercion, extortion, fraud, and other criminal conduct.
64. The record companies and their agents stood to financially benefit from these deceptive and unlawful acts. Proceeds from these activities are used to fund the operation of the record companies’ continued public threat campaigns.
65. These unlawful activities were not isolated. The record companies have repeated these unlawful and deceptive actions with many other victims throughout the United States.
Answer and counterclaim.
(Alternate link)
Ms. Andersen is represented by:
Lory R. Lybeck
Lybeck Murphy, LLP
500 Island Corporate Center
7525 SE 24 Street
Mercer Island, WA 98040-2336
(206) 230-4255
lrl@lybeckmurphy.com
301 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 301 of 301I am gotenkito@kazaa.com. I love gangster rap. I am not a 42-year-old disabled single mother of an eight-year-old daughter living in Tualatin, Oregon.
You have the wrong person. Ha ha ha...
Catch me if you can.
to the dip shits whoi think that RIAA doesn't hack into systems in order to gain info are idiots. You would be surprised how easy it is to bypass any MS security and claiming your IT and claiming it can't happen only show how stupid you really are.
Your limited brain and asumptions are your own defeat. Do you know how the system is configured or if it even had a router or fw? You must be a school kid or FOB so I will not hold that against you. Beofre posting your comments on p2p, hacking, RIAA, and what not is sad. Yes the lawyer is cluless on IT but then again so are the ones who claim RIAA can't hack.
Give me your p2p IDs and I can show you just how easy it is. If the RIAA really did hack in as the lawyer alleges happened and the claim on how the companies have a supposed team of enforcers hired to chase and force its vicitims to pay. How fake can this be? Chances are it is some idiot who made this up cause he/she got fired or denied.
Take a Stand Against the Madness; Stop the RIAA!
Need 100,000 signatures, now have 78,645
http://www.eff.org/share/petition/
if you use p2p to download copyrighted music, then you are a criminal, and I hope you rot in h##l.
Someone said copying isn't stealing to prove their limited intelligence above. I'll make it real simple for all you F- peabrains. When you copy my music you are stealing my right to profit from creating it. You want to go live in F-ing communism, where you don't own anything, have a nut. Otherwise, pay your way and despise those who think they are "entitled" to a free ride.
Re: poster at 6:11 PM
When radio was public (such as not owned by Clear Channel), many of us listeners would tune in to our favorite station to hear music. Many times we would hear a song, call the station to find out the artist & song title, then buy the record. Other times we would call the station to request a certain song. Those days are long gone. You can't even purchase the singles anymore.
Today, the internet provided a new way of, once again, hearing those songs. File sharing is not stealing music, it's another form of radio. Instead of calling in to request your song, you would download the song yourself and play it. MP3 quality is the stripped-down version of the original recording, similar to the difference between Pepsi-Cola and store brand cola. In fact, MP3's at the bit rate of 128 Kbps have a similar spectral response as FM radio, most of the music detail missing with a high-end cutoff much lower than a CD.
What does matter is, Does the song have meaning ? Can you relate the song to some event or period of time ? Since radio has been replaced by the internet, this is the only way new music can be discovered.
It is not stealing, it's another form of radio and if we don't like the song, we won't buy it. So I say to you, if your music is any good you will quickly get discovered.
To the anonymous asshole who has the right to profit from his/her music:
Yes, you do have the right to profit from your music, just as I have the right to profit from mine. The question is, do you have the right obscurely profit from your music? And, for the sake of artists like myself, are you so sick and criminal that you create music solely for the purpose of profit?
I've released 3 albums, which are up for grabs and freely downloadable off the net (www.joshuapetersononline.com/music). To me, my last concern is whether anybody who downloads one of my songs pays my idea of a "fair price" for it. I produce solely for the art of producing; nothing more, nothing less.
If someone happens to come along and wants to contribute some of their hard-earned money to helping me get my hands on newer technology and to help with allowing me to spend more time on the music and less at a job, I greatly appreciate it. But regardless of that, I will never sit here and say "I have the right to take any amount of money I want from you if you listen to my song"; after you reach that point, my dear, you are no longer doing it for the sake of music, you are doing it for the sake of money.
One good example would be my experience with Enya. Enya's webmaster was very rude, offensive, and downright cold-hearted to me - a very devoted fan of Enya's. Things suddenly took a very dark turn when he threatened me with legal action after I told him that he could explain to Enya that I will not spend my hard-earned money on her new album (Amarantine) because of the fact that Aigle allows their employees to treat their fans grotesquely. I stand firm on my decision, even right now. I will not buy another Enya album because it is apparent that Enya is no longer about music, Enya is about profit.
I stand firmly on the fact that if my music were being distributed illegally over the net, I would be upset. But I would approach the situation thinking that a song I produced is loved by someone enough for them to risk persecution just to listen to it. At NO POINT would I allow the RIAA or my record company to profit from the distribution of my music. Regardless of whether the label would own the copyright to an album of mine, the label would not own the copyright to any of the songs on the album, thus meaning that they are not entitled to profit from any of the songs without my say-so. I would never stand by and watch devoted fans, whether legally or illegally, be treated like Jews in the Holocaust.
The reason file-sharing is illegal is because it is STEALING. What if someone made you do all the work you do at your job, then didn't pay you for it?
# posted by Anonymous : 7:02 PM
Oh NO!!! When did file sharing become illegal? I thought only sharing copyrighted works without permission was illegal.
If file sharing is illegal, then DVD or tape sharing should be too, and there is a HUGE video rental industry, so...
WTF?!!
Hacking, is accessing someones computer without their permission. Period. That is the legal definition.
So unless she gave whom ever explicit verifiable permission to get into her machine, they were breaking the law.
I condemn the RIAA BS that is going on, and am quite shocked this has not happened sooner. The RIAA is out looking after its own dime, nothing else. They are doing nothing to provide a decent means to digitally distribute music. You claim "I Tunes" is good... guess what, you are still paying the same pricefor a "regular CD" and you still cannot burn it legally.
The RIAA and MPAA have become money grubbing, blundering idiots of commerce.
They have made it illegal to do what just a few years ago was allowed. If you bought a CD, you could back it up, put it on the PC, make a mix CD whatever. No legal consequences what-so-ever. Do that now... it is illegal. The same goes for movies, you could legally back up DVD's... not anymore.
It is not enough that these money grubbers take and pocket money from every blank and burnable CD/DVD made and sold? Yes folks, they actually get paid for the blank media that is sold to consumers.
This BS needs to stop. Artists need to get a clue and realize that they no longer needs these asinine companies, they can record and distribute their own song cd's.
It is absolute BS that the only way to get played on the radio is to be signed with someone that is only interested in taking money from you and will not promise you a damned thing.
Hell has just frozen over. For the first time in my life I've sent an email to a lawyer, saying "get the bastards". Ok, so lawyers don't suck all the time....
I agree with the poster above. The suit should be expanded to specifically include the RIAA (who were the real instigators, let's face it), MediaSentry, and the other organizations who were party to this invasion and scam.
They are acting like the mob. Here is a link to the Federal Trade Commission's site. They have been in trouble with the Fed's over "mob like" activity before. To me, this shows a pattern of behavior.http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/05/cdpres.htm
Uhhh..."Acting like the mob"? The RIAA IS "The Mob"."The Syndicate".The RIAA is the ENFORCER of the record companies, who are a bunch of crooks:they strong-arm the Artists,the Distributors, and the music-buying public.
I don't care how the information was collected:Her computer connection was HACKED.Personal information was retrieved, and recorded.
I wish the Courts, for once, would do the right thing, and throw these charlatans' in prison...like the Tyco/Enron exec's.
Why should some organization be above the law because they have more money than the people they are extorting from?
The problem is that when you run limewire or Kazaa or one of the other similar programs and you share music, its easy for someone to see what files you have on your drive, and are currently sharing. This is a built in function of the software, not someone "hacking" into your computer!
"Artists need to get a clue and realize that they no longer needs these asinine companies, they can record and distribute their own song cd's"
This is the real reason the RIAA is on the attack. They are fighting any technology, and the users of this technology, that enables artists to bypass thier corrupt business. My brother-in-law and I wrote and recorded a half-dozen songs using nothing more than his own musical instraments, a PC and an inexpensive audio mixing program. At the time, the only quality limiting factor was the microphone we had. They turned out fairly well. If we were truly interested in pursuing it, we could create our own album and make it available over the internet. And the best thing that could happen to us whould be our songs being shared over a P2P network.
Contrary to what the RIAA would like you to believe, independant research (research paid for and performed by people with no financial interest in the outcome) has determined that filesharing music only increased music sales. Any supposed loss to the music industry (Which I do not believe really exist) would be because of a change in thier target market spending habits. It's a fact that most music is purchased by teenagers and younger adults. This demographic has limited funds for entertainment, but the entertainment choices have increased with DVDs, video games and PC games. Guess where the funds come from to support these newer interests. Yup. People will buy less overpriced music CDs to buy video games and movies.
Like a gangster faced with some one threatening thier ill-gotten gains, the RIAA is using the most agressive, spiteful ways to maintain thier corrupt business. The unfortunate difference between gangsters and the RIAA is that the RIAA can legally purchase legislation from our corrupt politicians, which they have clearly done already, and are continuing to do. We must stop them by voting everyone out of office who is supporting the RIAA.
Time for a 100 Million dollar class action law suit.
And I love RICO. 10 times damages. WooHoo! Somebody is going to be rich.
--DB
Whatever the arguements are - the bottomline is if she has a DHCP connection with her ISP, they can't prove it was her in the first place. But if it's a static DNS account and even worse with a 56K modem, she could be in a lot of trouble....
I feel the DHCP arguement is her only hope in this case. Let's pray that it is...
Good luck Tanya!
yooooooooo dawgs
It really depends on the ISP. Some ISPs lock specific IP addresses to MACs when they assign them via DHCP, and keep record of the mapping, at least for a while.
Don't lose sight of the facts. She's not someone who actually downloaded music and trying to get away with it, wither you consider it a crime or not. She, in fact, did not download "Gangsta Rap" at 4am in the morning. Someone else could've easily spoofed her IP, especially at 4am, when her computer's not on and there's no possiblity for conflict. Since IP is something that can be easily faked. The only real evidence would have to come from examining her computer. Any jury with half a brain should be able to see that.
The RIAA does need to cool it down, i dont know where they got the idea that they can fight THE INTERNET from. are they crazy? alot of servers out there get attacked illegally from hackers all the time, these are ran by well experienced well educated admins yet they try to fix the holes in the servers and not fight the whole net as they know its useless and waste of time and good money, most people who download music are kids or people with little money (MOST PEOPLE, not all) and yet the RIAA thinks they can get blood from a stone? showing an IP address does not prove anything and should never be considered in court, IP adresses are given by a remote computer and never by the actual computer doing the downloading, eg. say i have someones dial up login and password from Bell Sympatico in Toronto Ontario, Bell Sympatico offers local dial up #'s accross canada which you can use that same login and password anywhere. now say i live somewhere in quebec (just an example, like id want to live there)i can dial up to Sympatico and login with that persons login and password. what we have here is two different computers assigned an ip address by Sympatico, Sympatico logs the IP address its giving out by accounts. i never hacked into anyones computer nor did i skip accross there ip, i simply connected to the internet using there user name and password, i can do what i want, i know its only about dial up stuff but with a little more effort other connections can be spoofed in nearly the same matter. in actuality, your ISP rats you out in many cased.
Well, it sounds to me that maybe this woman happened to have some kind of virus or spyware on her system, allowing an anonymous hacker to use her computer to illegally transfer the music. Millions(est.) of computers are infected with such virii and spyware, and many are used for just that. If you've ever seen a large p2p filesharing room(not giving any specific places to look :P), you'll see how most of them are running from educational servers... chances are all of those servers are being used by a hacker so that they can get and keep all of their files without being found out. All that is required is some kind of code to proxy information to another computer.
However I'm glad to see she's fighting the Recording Industry Assholes of America...if I got sued by them buttmonkeys I'd countersue too :).
Hope she wins.
Happy to live in sweden...
"15. 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. "
What the HELL???!!! and this is would be the land of freedom???
Well I hope you win and know that you have fans and supportes around the world.
Good luck!
It's about time someone took a stand against RIAA. They are out on a crusade to nail as many as they can - but hopefully they'll think twice after they've lost this lawsuit.
Good luck from Norway!
The RIAA/MPAA ARE COURT PROVEN CRIMINAL ORGANISATIONS and should be immediadly shutdown and sued for the total amonth of money they own. It's time for the US to put on it's pants and stop been rulled my Gangster. Any copy protections of any is simply illegal. And ip address is too easly spoofed to be of any help in any in any court of law. Drestroy the MPAA/RIAA (and the parasitic company Macrovision) and restore freedom to the peoples.
(c) Holder have way to much powers. The MPAA/RIAA as only on thing in mind stealling money from everyone with illegal racket and monopoly. If piracy is so high on the net there is one easy explanation: Illegal price fixing, low quality and most of all CD and DVD are on of the fews items that you cannot return if you don't like it.
Someone mentioned earlier:
"Your employer knows and pays you to access those files and has given you express permission. As soon as you do so in a manner that is not in their interests, you can and will be prosecuted. For example, you decide to "show the bigwigs" their security vulnerabilities. Only problem is, they didn't authorize you to use the information in that manner."
How true..
see this case:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/tsunami_hacker_convicted/
And from someone else here:
" Anonymous said...
Guess none of you like music? The RIAA pays my bills and feeds my family, assholes."
They do?.... wow...you must be one of the few musicians to recieve anything from them.... or..
Ah!.. you work for them then.
..What is it like to work for the mob?
I love music, but do you honestly think that RIAA does?
SOCAN (Canadian version of this RIAA mob)
A story about these guys... but I am not sure how true it is, it could be just a wishful urban myth:
SOCAN sued some Cinema/Theatre for royalties because they played the RADIO on a music station and sometimes a discman plugged into the sound system while customers were settling into their seats before the movie.
In otherwords, background music before the lights go down.
SOCAN reckoned they owed almost $3,000,000 in back royalties and "fined" them.
SOCAN's main example was "Bryan Adams" because they found his CD's in the machine.
Bryan Adams heard of this case and pointed out that he never recieved the $3 mill that that SOCAN so kindly got on his behalf.
SOCAN made some mumblings about "court costs, blah, blah"
Bryan Adams then sued SOCAN's ass..
..won... and gave the $3 mill back to the theatre.
As a point of interest, He is the only musician ever KNOWN to recieve a penny from SOCAN.
I assume RIAA is similar.. in which case, they can rot in hell.
As for Mettalica, I think those boys had a little bit of wool pulled over thier eyes initially by RIAA.
Can't you just see the spiel?
RIAA: "we have just discovered that millions of your songs have been stolen and copied!"
Mettallica: "Holy shit!, we gotta stop that!"
RIAA: " we are working on it, could you just sign here to help us out?"
Afterwards, it was too late.
And I wonder if RIAA ever gave any of the money ripped out of Napster to Mettalica?
On the other hand,
David Bowie loves the internet, MP3's and file sharing...
His record sales have soared.. ...specially his older stuff.
This man has almost 3 generations of music under his belt.
This generation go looking for his music, and discover all this older stuff.. and a percentage of them go and buy the CD's...
A large number of people that didn't know those songs even existed and would NOT have bought the CD's if MP3's and file sharing did not exist..
Some new musicians are finding they can make more money and gain more popularity by selling their stuff directly through internet.
A number of people have made comments about Internet and everything on it being free and annonymous in a few years.
I don't think so..quite the opposite.
Internet ACCESS has been getting cheaper, and in a lot of countries free, but content is not.
Each year, there is LESS information available with out some form of payment.
Then there is microsoft.
Already there are some games and other software that will only work if you have XP service pack 2(XP-SP2).
Have you asked yourself why?
Or how about some of the new "features" of Windows Vista.. the new bloat ware of an OS that will be rolling out shortly.
Forget being anonymous at all.
In a few years, free internet will be one giant useless commercial, and what is left will be heavily tracked,traced,watched.....
A couple of observations of the recording industry:
1)The artist gets a very small percentage of the money generated from their work.
2)The cost of blank CD's over the years has gone from $8 a disc down to 30 cents a disc....
The cost of a new release pre-recorded CD has gone from $25 down to ... $25.
3) new movie soundtrack CD : $25
WHOLE movie on DVD(including soundtrack) :$20
Huh?
I really, really hope this lady takes it all the way and burns RIAA's ass.
Let's not mention MPAA and what they have planned and want to do to movies....
IP adress of www.RIAA.com:
68.163.90.10
Now, put that IP adress into google search and read the results.
A lot of what is there is NOT on their normal website, yet I have just read some of their lawyers letters!
If I was more 'net savvy, I could figure out how to download some music and make it look like it came from their IP adress....
And then i could use that as "proof" that they were hosting a copyright file for download.
See what those idiots would have to say then...
Also discovered from simple ping and trace commands:
They have firewalled thier server from most things except normal web type "port 80" requests from computers.
They are hosted on Verizon networks.... maybe thats one of the reasons Verizon customers are always complaining about their internet speeds.... :)
I would imagine there are many hackers hitting RIAA... and therefore chewing up bandwidth of Verizon.. lol
Big Brother is no longer Watching, he is opening the door and going inside!
God Bless you MS. Anderson!
Spoof an IP? Easy.
Fake a MAC Address? A feature built in to most routers.
Fake a MAC address? Easy? It sure is... of course, it means nothing since the MAC is only used for the distance of one segment 'ie, from your network card to the router' ... after that a different interface with a different MAC rebroadcasts the packet with its own mac address ... essentially the hosts MAC means nothing beyond one 'hop'
Fake an IP? Easy... Childsplay... But what happens when your packet gets to the destination? Where do the replies go ? Thats right, to the wrong person... Since TCP traffic requires a bidirectional handshake then spoofing an IP in order to establish bidirectional communication is far from easy.
Besides which, mentioning either possibility in court would damage the public perception of her. Her best defence is ignorance.
And, she should make it damn clear that if she is found 'guilty' shes going to get mighty vocal. She should tell the RIAA lawyers that shes a realist and fully expects that they can probably get any outcome they wish... Thats the state of the American justice system. But if they DO win shes quite happy to go to jail protesting her innocence - And shes going to spit her heartbreaking story all over the glossy mags complete with 6x4 photographs of her weeping child and her disabled physical condition.
Theres more than one way to win a court case - and you can bet that the RIAA wont want to take a 'disabled mum with child' PR hit ... they'd rather silence it all up and go gather the easy money.
-Meds
Sorry for the double post.
Actually. Maybe I'm wrong - Maybe the image of a disabled mum going to jail is EXACTLY what they'd prefer? Maybe that will scare a huge percentage of file-sharers off.
I suppose it depends how secure their current powers are and if they consider it worth even trying to maintain a public justification.
Man, it makes you just want to get up on a roof with a sniper rifle don't it :)
I wonder how many RIAA lawyers would have to die horribly before they see sense 'n' back down.
-Meds
Guess none of you like music? The RIAA pays my bills and feeds my family, assholes.
# posted by Anonymous : 8:22 PM
Really? I wish the company i worked for did that for me, why if they paid my bills and fed my family they might not even have to pay me and make me go out and do those things myself. It's quite disturbing really, you seem to think that the company you apparently work for are doing all the work while you sit on your butt and live off some sort of corporate stipend.
Granted, if you were joking it was funny.
Here's hoping Ms. Anderson wins and we all get to read headlines like 'RIAA bullies innocent disabled mother' .
I hope & pray to God she wins, and all the former people the RIAA has persecuted will come back and sue them right out of business! ha ha ha, go Ms. Anderson!!!
What comes around, goes around.
The RIAA's activites are clearly fraudulent in nature, and I hope they get everything they deserve for demanding over $700 per song that Ms. Anderson never actually downloaded.
this is so funny to me..
evry1 agrees with each other on here (most everyone) but yet we all make our own proving point to how shes right...
i agree...
look at the times on most of the posts... they're all at like 1 inthe morning.. damn we need lives
haha
good luck tanya... and oh ya find me an RIAA Ip adress... (google ipscan.exe) if you can find a general range of their ip... you can find individual ones.. scan for open ports.. figure out what kinda server they run.. google some bugs on it.. get creative... have fun..
oh and make sure you proxy through like fucking china or something haha
god speed and blessings..
to quote anchorman
riaa "dirty pirate hooker" "why don't you go back to your house on whore island?" haha an amazing movie...
-JoDaDdY
i reckon some computer geek hacked her pc and used it to download files so they could trace the downloads :s
Have been following this thread for a bit (it's taken a while given all the comments!).
I have a question though, it said that, "Settlement Support Center also falsely claimed that Ms. Andersen had “been viewed” by MediaSentry downloading “gangster rap” music at 4:24 a.m.". Does this mean she wasn't downloading gangsta rap? and are they even allowed to view what you are actually downloading?
What I mean is it is all very well for them to do a search on any P2P system to see what a person is "offering" for download but does that alone constitute copyright infringement? Wouldn't there have to be an actual instance of it? and if Media Sentry "offered" someone a download of a copyrighted song and someone did download it, is that copyright infringement? Given that you are downloading it from someone who has the authority to "offer" the song from the copyright holder (bit like Ringo giving you a copy of the white album when you bumped into him on the bus)?
The other option is that Media Sentry can actually see what someone is downloading from someone else! Isn't that a bit like listening into other peoples phone calls? reading their e-mail? or opening their mail!?...That doesn't sound legal!!...
Course I may be missing the point somewhere!! Just interested in the part where they say they saw her downloading such and such (if she wasn't downloading it from Media Sentry then it sounds like they were evesdropping on her communications).
Anyway if anyone can elaborate please do.
PS: Hope you are doing ok Ms. Andersen!
-stoops-
Quote: Course I may be missing the point somewhere!! Just interested in the part where they say they saw her downloading such and such (if she wasn't downloading it from Media Sentry then it sounds like they were evesdropping on her communications).
Sounds like either she was downloading from MediaSentry, or they were sniffing packets from her computer. If sniffing packets, I'm not so sure that's kosher unless MediaSentry happens to be her ISP. ;-) If downloading from MediaSentry... could that be some form of entrapment?
Whatever the case... I am personally not a big music downloader, and if I like an artist's music, I buy it, regardless if I downloaded it or not. About 15 years ago, I made cassette copies of nearly every ELO and Billy Joel album available at the PUBLIC LIBRARY... LOL! What makes the internet and filesharing so different?
I have real issues with the idea of someone getting into my computer to see what's on it, though. I have MediaSentry's IP range specifically blocked in my P2P software, along with several other ranges. If I don't want you in my 'puter, I just don't want you in, plain and simple.
I know from having acquaintances caught shoplifting that Wal-Mart will want you to sign a sort of declaration of guilt and that you will pay them restitution without them ever taking you to court, and that it's some sort of civil claim. I've had no legal training or certification, but it's my understanding that the civil burden of proof is a LOT lower than the criminal burden of proof.
Sorry for the meandering of this comment, and I wish the woman lots of luck.
--br0wser
"torrent anyone?"
My thoughts exactly.
1. This is a civil trial, not a criminal one
This means that:
a) no jail time is involved
b) that reasonable doubt does not neccessarily exist-ie OJ Trial- not guilty in criminal, but paid out in civil
c) if it would have been a criminal trial the police (with a warrant) would have raided her home and seized her computer thus verifying if she did or did not download music. This of course would never happen as the amount of home raids required vs the number of allegations would be impossible. Plus jailing millions of suspected citizens- yeah, criminal trials would never ever happen
2. The hacking from mediasentry may not be "hacking"
If I was using Kazaa a person could use my profile to look at all of my shareable files without entering my computer.
But problems exist with this
a) it would be hard to prove that this was in fact Ms. Anderson (as stated by many here)
b) that said song(s) the person downloaded does not in fact have a right to own a copy- to be brief on copywrite laws you are allowed to have 2 copies of any given work. IE: I am a music teacher who orders sheet music from a company. I can make xerox's of the # of music I bought while waiting for the music to arrive, and can go so far as to keep the real copies under lock and key and have my students use the xerox's to keep my real copies in good condition. The same applies for any music you download. If you own the CD- even if it's in the jewel case you are 100% safe from reprisal. This applies to books, games, music- anything- so to make a long story short, a person could use the defense that they wanted to keep their CD being scratched by their kid, roommate- whatever as the reason they downloaded it.
c) it would be impossible for mediasentry to determine that a file metalicaentersandman.mp3 was infact the copywrited work "Enter Sandman" by Metalica. It could have been someones uncle Jerry drunk at a bar singing the music that people thought was hilarious and worth trading- We and they never know until it's downloaded.
d) it would actually be a toss up how admissable this would actually be. They would need physical data to back it up. This means screen captures and links proving the trail and showing the music or file in question. Next there's a question of proving that it's true. Electronic images and data can be falsified. It cannot be recreated. Then there's the question of if they have a right to use it anyway since it was pulled from a persons computer. This would likely depend on the TOS and EULA, but I cannot be 100% sure.
3. if mediasentry did hack the computer (highly unlikely) then as others have said that is a felony and an even more stupid practice than suing your customers
4. people that say that the RIAA can afford to go to trial- against one person yes, two sure, but if they issue suits in bulk and they went to trial on all of them, they'd never recover the legal fees. EVEN if they got the judgements, which as I've stated before would be hard to prove
Aren't we protected against the kind of thing the RIAA is doing under the Bill of Rights (namely amendment 8) or does that not apply to non-governmental organizations?
Bill of Rights only applies to governmental action.
I'm agaisnt downloading music even though I've done it in the past; I was young didn't know the consequences and it being wrong. I do not agree with the RIAA from reading this article. I like the fact that they've target the people and p2p networks that did illegal downloading. Now there tageting innocent people, now that's wrong.
I'm doing a research paper on downloading free music as of now. When I looked in to it for a speech in speech class, I thought Vicky Sims, an accuser, lied about downloading free music now I see that she is innocent.
The RIAA is in that much rage! They think it's okay to go into people's private space; thinking they're targeting the illegal downloading people, but really they're targeting the wrong people. I truly believe the IP Addresses are getting mixed up. It's cool to look through other people's private property as long as you ask their permission first.
I really truly hope and pray that this lady wins. I feel bad for downloading in the past. I hope my IP address isn't on the list.
Another thing, the RIAA does not think about their actions,they think every person that "downloads" own a computer. They could be using "other people's computers", they do not think about that. The RIAA automaticly think the accusers own their personal PCs. What if a teen or visitor downloaded free music on your PC, the parents or house where the visitor were are getting in trouble..
Silly RIAA . I can feel them cracking .
I just HOPE the RIAA or their chattels hack into my PC, ID love to sue their ass also.
I used to buy between 10 and 20 CDs, Albums etc a month. Now I DO NOT buy CDS period. Ill just watch MTV, VH1 etc or listen to the radio, their evil, greedy, money grubbing ways MUST end, IF people stop buying they will go away,
I Love music but its just not worth it anymore
I download a serious amount of audio music, video music, movies, software, games (and share them out on-line)and i don't give a @#$% if my IP is recorded because i can easily say that someone else has gateway'd my IP for whatever use. None of the d/l's are kept on my machine and i can easily just place in a pre loaded windows hdd (pre o.s'd so that the date of installation is not suspect). It would be interesting to know what they feel about VCR's and the ability to record copy prtotected music,movies and any tv shows. I doubt there is 1 person who hasn't recorded an event off T.V and knew it is illegal, but RIAA will not break and enter into your home to investigate what has been recorded but we all know that is illegal
stop recycling music, bring out songs that have been written by the singer, stop producing crap arse one hit wonders off Idol shows such as American Idol and the many clones world wide. Stop killing the good artists that have talent....i can go on but i hope you all see my point here....GIVE US BETTER MUSICIANS AND WE JUST MAY PAY FOR IT. and well done to the person who wrote of VCR's, if they stopped giving us devices that can record then they might get somewhere but the latest release recording toys is rediculous if they are serious about copy protection. The public can purchase equipment that allows them to record free to air t.v as well as cable t.v without the need of a computer. I hear some people saying "but the person doesn't distribute the product", so to that i will say "so it must be ok to take a product(i.e,record or download) as long as you do not share it buy non profit or profitable means" ..... roflmao....Hope you win Ms Anderson
Just Face it Lawyers=Liars and until Internet Crime truly becomes Illegal people are going to be screwed!
Hacking, breaking and entering, Pick pocketing, Burglery, spamming, denial of service attacks, phreaking, Dummy Downloads, Aggressive Virus Attacks, False Links=(spyware,Keyloggers, Porn Dialers)
All these things listed are Crimes, In that they are designed to obtain or introduce information, without Permission!.
Some people use their computer for online transactions regardless of recommandation, and they do store very delicate info on their machines.
I think It is time that an International law govern over the illegal use of information obtained by thiefs of the internet!.
I have seen a horrible increase in these things to the point that advertisement impedes my ability to surf and I have stopped surfing alot of sites because of these practices. Entry Into my pc without permission is like stealing my wallet or my wifes purse and it is illegal!
Step up to the plate uncle sam you are failing everywhere else.....Why don't you do something about it!.
When I purchase these easily damageable discs I immediately create a "backup" copy and because of this I am in fact stealing (or am I?) due to the false statements that circulate I am being told that copying is illegal and I can be fined and/or sent to gaol for doing so.
The mongers in the music world and all other areas of cd/dvd productions love to remind us that to copy a disc is illegal so that when our inferior made discs fail to read they can have us pay for the same product for a second time and so on.
I pay for all of my music and have been sick and tired of having to purchase the same cd/dvd again just because my safely kept cd/dvd collection fails to play in any type of player, so as I said at the beginning I now backup my cd’s and dvd’s including software and games.
I am neither for or against downloading free music or whatever else tickles your fancy as there is an argument worth listening to on both ends of the debate.
I would like though a more reliable product than a cd/dvd disc and an ipod is not a option for me because I got a wonderful 2 years use out of it before it stopped working one day. When enquiring into the repair or replacement of parts for the ipod I was informed I am better off buying a new ipod and so I did and just under 2 years later it stopped working again.
Please give us products that last instead of the current system of get the customer to come back to buy the same product again and again.
At the risk of showing my age :p why aren’t things made to last like they used to.
To Anonymous 4:45 AM
It is because of honest people such as yourself that musicians across the world will be paid for their songs and i would go as far as to say that there is far more people who buy music than there is who illegaly download them. if all of us stopped buying music then RIAA wouldn't have the money to pursue a church mouse and the artist/group should create their own website with sample songs and if the person likes it then they can purchase the song directly from the artist for a small fee(total fee goes to the artist/group instead of a percentage to RIAA)
please musicians of the world, head away from the likes of RIAA.
RIAA protects its own interest and not that of the musician. RIAA protects its right to claim money from musicians so its in its best interests to see the musician get their full potential of profit through the sale of cd/dvd's.
So come on musicians breakaway from RIAA and max your profits by dealing directly to the public because as long as you are good there will be people who will part with their money, as long as the price is worth it e.g, a new release single for $1 multiply that by the amount of downloads per day (imagine your favorite singer or group and then think how much they would make doing this) another point of revenue raising in this matter would be advertising space on their website, more $$$$.
That was my 2cents worth :))
Fairly easy to spoof an ip address on a token ring network like cable and pretty easy to hijack an ip on a subnetted dsn or for that matter all the way up the parent route. DHCP leasing an IP address is not proof. It has no encryption, no two way verification, no tracking of mac use after the lease, and is 35 year old technology. Even a mac address can be spoofed using a $10 network card or a $20 router. They almost all allow that now.
The simple fact is there is no way to guarantee that any one person is responsible for P2P traffic based on an IP address. RIAA is just full of shit...if you get a letter from them...send them your trash collection bill.
its such a pity that this case will go unheard forever, the RIAA will tie it up in legal mumbo-jumbo for 20 years, and drain all her money in court costs until she eventually has to give up.
i purchased one of these new gadgets that is supposed to be the way of the future called an ipod, that was 4months ago and it no longer works. i contacted the store where i had purchased it from and was asked to call apple.
i called apple and was told there is no replacement hdd for the ipod (apprently my hard drive had failed)the solution was to purchase another, i asked why the hdd is not under warranty and was told the ipod is with warranty but does not extend to the hard drive.
i wonder why apple doesnt get into the console department with the awsome hard drives they use in these fantastic revolutionary ipods. i had decided to pay for a Creative Zen 20GB MP3 Player and have been using it for over 1 year and without a problem
lift your game apple
I was reading this entire page and started getting some ideas of my own to post
then i came across the post "lift your game apple" roflmao are you drunk? or on drugs? maybe both?
you said you bought a ipod four months ago and it stopped working and then you go on to say you decided to pay for a Creative Zen 20GB MP3 Player and have been using it for over 1 year and without a problem
i would like you to think about when you said you paid for the mp3 player because saying your ipod stopped working four months ago and then saying you went and paid for a mp3 player that u have been using for over one year now, makes no sence at all
you are saying four months ago u paid for the ipod and are also saying because of the failure of the ipod you went and got a mp3 player at this point in time.
did you buy the mp3 before buying the ipod? or is it brand new because the ipod has only just failed?
Well I hope she wins.
A bar owner friend of mine in Chicago was forced to pay BMI and ASCAP for music he played in the club he owned.
They threatend him with a lawsuit if he did not pay up. After several years of this extortion he got a bright idea. He said he would be happy to no longer play music by any artist that was a BMI or ASCAP artist if they would simply send him a list of those artists they worked for. Including a list of every song they did not want him to play. He never heard from them again and still has not to this day and continues to use music nightly and has never been sued by these leaches.
I would say since not all music on peer2peer is Illegal music they should also have to provide us with a current up to date list of the music RIAA has dibs on so that I will know if its a legal or illegal download. I know ignorance of the law is no defense. But really how am I supposed to tell what bands allow downloading and what bands don't if this information is not all gathered in a public site where it can be viewed.
I in fact would love to have that list I would make sure the artists on it got none of my money and the artists who do struggle to survive and allow people to share music got more of my money via ticket sales for live music and homegrown labels.
Just my 2 cents worth and while that scenario may not work for everyone I know it worked for at least one person.
Before you think oh thats Bull. Just think about how big a list like that would be and what it would take to maintain it and keep it current and up to the minute and then you see why it was such a simple thing to say "GIVE ME THE LIST OF WHAT I CANNOT PLAY". It would be impossible to provide a list. It would fill a hard drive or a whole office building of file cabinets and it grows daily.
I would be happy to oblige and not support RIAA artists. Plenty of good music out there for free just got to find it is all.
PEACE PEOPLE
As far as the zombie question, this is old information I am running on so forgive me if I am incorrect, that is a possibility, but you would need to download and run a self-executing file that places a patch on your system that will allow for external access, and I beleive windows needs to be set up for network sharing. But that setting I believe would be easy enough to change through the self-executing file. Once this patch is in all that needs to be is for the computer to be left on and plugged into a phone/DSL/LAN whatever way of getting out of the building into the wide-open world.
Unfortunately, ActiveX (employed by IE, which IMO is the worst browser on the market), can install any program it wants into your computer without tellling you, then havce it run on startup. Think of this possible situation:
Some company has an ad on the LimeWire site/a bittorrent site.
RIAA offers to pay that company a bunch of money to add some ActiveX code.
Said ActiveX code installs spyware program on your computer, such as MediaSentry if that's its purpose.
RIAA can now spy on your entire harddrive, and then sues you.
alot of sites will still work fine without the active x they want installed. I myself do not allow active x installs unless i really needed it
same here. That's why Firefox is so much better. Most people, unfortunately, use IE and do nothing to try and disable ActiveX, which is what causes their computers to become zombies.
Copies of works that you own are legal in the US under the "fair use" clause. The RIAA and the MPAA are trying to circument this clause by arguing that it makes copywrite laws difficult to enforce. TOUGH. The fact is that "fair use" says that if you buy their product it's yours to use in any matter you see fit, as long as it doesn't break the law. This means that you can back it up, play frisbe with it, whatever you want. It's not their business how it's used. This is the same reason that gun manufacturers and fast food restaurants were just cleared of responsibility from lawsuits. Because the use of their product is no longer their business.
Four things:
1) I hope she wins! BIG-TIME!
2) What would happen if a grass roots effort was started where everyone, or as many as could be covinced into participating, boycotted buying any music in any format and going to any Concert for at least 3 months. The slogan: "When the RIAA shuts down we will start buying music and going to concerts again.
3) How long would the industry keep the meddling RIAA around if THAT happend?
4) Sadly, that could never happen. Most people would not be willing to sacrafice their music 'entertainment' for any length of time.
great day everyone!
Again, why is downloading music wong? I have It’s illegal, records sales drop, the artists, song writers, producers will not get paid, Music Industry will fade away, violates the copyright law, and Unloyal to musicians. Anything else? "Person who stated RIAA is in rage and what if someone not leaving in your house downloaded and you got in trouble"
Oh my god. I just called the RIAA number and left a msg on their piracy mailbox to ask them a question. I was so nervous that I wanted to blurt out that I downloaded music and that I was so sorry. I was shaking badly in my voice. I didn't leave a number, I left a email address-wouldn't want them to trace my house and I hope they do not have caller id.
"Guess none of you like music? The RIAA pays my bills and feeds my family, assholes."
I found this to be an incredibly thoughtless remark. While it is regrettable that the destruction of the RIAA would mean the potential loss of your job and force you to find other work, shouldn't the potential benefit to the millions of Americans who would benefit from a music industry run by a more fair and reasonable body outweigh the loss caused to you? For example, I work for a defense contractor. Approximately 40% of our business comes from federal government contracts. My entire division performs military R&D. If through some miracle world peace was declared tomorrow and the US military was disbanded I would be out of a job and my company would likely fold. However, is the suffering of hundreds of millions of people around the world caused by war and violence less important than my continued employment? Of course not. Although this is a more extreme example, the same principle applies to you. Your continued employment is not more important than the destruction of a group that practices questionable business ethics, and is overall a burden to the populace.
I've always wondered where the line for fair use is drawn. It is well established that an individual is allowed to make a copy of a work that they own, which includes downloading a copy. It has also been established that recording a song off of the radio is legal. Does a person then own the song they recorded? Can I now legally download another copy of the song? The recording industry would of course say no, but where is the difference between these two? The free exchange of ideas has always worked great for building and improving society in the past, but who cares about that when you can try to own everything and say, "F*** society! Look out for number 1!"
I can tell you all from being a professional musician who has played with very many artist. There are elements in the industry that are directly tied to org.crime. So dont discount that these things dont go on. As in any industry. There is good honest people and theres just flat-out crooks.Most people in this industry know these things take place. But because of the money involved,are powerless.Hope she wins.
I just thought I'd mention that the lawyer included her disability simply to reinforce the claims of damage to health from the stress of a false suit (i.e. she was unwell, and the stress of the suit made them MUCH worse, costing her money in treatment).
... the PR value is a nice benefit, though. ^^
To those saying that she should drop various claims because they weaken her case, and claiming she has a poor lawyer because of it... you don't know much about practicing law.
Not one of the claims is unreasonable on it's face, and putting every possible claim in your initial lawsuit is the correct way to do things. If nothing else, it forces the RIAA lawyers to do extra work to defend those points. All it takes is for one of your claims to get through and you have a "win".
From her point, she cannot know whether they a) hacked her computer and got records mixed up, b) told her they hacked her computer and got records mixed up. Either way, it (should be) illegal, so she submits claims against both routes, and one of them is likely to stick.
This is just one more example of the individual taking on the system, putting up a brave and valliant fight before ... well what ?
Fact is , can the record and multimedia companies afford to lose this lawsuit - would a loss not bring down the tower of lies and deception and shake them to the core - I think it would - this could make ENRON look insignificant in comparism ...
My heart says she'll win, my head says the RIAA could not allow her to do so ...
The odds are the RIAA'll want to settle quickly, so'll the lawyer, and she'll probably take the first offer she gets. Such is life.
By sharing files I don't think a person is doing anything illegal its the person downloading the work they don't have a right to that is breaking the law.
Wrong. The courts ruled that it's uploading that constitutes copyright violation (I.E. You may own the rights to have the original copy of the music, and a backup copy in any format that you choose. How you obtain it is not illegal, as long as you prove you're entitled to that copy that you're downloading.)
Basically, you may not upload a file to someone that doesn't have the legal right to have a copy of that song.
Next up, for those not thinking, the case notes clearly state Ms. Anderson had password protection on her computer. Therefore, any means by which the RIAA and their goons accessed the computer, was illegal. Easily proven.
Furthermore, IP addresses can be faked, spoofed, or masked VIA using a proxy. Nobody's thought of this, surprisingly. Someone most likely (in the event of her not having a wireless network) was using her ISP and IP address as a proxy server, and possibly by the use of a rootkit, if any files were indeed downloaded. Of course, the ISP will be involved in this part, as they're the ones with the records of which client was using which IP address at the time specifically in question.
Someone was bashing her chosen represented law firm by saying that they had "no technical expertise." You, sir/madam, need to get smarter. The RICO Act is covered under commercial/business law, all they'll have to do is get a few expert witnesses in technological matters and they've basically got all that they need to get ready for a big win in battle.
IANAL *BUT* I have a lawyer behind me speaking to me while I type this out.
~Khyber
Sweet!! This makes me want to set up a 166 mhz MMX machine (32 megs of ram or whatever) and put it RIGHT out on the internet so they can probe it! Heh. Bypass the router, turn off the firewall... Heh....
Please correct me if I'm wrong but since when does a non-govenmental agency have the right to search anything that belongs to someone else..Isn't that like some one breaking into you home and looking around? Also, if they did have the right what happened to due process? Shouldn't there have been a search warrant issued to search someones private property..If the police need one shouldn't they?
Alright, folks, let's just stop here for a moment and get back to the basics.
Forget about IP Address vs. IPA.
Forget about an IP being a reliable and court-usable means of proving a human identity (let alone a specific computer identity).
Forget about whether the distribution of copyrighted works is or is not illegal.
MediaSentry was hired and has claimed (by way of reporting back to their masters) to have become "aware" of Ms. Anderson's data traffic activities as relates to legal claims made by the RIAA against Ms. Anderson. MediaSentry was hired and has claimed to have viewed the contents (to what extent is unknown and perhaps unknowable) of her computer.
First question:
When, exactly, did MediaSentry become a court-appointed entity for the purposes of physically executing any standing court order authorizing the network equivalent of wiretapping?
Second question:
When, exactly, did MediaSentry become a court-appointed entity for executing a court-generated search-and-seisure warrent?
Third question:
When, exactly, did any court of law create either a wire-tapping order or a search-and-seisure writ for Ms. Anderson specifically prior to the execution of such activities?
So, frankly, if there was no prior court order to authorize these types of activities against this specific individual, then the activites themselves are illegal, in breach of federal (and possibly state) laws, and any evidence thus obtained is completely off-limits to the plaintiff.
Now, I've never been to law school, so I don't know what all laws and statutes and ethics rules these activities violate, but it sure seems to me that MediaSentry is or should be in an awful lot of trouble and, since they were hired by the RIAA to specifically engage in these kinds of activities, then the RIAA itself should be culpable as well, for the same reason and in the same way that a person who hires a hitman to kill someone is just as guilty of the murder (in legal terms) as the hitman him/herself. This could, theoretically (at least I think) be extended back to the various recording labels that the RIAA represents.
As a brief aside, wouldn't it be a gas if executives from recording companies started going to jail for being accessories before-the-fact to criminal wire-tapping, fraud, and RICO charges? (Man, I'd just love to see that!)
I agree with an earlier poster that the RICO finding should be both state and Federal, since this was across state lines.
(BTW, let me take the opportunity here to say that all of this just adds to the joy I experience each and every day in not being a Windows addict.)
Hehe i use a friggin bi-directional sandbox... Any program i run sees only what i want it to see(It's a pain in the ram though...) also i congratulate you guys who posted comments. i almost had to bring my computer out of 800x600 47 hertz interlaced to view it.
seriously though good for her! the riaa sux and deserve supreme poneage..
To all people who hate RIAA and posted their emotions here :
"Thats what is RIAA is all about , when you download new music or video you think about RIAA and feel hate or fear it sctualy stops some of you from downloading"
From all those posts i can see that RIAA is doing their job
sry for bad english
The Music Industry is losing money because of their prices and activities and nothing else!
Hopefully she will win.. and win a big settlement. For the scare they caused her.
I must say, this is a decidedly dismally written suit. If indeed that is what is represented by this article. However, I fully agree and back this woman. The RIAA has been getting away with improper conduct for far too long to forward it's goals, and they need to be stopped. They invade our privacy for their own ends, and it damages people's credibility needlessly. These coercive acts must STOP!
I would gladly agree to head a project to set up a defense fund for those people wrongfully accused of illegal acts, and that have had their electronic property violated illegally. If anyone would like to help me out with this project, please email me at the.axe@gmail.com and we can further discuss this matter in detail.
Well if she manages to get an untampered jury and a solid case all that will happen is she'll be bought off by the RIAA, and to be honest, in her financial situation almost anyone of us would do the same, she has no interest in the invasion of privacy or strongarm tactics of these corporations apart from how it has affected her personally.I too would love to see these assholes get it where it hurts, but it just aint gonna happen, because after the offer of a substantial settlement ( with clauses) , she'll accept and buisness as usual for the RIAA and their henchmen.
If your courts in the US doesnt end up freeing a person like Andersen, and if your system doesnt end up giving her some lage amount of compensation, you should seriously be thinking of starting a revolution to get rid of such corruption.
Anyway I think all of you miss the point. The important question is: How do people who DO share files protect themselves or fight back ? My suggestion is to help ms Andersen and 3 billion other people to download files in order to flood the system. When more than 50 % of a population do something, we should be able to follow normal democratic procedure to make laws that put all people involved with RIAA-like activities away in one of your many prisons, far away from mainstreem activities. That way we would avoid the above named revolution.
Go Ms. Anderson Give'em Hell. You have all the support you need. I hope you make the record companies choke on their very own policies that have been buying from congress and such.
hope she wins the case, goes to show that these fuckers break the law themselfs by privacy invasion.but of course we all know whos going to win, those rich cock suckers riaa can go to hell
dont forget.. her name is ANDERSON... she might be the ..ONE! ;) Best of luck to her :D
(double post?)
As with most abuses of the legal system, and most recently under the very poorly drafted Digital copywrite laws, the large, bullying companies step far past the spirit of the law and use the poorly written word of the law to perptrate these inherently dihonest and repugnant acts against citizens. Like Ms. Anderson, we all have to be vigilant in reporting criminal acts (such as the extortion threats) by these so-called legitmate companies and reply charge by charge, detail by detail, to all their unscroupulous acts with all the legal power each of us can muster. In the end, this will be a class action and with any luck, the RIAA and their motion picture counterpart, the MPAA will be enjoined permanently from injuring indiviaduals who have not done wrong.
Now I dream of the day when our legitators in both Houses in Wasjington DC and the state governments around the country actually govern for the bebifit of all citizens instaead of whoring themselves and out government out to the highest "contributors" and industry analysts (lobbyists).
I dream of the day when statesmen (and women) replace the political hacks and whores we suffer today and the United States actually becomes a beacon of true American Values for the rest of the world - again.
Like the kids in ther "Mickey D" commercials say, "It could happen".
To Ms. Anderson and her Attorneys,
hardball these nefariuos companies and scoundrels all the way to the poorest of all poorhouses, not to mention prison for their crimes.
I hope Mrs. Anderson Blows them away, they have no right to do this to people and if the RIAA win it just gives them Carte Blanche to spy on us for whatever reason they want, next it will be monitoring of financial statements, online banking everyone must support this woman against the various facets of orwellian prophecy unfolding before us.
When I download a song, I am not committing a crime.
I do not exhibit it for profit, nor do I cause ANY loss of profit to the song's owner.
I have not damaged you by downloading a song for free.
You still retain all of your copies.
I have not deprived you of profit.
To deprive you of profit, it would have to be proven that I would have bought the CD in the first place, and that due to downloading the song I will now not buy it.
You cannot prove that I would have bought the CD, simply because I wouldn't have. There are a great many songs I like which I do not have MP3s for. This does not mean I own the CDs.
What I actually do is discuss it with my friends, which provides the service of free advertizing. I cannot charge for this service, because it was not asked of me. But it is still a service, and if one appreciates free advertizing they would be jerks to not thank those who grant such to them.
To take an entirely different approach, let us consider telepathy, and various means of communication.
Suppose I go to a concert and listen to music. When I get home, I talk about the music, and how much I liked it. Is that wrong?
Let us suppose I talk about how well the violins were, and how the complex harmonies they made impressed me. Is that wrong?
Let us suppose I hum it a little. Is that wrong? Perhaps. If the work is copyrighted, I cannot exhibit it for profit, because it's their song and if money is made, they deserve it for their hard work. That's not what I'm doing though.
Let us suppose I'm capable of playing it on my own instruments.
Let us suppose I'm capable of doing it very well, of analyzing the frequencies very precisely so that it sounds very much like originally played.
Let us suppose I'm so good at my description of the music that I can explain it mathematically as a series of waves.
Let us suppose my friend is so good as to be able to understand those waves.
Let us suppose I have the ability to remember the song exactly as it was played, and to through some act of telepathy transmit it to someone else so that they can hear it exactly as I heard it.
Now stop imagining. We do this all the time.
This is where technology has led us. We as a species have a tool which permits telepathy, and it is uniting us like never before.
The RIAA wants to enforce a restriction on your ability to talk to your friends. To share aspects of your life, and to share experiences, in a world of increasing connectivity. And legal or illegal, they will lose, regardless of what the courts decide.
They want to control your thoughts.
And they want you to pay them for the priviledge.
I don't know in the states but in kanada, we, the population, with our taxes, are paying for lawyers for big companies like that. So even if you sue them, they will always have the money for lawyers. But not you. Anyway, really hope that she win her case!!!
telepathy?
wtf are you smoking, and can I have some?
Remember a few facts:
BigChampagne says 7 million people engage in electronic file music downloads at any given moment in the United States. Most Americans have less than $100,000 in assets.
Should the RIAA be able to successfully sue each person in one second, for one violation, for $100,000, this would force the bankruptcy of more than 2% of the nation in one moment.
I argue that the potential economic damage caused by this law renders it a danger to the entire nation. Even if each was guilty all told the RIAA their names at that moment.
Furthermore, some research indicates estimates of 40 million people in the United States have engaged in this behavior at some point in the last five years. Thus, more than 13% of the nation is vulnerable to suit. Should 40 million people settle out of court for as little as $10,000, the resulting settlement would be 40% of Gross Domestic Product of the nation. Such a settlement would be grossly unfair.
Considering that such an activity is about as common as openning a store on a certain block of gang turf, that gang asking for $1,000 to not take damaging action upon the store owner is nearly the same. Should that gang operate in the entire United States, attempting to shakedown 10,000 people, that gang would clearly be engaging in racketeering.
If you have a firewall or password protection, not only must a hacker commit felonies to gain access to your system, they must violate your DMCA rights of encryption. Furthermore, if you make a purchase from outside your state with your computer, they compromise assets conducting Interstate commerce.
I, for one, pledge to sell all of my CDs and use the money to fight this immoral abuse of Congress, the immoral law it supports, and the immoral methods of 'enforcement' these entities use.
I am calling on everyone who shares my beliefs to have a yard sale of their CDs, and send the proceeds to Ms. Anderson's legal defense fund. Her legal team means well, but cannot fight the endless armies of lawyers from the RIAA et al. Let's make this the Battle of Thermopylae - if she must go down, let's make sure it spells the end of the RIAA invasions into our homes.
I want to see a class action on this one.
It's a win/win for her. They ADMITTED they hacked her computer to get evidence of infringement. It does't matter if they ACTUALLY did so (or were even able to do so). If they stick with that, she has them on trespass. If they deny it, she has them on perjury. Either way, they lose.
rolls eyes
More or less not much notable happening today. Nothing seems worth bothering with. Pfft. Shrug. I've basically been doing nothing worth mentioning, but it's not important.
Medicine Blog
Reminder:
Comment policy:
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2.no profanity
3.no RIAA trolls masquerading as something else (if RIAA PR flacks present themselves for who they are, they are welcome to participate)
4.no unsupported accusations
5.no defamation
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7.no unsupported anti-lawyer or anti-judge insults (if you know of something specific that a lawyer or judge did, with which you disagree, and you want to comment fairly upon it fine, but I don't want people here denigrating the legal profession with undocumented insults; I think that is a tactic used by RIAA trolls and some other big corporations who are trying to discourage ordinary people from talking to lawyers and learning about their legal rights, or from going to court to fight for their rights, thinking the system is stacked against them; lawyers and judges are the cornerstone of the rule of law, which is the cornerstone of our democracy, and they are the closest thing we have to an equalizer in our society)
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The fact that she's disabled IS relevant. Why? Because she lives on disability, so doesn't have money to defend herself properly from extortion AND because the emotional trauma from the threat could very well have worsened her physical condition. It is also important to show the character of the RIAA in going after people they may believe can't defend themselves. IT may not be politically correct - but it is very relevant.
She is going to win! The RIAA has deep pockets and attorneys have bills to pay like everyone else.
Although it's not about the money, large judgments against companies seem to be the only way to keep them in line. Knowing that a good lawsuit could wreck your bottom line, keeps companies from using illegal tactics. Usually!
RIAA sounds like a roar of Satan, but as we all know, tyrannic people tend to collapse in the end and that's what will happen to RIAA also.
When people stop changing their ways of doing things -- just like RIAA has stopped changing their ways of marketing music -- people tend to die and that's according to history, going to happen to RIAA also.
Good people, understand that life is happening in everything that is changing. Recording industry has been the same since the early 1900s and if it's not inventing new and innovative ways to work and keep their customers happy, it will die eventually.
Bacteria are a good proof of life; they keep changing and getting better, inventing in order to survive. But people don't always like them. We like bacteria that are helping us to continue survive, in order to be alive. People don't want a bad bacterium, like RIAA to make their lives miserable. Thus people will end up fighting against RIAA and RIAA will die in the end.
RIAA has shown that it's not a friend of their customers nor a friend of their _potential_ customers. That's a bad thing in markets and in the end RIAA will be seized by haters and people that don't like unfair business. But of course, the bad bacterium will find another way to survive and it's not the same form of RIAA that we know, but probably as a "spirit" amongst people.
Good luck to this lady!
I have just found your blog on Slashdot and have been reading, with interest, the various cases by and against the RIAA.
What I keep thinking of when I read these tactics (along with the assumptions the RIAA makes in prosecuting people) is a story told me by a CPA friend of mine.
He told me about an 80s band that, after an altercation with a paparazzi was being sued for battery. The band member called his lawyer who gave him a quote for his defense. The band member then told his lawyer that he did not have the money and that he had not received any royalty check for years. His lawyer looked up his contract, which stated that the group had the right to audit royalties at any time (pretty standard for these types of contracts). My friend's firm was brought in to do the audit.
The audit found that the record company had underreported album sales when the band was considered a "supergroup" and filling stadiums by an astonishing 20%. After the band had long since quit touring, the company routinely underreported CD sales by up to 80% and in the last several years by 100% -- even after remastering their work using digital processes.
While the actions of one recording company do not always scale to include the entire RIAA, I find this kind of behavior instructive, especially as the RIAA is claiming to be trying to protect the artists.
Thanks Tanya. What you are fighting for is what I have said all along is flawed about these lawsuits... How do they know it was you using that internet connection? It's a piece of cake to crack into someone's Wi-Fi connection. The tools are easily found on the internet. What if I have an open Wi-Fi connection? It's simply a flawed argument to say that because a particular IP address was downloading music that the person who pays for that IP is responsbile. Like she and her lawyer have proven over the years, anyone can spoof that IP or break into her internet connection is multiple ways.
Your blog is outrageous! I mean, Ive never been so entertained by anything in my life! Your vids are perfect for this.
These unlawful activities were not isolated.
too much lawsuits. its giving me a headache.
Way to go! I hope she crushes them.
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