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Granny Sues RIAA Over Unlicensed Investigator
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jul 03, 2007 07:43 PM
from the more-ways-to-hit-them-back dept.
from the more-ways-to-hit-them-back dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "An elderly, non-file-sharing grandmother from East Texas, who had been sued by the RIAA after being displaced by Hurricane Rita, has sought leave to file counterclaims against the RIAA record companies for using unlicensed investigators. In her counterclaims (PDF) Ms. Crain claims that the record companies 'entered into an agreement with a private investigations company to provide investigative services which led to the production of evidence to be used in court against counterclaim plaintiff, including the identification of an IP address on the basis of which counterclaim defendants filed their suit... [They] were at the time of this agreement aware that the aforementioned private investigations company was unlicensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas specifically, and in other states as well... [T]hey agreed between themselves and understood that unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part of a mass litigation campaign... [T]he private investigations company hired by plaintiffs engaged in one or more overt acts of unlawful private investigation... Such actions constitute civil conspiracy under Texas common law.'"
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[+]
RIAA Backs Down On "Unlicensed Investigator" 191 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Texas grandmother Rhonda Crain got the RIAA to drop its monetary claims against her after she filed counterclaims against the record companies for using an investigator, MediaSentry, which is not licensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas. The RIAA elected to drop its claims rather than wait for the Judge to decide the validity of Ms. Crain's charges (PDF) that the plaintiff record companies were 'aware that the... private investigations company was unlicensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas specifically, and in other states as well... and understood that unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part of a mass litigation campaign.' Similar questions about MediaSentry's unlicensed investigations were raised recently by the State Attorney General of Oregon in Arista v. Does 1-17"
[+]
Is RIAA's MediaSentry Illegal in Your State? 200 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Is Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG 'investigator' MediaSentry operating illegally in your state?. The Massachusetts State police has already banned the company, and it's been accused of operating without a license in Oregon, Florida, Texas, and New York. Similar charges have now been leveled the organization in Michigan. Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Growth, in response to a complaint, has confirmed that MediaSentry is not licensed in Michigan, and referred the complainant to the local prosecutor."
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I wonder if she's from Pasadena? (Score:3, Funny)
Please pay for your copyright violation. (Score:3, Funny)
Signed,
The RIAA
Every other day (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems like every other day we either find out that the RIAA used some illegal practice or lost a case against a so called music pirate though they keep dishing out lawsuits. The RIAA train has derailed but it doesn't seem to be slowing any time soon.
You only hear about the people striking back because they're the rare counter-example. You don't hear about the thousands and thousands of people who settle to get the lawyers off their backs.
The RIAA train hasn't derailed. The function of the lawsuits isn't to make money. The goal is to scare people away from file sharing and back into the music store, either bricks and mortar or online. As long as the lawsuits stop the bleeding from file sharing, they only have to break even, or just avoid losing
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Did they take someone to trial and win today?
The function of the lawsuits isn't to make money. The goal is to scare people away from file sharing and back into the music store, either bricks and mortar or online.
They're doing a bang-up job there, too. Tower Records says "Thanks" for the extra traffic.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was "young" (read: under 25), music was my love. Well, besides computers. I have a few hundred CDs. But for almost 10 years now, I didn't buy a single one. Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe I just can't stomach the cover versions of "my" songs, dunno.
Back then, there also wasn't much that competed with CDs for my money. Fashion would've been the only other thing to waste money on, and I've never been the fashion geek. So all my spending money went into music.
Today, a l
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Good, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the puppeteers, not the puppet, that needs to be demonized.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Start having a bunch of people hitting back. Lawyers in court == more lost money. Start having them losing cases for big money == more lost money. Start having the courts perhaps decide that they lose the rights to press suites in regards to the material they're
Re:Good, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on the findings. There was a case that came up just recently where the RIAA is being accused of both federal and state RICO charges as well as quite a number of other things. While this is only a civil case, these are criminal charges. If the findings go to the plaintiff on some of the more serious charges, and were the RIAA not to reform itself, the remedies in a follow-on case from any other party could be quite severe indeed.
C//
Parent
If only boycotts worked (Score:3, Interesting)
In the past consumer boycotts have rarely if ever worked, because most consumers either don't know or don't care, or think what's the use. So form a message and target it. Spread it on Myspace and Y
Re:Good, but... (Score:4, Informative)
But when I say "RIAA" I'm talking about the 4 major record companies and their labels.
Parent
I guess in Texas... (Score:5, Funny)
In Texas, old ladies SUE YOU!
Licensing (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's say your laptop is stolen. Let's say you had a program that reported IP addresses. Someone buys your laptop from the thief for a stupid low price and hooks it up. It reports their IP. You turn the evidence over to a cop who goes to get your laptop.
1. You were not licensed to be an investigator.
2. The program author was also not licensed.
3. The cop obtained evidence from you.
The person who bought stolen property cannot be charged with a crime. All because you didn't have a "license".
Instead, the law requiring a license should be replaced with a "suspects' bill of rights". Anyone can investigate, but if his/her rights are violated, then the evidence becomes poisoned fruit.
Re:Licensing (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Your analogy is flawed... (Score:5, Insightful)
What isn't legit is hiring someone without a proper license to do this professionally
on your behalf. The same thing goes for providing security services of any kind (incl.
cybersecurity...)- YOU can do it for yourself, but if you hire someone, you need to hire
someone with a license or operating the umbrella of one to make it legit if something
goes wrong.
Where your analogy falls apart is that you make the assumption that a consultant doing
the work is analogous to your doing the same work. It's not as far as the civil and
criminal laws are concerned. Since the RIAA or the Labels themselves did not have direct
hire employees doing this work, it's not the same thing as what you present- they hired
a an outside professional (or group thereof) that didn't have a Federal
license for the work being done or a Texas state PI's license. This makes it all subject
to litigation like what's now happening to them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, meanwhile suits like this one become fodder for the evidence cannon...
Civil vs. Criminal (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to the objections others have pointed out, the situations are not analogous. Stealing your laptop is a criminal offense. Despite their propaganda, unlicensed copying of a RIAA member organization's content is a civil matter AND not theft.
Parent
Don't Mess With (Score:5, Interesting)
> [T]he private investigations company hired by plaintiffs engaged in one or more overt acts of unlawful private investigation... Such actions constitute civil conspiracy under Texas common law.
Just so. Also, as noted in the p2p article their actions "amount to extortion". If someone says "If you do/do not do X, then I will/will not do Y", that's extortion. When it's done across state lines, it's a federal offense, and none of the plaintiffs are Texas corporations.
I'm looking forward to the day someone manages to get charges filed rather than just filing suit, and someone from the MafIAA gets arrested. My money's on a state's attorney general doing it, and Texas is a very likely place for that to happen. In any case, KICK ASS, GRANNY!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The RIAA is such a broken record.... (Score:4, Funny)
Jimmy
Parent
RIAA put some grannies in the ambulance ... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, her lawyer knew enough to discover this information and file this anyway...
You'll recall from an earlier article that Tanya Anderson's lawyer (in Oregon) http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDFfull.asp?filename
Texas has a similar requirement for private investigators to be licensed. So THIS granny's attorney is filing a copycat countersuit. This is the second buffalo in the stampede.
I expect we'll shortly see television ads from the law offices of James Sokolove asking whether you have received a settlement request from the RIAA, which is about to be nibbled to death by ducks. B-)
Parent
Re:RIAA put some grannies in the ambulance ... (Score:4, Funny)
You'll recall from an earlier article [slashdot.org] that Tanya Anderson's lawyer (in Oregon) found a number of grounds [ilrweb.com] on which to countersue.
[...]
I expect we'll shortly see television ads from the law offices of James Sokolove [jimsokolove.com] asking whether you have received a settlement request from the RIAA [...]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RIAA put some grannies in the ambulance ... (Score:5, Funny)
You wouldn't say that if you were standing in front of them. 8^)
Parent
Re:RIAA put some grannies in the ambulance ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Lawyers Rock (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Lawyers Rock (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Lawyers Rock (Score:4, Funny)
I kid, I kid.
Parent
Re:Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawyers aren't the real problem, and getting rid of them isn't a solution. The underlying problem is that some people are anti-social jerks who have discovered that they can get their way by bullying others. Under our current system, the jerks hire lawyers to do their bullying for them. If you eliminate the lawyers, the jerks will just find a new set of bullies to do their dirty work.
The real solution is to give ordinary, decent people a way of striking back when the bullies get on their case. Counter-suits, like the one mentioned in this article, are a good way of doing that. If everyone who was wrongly accused by the RIAA decided to launch a nasty counter-suit rather than caving in, the litigation strategy would grind to a halt- or at least focus on the worst, most obvious real offenders rather than people chosen at random.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
should read:
"My right to walk the streets unmolested by the police outweighs your right not to get blown up."
Parent
Re:Not The Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Lawrence Lessig goes further. The ultimate problem isn't that the RIAA is bullying people with lawsuits. The lawsuits are enabled by the likes of the RIAA being able to buy the laws they think they want. And that in turn is enabled by our broken political system that can ignore the will and the good of us all in response to slick but wrong (even obviously wrong) PR campaigns or for the sake of a few measly campaign dollars.
These PR campaigns and dollars come from a bunch of extremely short-sighted legal hustlers with no sense of civic responsibility. Swarm intelligence works when the individuals of the swarm actually think, but many of these special interests are too narrowly focused on getting handouts. The AARP is an example of this. Some years ago the AARP was pushing hard for more expansion to Social Security, Medicare, and so forth. The AARP was pushing for more than even a majority of their own members wanted! Had they got everything they asked for, the US might've gone broke during the dotcom burst. They only saw it as their "duty" to get everything they could for their "clients", and what that might do to the country wasn't even on their radar. That was someone else's problem. And that was only part of the game-- they ask for the moon, and hope when they get "cut" back, they'll be left with about what they really wanted. Sometimes however, they score bigger then they expected, and when that happens do they back off? Give some back? Heck no, take the money and run! And push for even more! It's be nice if our system was robust enough that they could push as hard as they like without fear of breaking anything, but our system doesn't seem to be quite up to that. When the AARP was pushing, Big Pharma was only too happy to help get a fat drug benefit "for seniors". And they got that part, most unfortunately. Now we all get to foot absolutely outrageous bills for drugs. Many other countries took the much more sensible approach of forcing Big Pharma to lower their prices.
As Lessig said, it is totally against the public interest to have the extreme Intellectual Property laws we have these days, with copyright lasting 95(!!!) years, and our current berserk and broken patent system. Same goes for our crazy health care. Big Pharma is in many ways even more extreme than the RIAA/MPAA. Don't know what Lessig can do about it, but I suppose he's got something in mind.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, there are the crooks that jump in joy every time they found a loophole in a law so they can milk some unsuspecting victim and basically collect protection money, due to his victim not understanding the law. They're basically the legal (as in "law world" not as in "allowed") equivalent of malware writers. Using the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And basically, to turn your argument back at you, this can and possibly will happen to the US as well if more and more laws made against instead of for the people enter the legal system. Sooner or later people will not be able anymore to see laws as rules made to protect them. They see them as oppressive tools used against them. An
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, that makes me ... what's the opposite of dying a little inside?
Not sure, could be any of the following.
- Living a little inside
- Living a little outside
- Living a lot inside
- Living a lot outside
- Dying a little outside
- Dying a lot outside
- Dying a lot inside
It all depends on what you want to reverse...
I think it's great that people are fighting back against the RIAA. I completely support what the RIAA are meant to stand for (I.E. the anti-piracy thing) but their attitude, methods and motives are terrible.
Re:you GO, girl! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is a 1-5 rating based on the hurricane's present intensity. This is used to give an estimate of the potential property damage and flooding expected along the coast from a hurricane landfall. Wind speed is the determining factor in the scale, as storm surge values are highly dependent on the slope of the continenta
Its the little old lady who got a subpoena (Score:5, Funny)
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
She got a mean nasty letter after fleeing hurricane Rita
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
It said "Hey, we caught you downloading our garbage,
so we've hired a bunch of lawyers to sue you to Dodge!"
And everybody's saying theres nobody meaner
Than the mean nasty lawyers from the RIAAaaahhhh
They sue real fast and with no good reason
They're like "Grandmas should be in open season!"
Its the little old lady who got a subpoena...
You can see her on the stand telling the truth now
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
With her four lawyers and her bi-focal glasses now
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
"Them lousy RIAA jerks hired an investigator
who would be better occupied as my personal masturbator!"
You can see her on the stand her kickin' RIAA ass now
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
With her four salivating lawyers and her beehive hair now
Go granny, go granny, go granny go
She's gonna have an RIAA executive as her waiter
cause they cant help being evil vindicators
And everybodys saying theres nobody meaner
Than the little old lady who got a subpoena
She counter sues real fast and packs a punch
They say She's out to eat some asshole's lunch...
Its the little old lady who got a subpoena
Parent
Re:Its the little old lady who got a subpoena-D/L (Score:5, Funny)
Oops, WinMX is down.
Parent
Re:Its the little old lady who got a subpoena (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:There's no reason to hunt them all down (Score:5, Funny)
Yarr!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No kidding. These people are scary.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1. The RIAA peppers the legal apparatus with lawsuits. It's a given that a fair lot of those won't stand a minute in court and pretty much beg for a countersuit.
2. The RIAA has deep pockets that are ripe for picking. They can pay whatever sum you can convince the judge to grant you.
3. Most people who got into a mess with the RIAA just want those suckers off their back. I.e. it's easy to get them to sign over not half, bu
Re:Hell Yeah! (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent