RIAA Drops Tanya Andersen Case 164
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "After 2 years, the RIAA has finally dropped its longstanding case against disabled single mother Tanya Andersen in Oregon, Atlantic v. Andersen. The dismissal (pdf) relates merely to the RIAA's claims against Ms. Andersen, and does not relate to her (a) claim for attorneys fees or (b) counterclaims against the RIAA, which are presently before the Court on a motion to dismiss. The counterclaims were first interposed in December 2005. This is the same case in which the RIAA insisted on taking a face to face deposition of a 10 year old girl. Prior to the case, neither the mother nor the child had ever even heard of file sharing."
Re:two years (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I really hope... (Score:4, Interesting)
Swing... and a miss... (Score:2, Interesting)
How do people like these folks even end up on the RIAA's hitlist? Do they pick their targets by just pinning up a street map of a city and throwing darts at it?
Will it ever get to the point where a judge just gets tired of all these false positives, desides that the RIAA can't be trusted in court, and throw them out of the courthouse? Let's hope so!
Re:We need some personal accountability (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope your wrong. This is corporate policy. In this case the entity it's self really is to blame. I can give you that some employees may find it distasteful and personally disagree. They may even just work there because they need the money to raise their family. How ever the RIAA as an entity is corrupt and needs to be removed. The music industry has been convicted of price fixing. They have a long history of ripping off artists. I don't know how they have avoided getting busted under the RICO act a long time ago. Well I do know. They "Art" side pays big money and sends out celebrities to keep the Democrats in their back pocket and the big business side gives out big money to keep the Republicans in their back pocket. It really is the perfect storm. The Democrats can pretend they are protecting "Artists" rights while the Republicans can claim the be protecting profits.
Re:Don't start clapping yet (Score:2, Interesting)
It won't get called off. To call it off would require a complete dismantling of the U.S. copyright and patent system. Copyrights and patents as they presently stand were never consistent with reality and they've always been blatantly immoral. Easy digital reproduction simply makes this painfully obvious to even the dimmest bulb.
Clearly, there's too much money tied up in copyrights and patents (and consequently too many Congresscritters purchased by interested parties) for the current system system to be dismantled.
No, the sad fact is that what the RIAA does is legal and will remain so until the Republic finally falls and we can ignore those jokers in Washington. In ten years, there will be midnight copyright raids, the same as there are drug raids today and with the same justification.
Screw ethics and morality. The issue is always about how those in government can control the governed. Copyrights and patents are a wonderful way of making sure we all knuckle under.
Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do people insist on adding in this little factoid? It has absolutely no relevancy to the case. Certainly the RIAA has their heads up their ass, but if or not this woman or her child are "handicaped" has nothing at all to do with if she or her child are "guilty" as charged or whether she should or should not be pursued for breaking some law someplace. Anymore than this:
Re:two years (Score:4, Interesting)
I think $750 per day is a reasonable amount tho.
Surely a day of a person's life is worth as much as a copy of a song.
So 547,500 for two years.
Re:Yes, but did she steal songs? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would say that Ms. Anderson appeared to be innocent all along, but that doesn't matter to the RIAA. Only the bad PR may have mattered to them. This case, like many others, shows the RIAA's inaccurate and despicable driftnet techniques can harm the lives of the seemingly innnocent. When she received her settlement notices from the RIAA, she tried to reason with the settlement center even offering her HD as proof that she did nothing wrong. The only options they gave her were to pay their settlement or face a lawsuit informing her that they had accessed her computer to gain all the evidence they needed.
Living on a fixed income (because of her disabilities) she simply could not afford to pay the RIAA to go away. So the suit began. During discovery the HD was examined and no evidence of P2P software or illegal songs were found. Her lawyer also brought to the attention of the RIAA that P2P username that they targeted belong to someone else in the city when they googled for it. That other person openly talked about stealing songs via P2P on his myspace page.
To me it appears that she was innocent all along. Yet the RIAA still pressed forward wanting to depose her minor daughter in person. I hope that she wins big in fees because of all the anguish they have inflicted over the past 2 years. BTW, if she was innocent, then the RIAA either illegally accessed her computer (she did not have P2P software) or lied to obtain a false settlement. IANAL but wouldn't the latter be considered a crime?
Re:Yes, but did she steal songs? (Score:2, Interesting)
BTW, if she was innocent, then the RIAA either illegally accessed her computer (she did not have P2P software) or lied to obtain a false settlement. IANAL but wouldn't the latter be considered a crime?
Arrrr... and this be Oregon, where unauthorized access of computers [lightlink.com] be aggressively prosecuted [lightlink.com], so the former be too.