RIAA, Safenet Sued For Malicious Prosecution 337
DaveAtFraud writes "Tanya Anderson, the single mother from Oregon previously sued by the RIAA — which dropped the case just before losing a summary judgement — is now suing the RIAA and their hired snoop Safenet for malicious prosecution. (Safenet was formerly known as MediaSentry.) Anderson is asserting claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act. A reader at Groklaw has already picked up that she is seeking to have the RIAA forfeit the copyrights in question as part of the settlement (search the page for '18.6-7')."
Re:The RIAA don't have copyrights.. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes,the slashdot summary should have made that clear.
Re:Hope she has money (Score:5, Informative)
Rights not Copyrights (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Give up the copyrights? (Score:4, Informative)
I believe she's suing the individual companies.
Re:Give up the copyrights? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This woman should just leave it alone... (Score:4, Informative)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but like hell they didn't. It's pretty clear these guys see the "threaten 'em all into paying" strategy as a moneymaker and a way to set an example. Both interests are served by bankrupting average Joes and Janes.
They knew, exactly what they were doing. And IMHO they deserve to pay the price, far more than some kid who innocently downloads a song and gets taken to the cleaners for $4000 neither they nor their parents can afford.
Re:Hope she has money (Score:2, Informative)
I'll take it as a general rule that it is better to go into court with a rifle than a shotgun.
Malice - in the legal sense - can be damn hard to prove.
Re:How to avoid a jury trial/force a settlement? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:donations (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright abuse IS one of the charges. (Score:5, Informative)
Given that Count 13 IS "Misuse of Copyright Laws" and, in that count, paragraph 18.6 claims "Such actions constitute a misuse of copyrights, and lead to a forfeiture of the exclusive rights granted to defendants by these laws." I'd say the conditions you ask for are met.
"Who shall watch the watchers?" is a problem posed millennia ago. In the case of police violating the fourth and fifth amendments, the answer the courts found was: "If you cops/prosecutors break the law in collecting evidence for a case, all that evidence - and all evidence collected as a result of it - is thrown out. Keep YOUR act clean or you lose the case."
Similarly congress has said: "Copyright gives you certain exclusive rights for a (long) time. It's hard to play 'whack a mole' with all the infringers, so we're giving you draconian penalties to make an example of those you do catch, to make examples of them and scare off others. If you misuse these rights, you lose them - not just for THAT case, but FOREVER."
If the court rules "You misuse the copyrights, you lose the copyrights" it will, IMHO, be correctly interpreting the law. Setting up a situation where the RIAA and its members get judgments when they go after a real copyright violator but lose the copyright on the songs involved if they maliciously or negligently prosecute an innocent non-violator would create a DANDY incentive for the RIAA to abandon its reign of terror and do their best to be squeaky-clean on any cases they pursue.
Re:How to avoid a jury trial/force a settlement? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Give up the copyrights? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&s
Nice going "editors". Oh shit, I'm on the wrong site to be RTFAing aren't I?
Re:Hope she has money (Score:3, Informative)
I'll never forget sitting in on a civil case where the impassioned wide-eyed rookie lawyer got up from behind his desk and starting waving his hands in the air like it was Law and Order, asking a question angrily. The bailiff put his hand on his pistol and the judge told him to sit the hell down.
The really good lawyers are the ones that remember precedent arising from decisions written in 1952 that was really about whether, I dunno, one brand of chicken wire infringed on the patent out on competing chicken wire, but hey, maybe that case applies here.
Guess which pay scale the latter lawyer is in.
Re:How to avoid a jury trial/force a settlement? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and and RICO are both criminal, not civil. In fact, they'll be facing felony charges.
Re:She's going to win, too (Score:4, Informative)
They already tried intimidation. Not only didn't it work, now there's a protective order. If they try that again, someone goes to jail for contempt.
Read the whole lawsuit - WOW (Score:1, Informative)
Re:This woman should just leave it alone... (Score:5, Informative)
Well...
The bad news for the record companies is that the first three items in that list can't really be disputed -- a court has already issued a finding as to their truth. Proving the final item is all that's needed to inflict ruinous damages on the RIAA and its member companies, and there's quite a lot of evidence to back that one up.
Re:How to avoid a jury trial/force a settlement? (Score:5, Informative)
Flamebait and Troll vs Insightful and Informative. (Score:5, Informative)
Now, given that someone was dragged to court, despite the evidence saying that said person was innocent of all wrongdoing, and the case was pushed, in the hope that they'd run out of money and fold..
Given also that rather than face a judgement against them that would set a precedent that they were dead in the wrong, the RIAA just drop the case, and walk away with the premise that there's no comeback at all.
The GP poster just says effectively "She got away lightly", despite having to fork out legal fees.
That is a highly inflammatory remark to make. The defendant did NOT get away lightly. She was harassed, threatened, and abused. By all measures, it is quite possible that the RIAA will be found guilty of extortion in this case (not all, by any means, but a strong possibility in this, as discovery has already uncovered a lot of illegal processes performed by the RIAA and their agents).
Modding the GP poster as a 'Troll' in this case would probably be better served by a 'Flamebait'. Whether by lack of understanding of the issues, or a deliberately crafted attempt, it serves the purpose of largely being both wrong in the detail (though there are mitigating parts, such as mentioning that not all cases are wrongly brought; the GP just doesn't follow through the logical progression and admit that this case WAS wrongly brought and prosecuted, thus bringing it into the realms of extortion. They merely say that some cases were correctly brought, thus all cases are warranted, which is NOT correct) and in the conclusion.
Now, modding up says that a post is insightful, informative, or similar. Given that the post uses spurious logic (taking a false premise, and building a logical chain of sorts on top of a false premise; in this case that given one case is valid, all cases are therefore valid) AND presents the resulting conclusion in a manner that can be deemed inflammatory (an innocent person harassed and hauled through the courts with the aim of wrongfully obtaining money is deemed to have got off lightly when charges are dropped), modding the post up as insightful OR informative is just plain wrong; it is plainly neither.
I'm all for debate; There are posts on here that I vehemently disagree with, but as they're presented with a rationale that fits facts, I concede they have a point, and have to re-think my own opinion. Sometimes the facts support many opinions. And that's ok.
However, when the opinion does not fit the facts, it is wrong (and thus can't be either informative, or insightful).
Presenting the falsehood in an offhanded, condescending fashion is, like it or not, either flamebait, or plain trolling (attempting to derail incisive discussion by presenting falsehood likely to produce a vehemently emotional response rather than an educated an well thought out one).
Re:Finally someone brings up RICO (Score:3, Informative)
One of the claims is that private investigators in Oregon need licensing. MediaSentry was not licensed in Oregon, and KNEW this (or SHOULD have known, since they claimed investigative expertise). Thus EVERY MediaSentry investigation in Oregon (and other states) broke the law. Systematically. Since the investigations where illegal, the demand for compensation is extortion, and ORICO applies.
And the complaint goes on... (this is just one of the goodies).
Re:How to avoid a jury trial/force a settlement? (Score:4, Informative)
1. It comes from caselaw.
2. It would mean those particular sound recordings are no longer copyrighted. It would have no bearing on the copyrights in the underlying song.
Re:Flamebait and Troll vs Insightful and Informati (Score:5, Informative)
Jorghis, they lost. They sued Andersen knowing their process was error-prone, and they lost on the merits. This has already been litigated.
They supposedly had an IP address, gathered by an unlicensed private investigative company. One of the problems is that they didn't know whether or not it belonged to her, and they knew of that flaw. What's more, they were presented evidence that their claims were in error, and they sued anyway.
Just because nothing was found on the computer doesnt mean she is innocent, it isnt hard to completely remove some files from a computer. Logically, their presence may prove guilt but their absence proves nothing.
It's a lot harder than you seem to think. Anyone who has ever analyzed a hard drive knows that the wiping of specific evidence can be pretty glaring.
Of course, in this case we're talking about the absence of ALL evidence. There was no evidence she had done this. None. No pattern or history of filesharing; no connection of the unique Kazaa name to her (actually, identifying the likely culprit was pretty simple with a Google search), no similarity between Andersen's obvious music taste and the files that were shared. Simply an IP address, which may or may not have been hers at the time. History indicates that the matching of IP addresses after the fact to individuals is actually a rather flawed process.
And the RIAA knew all of this, and even admitted as much. Did you read the filing?
So perhaps you still wish to condemn her because she didn't "prove" her innocence. Of course, that's not the way our justice system works. But you'd have to be pretty hard up to see her as suspect to insist that she could be guilty, regardless.
Logically, their presence may prove guilt but their absence proves nothing. As long as they found her IP address sharing copyrighted material I dont see what the problem is.
Then you haven't read the filing, and aren't familiar with this case.
If they couldnt get enough evidence on top of that to get a guilty verdict that doesnt necessarily mean that suit was motivated by malicous reasons.
Then you haven't read the filing, and aren't familiar with this case.
I mean come on, it costs WAY more than 4000 dollars to go through with a lawsuit like this, if she was innocent they would have no logical reason to pursue it.
Oh, really? How about their explicitly-stated rationale that they didn't want to encourage others to defend themselves? How about the fact that they still hoped she would settle, and they could chalk up another "win" on their record?
Do you really believe that they were sueing her just to be dicks? It makes no sense.
Partially, yes. Partially because they know their "threaten-em-all" PR campaign is a house of cards into which they're totally invested.
I have a very cynical reaction to cries of "person XYZ was sued by the RIAA and is innocent". I mean, its so easy to find people who are guilty that it just seems ridiculous that they would go after someone who has done nothing in spite of all the costs involved.
Then you haven't read the filing, and aren't familiar with this case. The RIAA's actions weren't what you seem to think they were.
All that being said, if she actually is innocent I hope she wins, but I doubt that is the case and if it is she is a very small minority among the people getting sued.
As I said above, for all intents and purposes the RIAA lost on the merits, and there's absolutely, positively no evidence Andersen did anything wrong. By contrast, there's significant evidence the RIAA knowingly pursued baseless allegations in furtherance of a PR campaign.
Re:This woman should just leave it alone... (Score:5, Informative)
Fraud, abuse of legal process, and malicious prosecution
Extortion, fraud, abuse of legal process, and malicious prosecution
Invasion of privacy, fraud, abuse of legal process, and malicious prosecution.
Deceptive business practice, racketeeering (Oregon and federal).
Is that illegal enough for you? One item not mentioned: They publicly declared that she was a "thief" and listed all the songs that supposedly she stolen which made her out to be racist while knowing that they did not really have any evidence against her. That would fall under libel and slander.
Re:How to avoid a jury trial/force a settlement? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Give up the copyrights? (Score:2, Informative)
Not as such, no. You also have the lower standard, preponderance of the evidence, rather than reasonable doubt.
That said, you do have a certain presumption inherent in the civil system. The party seeking to change the status quo, e.g. seeking relief, has to produce the preponderance. If the evidence is even on both sides, the party not seeking affirmative relief prevails.
Applied in the usual way, then, plaintiff has to prove his case by a preponderance of the evidence. The starting presumption is that he shall have no relief; it is his job to produce enough evidence to be a preponderance, and should not do so then he has no relief.