RIAA Backs Down On "Unlicensed Investigator"

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 she going to sue MediaSentry?

[davidwr]

I'd love to see the discovery on that one.

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

[TheMeuge]

Someone should set up a fund for her to go after RIAA and MediaSentry over this.

Heck, I'd Paypal a few bucks over to see how this turns out. I figure another ten thousand people are with me. If we all chip in $20, that'd be enough to get this ball rolling.

They should have dropped the suit entirely

[stox]

If I am reading this right, IANAL, blah, blah, blah, RIAA is simply dropping monetary damages. They have not dropped the suit. I don't see how this will effect the counter-claims. Hopefully, Grandma will ream their tail ends so bad that their heads will fall through.

Go Grandma! Go!

What's the significance of a license

[slashqwerty]

I am curious what the significance of a license is. I assume a licensed investigator has to take a test and possibly be bonded. How does that affect their ability to collect evidence or impact their credibility in court? One would expect most states to have similar licensing requirements. If MediaSentry is licensed in some states certainly they must follow the general guidelines that Texas requires of licensed investigators. Also, since copyright infringement is a federal issue why does it matter what Texas law says?

Not surprising

[Stanislav_J]

They probably thought it was better to drop one case than to risk a precedent-setting decision that would have invalidated hundreds of other similar "investigations" and perhaps result in some sort of class-action suit.

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering the same thing? She filed a counterclaim, if she filed it, is it only contingent on the original claim still being there?

I mean, it sounds like it's like if you decided to sue someone, and they said "You know what, I'll just drop everything because I don't want the judge to pass a verdict." However, I thought the Defendant couldn't drop the suit, the Plaintiff who brought the suit, is the only one who could drop it???

well

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always questioned RIAA's methods of collecting data to sue people, most of their info is just Circumstantial evidence. Most people settle cause they don't want to fight a company that has money to tie this sham up in court for month's. Even with their army of lawyers it was only a madder of time before one of the defendant would get a lawyer that would find a crack in their case and blow it open with C-4. I knew their case's were a flop when they would avoid Harvard.

Not only emotion...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Part of this is to show the sheer innaccuracy of the RIAA lawsuits in the first place.

I'm making a list. To my knowledge, they've sued:

• Several pre-teen girls, who could not possibly afford either to buy the music legitimately or to pay the settlement.
• Several grandmothers, who are unlikely to even know what P2P is.
• At least one dead person.
• At least one person who has never, in her life, touched a computer.

There's probably more, but I haven't been paying attention.

If the facts are so firmly on the defendants' sides as Ray would have us all believe, why is it necessary to resort to such blatantly manipulative appeal to emotion?

If the facts are so firmly on the defendants' sides, why not appeal to emotion?

Just understand, pointing out the people involved -- especially when those people are unlikely to be capable of piracy, much less want to -- is not always an appeal to emotion. Sometimes, it's simply an appeal to common sense -- which is why you will occasionally see articles tagged "suddenbreakoutofcommonsense", for when the RIAA/MPAA is losing.

Just wait:

[Lost Penguin]

RIAA has a bill in the pipeline to become law;
FBI would investigate copyright violations, or possible a new federal copyright cop squad.
Your tax dollars at work....

There's a sting about to happen

[Ralph Spoilsport]

for a while I was thinking of working as a private investigator. More than one PI agency is wildly looking for digital investigators to do copyright investigation.

I have a job, but I'm "on a certain list" so these kinds of job offers come across my desk.

It's not good, and it's not pretty. Someone with Serious Pockets is looking to screw a Lot Of People over copyright re: file trading.

It's all coming out of the "heartland USA". I moved out of the states a while ago. But "people know me" so I get rumblings/job offers before others do. If this investigation goes down as it seems, it will be ugly.

For whom? Well teh music industry of course. They're a bunch of fucking morons with a business model that bears no resemblance to what the market is requiring. So rather than grow a lobe for profit (vis the Ferengi) they would rather do the American Thing and sue everyone into the dirt. Morons.

So: word up: the morons are on the march...

RS

Re:Why try so hard to appeal to emotion?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

What I want is for the truth to get out there, and I want this reign of terror to end. The most important single factor in almost all of these cases is the huge economic imbalance in each and every case. In an ideal world that would not be relevant to the outcome, but is there anyone out there who thinks we are in an ideal world?......

Raise your hands.

I don't see any hands.

No one bothered by the need for a license?..

[mi]

Is it bad to download a few songs from an artist that you've heard of but never heard? I've done that several times.

I've also done "several" investigations of the spammers — using tools like whois and nslookup. I was not licensed to perform the investigations — in any state.

According to this grandma's counter-suit and — more importantly — to all the kudos she got from the Slashdot crowd, all of those spammers should have a good case against me...

I may understand (and even accept) the desire to keep tabs on gun-wielding private detectives like Dr. Watson or "Maltese Falcon"'s main character, but MediaSentry, no doubt, has never even set foot in Texas, all their "investigations" being limited to the Internet. Twisting the law in this fashion should be troubling... But hey, it is RIAA, so whoever sticks whatever up theirs is our hero...

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

[KDR_11k]

When is P2P actually fair use?

Re:This is not a good thing

[Evets]

This would be a problem considering that the bulk of their lawsuits are based on MediaSentry downloads via Kazaa. Kazaa is around no more, which means that there is no investigation to be made.

What they didn't want is for their suit to be thrown out with the Kitchen sink because of their reliance on information provided by unlicensed investigators. If that happens, they lose anybody in the state who is looking to settle anytime soon.

As it stands, it will take some time before another defendant even has the chance to bring this subject to light again and when they do, the RIAA will have had a much longer time to come up with a good argument for the judge - or even perhaps engineer the argument to be presented to a judge who would be receptive to their arguments.

They bought time. The grandma closed the door on the case. We'll see what happens with the next guy.