Class Action Complaint Against RIAA Now Online

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Recommended reading for all interested in the RIAA's litigation war against p2p file sharing is the amended class action complaint just filed in Oregon in Andersen v. Atlantic. This landmark 109-page document (pdf) tells both the general story of the RIAA's campaign against ordinary folks, and the specific story of its harassment of Tanya Andersen, and even of her young daughter. The complaint includes federal and state RICO claims, as well as other legal theories, and alleges that "The world's four major recording studios had devised an illegal enterprise intent on maintaining their virtually complete monopoly over the distribution of recorded music." The point has been made by one commentator that the RIAA won't be able to weasel its out of this one by simply withdrawing it; this one, they will have to answer for. If the relief requested in the complaint is granted, the RIAA's entire campaign will be shut down for good."

Re:Well, well, well...

[The Ancients]

Actually, since I live in NZ, they're not our overlords yet, but we do have the RIANZ down here, who are cut from the same cloth.

In fact, here it's illegal to make any copies of music at all. Hence, until the iTMS arrived, it was a pretty good bet that almost all music on any digital devices was illegally uploaded. Law changes are proposed, and the RIANZ wants to keep the law the same, but they give their word they won't chase the little guy, but want the law to remain the same just in case.

keep reading, it gets better.

[Mactrope]

I suggest you keep reading, the best parts have references. Yes, there are about six or seven pages of introductory opinion but by the time you get to page 7 you start to get into the meat of it. They quote three disgusted Federal judges who use terms like, "gamesmenship", "speculation" and "hammer" to describe the suits. By the time you finish, terms like "sham", "illegal" and "outrageous" sound accurate.

Technicality, but still...

[Bombula]

"The world's four major recording studios had devised an illegal enterprise intent on maintaining their virtually complete monopoly over the distribution of recorded music."

That would be an oligopoly, not a monopoly. "Monopoly" means "one seller". We have four fish to fry here.

Re:unprofessional

[milsoRgen]

plaintiff repeatedly referring to them as sham lawsuits

Page 29 "These activities are a "sham" as defined by U.S. Supreme Court in California Motor Transport Co. V. Trucking Unlimited [findlaw.com], 404 U.S. 508 (1972) and subsequent cases."

Re:This could backfire

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

They also apparently have an army of unlicensed private investigators. It seems that their tactic was: 1)"illegally enter the hard drives of tens of thousands of private American citizens to look for music recordings stored there". That was MediaSentry's job. 2) Fill "thousands" of anonymous lawsuits, only to subpoena the ISP, and then "discover" the IPs that they already illegaly found. The lawsuit is then discarded, having served it's purpose. 3) Profit, by settling out of court, harrassing and such. I thought I was pretty well informed on those things, and yet it's the first time I hear about that. It sheds a very new light on the fact that they often couldn't give the proofs. (What I still don't get though, is how they ended suing guys without computers.)

I wonder about that myself. If I were a judge I would have hit the RIAA's attorneys with Rule 11 sanctions, big time.

Re:This could backfire

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

After reading/skimming my way through all 109 pages of that, I have a question for you. I noticed many of the allegations made against the defendants look like laws with criminal punishments. Is there any chance (please say yes) that some of the people involved in this legal travesty could face prison time? Preferably somewhere with multiple large cellmates named "Bubba"?

Yes.

For example, the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth recently pointed out [blogspot.com] that
(a) MediaSentry has no license to conduct investigations in Michigan (b) MediaSentry needs a license to conduct investigations in Michigan (c) MediaSentry appears to have been conducting investigations in Michigan and (d) the penalty for conducting investigations without a license in Michigan includes up to 4 years in prison.

Re:This could backfire

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Right, I was aware of the illegality of the MediaSentry investigations. I guess I had my eye on the much jucier RICO charges like racketeering that can carry up to 20 year sentences. Any chances a US Attorney could indict on those grounds even after this litigation is settled?

Sure. They'd have plenty of material to work with. In the Napster case the judge held they could no longer assert attorney-client privilege, under the 'crime-fraud exception', because they'd lied to the US Department of Justice when it was conducting its antitrust investigation of them.

Of course the Napster case was settled shortly thereafter.

Re:This could backfire

[schon]

I think it's been demonstrated that their activities center around scaring people away from acquiring music illegally via the Internet, rather than recovering "damages" due to copyright infringement.

Uh, no.

It's been demonstrated that the recovering of "damages" is their primary goal. They set up a fscking Settlement Support Center [p2pnet.net] as a for-profit corporation to streamline their extortion. If they're just trying to scare people, why do they need a new corporation (which has it's own army of lawyers) to process the payments?

Scaring people is just a happy side-effect. The "settlements" are revenue-generating.

Re:Well, well, well...

[Original Replica]

Politicians seem completely incapable of grasping the idea that it is just dumb to keep something illegal when not only is everyone doing it, but everyone is morally right to do it.

That only hold true if the goal of the politician is to serve the people. If the goal of the politician is to have power over the people or to serve someone who wants to have power over the people, then having the majority of the people open to prosecution at your leisure is a very useful tool. Most parking and speeding tickets are a lower level of this sort of criminalizing of the average person:"The National League of Cities says 47% of the nation's cities raised fees and fines last year. Most of the added money came from parking tickets. Revenue from these fines and fees now rivals property taxes as a major source of municipal income, says the league's Chris Hoene." [usatoday.com]Now obviously, the city governments that generate a significant portion of their income through tickets don't actully want everyone to start parking legally, nor do they want to make more legal parking easily available. They want money, just like the RIAA does.

Re:unprofessional

[rboatright]

the term "sham" in this context has a specific legal meaning. Basically, the pleading is attempting to state that the lawsuits fail both prongs of the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, and in order to do that, they have to establish that the suits were, in fact, "shams" within the meaning used in California Motor Transport. So, it sort of HAD to read that way, is instead of what you think, exactly and precisely professional. It's just that we're not used to encountering stuff like this.

Re:This could backfire

[jonathansdt]

BTW: if any of this happens (White house debacle) in a real company, did you know that they automatically lose any lawsuit that has a grounded basis in those documents?

Only if it can be proven that you suspected said records would be discovered and used. So start every enterprise with a policy of records destruction by fire.

Re:'big 4' and RIAA

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

maybe someone with more knowledge of the law can comment on the 'burden of proof' to connect RIAA to the record labels, for the sake of punitive actions (damages and maybe even better/worse...)

It's not even an issue, it's an admitted fact that the lawsuits are being run by the record companies' front, the RIAA; the contracts with MediaSentry were signed by the RIAA.. the extortion -- I mean settlement -- checks are made payable to the RIAA client trust fund.

Re:I don't mind lawyers getting rich.

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

The case is also against the big 4 record companies, and the illegal investigators, and the illegal collectors.