Single Mom Fights Back Against the RIAA

I am sitting here listening to and half watching the March 10th edition of WebbAlert and I am hearing about a suit filed against the RIAA. Amongst the accusations: electronic trespassing, malicious prosecution, libel, slander, deceptive business practices, and invasion of privacy. Tanya Anderson has already had her day in court to clear her name but she is not stopping there. She is filing a malicious prosecution case. Good for her. I am very glad that some are standing up to the bullies.

According to this Wired News Article, The RIAA actually tried to attempt to contact the eight-year old daughter at school and deceptively gain one on one access to the child. If the case proceeds it might mean the the RIAA would have to disclose how they obtain evidence and decide who to sue. could this mean that they would have to use licensed investigators?

Now if you have ever heard my opinion on the RIAA, you would know that I feel a better description of this self appointed police force is the Racketeering Idiots Association of Absurdity. What has bothered me about them the most is the hypocritical rational and gestapo-like approach of the organization. Perhaps I am being to harsh with the word gestapo but they are, at the least, bullies. I don’t like bullies. Kudos to the single mom fighting back in this case.

Gone are the days when the RIAA managed to assure the audio quality of the recordings, mastering engineering techniques so that your needle didn’t skip and the bass sounded right. It was the only format we had then, they had to perfect it. Enter the days of attempting to force the consumer to use one type of DRMed media and suing fans. they no longer attempt to assure quality for the consumer but now attempt toe tell the consumer, what they can listen too, how much they pay for it and what they can listen to it on… Big brother with really bad taste.

This case may actually bring to light what I have felt has been going on right along. It may reveal some questionable, even "potentially incriminating" tactics and according to the second article webbalert mentions, has the potential to lead to a class action lawsuit.

Another thing that always puzzled me and others have tried to explain to me and failed is why the RIAA is not actually guilty of RICO violations. Seems this case also has charges around that in it as well. Nonetheless, if this case proceeds to discovery it will, at the least, make a bad looking organization look only worse.

Some of the things that this article claims the RIAA will have to explain are very interesting as well. They include:

• How much does an RIAA Lawyer earn? Seriously, how do you justify any attorney’s salary?
• Justification for the average $4-5K. Is blatant greed not enough?
• How it picks it victims. Oh, I am not saying that well. Let me quote the article… "How it decides which file sharers to sue, and which ones not to sue". Here I thought they just checked for a college fund, maybe there is an actual method?
• "Where the settlement money goes (i.e. whether any of it makes it to the artists)". I think this one is going to be the best one to read about. An industry that created the term "starving artist", is going to have to draft a pretty convincing argument on this one. Maybe Metallica will share the bank account deposit information with us?

My initial thoughts are that this may work out well. That is, if is prohibits tactics I suspect the RIAA is using. My next thought though is if they cared little for ethics in the first place, is a court decision going to be a real determent? Maybe they will just drop the facade and simply admit that they are just a bunch of greedy racketeers who intend to instill fear into the masses? Heck your honor, it is not like they want our product anymore, how else do we make em buy it?