RIAA Lied To School Staff To Gain Access to 8 Year-Old
Tanya Anderson, a disabled single mother who recently defeated the RIAA in court, is suing the music labels and their legal bulldogs for malicious prosecution.
Despite providing the RIAA with evidence of who was the true owner of a suspect Kazaa account, Anderson says that it not only ignored her, but attempted to directly contact her 8 year-old daughter, both at home and at her elementary school, lying in an attempt to gain one-on-one contact with the child. From the complaint:
"Knowing of her distress, the RIAA and its agents even attempted to directly contact Kylee. They called Ms. Andersen's apartment building looking for Kylee. Phone calls were also made to her former elementary school under false pretenses. The voice of the woman on the phone claimed to be Kylee's grandma inquiring as to her attendance. Ms. Andersen learned of these tactics and was even more frightened and distressed."
The kazaa account in question was loaded with tracks of such child-friendly appeal as "shake that ass bitch," "nigger f---er," and "f--- y'all hoes."
RIAA-linked firms tried to glean a four-figure sum from her in return for not taking her to court, despite the claimed admission by a settlement officer that he believed she had not infringed any copyrights. Lawyers later demanded the child be subject to deposition.
This lawsuit was ultimately dismissed with prejudice earlier this month, meaning she is eligible to recover legal fees from her adversaries. Her own lawsuit was filed last week in Oregon's US District Court, and accuses the RIAA of libel, slander, deceptive business practices, and invasion of privacy.
We're past the point where sensible discussion can take place regarding piracy and the outstanding legal attempts to stop it. The RIAA clearly has no mechanism in place to distinguish likely offenders from everyone else: it's only overarching strategy is barratry, described in the complaint as a "threat and litigation enterprise."
It's now just a question of how long it can get away with randomly selecting people from which to extract "settlements," carefully sized to be cheaper than the cost of retaining a lawyer.
damn, just damn
