RIAA charged under racketeering act?!

[Thorin]

Tanya Andersen is countersuing RIAA.  Part of her countersuit invokes Oregon's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act.  This one'll be fun to follow...



Oh, and I hate not being able to sleep at night  

[Ustauk]

Oh, and I hate not being able to sleep at night  

Have you tried warm milk?

[Darren Dirt]

Tanya Andersen is countersuing RIAA.  Part of her countersuit invokes Oregon's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act.  This one'll be fun to follow...

It's about time people stopped cowering and actually stood up to bullies who use fear and threats and outright deception and fraud to control others (I know from experience, but I don't want to discuss my relationship issues right now...)



Here's my initial thoughts on this RIAA countersuit, kudos to Ms. Andresen!

[Thorin]

Sorry, that link leads to a login page, and I don't feel like registering.



ArsTechnica has an interesting article on this as well.  Especially the second part where they talk about Kim's Video and Music Store...

[Cova]

Haha..., this line from the Ars article linked above is about the best line ever...



"The sheer depravity of it all inspires cynicism. If the RIAA is found guilty of fraud and extortion, I bet that SCO will sue them for infringement of a business methods patent."



In fact, I might have just found a line worth using as a signature...

[Darren Dirt]

Sorry, that link leads to a login page, and I don't feel like registering.

Oops, forgot -- that's a recent change to that forum.



I said (quote) that it was amazing many basic maxims of law (see this page) are violated by the ongoing actions of the RIAA, especially what is described in the individual countersuit mentioned here...





7. Ms. Andersen has, however, been the victim of the record companies? public threat campaign. The threats started when the record companies falsely claimed that Ms. Andersen had been an ?unnamed? defendant who was being sued in federal court in the District of Columbia. She was never named in that lawsuit and never received service of a summons and complaint. (Forget centuries of history, I mean do we really need to go through the formality of actually identifying by name the accused in order to attack them in our wonderful adversarial system? Yeesh, next thing you know you're gonna expect the plaintiff to have the full burden of proof of the accused guilt...  )





9. After receiving the February 2, 2005 letter, Ms. Andersen contacted the record companies? ?representative,? which turned out to be Settlement Support Center, LLC. This company was formed by the record companies for the sole purpose of coercing payments from people who had been identified as targets in the anonymous information farming suits. Settlement Support Center is a Washington State phone solicitation company which engages in debt collection activities across the country. (A powerful threat does not a cause of action make.)





10. When Ms. Andersen contacted Settlement Support Center, she was advised that her personal home computer had been secretly entered by the record companies? agents, MediaSentry. (What idiots to admit such wrongdoing.)





14. Ms. Andersen wrote Settlement Support Center and even asked it to inspect her computer to prove that the claims made against her were false. (Even though the burden of proof is on the claimant, sadly.)





16. Instead of investigating, the record company plaintiffs filed suit this against Ms. Andersen. F. The Record Companies have no Proof of Infringement. (Big shock - now why would they be uninterested in proving their own claim is unfounded, hmm...)





17. Despite making false representations to Ms. Andersen that they had evidence of infringement .... plaintiffs knew that they had no factual support for their claims. (Oh, right, that's why.  )



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Tanya Andersen, a 41 year old disabled single mother living in Oregon, has countersued the RIAA for Oregon RICO violations, fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation, the tort of "outrage", and deceptive business practices.



Hey Ms. Andersen, you go girl!



(/quote)

[Darren Dirt]

With all due respect to Family Guy (Kurt Cobain: "...and this is my wife, Courtney Love" Fan: "Who?") the following speech is both articulate and truthful... revealingly so. (I'm guessing it was 2002ish based on the Napster references -- update: it was actually 16May2000.)

'm not scared of you previewing my record. If you like it enough to have it be a part of your life, I know you'll come to me to get it, as long as I show you how to get to me, and as long as you know that it's out.



Most people don't go into restaurants and stiff waiters, but record labels represent the restaurant that forces the waiters to live on, and sometimes pool, their tips. And they even fight for a bit of their tips.



Music is a service to its consumers, not a product. I live on tips. Giving music away for free is what artists have been doing naturally all their lives.

Hey RIAA, the whole justification for your existence is being exposed as a hoax by the very artists you claim to be "protecting"!



Courtney Love Does The Math

[Darren Dirt]

Freely available information is A Good Thing. Just found this resource:



What is RIAA Radar?

The RIAA Radar is a tool that music consumers can use to easily and instantly distinguish whether an album was released by a member of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).



Why should I use it?

Just as people can currently find out where some products come from and who made them (Is this banana organic? Does this milk contain growth hormones? Were these clothes made in a sweatshop?), it is important to have that knowledge for as many consumer goods as possible. Knowledge is power, and knowing where the product came from can (and should) influence what you buy.



Why is it important to know if an album was released by an RIAA member or not?

That's possibly a fairly long answer, but just the highlights of the RIAA's practices involve price-fixing, blaming its poor financial state on unfounded digital piracy claims (and in turn, blaming and suing its own consumers), lobbying for changes that hinder technological innovation and change copyright laws, underpaying the artists it represents, invading personal privacy to enforce copyrights, and dismantling entire computer networks just because of their ability (of their users) to share copyrighted files. (Feel free to visit the RIAA and Boycott-RIAA.com to learn more!)



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Sadly, of course, most "well known" artists/albums will have been "grown" in a music-industry equivalent to a "factory farm". Even punk anarchists: http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/search.asp?searchtype=ArtistSearch&keyword=The+Offspring++The+Offspring





But still, knowledge is power... What you choose to do with that knowledge is up to you

[Darren Dirt]

Sony, Apple, Microsoft, and others form digital exchange group



http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060504-6754.html



A consortium of eleven companies, including EMI Music, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group; Apple Computer Inc., Microsoft Corporation, and RealNetworks, have joined together to form DDEX, short for The Digital Data Exchange. The organization's stated goals are:

-To develop and maintain a robust framework of communication standards to support the digital distribution of digital content with the initial focus on music and music-related assets;

-To improve the efficiency of information sharing and transaction processing between participants in the music supply chain through use of Standards; and,

-To promote global awareness and compliant implementation of these Standards



This all sounds very harmonious and life-affirming, but what are their actual, tangible goals?



"DDEX's initial focus is on communication of information (metadata) as opposed to format compatibility, which falls outside the reach and scope of DDEX."...



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...in other words, they will all work together to make sure the tagging works for everybody, and each will help the others keep their share of the restricted-by-format pie ... but they will not *shock* let the consumers decide which of multiple competitors they prefer to deal with  :evil:



It's not racketeering if you've got multiple multi-national media giants doing it... right?

[Darren Dirt]

A disturbing letter* to the RIAA


Seriously, though, the guy makes a good point about how much is allegedly "copyright violation" nowadays... Reminds me of observations also pointed out by "truefd" on Youtube -- especially about if you tell somebody in an email about a movie, quoting some dialogue, is *that* "piracy"? Arrest yourself!


* other "Overqualified" letters