Dave's Top Eight

1. Jerry Reed...Revisited by Darrell Toney (reviewed 6/07) (5 Stars)
2. Sounds Like Sunday by Janet Paschal (reviewed 5/07) (5 Stars)
3. True To The Call by Kingdom Heirs (reviewed 3/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
4. Revival by Gold City (reviewed 10/06) (4 1/2 Stars)
5. Get Away Jordan by Ernie Haase & Signature Sound (reviewed 2/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
6. Breakin' Chains by Three Bridges (reviewed 5/07) (4 1/2 Stars)
7. Big Sky by The Isaacs (reviewed 4/07)
8. Skywriting by Mercy's Well (reviewed 7/07)

Click title to purchase at CBD.com...click artist name to read Dave's Review. A CD will automatically fall out of the Top Eight after twelve months if no CD surpasses it before then.

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June 26, 2007

RIAA Gets Sued...Shoe's On The Other Foot

Link to story
Beaverton (OR) – Former RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen is now suing the major record labels and the RIAA for negligent and illegal investigation and prosecution. In a thirteen count civil suit filed in Oregon District Court, she alleges that record labels didn’t use properly licensed investigators and violated her privacy.

You may remember Andersen as the single mother who was accused of illegally downloaded music through peer to peer networks. After a two-year legal battle, she forced the RIAA to dismiss the case with prejudice.

You can read all the legal torment that Tanya Andersen was forced to endure by clicking HERE.

Read the summary of her counter suit HERE. It contains such gems as "Settlement Support Center also falsely claimed that Ms. Andersen had 'been viewed' by MediaSentry downloading 'gangster rap' music at 4:24 a.m. Settlement Support Center also falsely claimed that Ms. Andersen had used the login name 'gotenkito@kazaa.com.' Ms. Andersen does not like 'gangster rap,' does not recognize the name 'gotenkito,' is not awake at 4:24 a.m. and has never downloaded music."

To sum it up, the RIAA sued a disabled 42-year old single mother in Oregon two years ago, accusing her of illegally downloading music from the internet. Her daughter was 7 when the alleged copyright infringement occurred. Among other things, the RIAA demanded to interview her daughter face-to-face, three years after the alleged violations were said to have occurred. Ultimately, the case was dismissed "with prejudice" (meaning Andersen was free to seek to recover her expenses incurred for the lawsuit). Andersen has now filed her own lawsuit against the music industry.

This could be a landmark case. The tide of RIAA abuse could be turning, pending the result.

I'm all for using music legally. I don't advocate downloading copies of songs you don't own in some legal form.

However, the RIAA has been emboldened by some bad law in recent years and as a result, they're finally getting some much deserved egg on their faces.

If you're an artist or songwriter who thinks whatever the RIAA does on your behalf is well and good, consider the following...

The RIAA attempts to collect $750 PER SONG for every illegal file discovered in a violator's possession. These are songs that can be been purchased legally for less than $1.00 each. How could this possibly be considered a reasonable penalty? The RIAA makes the Internal Revenue Service appear almost as forgiving as God Himself. For contrast, if you break federal law by failing to file a tax return, the IRS levies a 25% penalty plus interest (6% annually). For each month you fail to pay the penalty, you're charged an additional .5%. If the RIAA were the IRS, you'd pay less than $2 per song if you got caught stealing.

$750 per song is only the beginning, though. That's just for civil cases. It gets much worse if the RIAA wins in criminal court. For a first time offense, a violator could theoretically be fined $250,000 and spend FIVE YEARS in prison. For comparison, I once sat on the jury for a criminal court case where we agreed to convict a man for voluntary manslaughter. The judge only sentenced him to FOUR years. Something is seriously out of whack in our society when stealing a song carries a more serious conviction that killing a man.

But that would be only for a truly serious violation, right?

Maybe not...the RIAA's website asks, "Don’t you have a better way to spend five years and $250,000?" Directly below this question is a list of examples of what could cause you to suffer such a fate. The first example reads, "Somebody you don’t even know e-mails you a copy of a copyrighted song and then you turn around and e-mail copies to all of your friends." The implied threat is that even if you obtain one file, not of your own free will, and share it with people you do know, you could go to jail and owe more money than the total income of the average person multiplied by several years.

If that's not proof enough that the RIAA might sue you in criminal court for a minor violation, consider the case of Tanya Andersen...a woman who was sued without a shred of merit. According to reports, she had never even heard of file sharing at the time she was sued.

Let's hope her countersuit takes some of the wind out of the RIAA's over-inflated sails.

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posted by David Bruce Murray @ 10:28:00 PM


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