p2pnet.net News:- RaeJ Schwartz is a mother in Queen’s, New York, who’s been seriously disabled by multiple sclerosis, a chronic, crippling disease of the central nervous system.

It’s also known as MS, and there’s no known cure but according to EMI, Vivendi Universal, Sony BMG and Warner Music, the members of the Big Four Organized music cartel, RaeJ is another of the thousands of American mothers who are illicit p2p file sharers distributing copyrighted music online and contributing to the “devastation” the multi-billion-dollar labels claims the practice is visiting upon them.

She vehemently denies the allegation, telling p2pnet that not only has she never shared a file in her life, until the Big Four came along, she didn’t even know what the phrase meant.

Her name is, however, on an ISP agreement form. And she does have a young daughter who’s undoubtedly the real target of the attack by the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIdoubleA, as the Big Four US enforcement unit is infamously known.

Because it’s now SOP for the RIAA to first terrorize the parents of children its lawyers later accuse of uploading and downloading music, as happened with 12-year-old Briana LaHara and Brittany Chan, 13, just two of the RAA’s child victims.

And it’s happening today with Michelle and Robert Santangelo whose mother, Patti, was initially accused of being a “massive distributor” of copyrighted music.

Robert was 12 and Michelle, 16, when this was supposed to have taken place.

To boost their claims without actually having to prove anything, the RIAA is also using the mainstream media to publicly harrass and humiliate the Santangeo family via a ‘court document’ which, although it still hadn’t been indexed at the time of writing, or seen by the Santangelos or their lawyer, Jordan Glass, was last week freely distributed to the media.

In the Schwartz case, “The plaintiffs have engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the Courts of the United States,” says their lawyer, Ray Beckerman.

They’re doing it, he states, by:

Bringing lawsuits against people, “who are not known to have infringed copyrights”;

Making, “false and unsupported allegations that the defendants have infringed copyrights”;

Utilizing a corporation known as Settlement Support Center LLC, “to make extortionate threats of criminal action and of defaming defendants’ names and credit”:

Conducting ex parte ‘John Doe’ lawsuits, “which they have no intention of pursuing, but in which they interact with Judges, Magistrates, and other officials on a daily basis, without notice or opportunity to be heard being offered to defendants”; and,

Bringing the ‘John Doe’ lawsuits in jurisdictions far removed from the homes of the ‘John Does’ so they have, “no meaningful opportunity to be heard or to retain counsel of their own choosing; by sending out press releases for the purpose of humiliating, embarrassing, and extorting; and by other unconscionable conduct”.

The Big Four claim files shared equal sales lost, something they’ve never come even close to demonstrating.

With file sharing, ’sharing’ is the operative word. No money changes hands and no one is deprived of something they once owned. And yet EMI, Vivendi Universal, Sony BMG and Warner Music accuse the Schwartzes, the Chans, the Santangelos, the LaHaras and all their other innocent victims of being “criminals” and “thieves”.

Recently, in the first ruling of its kind in Europe, Spanish judge Paz Aldecoa threw out a case against an unnamed 48-year-old man who offered and downloaded digital versions of music on the internet. The man was also said to have sent music CDs to people but, “Under Spanish law, a person who downloaded music for personal use couldn’t be punished or branded a criminal,” said Guardian Unlimited.

“That would imply criminalising socially admitted and widely practised behaviour where the aim is not to gain wealth illegally but to obtain private copies,” Aldecoa said in her judgment.

Meanwhile, “the bizarre sue ‘em all marketing campaign isn’t working and every day, more and more people are turning away in disgust, continuing to use the p2p networks and independent music sites for their music downloads,” p2pnet posted.

“And ironically, the existence of the sites is continually publicized and emphasized by the very lawsuits meant to destroy them.”

Stay tuned.

Also See:
Briana LaHara - Big Music mobile p2p attack, November 3, 2005
Brittany Chan - RIAA fails in Chan case, March 22, 2006
happening today - RIAA goes after Santangelo kids, November 2, 2006
harrass and humiliate - RIAA: filing cases by the media, November 5, 2006
first ruling - Music downoads legal in Spain, November 3, 2006
p2pnet posted - Big Music’s survival guide, November 2, 2006

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