p2pnet - rss feed: RIAA builds new consumer class
p2pnet.net news view:- “I can barely walk,” RaeJ told me. “It’s rough and we’re living from paycheck to paycheck.”
RaeJ Schwartz (Ray-Jay) is a seriously ill New York mother who’s being persecuted by the Big Four Organized Music Cartel’s RIAA.
She has multiple sclerosis, but that doesn’t seem to trouble the RIAA, short for Recording Industry Association of America, owned by Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany).
It’s also almost implied that MS is something which can be lightly dismissed. But it isn’t. It’s an awful disease, and there’s no known cure.
“As a person with MS I think I get a little leeway in my coming in on this late,” says a slashdot poster, going on:
MS symptoms are elevated by emotional inputs like Stress. I’m sure that the case is putting her into undo stress and in turn making life VERY hard. When you know that something like this is hanging over your head even a ‘normal’ person would freak out. Imagine (if you can or even want to) trying to deal with this while being literally paralyzed by it. The longer this drags out the more she has to go through physical suffering as well as the emotional suffering of feeling wrongfully accused. She has my support and well wishes (and as much solumedrol as she needs to help)
Another slashdot post says:
My mother had Secondary Progressive MS [msif.org]. In addition to the exacerbation of physical symptoms the emotional effects of stress on someone who has already been robbed of her physical self reliance cannot be overemphasized.
After living with MS for forty of her sixty-two years my mother could no longer take it and killed herself.
Since she was physically incapable of any active suicide method (opening a pill bottle, holding a razor or even a fork) she had to starve herself to death.
Unless things have drastically changed since I was young, having MS is also very expensive. In 2005 constant dollars my mother’s 1974 medical care cost was about $166,000. Since healthcare costs have risen much faster than inflation over that period I can only believe that would be much higher today.
Impoverishing victims of expensive and debilitating diseases with frivolous lawsuits is reprehensible behavior to say the least.
Hell bent on suing the people they should be wooing
Mashboxx chairman Wayne Rosso is smitten with the people who run the RIAA. He says basically, they’re good guys, fun to be with and very supportive.
I don’t doubt Rosso believes that. But I have to ask myself why, if Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman, the RIAA’s two main men, and oft-quoted spokesmen and women such as Jenni Engebretsen and Jonathan Lamy are such fundamentally decent people, they haven’t quit the RIAA long ago?
They’re all highly intelligent, highly skilled, highly qualified people and one would think they’d have little trouble finding equally rewarding (in all senses) positions elsewhere.
Because as things stand, they and other RIAA employees are fashioning and directing what can only be described as bloody minded, vicious and ongoing attacks on helpless, not to say innocent, American men, women and children. And there’s no way these RIAA employees can be unaware of what’s happening.
Through emails and phone calls, I’ve come to know a few of the RAA victims and the lawyers who act for them and they’re all exactly what they seem to be - very ordinary, genuinely decent people. There’s not a thief among them and you’d think the huge, enormously powerful, Big Four record labels would be wooing them instead of suing them.
Not that Bainwol, et al, are alone. The sue ‘em all campaign is world-wide and RIAA clones and cohorts in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, are doing exactly the same thing.
A purely technical argument
In the US, among the victims are Patti Santangelo, who remains firm in her decision to fight Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG; RaeJ Schwartz, the woman who’s battling multiple sclerosis as well as the RIAA, and another disabled mother, Tanya Andersen, who’s taken the attack to the labels as she sues them under the RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization) Act.
But at this moment in time, the attention is on RaeJ because, as her lawyer, Ray Beckerman, points out in Recording Industry vs The People, “The RIAA has made a request for a premotion conference in Elektra v Schwartz, indicating that it intends to make a motion to dismiss Ms Schwartz’s counterclaim for attorneys fees, on the ground that a copyright defendant’s claim for attorneys fees cannot be expressed as a counterclaim.”
This is the RIAA using a purely technical argument to make life even more impossible for a woman who’s already under unbelievable stress because of a chronic, life-threatening illness.
She has multiple sclerosis and there’s no doubt in my mind the RIAA is making this terrible medical condition far worse.
Like so many Big Four victims, RaeJ had, and has, no idea how to share a music file, and the RIAA knows this full well. But it’s a way to get to her daughter, the real target of the RIAA’s owners, the Big Four Organized Music cartel members, all of whom have been caught red-handed at bribery and price fixing, and all of whom have for decades been robbing the customers and artists (who’ve made them so very, very rich) blind.
They say they’re being “devastated” because “criminals” and “thieves” such as RaeJ have been “massively” distributing copyrighted digital music files online. However, nothing has been stolen, no money has changed hands and its’ never been shown by the labels or anyone else that files shared equal sales lost.
As far as money is concerned, the revenues regularly and routinely pulled down by the Big Four would easily support several under-developed countries.
If they’re having sales problems, they’re wholly of the labels’ own making: bad product, bad business decisions, bad management, terrible pricing and their mindless refusal to see the people who’ve developed the p2p technologies they’re fighting as friends and potential collaborators; and consumers as responsible people, not hard core crooks.
‘A mere formality’
But back to Mrs Schwartz, for some obscure reason the RIAA is deathly afraid.
In Elektra v Schwartz, it’s desperately trying to shoot down RaeJ’s counterclaim for attorneys’ fees. Do the RIAA’s masters fear the financial consequences now and down the road? Or is it something else?
Although it would have you believe differently, the RIAA is by no mean on top of things and one of its more highly publicized defeats involved Paul Wilkes whose lawyer, Daliah Saper, said the labels were, “bound to mistakenly bring cases against innocent individuals with their drift net litigation tactics”.
And in the Schwartz counterclaim, an ACLU, EFF, Public Citizen brief exhibit, Capitol v Foster, also tags the RIAA’s “driftnet” tactics.
Ray Beckerman, RaeJ’s lawyer, had both asked the RIAA to drop the case because of her failing health, and offered to withdraw his client’s counterclaim if the RIAA lawyers could simply back up their claim that the counterclaim for attorneys fees wasn’t allowable.
“I wouldn’t want to get into motion practice over a mere formality,” said Beckerman. “We’ll let you know,” said the RIAA. And that was the end of that.
It’s almost as if the RIAA is saying, ‘OK, she has MS. But that does not let her off the heinous crime of sharing music.’
A crime in its own right
But RaeJ isn’t alone. Far from it. An estimated 20,000 or so men and women, and even very young children, are being victimized under the warped RIAA sue ‘em all marketing plan.
When the RIAA decided Patti Santangelo would probably make a good mark, they went for her with both barrels. But she wasn’t having any, so when they couldn’t cow her, they turned on two of her children.
Tanya Andersen, a mother whose sole income is from a medical disability pension, is also being harried from pillar to post by the RIAA. But like Patti, she’s refusing to give in and currently has a case under way against the labels under the RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization) Act.
One frequently reads about Class Actions, something the Big Four’s Sony BMG is only too familiar with, and wonders why the victims haven’t gotten together to launch an action against the RIAA, the people who work for it and their employers. And why aren’t other corporate parties involved in these cases also being singled out?
Tanya Andersen is pointing the way, as is David Greubel, a Texas father who says the the $115 million Sharman paid to join the corporate entertaimment fraternity constitutes recovery in full for “injuries allegedly caused by Defendant Greubel, among others”.
These days, class actions are technically difficult and very expensive to bring, I’m told. And the same applies to directly suing the likes of Sharman Networks which owns Kazaa, the p2p application which is named time after time in the RIAA cases, and whose Australian owner is now part of the corporate music scene.
But the times, they are a-changing. The RIAA, and others of its ilk, are losing the war, and in the process, building up a huge reservoir of ill-will against their masters that even the ever-faithful mainstream media can no longer ignore; creating non-stop PR for file sharing, the very thing the Big Four want to defeat; and, best of all, from the point of view of indie music, giving birth to a whole new class of consumer who’s doing everything he or she can to avoid buying anything which smacks even slightly of the Big Four labels.
Jon Newton
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November 21st, 2006 at 12:04 am
I was sued by Directv, They made up a story just like the many stories made up by the RIAA. Then use the court to assist in taking people’s money on the basis of a fraudulent claim. The individual cannot prove innocence because they do not have the money. The attorney’s representing them have destroyed many American Families now by driving them into bankruptcy. These families then fall onto public tax rolls for support. The new class is a bunch of American’s who are looking for that part of the Constitution which protects there property from such thefts. The justice system has failed and in fact shown support to the RIAA and Directv in taking money from people whom they knew were innocent or wrong doing. I cannot wait for the shoe is on the other foot and the public can make up stories and false claims against big corporations.
November 21st, 2006 at 1:05 am
why were you sued by directtv?
November 21st, 2006 at 6:37 pm
DirectTV was concerned with folks who pirated their signal through electronic black boxes, both ready made and self assembled. They too, cast a large net over the universe of people who both were stealing the signal and who for some other reason were thought to perhaps have purchased electronic supplies which may have been used in the building of a black box (as well as legitimate uses). If I remember correctly, they were forced to stop this despicable practice through consumer lawsuits. I am sure RIAA knows how to tread a much tighter tightrope. I just hope they get nailed. I still will not subscribe to DirectTV although I have no reason to fear them.
November 22nd, 2006 at 5:44 am
How did the lawsuits by Direct TV, that were referenced above, finally stop? I’d heard about this before, but never have heard how the suits were stopped.
December 8th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
At the risk of sounding callous, did the degree that this story concentrated on MS seem to be a bit much? The disease, unfortunate as it may be, is being exploited here in a flagrant appeal to pity, and is irrelavent to the issue. If the person did anything wrong here, having a disease does not excuse any wrongdoing. If she did nothing wrong, then the RIAA’s actions are pretty detestable regardless.
I’m no fan of the RIAA, but is the Snidely Whiplash caricature that we see in stories like this really necessary?
December 28th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Basically the 11 circuit court of appeals said that Directv had no cause of action against people for the mere purchase of a device. Like the RIAA cases, one must have done something like view the programming or download a song. In that 11 circuit appeals breifs, directv admits that inn most cases they never had evidence of anyone actually having viewed there programming with out paying. They only had the purchase of a device which may have been capable of making an access card. These have become known as a hypothetical claim. Like the directv cases, the RIAA cannot provide any proof who sat behind a computer or in Directv cases, who watched television with out paying. Directv took money from thousands of dollars knowing they owed nothing. Mailed out over 100, 000 letters from which most settled. Then sued some 30,000 people in Federal court running people out of money then forcing an out of court confidental settlement. About 100 cases actually went to trial and it was about 50/50 win loss. Where there are confidental settlements one has to watch for those where the public is prohibited from reporting any acts of purgery or evidence tampering. Not only are people summarily sued but the right to report crimes taken from them in confidental settlement. If they report the crime, they are sued for disclosure and breech of the confidental agreement. The justice system is also good with a settlement agreement where someone is silenced from reporting criminal acts by attorneys under the confidental agreement. In all these suits, claims are made which they know are not true and manufactured or manipulated evidence is some what common.