RIAA ramps up attack on family
p2pnet.net news:- A brilliantly expressed letter from a lawyer representing the victims of another Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG RIAA sue ‘em all attack made international headlines at the end of March.
“Merl Ledford III [right] , of Visalia, California, threatened the Big 4 enforcer with a malicious prosecution lawsuit unless it dropped the case it had lodged against his ‘middle-aged, conservative clients,’ the Merchants”,” p2pnet posted.
The case was subsequently (and consequently) dropped, but now it’s taken on a new, though unsurprising, dimension.
In what’s become standard operating procedure, having failed to terrorize Cathy and Barry Merchant into ’settling’ out of court, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has begun harassing their family.
It’s now demanding access to the household computer, saying it’s going after anyone associated with the Merchants who’s, “directly or indirectly responsible for the illegal uploading, downloading and distribution of the Record companies’ copyrighted works using Mr. Merchant’s AOL internet account”.
The RIAA says it’s filed a complaint in the Easter District of California naming Doe Defendants 1-10, and has, “filed an ex parte application for leave to take immediate discovery so that we can identify the names of the Doe Defendants”.
Holme Roberts & Owen are, for the moment, the RIAA’s hired legal guns of choice and HRO associate Thomas McCarten Kerr’s name is at the bottom of the complaint.
“We intend to serve discovery and take the depositions of Mr. Merchant, as well as other family members,” he says, adding:
“Additionally, we have requested inspections of computers owned by Mr. Merchant and his family, lastly, we have requested leave to seek discovery from AOL for any additional information they may have about the IP address associated with the infringement of the Record companies’ copyrighted works, and which has been connected to Mr. Merchant’s internet account.”
The same thing happened with Patti Santangelo, the New York mother who defeated the RIAA, only to see it attack two of her five children, Michelle and Bobby.
Also See:
international headlines – Dear RIAA: better think again, March 27, 2007
dropped – New RIAA defeat, March 27, 2007
defeated the RIAA – Patti Santangelo v RIAA: battle won?, April 8, 2007
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
April 10th, 2007 at 9:52 am
“We intend to serve discovery and take the depositions of Mr. Merchant, as well as other family members,”
Jon, where did the HRO guy Kerr said that?
In an interview with you, official press release or where, when how?
I can’t find a hind for a source or a link regarding that.
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Alter_Fritz
April 10th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Hi AF – I have a .pdf in image format. I keyed in the text from that.
Cheers!
April 10th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Just where do these jerks get the idea they can rummage around anyone’s computers? There’s no way in hell I’d ever let anyone poke around my private and personal information.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:05 am
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/04/sony-v-merchant-round-2.html
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Alter_Fritz
April 10th, 2007 at 11:10 am
This wasn’t online when I posted the story.
Cheers!
April 10th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I knew that it wasn’t online then, otherwise I hadn’t asked you about the source for your Kerr quotes
(I supected a HRO/RIAA press release or something like that where the disgruntled RIAA lakey “boyface”-Kerr was playing a bit with fire after he got his slap for incompetence last time)
cheers too!
April 10th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
in the commetns on the recording industry vs people site there are questions as to why they are doing this. After all they were offered the hard drive already. One of the comments:
“I think what they’re trying to do is get the discovery without having to formally make an accusation against the Merchants. Given the description of their situation from the first letter, the RIAA may be afraid of the can of worms they’ll have opened if they make accusations and then fail to turn up hard evidence. This feels like an attempt to find out whether they’ll find anything or not before opening themselves up.”
I think they are trying to avoid paying attorney fees for the accused when they are forced to drop the case.
If they had sued the 10 John Does as named defendants, when they have to drop the cases they would be counter sued for the attorney fees for each. I think they are hoping that by doing it this way they will be able to disupt the John Does lives as much as possible without having to pay the attorney fees.
It is the next step in their game plan now that people have started figthing back and their sub standard practices are showing. They want to be able to accuse generic people, cause them as many problems and as much costs as possible, them they can back off or sue without having to worry about paying for their mistakes.
Wonder what would happen if the tables were turned? What if someone filed a suit against 10 unnamed infringers at the RIAA or it’s minions? Bet they would start screaming about how unfair it was.
April 11th, 2007 at 9:32 am
The courts can give them the authority to examine the computer, but they have to have hard evidence that shows that examining the computer may yield the incriminating evidence they need. But I agree, the second RIAA talks about examining *MY* computer, I’d be running cipher /w:c: after moving all my content to a spool of DVDs that would be hidden at the site of a trusted third party.
HA. HA. HA.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
You may also want to make sure to set the computer’s bios date to a time before you received the extortion letter, that the registry is clean, wipe index.dat files, and then overwrite all of the free hard drive space. After that is done delete the file which you used to wipe free hard drive space. Once all of this is done, set the bios date back to the current date. Once all of this is done, and if nothing is found to substantiate RIAA claims, sue their asses off!!!