Knoxville soldier sues the RIAA
p2pnet news | RIAA news:- A Knoxville soldier is suing Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA, saying it violated his privacy and abused copyright law, as well as engaging in a conspiracy to defraud American courts.
Nicholas Paternoster, 33, stationed at Fort Campbell, Tennessee, is accused of using Sharman Networks’ Kazaa P2P file sharing application to illegally distribute copyrighted songs online.
“Of the seven Tennessee cases filed in March, court records show that only Paternoster has challenged the recording industry’s charges,” says knoxnews.com, going on, “His Nashville attorneys filed a response to the record labels’ lawsuit last week.”
Disabled Oregon mother Tanya Andersen is also suing the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for malicious prosecution, among other things.
“They made life horrible and did a lot of damage,” she told p2pnet. “People need to fight back. It’s really wrong they can abuse their power like this. It was three years – two years for the lawsuit and a year when they were harassing me. It was horrible. It’s really important for me to tell people what they’ve done and I’m really thankful that I’m able to do that.”
Paternoster denies he’s an illegal distributor.
The labels, “ostensibly competitors in the recording industry, are a cartel acting together in violation of the antitrust laws and public policy,” say his attorneys from Nashville’s Beam & Rogers, says the knoxnews.com, going on that according to a document filed in the case, “Paternoster was unaware that the Kazaa software was installed on his computer. While on a tour of duty in Germany from 2004 to 2005, the document says, another soldier downloaded the software and set up a Kazaa account under Paternoster’s name.
“Last summer Paternoster discovered the software and ‘thousands of files downloaded on his computer by the soldiers he housed,’ and he uninstalled the software and deleted the files, according to the document.”
Kazaa, which is still being marketed online, is in its turn also the defendant in a lawsuit.
It designed its software, “in such a manner as to create a shared files folder and make that folder available to anyone using Kazaa, while at the same time failing to make the user aware that it had done so,’ says a court document in a class action launched by RIAA victim Catherine Lewan.
It goes on:
The Sharman Defendants marketed KaZaA as the P2P service that allowed individuals to share files.
The Sharman Defendants deceptively marketed the KaZaA Product as allowing ‘free’ downloads.
The Sharman Defendants deceptively marketed the use of the KaZaA Product as legal.
The Sharman Defendants deceptively knew that most users of the KaZaA Product would use the KaZaA Product to catalog and store digital copies of copyrighted sound recordings and films.
The Sharman Defendants encouraged, invited and solicited such conduct from the public, its customers, and users of the KaZaA Product.
To use the KaZaA Product, an individual user would download the KaZaA software and install it on their computer.
The user could then use the KaZaA Product to catalog files on the individual’s computer. These files would be contained within a ’share folder’.
To increase the sound recordings and films available on the KaZaA network, the Sharman Defendants designed the KaZaA software to create the shared folder and make the share folder accessible to anyone using the KaZaA software on the KaZaA network. They did so such that neither the KaZaA software nor the individual user’s computer would inform the user that this had occurred.
In other words, the Sharman Defendants designed the KaZaA software to share the contents of the individual users ’share folder’ without letting the user of the KaZaA software know that he or she made such content available to others on the KaZaA network.
The class-action document also says:
The Sharman defendants designed the KaZaA software to install a number of additional programmes (’spyware’) on an individual user’s computer for nefarious purposes. They did so such that neither the KaZaA software nor the individual user’s computer would inform the user had this had occurred.
The spyware employed by the KaZaA software affected computers adversely.
The Sharman Defendants designed the KaZaA software to be nearly impossible to fully eradicate from a user’s computer. Consequently, an individual’s shared folder would remain accessible to the KaZaA Network after the KaZaA software had been removed from the individual’s computer.
By automatically sharing files in the shared folder, KaZaA exposed its users to claims of copyright infringement by making such files accessible to other users of the KaZaA network to download.
The Sharman Defendants knew and continue to know that the use of the KaZaA Product exposes its users to claims of copyright infringement.
“Kazaa and other file-sharing networks often make a computer’s files available for download by other network users, which allows the RIAA’s investigators to document instances of copyright infringement,” says knoxnews.com.
“The file-sharing option can be disabled, but many users never realize they are making their files available.”
The Big 4’s RIAA invaded his privacy and are trying to shame him into accepting their demands, say his lawyers who, the story goes on, also list a, “host of other common complaints about recording industry tactics, including targeting dead, disabled and unknowledgeable people with lawsuits; relying on Internet Protocol addresses to identify defendants; making ‘extortionate threats’ and seeking ‘exorbitant settlement amounts’ through the RIAA; and invading defendants’ privacy by pursuing ‘John Doe’ lawsuits and subpoenas without the individual’s knowledge.”
“We try to be fair and reasonable in resolving these cases,” story has the RIAA’s newest spokeswoman, Cara Duckworth, stating. “Our aim is not to be in court, but to seek appropriate retribution for the damage done to the industry.”
Of the other six recent lawsuits in Tennessee, “three have been dismissed, one has been settled for more than $9,000, and the record labels are seeking default judgments for $7,500 and $4,500 against two other defendants who did not respond to summonses,” adds knoxnews.com.
Also See:
knoxnews.com – Music industry countersued, July 18, 2007
p2pnet – Tanya Andersen sues the RIAA, June 25, 2007
defendant in a lawsuit – Michelle Santangelo vs the RIAA, July 16, 2007
newest spokeswoman – New RIAA misinformation director, June 12, 2007
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July 18th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
STOP THE HUNTING
What RIAA does is called hunting.
They invade the victim’s territory and privacy hoping find that the victim may have done something to their dislike so the can go for the kill.
Hope this this will stop the hunting.
July 19th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Hunters they are, but let’s use the correct term here…
they are internet predators. They prey on the young and on the weak. They are no better than the perverts who use the internet to hunt down children to rape for their own personal satisfaction. In fact they may be worse. Unlike the child moster, they first rape the parents so they may get to the children, and along the way they have achieved, in some cases, a court’s blessing to pursue the children.
I am so fucking apalled that any of these cases have gotten as far as they have though the court system and that this lawsuit campaign has been allowed to continue as long as it has. I’m also completely astonished that this comparison has not been raised in one single case in the last 4 years!
It is high time for someone, somewhere, to file criminal charges against the RIAA for their predatory actions.