p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Elisa Greubel, 15, made on- and offline headlines around the world when she contacted Canada’s Nettwerk Music to say Download This Song by the company’s MC Lars really meant something to her.

That was because the Big 4 record labels were, “trying extort a lot of money from her father, David, for supposedly sharing nine copyrighted songs online,” said p2pnet.

Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA likes attacking kids.

But only after they’ve already made their parents’ lives miserable.

MC Lars passed Elisa’s message to Terry McBride, who runs Nettwerk, and he decided, “Suing music fans isn’t the solution, it’s the problem,” as he told p2pnet in a Q&A.

The company was once one of the few independent record label members of the RIAA. Until it walked away in disgust.

‘Suing fans is dumb’ became a NettWerk Music theme and McBride also decided the company would pick up the Greubel’s legal bill, with US lawyer Charlie Mudd representing them.

Good work down the drain

But this wasn’t the first time Canadians had helped American RIAA victims.

When McBride took up the Grebels’ cause, p2pnet readers were already digging into their pockets to contribute to the Patti Santangelo ‘Fight Goliath’ campaign, ultimately raising more than $15,000.

But there was a major difference: the details of Patti Santangelo’s case were fully available from beginning to end because Patti wanted to encourage other RIAA victims to stand up to the multi-billion-dollar Big 4 bullies.

Tanya Andersen, another single mother, took exactly the same approach and ultimately, beat the RIAA.

But Mudd ’settled’ with the RIAA behind closed doors. No details which might have helped other innocent people being sued by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG enforcer were revealed.

And this meant NettWerk’s good work essentially went down the drain.

David Greubel had agreed to a Q&A with p2pnet but on Mudd’s say-so, backed out.

Kazaa ‘Left its customers to hang in the wind’

Sharman Networks’ Kazaa P2P application was the subject of a class action in which Mudd represented the victim, Catherine Lewan.

Sharman used to falsely claim support of P2P. But it was just a marketing gimmick.

“There are no statistics detailing exactly how many Big 4 victims were identified because they were using Kazaa,” said a recent p2pnet post, “But it’s safe to bet the vast bulk would fall into that category.”"

“Anecdotally, I would guess that 95% of the cases have to do with Kazaa,” we quoted Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman as saying, “It’s rather suspicious. Kazaa made a deal for itself which left its customers to hang in the wind.”

Mudd settled this case secretly as well.

I recently spoke with Lewan who told me she wasn’t free to discuss the settlement.

When will Sharman Networks share the same fate as the people who, having used its software, wound up on the wrong end of a lawsuit?

‘They had made a mistake and sued anyway’

Here’s what RIAA victim Gene has to say in a p2pnet Reader’s Write to one of our stories on the Joel Tanenbaum case »»»

The one thing about these suits is that they ignore they have attacked the wrong person. When the wrong person is attacked, the the actual suit filed in the court becomes a fraudulent lawsuit especially when the RIAA or Directv knows the suit is a false court complainant. This is a crime to knowingly file a suit you know to be false. The target of the suit then becomes a crime victim. But when the crime victim asks for victim assistance from the AG’s office, they are ignored. It then becomes important that the AG’s office as well as the federal victim witness program get the message that “all” victims of crime need protection.

I received such a letter, responded that they were wrong. They sued anyway knowing full well they had made a mistake and sued anyway. Then a settlement requires that you not ask that criminal charges be made or that you will not be a witness against them in any criminal proceeding. With that your rights of a crime victim are gone which is also illegal and conceals the fraud. For those who were attacked and were truly innocent, the next time Justice asks you to be a witness or be a juror, treat justice as they have treated you as a victim of crime. Ignore them as a juror and witness and see just how they like it. It is the only way that Justice will protect the victim’s of suits which were fraudulent.

Settling in secret helps no one but Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG. And their RIAA, of course.

Information, concepts and cases which might be used against them are buried, and worse, the names of victims are never cleared.

Ever.

The right to trial by jury

Harvard law professor Charles Nesson and his students and friends have taken the Joel Tanenbaum story to the people.

Harvard’s CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion blog posts »»»

Because Joel Tenenbaum allegedly downloaded seven songs from a file-sharing network comprised of millions of his peers doing likewise, the plaintiffs have already imposed upon him process filling a docket sheet running back over years,” says their .

Representing himself pro se with help from his mother he has responded with constitutional defenses and a counterclaim against the plaintiffs and against the RIAA for their abuse of law and this court’s civil process.

Joel challenges the constitutionality of the process and statute being wielded against him. The “Digital Theft Deterrence Act of 1999? is essentially a criminal statute, punitively deterrent in its every substantive aspect.

Joel seeks damages to compensate for the actual damage RIAA has done to him and his family.

He claims the right to trial by jury including the right to offer proof and argument to the jury about what is right and what is wrong on both sides of this case.

In the face of the onslaught the plaintiffs have imposed and are continuing to impose upon him he seeks justice from both judge and jury.

At core his defenses and counterclaim raise a profoundly conceptual question: Is the law just the grind of a statutory machine to be carried out by judge and jury as cogs in the machine, or do judge and jury claim the right and duty and power of constitution and conscience to do justice. 

The plaintiffs and the RIAA are, “seeking to punish him beyond any rational measure of the damage he allegedly caused,” says Nesson, going on »»»

They do this, not for the purpose of recovering compensation for actual damage caused by Joel’s individual action, nor for the primary purpose of deterring him from further copyright infringement, but for the ulterior purpose of creating an urban legend so frightening to children using computers, and so frightening to parents and teachers of students using computers, that they will somehow reverse the tide of the digital future.

The plaintiffs in the suit and the RIAA are abusing law and this court’s civil process. Because Joel Tenenbaum allegedly downloaded seven songs from a file-sharing network comprised of millions of his peers doing likewise, the plaintiffs have already imposed upon him process filling a docket sheet running back over years.

The RIAA and the Big 4 are good at dancing in the shadows. Let’s see how well they do under the full glare of public disclosure.

Meanwhile, although the RIAA has subpoenaed some 40,000 or so men, women and children across America, it has yet to win even a single case.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 2:38 pm and is filed under P2P, RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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