p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Donald Kelso (right) has a lot to smile about.

He’s a partner at Holme Roberts & Owen, the Denver law firm which boasts, “No matter how complex your problem may be, we’re listening”.

Unless you happen to be Brittany Kruger, a junior at Northern Michigan University in Marquette.

Because, said a Pay Up Or Else extortion letter from him to her dated March 23, she had 14 days to settle false corporate music industry copyright infringement claims.

Four days remain.

But Brittany isn’t alone.  A  significant number of other innocent American men, women and even young children have also been accused by Holme Roberts & Owen attack lawyers of  illegally distributing copyrighted music files online.

You could drop the ‘R’ from the company’s initials for a better description of their role.

It took on the job of official RIAA front three years ago from Shook Hardy & Bacon, the firm which made its bones trying to protect the tobacco industry.

HRO has  absolutely no hard evidence, zero proof, but they’re allowed by law to proceed just as though they do, quite literally terrorising people.

The disgraced RIAA private eye MediaSentry, fired by the Big 4 late last year, provided the ‘facts’.

Brittany’s father, Randy, is fast running out of options to bring MediaSentry into the light of day, having just had his Freedom of Information Act request to the Michigan authorities rejected.

Michigan is supposedly investigating media century for operating illegally within the state.

Kelso’s letter to Brittany is bland, but behind it lies a threat insidious enough to have driven another young woman to threaten suicide.

They ;abels have already demanded more than $8,000 from Britanny but now, says Kelso, they’ll accept less.

“To pursue this option,” says Kelso, “you need to contact us immediately … so that the record companies’ settlement representatives can explain the terms of the reduced cost settlement to you. In the event no agreement is reached, you may face significantly higher, statutory damages in federal court under the Copyright Act.”

Randy and Brittany

It’s worth repeating part an earlier post from Randy »»»

Terrorised by the labels

Randy Kruger and his family are victims of Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Britanny, 18, is not a fake RIAA statistic. She’s a real person, a student, but instead of being allowed to study and enjoy her young life, she’s being terrorised by the labels.

In a letter to  her mother and father, “Hello parentals,” she writes, continuing:

Thank you for covering for me.  I’m sorry I ask if the money all the time.  I’m sorry that I got you and me into all this trouble with the RIAA.  If I could do this all over again I would be a lot smarter about it.  I feel like I’ ve let you all down.  I let myself down.  All this stuff makes me feel like an idiot.  I feel like all this crap is taking away from your lives and the rest of the family. I’m sorry.  I love you, and I’m glad that you have supported me and basically taken care of all this crap for me.

I love you.

But she’s not alone in this.

Her parents and younger brother are also under attack.

Britanny’s father, Randy, says, “I’ve heard that if you put a frog into a pan of boiling water, it will jump out immediately, but if you put the frog in and turn up the heat a little at a time, the frog will cook.

“I guess our politicians must like frog soup, because we are being served up (30,000 + servings at last count, and counting).

“Big Brother now has a role model.”

Here, Randy Kruger tells it like it is, unedited  »»»

My name is Randy Kruger and yesterday, I’m told, was “the day the music died”.

Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper died 50 years ago.  I’m not so sure if that was the day the music died or just another day where corporate greed tried to choke another nickel from music fans.   The Recording Industry is still collecting on the misfortune of Mr. Holly and his associates.

February 3, 2009, is the ultimatum day; the day the RIAA’s extortionate demand to settle a file-sharing threat for $7500.00+ or be sued in Federal Court in the Western District of Michigan will expire.

My daughter is the target of this particular attack.

Morgan Swartzlander is the person who makes to calls for the RIAA collection agency.  She claims to be the “Lead Settlement Representative” for the RIAA.

She works from some secrete location, leaving only an untraceable phone number, or sending vague emails, providing no assurances, and introducing us to Donald J. Kelso of the Lawfirm, Holme, Roberts & Owen LLP.

Donald is the guy who sends all the nasty mails.  And yesterday’s call left my daughter in tears again.  I’m told that Ms Swartzlander is very pleasant when she leaves a message, but is not very pleasant when talked to in person.

We pray for her and Donald. I guess someone out there in this economy still has a job.

How did my Brittany ever get into this mess?  She’s only 5?2 and yet she was a skilled volleyball player in high school.  She holds records at Coldwater High school for all time serving percentage, and holds two of the top five single season records serving percentage records. She was on a high school team that finished its season as the in 4th place team in the state, in its division. She was the shortest player on the team and in the tourneyment.

Brittany is also a music fan.  She belonged to a CD club.  To her music holds an escape, a way to be identified, and a way to relate to her peers.  She’s just like any other kid. When she was 13 years old, we bought her one of the first MP3 players on the market.  It was an “RCA Lyra” and it had a 32mg CF card in it.  The memory was tiny by comparison to today’s iPods. The “Lyra” came with Real Player-Music Match software and the offer of free downloads from the Internet.

The city of Coldwater, Michigan was one of the first cities in the nation to have high-speed internet access, and we were subscribers to the service, and she was introduced to downloading music.

Brittany was barely out of high school, and still a teenager when she went to Northern Michigan University.  She wanted to be an RN (registered nurse).

Northern Michigan University lured its students with the promise of a laptop computer to every student, and was recognized as one of the nation’s innovators with its wireless and wired campus.

Brittany changed her major to Athletic Training after her first year in college, and developed a love for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, hockey, and Marquette in general.

Brittany has always wanted to help people, and that dream is still alive in her.  The change in her academic major will cost her a 5th year in college, but will still give her training in an area she likes.

Brittany was also Doe # 5 in a lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry called “LaFace v. Does 1-5?.

This “Doe” lawsuit was filed in the Western District of Michigan, Northern Division, but somehow ended up in Kalamazoo, Michigan in the Southern Division.

On a January day in 2007, MediaSentry, an investigative company hired by the RIAA, showed up online, pretending to be another kid looking to share some music.

MediaSentry used its its secretive investigative skills to gather information on millions of people nation wide to turn over to the RIAA.

During the Doe Lawsuit, Brittany made motions in court against the subpoena and made reference to the unlicensed electronic voyeurism that the recording industry’s investigators had participated in.

The Recording Industry counsel tried to invent reasons to evade the issue.

MediaSentry basically scanned the hard drive of the computers they accessed to gather information about the kids.  These investigations have came into question in several recent suits.   The story changes from court to court when the issue is presented.  When the issue has been brought up in various court cases, the counsel for the recording industry has claimed that MediaSentry has connected with computers to search their hard drives, while in other courts cases, they claimed that the information they gathered came from cyberspace.

The RIAA also claimed to have listened to the music files that they had gathered, prior to filing suit.  Leaving the question of tampered evidence unchallenged. A law firm then notifies the Universities and Internet Service Providers of their suspicions, that their plaintiff’s copyright has been violated.

In my daughter’s case, Northern Michigan University notified her and at least 19 other students that they had been suspected of copyright infringement because they had been accused of used a file-sharing program. The University then cut off the students’ Internet access without any notice.

Brittany was told that she would have to come into the Dean of Students office and was told that she could not have her computer access turned back on until she had signed a document provided by the university saying that she would not download any music.

This kid had never rode in a police car, or set foot in the principal’s office.

She was sick with fear, upset and scared.

It was Mid-Tern exam time, and her computer access was shut-off.

About a month later, she would receive a letter forwarded to her by the universities counsel telling her that she could settle with the recording industry before they filed suit against her seeking her name.  Shortly there after, a lawsuit was filed, and she went thought the fear and rejection process again.

Two years later, it is still going on.

Brittany asked us what to do, and we had no answers.  NMU’s counsel was equally clueless, and has been.

As a Father, when your child calls you from 500 miles away and is crying on the phone and upset, your blood boils.

When I heard why and who, it really boiled.  When I started to look around at this whole process, it made me sick.  To think that any company or group of companies could have the kind of power granted to them by congress, to stalk and invade personal computers under the guise of file-sharing and then to use that information to prove a point is not acceptable.

My Father freed concentration camps in the Second World War.  He taught us about tyranny and oppression, but never would I’ve imagined that our government and our Federal Court system would act as if they are oblivious to this kind of intimidation.

On the flip side of the coin, I’ve worked in the criminal justice field for almost 30 years, and have met the kind of people who think window peeping and bullying kids is a sport.  The kinds of people who make sport of Identify Theft and laugh at breaking the law.  When I found out that the majority of these cases had been settled out of court simply because of the economic and political pressure that the Recording Industry cartel has at its disposal I was shocked and even more angered.  I thought this was the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”.

I guess I was wrong.  I must have been living in a cave, because when I found web pages that showed RIAA enforcement agents going on raids with FBI agents, State Police, SWAT teams, I was horrified.  I thought,  “why would these people have this kind of power?”

Now I guess I know.  I’ve heard that if you put a frog into a pan of boiling water, it will jump out immediately, but if you put the frog in and turn up the heat a little at a time, the frog will cook.

I guess our politicians must like frog soup, because we are being served up (30,000 + servings at last count, and counting).

Big Brother now has a role model.

I wonder if I’m to blame for some of the cooperate greed that these thugs wield.

I drive a 1986 rust bucked and I love my kids.  I also have a vote, and I’ve legislators who should hear what I’ve to say. What I don’t have is a magic pocked book that will match that of the music industry.

The “Prince of the Power of the Air” would have you believe that I’ve wasted my time raising “pirates”, while they shoveling cash to the wide-open hands of my elected officials.

I’ve three kids in three different universities, and one son in the 11 grade.  I make it work every day, and my wife of 25 years makes it to work every day.

We try to pay our bills and we struggle.

Education is not cheap.

As a citizen, I wonder what has happened to our society in the past 50 years.  I don’t think I’ve wasted my time.  I’ve good kids, future leaders, yet my kids are not unique.  Their peers are the sons and daughters of parents who have been subjected to the fraud.  Most have paid up, and a courageous few have fought the fight.

The music died when a plane crashed on a frigid day, 50 years ago today.  The music died the day Sony and Universal City Studios clashed in court over the invention of the batamax recorder. The music died when home videotape cassette recorders were deemed a legal technology.  The music died the day Jimi Hendrix died, the day Janis Joplin died, the day Cass Elliot died, the day John Lennon was murdered, the day the Challenger exploded, and the day the Twin Towers were destroyed.

One tragic event after another, but kids still love music and they always will.  If they can make it, they will.  Garage bands and independent bands are everywhere, and some of them are simply amazing, as my youngest daughter says.

If kids cannot make music, they will listen to it.  As a music fan from the 70’s I was taught to buy an album and then record it to cassette tape.

No one ever sold any of the music we recorded, maybe we would loan out our album for a party, or give someone a cassette to listen to, but we did it because we loved the music.

When Cassettes replaced 8 tracks, we cheered.

Today’s kids love music too (some of which I would not give two cents for).  Kids, college students, single moms and ordinary people are characterized as pirates and thieves.  They are not.  They are ordinary people.   If the music is good, they will buy it.  If it sucks, they will let everyone know.  If they like it, they will share it, and they will buy it, and they will copy it to their computers to be put on their iPods, and none of them will get rich because of it.

Oh, and by the way, there has never been a recorded case of anyone starving to death because of file sharing music, as the music cartel would have the courts believe.

Kids get their music from an environment that the outdated business model of the Recording Industry cannot fathom.

The Genie is out of the bottle, and no matter how hard you try, scream, kick, shout and sue, it will not go back.

Kids listen to music that is offered freely as promotions, they drink soda, and they download music stored up in points under the bottle caps. They buy a new pair of shoes and they get 100 free songs.  They buy potato chips and they get free music.

Sony makes the player, and then sues kids for using the device.

How much sense does that make?  (If I buy a new Ford, will I be in fear of being sued by GM, or Toyota for some violation of the copyright act, especially if the Ford is cheaper?)   That’s nuts.

Sometimes, kids even listen to music on the “Radio”.  Imagine that, kids listening to the FM radio! The thought makes me cringe. A kid with no headphones plugged in.  I get the feeling that if the Recording Industry were to get wind of my rendition of Dobie Gray’s Drift Away, while in the shower, they would sue for infringement, and that’s a sick vision.

It all comes down to the bottom line, and if you can squeeze a buck from a college kid so that you can go buy another bag of dope to keep your most current addict singing, do what you have to do.

Who can stand?

For nearly two years I’ve lived with my daughter under the shadow of a lawsuit.

Brittany has been lied to and about in press releases and called self-serving by counsel, and she is scared, but she will step up to the serving line, and she will not go away.

The Recording Industry still racks up over $11 billion per year.

The Recording Industry has spent millions of dollars lobbying our elected officials, and greasing their palms to have laws passed that specifically enhance their position, and as a result of this grant of power, they chose to sue kids.

They have had their fingers in the pie of the Education Budget, and attempt to force Universities to invest in schemes to slow down the process, and it has not worked.

I guess it’s a long way to the top if you want to Rock-n-Roll, but then again, they made my daughter cry.

That’s how Randy sees things.

You can read Brittany’s story here.

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

April, 2009

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 am and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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