p2pnet news view RIAA | P2P:- I live in a small rural village on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, and I woke up at around 1:00 am to find we were in the middle of a power-out, something which happens regularly here. Electricity was finally restored by 6:40 am and when I logged on, there was an email waiting from Randy Kruger, a friend of mine, although I’ve never met him face-to-face.

I’d woken up thinking about his daughter, Brittany (right), a young woman who, like my own daughter, Emma, who turns 13 this weekend, absolutely loves music.

By now, Emma would have spent all of her money on Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music CDs. Instead, she knows all about the corrupt corporate music biz and how the Big 4 are trying to screw their own customers.

So she surfs around looking for new tunes. And she finds them. And so do her friends. And that’s excellent.

Stopped dead before they could start

Brittany lives in the state of Michigan, across the border in America.

I was talking to her and her father, Randy, yesterday evening about a tremendous break they’ve had – about how for the first time, as far as either of us knows, a judge has approved a request from an RIAA victim to have a pro bono counsel appointed.

None of the people persecuted by the corporate music industry and the RIAA, their extortion unit, can afford to hire lawyers to represent them, which is why the RIAA has been able to go so far for so long with its sue ‘em all campaign.

If a judge had made the same decision years ago with the very first case, the Big 4 labels would have been stopped dead in their tracks and the misery they’ve given families from one end of America to the other could have been avoided.

But it isn’t too late and if other judges follow suit, things will change dramatically

As Ray Beckerman puts it in Recording Industry vs The People »»»

This could be a great precedent for defendants.

If other courts follow suit, and appoint pro bono counsel to represent the defendants in these cases, it will level the playing field considerably.

And that’s the way it should be.

Murderers, rapists and bank robbers are all entitled to adequate, and ongoing, legal representation   But until now, RIAA victims none of whom, lest we forget, have ever been charged with anything beyond a purely commercial transgression, copyright infringement, have been pilloried in the mainstream media as criminals and thieves, although nothing has ever been stolen and no crime has ever been committed.

Now, things could be put right.

That’s the good news for the Krugers. But there was also bad news.

Or was it?

The rank smell of corruption

Like Thousands of other innocent people across America, the lives of the Kruger family have been turned inside out and upside down by corruption in place thanks, in this particular instance, to Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US, but controlled by a Canadian), and their RIAA – Recording Industry Association of ‘America’.

Because corruption riddles every part of society. The  oil companies, drug manufacturers, automobile makers and financial institutions are all bent, controlling world’s of wealth and resources on behalf of the people who own them. And nowhere is that more evident than within the entertainment industries whose members believe money is power and power is money.

But corruption thrives only in the dark and in the 21st century, pin-pricks of light are appearing, slowly and steadily merging into beacons which are shining brightly everywhere.

Because in this day, information is the currency and thanks to the internet, we have as much access to it as does any corporate mogul.

Were it not for that fact, it’s unlikely that more than a few hundred or, possibly, a few thousand, people would have heard of Brittany and her father.

Are you having fun?

When Nero ruled Rome, he knew the way to keep matters under control was to give the masses plenty of corporate entertainment in the shape of gladiatorial arenas where men killed each other, or were torn apart by wild animals.

Things are still the same today and making sure the masses get plenty of blood and violence, albeit vicariously, are the major Hollywood studios, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, aided by the games companies.

However, it’s said that music soothes the savage soul and providing the vast bulk of it have been the Big 4 labels, or one or more of their  thousands of offshoots and sub-labels.

All elements of the entertainment industries work hand in glove with politicians around the world. Neither can survive without the other and with that in mind, there’s something fishy — really fishy — in the state of Michigan, to paraphrase Shakespear in Hamlet.

Speaking of pro bono, Michigan completes MediaSentry probe was a p2pnet headline to a stort which continued  »»»

… while it appears that the activity alleged in the complaint whereby Media Sentry’s  action to detect and locate Internet users who may be downloading music requires a licence under the Private Investigators Licensure Act, there is insufficient evidence collected in the investigation that proves that Media Sentry was paid for such services.

We went on »»»

As with all too many RIAA cases, ‘evidence’ supplied by MediaSentry was used in RIAA efforts to paint Brittany as a criminal and thief …

MediaSentry was said to have been operating in Michigan, as well as elsewhere in the US, without appropriate authorisation and Brittany’s father, Randy, demanded Michigan launch an investigation.

MediaSentry’s practices and methods have been questioned repeatedly and successfully by experts. When it was dumped by the RIAA, it was sold to a rival company for a pittance. But it’s still being presented by the RIAA as a credible source of data and information.

Now, says the Michigan department of  energy, labour and economic growth, “while it appears that the activity alleged in the complaint whereby Media Sentry’s  action to detect and locate Internet users who may be downloading music requires a licence under the Private Investigators Licensure Act, there is insufficient evidence collected in the investigation that proves that Media Sentry was paid for such services. The investigation has not established all of the elements to prove a violation.

‘Funny how life can throw you a curve …’

In the email I mentioned earlier, “About three weeks ago I was fishing with my sons on the AuSable River in Grayling Michigan,” says Randy, going on »»»

It is a stretch of river that is Fly only catch and release.   It is called the Holywater by avid fly fishermen.  I cannot say that I am a very good fly fisherman, but standing in the AuSable is a dream come true.  We stayed at the Baileywick cabin.  Baileywick is owned by four brothers,  one of them being Jim Bailey.   I met Jim about 15 years ago as he was visiting Coldwater from his near by lake home in Northern Indiana.  It is funny how you come to know people.  Jim was at the time the Director of the Ruth Lilly Law Library in Indianapolis.  He was also a professor of Law at IU.   He has since retired.

15 years ago, my kids were all in grade school and we were getting by.  MP3 did not exist.   We had no need for a lawyer, and saw no need for one.

Funny how life can throw you a curve, conversations about the kids, fishing, old cars, and whatever and have now been poisoned by talk of the “Law Suit” and the question of what to do.   But then again, I guess this is life.

21/2 years ago,  the recording industry and it’s insane attempt to criminalize music comes along with its private investigator, MediaSentry.  The bizarre scheme they devised included the notion that, armed with political clout, they it can come and go into computers at will.

The RIAA announces in February 2007 that it was going to step up its legal assault on peer2peer users at various universities across America.

What they failed to tell anyone was that they had already hacked thousands of computers, and had already stored up data they claimed to have collected to kick off their folly.

What have they done?

Electronic Voyeurism, by using their hired gun, who was acting as the electronic equivalent of a window peeper and being paid for its bother, they have stalked the streets of the internet neighborhood with secret scanning programs to take digital photos through the open windows of houses in the neighborhood.

The hired gun has ran back to the bully with their prize.

The bully has threatened the neighborhood and distorted copyright, that is what they have done.

But we dared to question the act.

This week has been a mixed blessing.  After 2 1/2 years and a Doe lawsuit,  this spring the recording industry filed against Brittany.   We were required to respond to the suit by early July, so we did.  Brittany filed and then asked the Courts for counsel.

The Courts have granted the request.

What a miracle.

We are waiting to see who will be appointed to us.  I think this is the first time in recent history that the courts have honored such a request in a civil copyright action.

Then came a response to an investigation of MediaSentry and their unlicensed activities…

The Michigan Department of Labor following a review by the Michigan Attorney General closed their investigation of MediaSentry.

It appears that MediaSentry behaved in such a way as to have been in need of a Professional Investigators License, but no proof that they were paid has been established, so no administrative action will be taken.

How strange it is for MediaSentry to be working Pro Bono in the eyes of the Attorney General.

Working for free for the recording industry, or at least not being proven to have gathered any loot for their task.  The same company that was  “fired” by the RIAA late last year, and that has appeared time and again in Federal Court to support their data collections have been doing it for free in the eyes of some of Michigan’s finest.

Funny that a couple of phone calls or a single one sentence letter from the Michigan Attorney General’s office could have probably cleared up any question of financing.

I believe the investigator for the Department of Labor did a stand-up job, but then something happened.  I suspect that politics stepped into the mix, and along comes one of the “fishiest” decisions ever to come out of Lansing.

Michigan is a beautiful state.  Surrounded by water on three sides, and more shore line than California.  The Northern Michigan air is pure and sweet, the rivers flow swift and for the most part clean.  Corn fields, bean fields, wheat fields, lakes and hardwood forest spot Southern Lower Michigan.

Factories sit idle in Detroit, but the river continues to flow by and the people there are hearty.  West Michigan embraces the sunset across the lake that bears the states name. The Upper Peninsula  is a pristine wonderland, crossed with rivers, lakes, springs, swamps and forest.  But in the heart of the state is… Lansing.  The Red Cedar and the Grand River pass through Lansing, but there must be something in the water.

Lansing, the former home of Oldsmobile, is our state’s capital.  The Mecca of state government.  The bureaucratic dream world, where a blind eye is cast upon the obvious in the name of politics.

“Silver may have passed across a palm, or perhaps the whisper of a promise for political favor, or who knows what, but it smells and sounds fishy,” adds Randy, asking

“Can Lansing be the only place in the world where MediaSentry works for free?”

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

Follow p2pnet on Twitter.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

July, 2009

---

Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

---

Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 12:03 pm and is filed under P2P, 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.

HOME

Viewed 3165 times