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Tanya Andersen, a 41-year old disabled single mother living in Oregon, has countersued the RIAA for Oregon RICO violations, fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation.

Why did it take so long for someone to do this? The RIAA uses illegal practices to invade your computers (well, Windows users anyway) and find out personal information about you so they can sue you for file-sharing. The problem with collecting evidence this way? Um, it's illegal, and done so without due process or probable cause. Oh, and the RIAA is a PRIVATE company and not some government agency with the authority to act in this manner.

Below you'll find a news excerpt which is the bulk of what's awesome about this story...

The RIAA falsely claimed that Andersen had been an "unnamed" defendant who was being sued in federal court in the District of Columbia. She was never named in that lawsuit and never received service of a summons and complaint, she said.

When Andersen contacted Settlement Support Center, she was advised that her personal home computer had been secretly entered by the record companies’ agents, MediaSentry.

Apparently she had been up at 4:24am downloading "gangster rap" music under the login name "gotenkito@kazaa.com." Andersen does not like "gangster rap", does not recognize the name "gotenkito", is not awake at 4:24 a.m. and has never downloaded music.

This is gonna be fun. I hope this will bring to light some of the shit the RIAA is doing so someone, anyone will stand up and do something about it. I mean think about it... Illegally hacking a computer to get information about illegal activity is the equivalent to Sears sending a small, armed, task force into your home while you sleep to look for any stolen merchandise because you were considered suspicious during your last visit to one of their stores.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 11:46 AM | Permalink

I'm so happy with the outcome of a recent case where the RIAA had sued a mother because her 13 year old daughter had been illegally sharing music online. The mother proved that she was not very good with computers and therefore had no knowledge of her daughter's wrongdoing. The RIAA of course claimed that ignorance is no excuse and it's the mother's fault anyway. Absurdity!

Now read this excerpt from the article where I found the story...

The case was dismissed with prejudice, which prevents the case from being advanced against the defendant. Finally, the RIAA tried asking the Judge to amend the judgement in order to allow them to sue the child through a Guardian Ad Litem. However the court denied this RIAA's request.

Can you believe these fucking people? They are so greedy, ignorant, and outright insane that after trying to sue a mother who had no idea about computers for file sharing, they then went after a 13 year old. I cannot believe there is not more outrage about this. This is on par with Wal-Mart suing a 13 year old who stole some items from one of their stores.

Have some humanity! Write or wrong, the kid's 13 years old!

This is by far my favorite story on this subject, second only to the story about the RIAA suing a dead elderly woman for the same reasons.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 7:08 AM | Permalink

I was tempted to put this one under "Pure Funny" but I guess technically it's more news than anything else. Basically the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has donated $186,000 for 10 pole-mounted cameras so the LAPD can monitor movie piracy activity in the Fashion District on behalf of the MPAA.

The funniest stuff is in the MPAA's quotes about the move...

The MPAA says: "It is our pleasure to assist them with these cameras which will help them lift a rock and shine a light on rampant counterfeiting of DVDs which used to take place in the dark shadows."

Is that precious or what? (ominous voice) "In the past, DVD theft took place in the dark shadows of back alleys and caves filled with other miscreants like opium dealers." This sounds like it should be written in blood and followed by a scream in a cheap movie theatre.

Did I mention how scary this is? It reminds me of how the police are controlled by a corporation called OCP in RoboCop.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 7:57 AM | Permalink

If you didn't already know about this then here's a little background. Typically a number of spammers do their work by hijacking hundreds or thousands of computers with worms or viruses and then they send out their untraceable spam through these "Zombie" machines. Typically these Zombie computers are Moms, Dads, Grandmas and casual users who don't do enough to protect their already unsecured Windows computers.

Now the FTC wants to disconnect these users from the net until their computers are cleaned. Here's a quote from the Wired article:

"The FTC said it would ask 3,000 internet providers worldwide to make sure that their customers' computers haven't been hijacked by spammers who want to cover their tracks and pass bandwidth costs on to others."

Can you imagine these poor people who don't even know their infected, suddenly not being able to get online and then calling in to tech support. Then they're told this cryptic story about how they have an infected computer spreading something called "SPAM" and they need to clean their machines before they can get back online.

This is not only stupid, but scary. The government is going to have to "somehow" determine if a user's machine is exhibiting qualities of a hijacked machine and then issue a request to the ISP to disconnect that user. Then the ISP will have to staff tech support to accommodate all the added calls regarding the inability to get online.

This is just a huge mess waiting to happen. Of course it's also adding some kind of power to a government agency that I don't think anyone should have. Let the ISPs decide to do this on their own! I'm so tired of the government wanting to make rules, laws or policies to control everything.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 5:34 PM | Permalink

Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who chairs the Senate copyright subcommittee, made one of the most ominous statements to date about what might happen if unfettered piracy continues. "Before Russia enters the (World Trade Organization), many of us will have to be convinced that the Russian government is serious about cracking down on the theft of intellectual property," Hatch said during a hearing.

So now the US Government is going to enforce its copyright laws in other countries who do not have such laws. Wow. The sheer ego required to attempt this is baffling. I mean are the RIAA and MPAA really that powerful?

Posted by ZeroLogik at 8:00 AM | Permalink