RIAA's second biggest mistake was to sue Tanya Andersen, an innocent single mother, for copyright infringement. Their biggest mistake was to harass her and try to depose her 10-year-old daughter. (And even, allegedly, to call the girl's school posing as her grandmother!)
RIIA was forced to dismiss its case against Ms. Andersen with prejudice, although the counter-claims remain to be heard. And now those counter-claims are being bulked up with a new complaint, which basically charges BMG and two other record companies, the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), and two of their lawsuit minions, Media Sentry and the “Settlement Support Center” of basically running a rip-off operation, with formal counts including negligence, fraud, abuse of process, malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, libel and slander, deceptive business practices, misuse of copyright laws, trespass to chattels (!), violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and of course state and federal RICO claims.
The best part will surely be the depositions in which various record company execs and RIAA honchos and goons are asked whether they understood the nature of the fishing expedition cum intimidation racket they had cranked up. And being smart, some of them must surely have known. (The others will be mere knaves.) If they could sell seats, this could be the hottest ticket in town.
As it is, we'll have to make do with the transcripts.
(spotted via Groklaw)
Re: chattel
As I’m sure you know better than I do, there’s a hell of a lot of centuries-old law lying around just waiting for the unwary. Many years ago, while I was covering the rubberstamp Daley city council (the real Mayor Daley), one of the council’s subcommittees absolutely ground to a halt over a proposed ordinance governing supermarket shopping carts for fear that by the ordinance they would be distorting or damaging the law of bailment. These hack Democratic alderman had been transported back to law school and they were having a ball with an ethical serious discussion of a legal principle.
This kind of thing, responsibility to the rule of law even in the most trivial case, makes it all the more sickening to see the kind of I-had-my-fingers-crossed legal reasoning (Loud cries of“King’s X!”) propounded by the Bush administration, such as:
So let no one trespass chattels or violate the law of bailment, and don’t fear accusations of champerty and barratry.