RIAA's unethical investigations to be dragged into the open in court case
Tanya Andersen, a single mom in Oregon who was unsuccessfully sued by the RIAA, is countersuing, and her lawyer is planning to use the suit to drag all the tawdry details of the RIAA's sneaky, unethical "investigation" techniques into the open:
Link (via /.)Lybeck tells Ars that he'll be digging into agreements between the RIAA, RIAA member companies, MediaSentry, and the Settlement Support Sentry. Part of that will involve looking at compensation, like how much MediaSentry gets from each settlement. "I'd love to know what kind of bounty MediaSentry got paid to supply erroneous identities to the RIAA," Lybeck says.
One of the allegations in the amended complaint will involve MediaSentry's status as a private investigator. "MediaSentry claims it is able to gain access to people's hard drives without their permission and collect information," notes Lybeck. "It's illegal because they're not licensed to do that work."
The amended complaint and subsequent discovery will also focus on what Lybeck calls the "flawed nature" of the RIAA's investigations. "We know [the RIAA] cannot identify individuals," he says in response to a question on false positives. "We want to know how many dolphins the RIAA is catching," referring to a former RIAA spokesperson's 2003 comment about accidentally catching a few dolphins when fishing with a net.
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Heheh, there's a hard rain a-comin'. (I hope)
Oh please. Anyone who thinks America's plutocrat-friendly, Bush/Reagan-appointed judges are going to let this one fly should give my regards to the tooth fairy.
Supposing the information-gathering practices used in prosecuting previous cases (e.g. Jammie's) is discovered to be illegal, would those cases' decisions be reversed?
Re #3: Not without the loser taking steps to re-open their cases, which costs money and requires lawyers (usually same thing) - but if there is still time to file an appeal, and if the cases are similar in all relevant ways, and if the court is bound by the decision in this case, then the attempt can be made.
[The rest is off-topic but to change the laws one must be political and it seems to me it makes sense to observe how
the politics have led to the current situation in order to evaluate possible future courses of action.]
I say "attempt" because #2 Parq has an excellent point. None of Clinton's Federal Court judicial appointments went through - this was unprecedented - and the media thought that this was not important. Nor was or is it important that Clinton's Secretary of War - I mean, Defense- was a republican. When was the last time there was a Democrat as the Secretary of War (oops I mean "Defense")?
The Republicans have appointed all judges since 1980 and have controlled the Pentagon without interruption since then as well. During this time they unilaterally did away with the requirement that differing political views be given equal time in the FCC "regulated" mass media.Anybody under the age of 26 has only heard the Republicans political song in all its glory.
I think that the Republicans have since 1980 "taken over" a portion of the Dem party sufficient to create divisions in the Party,(sufficient to easily prevent any progressive legislation whatsoever even when Dems have a legislative majority, as now) the latest manifestation being a divisive leadership contest with a "media-driven" candidate. Oddly similar to Bush from nobody to Tex Gov'r in 1996 to Prez in 2000 with media fawning. Obama from U of Chicago (neo-con spiritual temple) -nobody- to Senator in 200? to Prez candidate contender in 2008 - a year in which the presidency is the Dem's to lose and which this "contest" has made a real possibility...
A Canadian echo of this is the right-wing "Liberals" who removed a popular PM (who kept us out of Iraq God Bless Him), who held a Majority in Parliament, and replaced him with a Right-winger who only got a Minority in the next Election and who proceeded then to do nothing but attack the previous Liberal government while in office, leading to the Extreme right-wing minority gov we have today. This right-wing Liberal then decreed that there would be no leadership contest to replace him for a year (to get Canadians used to a right-wing gov? To pave the way for a Reform Majority?) and after which occurred the "parachuting" in of "instant" Liberals - both of whom then came very close to becoming the leader- one of whom has written "intellectual" treatises supporting US use of torture.
Of course these instant Liberals were media-driven "celebrities" and are also co-incidently pro-[Mid-East}war, as well as being dead-set against any new election (until the Canadian people are "comfortable" with electing a Conservative majority?).The current Liberal leader wanted to go to the polls, these guys lead the faction resisting this - they got their way and then attacked the leader as being wishy-washy - kind of similar to internal attacks a la Clinton-Obama).
My thesis is that the neo-cons are as good as their word- their theory of governance affirms "govt by deceit",( they really do hold ordinary people in deep contempt)- and that infiltration and co-option of "the enemy" by "moles" is s.o.p.
Do things stateside feel as unbalanced as they look from my wintery home?
Further OT:
I understand that Mr. Obama is a direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson. If true, this fact alone makes him worthy of filling the Office of the President of the United States of America, in my uninformed opinion.
I Fear that he is being used, though.