RIAA Backs Down On "Unlicensed Investigator"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Texas grandmother Rhonda Crain got the RIAA to drop its monetary claims against her after she filed counterclaims against the record companies for using an investigator, MediaSentry, which is not licensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas. The RIAA elected to drop its claims rather than wait for the Judge to decide the validity of Ms. Crain's charges (PDF) that the plaintiff record companies were 'aware that the... private investigations company was unlicensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas specifically, and in other states as well... and understood that unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part of a mass litigation campaign.' Similar questions about MediaSentry's unlicensed investigations were raised recently by the State Attorney General of Oregon in Arista v. Does 1-17"

Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

I'd love to see the discovery on that one.

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Doesn't matter. No one connected with the RIAA mob has any accountability. Ever.

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

No one connected with the RIAA mob has any accountability.

Even if RIAA loses money on this, it doesn't matter much. Until some RIAA board members are facing real prison time, they will use whatever tactics the manage to get away with.

direction is good though

things are changing, people are waking up to the danger and harm of these parasite cartels

House of Cards

Their whole house of cards is coming down.

Actually, it is more like one of those building implosions. It starts slow, then...

The RIAA is getting hit more and more lately. More judges are finding against them. More people fighting back. More states and

Re:House of Cards

Old ladies are pwning noobs better than I can, these days.

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Until we can get rid of the general public perception that "piracy == bad" and "recording industry == good" they aren't going to face penalties.

When is piracy not bad?

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

When is piracy not bad?

The problem is the loaded term "piracy". Is it bad to download a few songs from an artist that you've heard of but never heard? I've done that several times. In the vast majority of those cases, I would not have bought the artists albums if I had not downloaded their songs first. In some cases, I didn't like what I heard & left it at that. In several other cases I have since bought albums by those artists, and in at least a few cases, I now own every CD available from the artist. So would you call my "piracy" in these cases a bad thing, even though they ended up resulting in more money in the artists pocket?

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Is it bad to download a few songs from an artist that you've heard of but never heard? I've done that several times.

I've also done "several" investigations of the spammers — using tools like whois and nslookup. I was not licensed to perform the investigations — in any state.

According to this grandma's counter-suit and — more importantly — to all the kudos she got from the Slashdot crowd, all of those spammers should have a good case against me...

I may understand (and even accept) the desire to keep tabs on gun-wielding private detectives like Dr. Watson or "Maltese Falcon"'s main character, but MediaSentry, no doubt, has never even set foot in Texas, all their "investigations" being limited to the Internet. Twisting the law in this fashion should be troubling... But hey, it is RIAA, so whoever sticks whatever up theirs is our hero...

What have you done with the information you got from your investigations? Did someone pay you to make those investigations? I don't know the Texas law on private investigators, but I believe the requirement for a license comes in when someone pays you to

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

When is piracy not bad?

Depends of your personal definition of "piracy". The term "piracy" was, right from the start, a new term intended to be as loaded as it could be to refer to the unauthorized commercialization of copyrighted works. In that time, no normal person could possibly consider that guy selling bootleg tapes/books to be a menace to society. After all, the only thing that that guy did was duplicate something and sell it cheaper than others. That couldn't possibly hurt society.

So, in order to fight that perceived source of lower profits, the companies that were in the business of selling authorized copies of those works decided to shut that down. As they weren't able to gather public support for that battle then they decided to start a public relations campaign against the unauthorized commercialization of copyrighted books (their competition). The first step was coining a negative image to the unauthorized sellers, which originated terms like "bootlegger" and "pirate", evil figures associated with violent, organized crime. It's easier to fight someone/something when they are evil. There was no surprise a while back when some american retarded record company spokesperson started associating "piracy" to terrorism.

Now those companies intend to include in that definition people who have absolutely nothing to do with the old definition of "piracy". Now the record companies, motivated by greed and the lust for control, want to label anyone who downloads anything remotely copyrighted as a "pirate". There is no commercialization of any copyrighted work. Now, instead of attempting to smear and fight the distributors, they are trying to attack the end consumer.

Does it make any sense to label as pirates people who bought unauthorized copies of copyrighted works? Obviously not. Yet, the record companies are trying to go the extra nonsense mile and pin that nasty, loaded label on people who access those works without ever exchanging any money.

So it isn't a question of "when is piracy not bad". As questionable as "piracy", the unauthorized commercialization of a copyrighted work, may be, the real question that must be placed here, and unfortunately you failed to understand, is why is non-"piracy" actions being labelled as "piracy" in the first place? If I download something for personal use after paying absolutely nothing for it then how exactly can you claim that I'm commercializing an unauthorized copy of some copyrighted work? Moreover, why should anyone be called a "pirate" if what that person is doing is perfectly included in their nation's fair use doctrine?

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

None of the cases are about 'piracy'. In copyright parlance, 'piracy' means large scale commercial reproduction and resale of copies. Not a single case brought by the RIAA has involved 'piracy'. It is the MPAA/RIAA propagandists who have been trying to rewrite the definition of the term 'piracy'.

When was (old school) piracy good?

Risking an offtopic mod I will answer the question talking the old school definition: Piracy was seen as good when the pirates restricted themselves to pirating from "the enemy". These privateers [wikipedia.org] were licensed to attack foreign ships and keep the spoils.

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An entire album most certainly can be called a demo.

It's just a matter of the fans doing unauthorized promotion.

Such activities are probably FAR more likely to be effective
than conventional methods. This is especially true for acts
that aren't the darlings

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

Someone should set up a fund for her to go after RIAA and MediaSentry over this.

Heck, I'd Paypal a few bucks over to see how this turns out. I figure another ten thousand people are with me. If we all chip in $20, that'd be enough to get this ball rolling.

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

Actually, it would be $200,020.

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

So, after the flood, Noah tells all the animals to "be fruitful and multiply!"

He wanders around, and the rabbits are screwing like rabbits, the minks are screwing like minks, and the elephants are... well, doing whatever elephants do.

Then he comes and sees some snakes, and they're not doing the nasty. Noah asks them what's wrong, and they say "We're adders!"

So Noah goes away and thinks. He then comes back, cuts down a couple of trees, and makes picnic tables from the logs. He tells the snakes to hang out there, and goes away.

A few hours later, he comes back and sees that the snakes are getting it on, which just goes to prove...

Even adders can multiply using log tables!

Re:Is she going to sue MediaSentry?

Hence you should have no trouble calculating pi^(i*e) , right ?

Ask Sir Mathsalot, not me. I am but a knave.

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Nope. e ** (pi * i) is -1. I'm not sure what pi ** (e * i) is.

For the record, pi^(e*i) is approximately -0.99955 + 0.02989i

For the further record, I found that using some complex math software I wrote in high school. :) (Why yes, I am a nerd... why d

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...because IEEE finite precision floating specs supercede actual exact analytical mathematics in any slashdotter's reality

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I agree.. I don't know if she has to drop her cross-complaint just because the RIAA's bailing.

-jcr

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I'm wondering the same thing? She filed a counterclaim, if she filed it, is it only contingent on the original claim still being there?

I mean, it sounds like it's like if you decided to sue someone, and they said "You know what, I'll just drop everything b

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IANAL but I think both parties have to be in agreement to drop a suit. The RIAA gets away with dropping so many suits because the defendants simply do not want to continue the fight and just get back to their normal everyday lives so they go 'sure lets dro

More important question

Is MediaSentry licensed to investigate in the state in which they actually performed the investigation? The location of the plaintiff's IP is irrelevant, it could be next door, it could be in Alaska.

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They filed the lawsuit in texas so the investigator has to be licensed in texas. See the connection there, Texas law equals need Texas license to conduct investigation.

Re:More important question

Riaa probably doesn't feel it is fair to have to obey all these different licensing restrictions. They probably want to use the results of the investigations as they choose since they paid good money for the results. Fortunately, they can only legally use investigators the way we can use songs and other copyrighted materials.

Ah.. it is so nice when the worm turns.

Re:More important question

Apparantly they aren't licensed [p2pnet.net] to investigate in any state:

"The illegality of the private investigations is also known to defendants," says Lybeck in the court document.
Most states require licensing or registration of private investigators. In Oregon, unlicensed investigators are subject to civil and criminal penalties. These licensing laws are well known to reputable investigators. On information and belief, MediaSentry and his investigators are not and have not been licensed to conduct private investigations of private citizens in Oregon or any other state. Their investigations are illegal.
For years, the RIAA and its member companies have been using flawed and illegal private investigation information as part of their co-ordinated scheme and comment enterprise to threaten, intimidate and coerce payment from private citizens across the United States.

Re:More important question

This is a good example of the law not keeping up with (or addressing) issues brought on by technological advancement. Maybe providing the law will abate uninformed opinions:

1702.101. Investigations Company License Required

Unless the person holds a license as an investigations company, a person may not:

(1) act as an investigations company;

(2) offer to perform the services of an investigations company; or

(3) engage in business activity for which a license is required under this chapter.

***

1702.104. Investigations Company

(a) A person acts as an investigations company for the purposes of this chapter if the person:

(1) engages in the business of obtaining or furnishing, or accepts employment to obtain or furnish, information related to:

(A) crime or wrongs done or threatened against a state or the United States;

(B) the identity, habits, business, occupation, knowledge, efficiency, loyalty, movement, location, affiliations, associations, transactions, acts, reputation, or character of a person;

(C) the location, disposition, or recovery of lost or stolen property; or

(D) the cause or responsibility for a fire, libel, loss, accident, damage, or injury to a person or to property;

(2) engages in the business of securing, or accepts employment to secure, evidence for use before a court, board, officer, or investigating committee;

(3) engages in the business of securing, or accepts employment to secure, the electronic tracking of the location of an individual or motor vehicle other than for criminal justice purposes by or on behalf of a governmental entity; or

(4) engages in the business of protecting, or accepts employment to protect, an individual from bodily harm through the use of a personal protection officer.

(b) For purposes of Subsection (a)(1), obtaining or furnishing information includes information obtained or furnished through the review and analysis of, and the investigation into the content of, computer-based data not available to the public.

***

1702.381. Civil Penalty

(a) A person who is not licensed under this chapter, who does not have a license application pending, and who violates this chapter may be assessed a civil penalty to be paid to the state not to exceed $10,000 for each violation.

(b) A person who contracts with or employs a person who is required to hold a license, certificate of registration, or security officer commission under this chapter knowing that the person does not hold the required license, certificate, or commission or who otherwise, at the time of contract or employment, is in violation of this chapter may be assessed a civil penalty to be paid to the state in an amount not to exceed $10,000 for each violation.

(c) A civil penalty under this section may be assessed against a person on proof that the person has received at least 30 days' notice of the requirements of this section.

1702.382. Injunction

(a) An attorney for the department, the attorney general's office, or any criminal prosecutor in this state may institute an action against a person to enjoin a violation by the person of this chapter or an administrative rule.

(b) An injunction action instituted under this section does not require an allegation or proof that an adequate remedy at law does not exist or that substantial or irreparable damage would result from the continued violation to sustain an action under this section. A bond is not required for an injunction action instituted under this section.

1702.383. Action for Civil Penalty or Injunction

If a person has violated a provision of this chapter for which a penalty is imposed under Section 1702.381, an attorney for the department, the attorney general's office, or any criminal prosecutor in this state may institute a civil suit in a Travis County district court or in a district court in the county in which the violation occurred for inju

They should have dropped the suit entirely

If I am reading this right, IANAL, blah, blah, blah, RIAA is simply dropping monetary damages. They have not dropped the suit. I don't see how this will effect the counter-claims. Hopefully, Grandma will ream their tail ends so bad that their heads will fall through.

Go Grandma! Go!

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If I am reading this right, IANAL, blah, blah, blah, RIAA is simply dropping monetary damages. They have not dropped the suit. I don't see how this will effect the counter-claims.

IANAL, but if you read the pdf document, it does not explicitly say that th

An effective weapon for now...

...but the Borg will adapt.

What's the significance of a license

I am curious what the significance of a license is. I assume a licensed investigator has to take a test and possibly be bonded. How does that affect their ability to collect evidence or impact their credibility in court? One would expect most states to have similar licensing requirements. If MediaSentry is licensed in some states certainly they must follow the general guidelines that Texas requires of licensed investigators. Also, since copyright infringement is a federal issue why does it matter what Texas law says?

Re:What's the significance of a license

If MediaSentry is licensed in some states certainly they must follow the general guidelines that Texas requires of licensed investigators.

What if Texas applies rules to investigations that protect Texans, but not others, from certain practices, or if certain things are permitted under Texas regulations but prohibited elsewhere?

I think it would be unlikely for a judge to say "Okay, we'll accept agencies licensed in Texas", because you then loose the ability to enforce investigators operating in your state to conform to the guidelines of your state - anybody could go get licensed in the most lax state for the area of investigation that is their primary focus.

Re:What's the significance of a license

I am curious what the significance of a license is. I assume a licensed investigator has to take a test and possibly be bonded. How does that affect their ability to collect evidence or impact their credibility in court?

It is considerably significant. If you are licensed, then you know that it could be revoked if you behave unethically or illegally. If you are licensed, it is an indication that as far as anyone knows, you haven't behaved unethically or illegally in the past. That DOES tend to enhance credibility in court.

The license needs to be in the particular state since otherwise, in addition to shopping for the most lax state, some might cheat by getting licenced in one state and doing all of their dirty deeds in another state outside the jurisdiction of the licensing board.

It matters in a federal case because you're not allowed to present illegally gathered evidence in court. Investigators are required to obey all relevant federal, state, and local laws.

Re:What's the significance of a license

They aren't licensed anywhere.

Not surprising

They probably thought it was better to drop one case than to risk a precedent-setting decision that would have invalidated hundreds of other similar "investigations" and perhaps result in some sort of class-action suit.

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They probably thought it was better to drop one case than to risk a precedent-setting decision that would have invalidated hundreds of other similar "investigations" and perhaps result in some sort of class-action suit.

The RIAA is counting on the defendant to not sue for a declaratory judgement.

You don't even have to be sued to do this. If you think someone is going to sue you over something, you can premptively ask the court to decide [some issue]. This allows potentia

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The fact that an organization the size of the RIAA, with its nearly unlimited resources, would effectively throw up their hands and walk away should speak volumes to other victims and consumers in general, and I'm certain the brightest legal minds in the US are reviewing this case with a fine-toothed comb to discover exactly what the perceived weaknesses were.

Well I don't know about the "brightest legal minds" but I'm certainly "reviewing it" and don't think I need a "fine-toothed comb" to discover the weakness. It's the fact that their entire house of cards is built on something that's inadmissible in evidenc

Why try so hard to appeal to emotion?

Ray is definitely fighting the good fight in taking a lead on all the RIAA nonsense, but one thing miffs me quite a bit. Why is it that every time he writes about someone who got sued, it's always "Texas grandmother So-and-So" or "Mother-of-two Blah Blah" or "Penniless, Starving Immigrant Family With Two Unwell Cats" or whatever? What difference does it make in this case that she's a grandmother? I see nothing in the summary of the TFA that explains why this is in any way relevant.

I mean sure, it's useful to keep in mind that there are human beings involved here, but any more than that is a fairly obvious attempt at clouding objective discussion by appealing to sympathy. It annoys me constantly, and I would think any semi-intelligent person would see right through this. If the facts are so firmly on the defendants' sides as Ray would have us all believe, why is it necessary to resort to such blatantly manipulative appeal to emotion? /CF

Re:Why try so hard to appeal to emotion?

And yet every time a big faceless corporation tries to dehumanize someone in order to win a case by preemptively labeling someone as guilty of copyright infringement.

If the RIAA was so sure about their cases as they would have you believe then they would take each and every case to court instead of offering these $3000 get out of jail free cards and backing out of any and all cases where they may look like they will lose.

But hey its fine for them, its just not fine for the grandmother/disabled person/single mother of two to try to shame the RIAA into dropping their case by giving them some bad publicity.

Not only emotion...

Part of this is to show the sheer innaccuracy of the RIAA lawsuits in the first place.

I'm making a list. To my knowledge, they've sued:

• Several pre-teen girls, who could not possibly afford either to buy the music legitimately or to pay the settlement.
• Several grandmothers, who are unlikely to even know what P2P is.
• At least one dead person.
• At least one person who has never, in her life, touched a computer.

There's probably more, but I haven't been paying attention.

If the facts are so firmly on the defendants' sides as Ray would have us all believe, why is it necessary to resort to such blatantly manipulative appeal to emotion?

If the facts are so firmly on the defendants' sides, why not appeal to emotion?

Just understand, pointing out the people involved -- especially when those people are unlikely to be capable of piracy, much less want to -- is not always an appeal to emotion. Sometimes, it's simply an appeal to common sense -- which is why you will occasionally see articles tagged "suddenbreakoutofcommonsense", for when the RIAA/MPAA is losing.

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Mainly because it's a much more open and shut deal than a 20 something geek gets sued for downloading Celine Dion. Granted that should be illegal just on taste grounds, the later case is much more reasonable to bring to court than somebody that's barely co

Re:Why try so hard to appeal to emotion?

Emotion is relevant in some decisions, and irrelevant in others. For example, it is irrelevant in the decision of whether the RIAA should be allowed to use unlicensed PIs. It is irrelevant to the question of whether Rhonda Crain is guilty of violating the RIAA's members copyrights.

There's no "emotion" in this equation: no license = evidence upon which case is based is inadmissible = no case.

Re:Why try so hard to appeal to emotion?

What I want is for the truth to get out there, and I want this reign of terror to end. The most important single factor in almost all of these cases is the huge economic imbalance in each and every case. In an ideal world that would not be relevant to the outcome, but is there anyone out there who thinks we are in an ideal world?......

Raise your hands.

I don't see any hands.

A word to the wise

Never enter in litigation against a stubborn senior citizen with too much time on his or her hands.

Case closed

In response to several questions that have been raised:

1. The case is now closed, counterclaims and all.

2. I have a hunch MediaSentry is not licensed anywhere.

3. The injunction is a consent decree. It doesn't carry with it any implied finding of liability at all. It's merely a promise, by a 70-something lady who never heard of filesharing, that she will not in the future engage in unauthorized filesharing of plaintiffs' recordings.

Re:Case closed

How is it that the RIAA is always allowed to withdraw from a case, in order to avoid setting a disadvantageous precedent, without consequences? Does the casino let you take your chips of the table in the middle of the game because the hand is going badly for you? You can fold your hand, but you cannot withdraw without consequences (i.e. loosing your chips). The difference here is that the accused is forced to play the legal game by the accuser (i.e. the RIAA) and so there should be no privilege for the accuser to withdraw without consequences. Perhaps, for the benefit us laypeople, you can explain this one for us. Thank you.

The defendants have neither the money nor the stomach for going to war with a multinational cartel of 4 huge record companies.

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Well, so much for equal justice under the civil law (I guess that only applies to criminal cases and even there money makes some people more equal than others). Isn't this precisely the sort of abuse that class action was designed to prevent? Perhaps some enteprising lawyers will find a way to collect from the RIAA on behalf of this class of defendants, well we can hope anyway. Thank you NewYorkCountryLawyer for answering my question.

There is a class action going on. Andersen v. Atlantic [blogspot.com].

There's a sting about to happen

for a while I was thinking of working as a private investigator. More than one PI agency is wildly looking for digital investigators to do copyright investigation.

I have a job, but I'm "on a certain list" so these kinds of job offers come across my desk.

It's not good, and it's not pretty. Someone with Serious Pockets is looking to screw a Lot Of People over copyright re: file trading.

It's all coming out of the "heartland USA". I moved out of the states a while ago. But "people know me" so I get rumblings/job offers before others do. If this investigation goes down as it seems, it will be ugly.

For whom? Well teh music industry of course. They're a bunch of fucking morons with a business model that bears no resemblance to what the market is requiring. So rather than grow a lobe for profit (vis the Ferengi) they would rather do the American Thing and sue everyone into the dirt. Morons.

So: word up: the morons are on the march...

RS

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Criminal courts have higher standards and the right to a jury.

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This would be a problem considering that the bulk of their lawsuits are based on MediaSentry downloads via Kazaa. Kazaa is around no more, which means that there is no investigation to be made.

What they didn't want is for their suit to be thrown out with