| Oklahoma nurse vs the RIAA |
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p2p news / p2pnet: Another American mother has joined the
growing number of people who are refusing to be cowed by the music
industry's bully-boy tactics. The Big Four's RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has
just added another 754 men, women and children to it's list of sue 'em all victims, bringing the total to around 17,000. So
far, not one of these people has appeared before a court or has been
found guilty of anything. But it now seems the first case since the
cartel launched its bizarre marketing campaign in 2003 may go to trial.
It centres on Patricia Santangelo, the New York mother of five who
decided she wasnt going to give in to blackmail by Sony BMG, Vivendi
Universal, EMI and Warner Music. However, Judge Colleen McMahon denied Santangelo's motion to have the file sharing case brought against her by the Big Four dismissed. The
labels are trying to paint a picture in which millions of people around
the world get up every morning, bent on "stealing" lossy, low-fidelity
mp3 music files from them. The assertion is
as ridiculous as it looks. Nothing has been stolen, no money has
changed hands and no sales have been lost and in fact, as has been
suggested on numerous occasions by any number of academic and
commercial research papers and independent on- and offline sources,
including Britain's authoritative The Economist, any troubles the music
industry has are entirely of its own making, Demanded money from her But,
"Debbie has and continues to deny that she had any knowledge of KAZAA,"
it says, going on, "Debbie is absolutely without any knowledge of how
to download material off of the internet. "At
the March 2, 2005 Scheduling Conference conducted by the Court, counsel
for Debbie, requested that the Plaintiffs voluntarily provide the
specific dates of the alleged infringement, but for some reason
Plaintiffs are unable (or unwilling) to provide actual dates." The document says last summer Foster was contacted by telephone by Big Music which demanded money from her. "Debbie
informed Plaintiffs settlement representative that she did not
download any songs from the internet," says the Barringer-Thomson court
paper, continuing, "Thereafter, Plaintiffs settlement representative
telephoned Debbie to demand payment of $5,000 and further told Debbie
that the Plaintiffs will go down to $3,750. "Debbie again informed Plaintiffs settlement representative that she did not download any songs from the internet. "
Despite being placed on notice that Debbie did not download any songs,
the Plaintiffs filed this action against Debbie and the Plaintiffs
continue to impugn Debbies character and subject her to demands which
are closely akin to extortion." We understand the labels are also going after Foster's daughter, Amanda. Foster is only one of the people being tormented by the music industry in this way. The strange and warped marketing plan under which the labels are suing their own customers is being presented as a raging success when actually, it's a dismal and pathetic failure which doing no more than to make a lot of ordinary people suffer needlessly. Over the next little while, we plan to bring you further information about Foster and a number of other victims who are fighting for their rights against Organized Music.Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites          Add your comment
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