Death is no escape


iconAll those lawsuits the RIAA is filing against file traders don't seem to be based on very hard evidence. After years of going after 12-year olds and grandmothers, the RIAA is suing a dead woman who hates computers.

Lawyers representing several record companies have filed suit against an 83 year-old woman who died in December, claiming that she made more than 700 songs available on the internet.

"I believe that if music companies are going to set examples they need to do it to appropriate people and not dead people," Robin Chianumba told AP. "I am pretty sure she is not going to leave Greenwood Memorial Park to attend the hearing."

Gertrude Walton, who lived in Beckley, West Virginia hated computers, too, her daughter adds. An RIAA spokesperson said that it would try and dismiss the case.

However the RIAA's embarrassment doesn't end there. Chianumba said that she had sent a copy of her mother's death certificate to record company lawyers in response to an initial warning letter, over a week before the suit was filed. In 2003 the RIAA sued a twelve year-old girl for copyright infringement. She'd harbored an MP3 file of her favorite TV show on her hard drive. Her working class parents in a housing project in New York were forced to pay two thousand dollars in a settlement.

Could it be that their standards for filing a lawsuit are just a tad bit too low?



Comments (3)      top   link me

Comments

In case you thought no-one appreciated the "An RIAA spokesperson said that it would try..." I did - Laughed really hard.

Posted by: Dean at February 8, 2005 6:33 PM

"Could it be that their standards for filing a lawsuit are just a tad bit too low?"

More like the intelligence standards for litigation lawyers are a tad bit too low....but we already knew that, didn't we?

Posted by: Robert Garrard at February 8, 2005 7:38 PM

There's no cost to filing a lawsuit that isn't firmly based on facts - so they go ahead and file, and if they guessed wrong, the defendant still bears the cost of bringing out the facts.

There should be a requirement to post $5,000 bond before even sending out a letter threatening a lawsuit - the target automatically gets this to cover the cost of hiring a lawyer to find out if there's even anything to worry about.

Posted by: markm at February 13, 2005 11:45 AM

(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014

About Ravenwood
Libertarianism
Libertarian Quiz
Secrets o' the Universe
Email Ravenwood

reading
<Blogroll Me>
/images/buttons/ru-button-r.gif

Bitch Girls
Bogie Blog
Countertop Chronicles
DC Thornton
Dean's World
Dumb Criminals
Dustbury
Gallery Clastic
Geek with a .45
Gut Rumbles
Hokie Pundit
Joanie
Lone Star Times
Other Side of Kim
Right Wing News
Say Uncle
Scrappleface
Silflay Hraka
Smallest Minority
The Command Post
Venomous Kate
VRWC


FemmeBloggers


archives

search the universe



rings etc

Gun Blogs


rss feeds
[All Versions]
[PDA Version]
[Non-CSS Version]
XML 0.91
RSS 1.0 (blurb)
RSS 2.0 (full feed)
 

credits
Design by:

Powered by: Movable Type 3.34
Encryption by: Deltus
Hosted by: Bluehost

Ravenwood's Universe:
Established 1990

Odometer

OdometerOdometerOdometerOdometerOdometer