RIAA named in first class action

"In cases which should by rights have been initiated by the Bush government on behalf of innocent families across America, falsely attacked by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, RIAA victims Tanya Andersen and Michelle Santangelo are determined to make the Big 4, as well as companies involved in the sue ‘em all morass, pay, literally and figuratively, for the distress they’ve caused and are still causing."

"In a request for class action status which, if and when successful, will ultimately include every one of the 30,000 or so RIAA victims, Andersen and her lawyer, Lory Lybeck (right), are looking to recover compensation for the, “significant damages caused by the Defendants” as well as punitive damages, statutory penalties, litigation fees and expenses and equitable relief."

"In what’s probably another first, Santangelo has launched a third party action against Sharman Networks’ Kazaa, the p2p file sharing software implicated in the vast majority of the RIAA sue ‘em all cases."

Apparently, Kazaa software works in the background initiating what amounts to "unintended sharing" creating new (unintentional) violators for RIAA to pick on.

Michelle Santangelo is also naming a former family friend Matthew Seckler for illegally installing this Kazaa program on her computer.

However, what's further interesting is that AOL is being blamed for failing "to use its Controls to prevent illegal downloading, even though it had the information, superior knowledge, ability, skill, techniques, tools, power and authority to prevent such downloading" while it "did not allow the RIAA’s alleged warning messages to pass through such filters"

And that last part is a bit bothersome, as Russell McOrmond says in a comment:

"Intermediaries like ISPs or multi-purpose software authors or hardware manufacturers should not be held responsible for not “filtering”, only those who are sharing/publishing/communicating without permission (with or without a computer)."

"I would hate to be called as a witness for the defense of Sharman Networks or AOL, but I can’t support the third party finger pointing that Santangelo is doing. It is not like these P2P applications were malware and in any way masking their intended use."

Which goes to suggest that Santangelo is pushing her lawsuit a bit too far which may, while possibly hurting RIAA a bit, bring forth the idea that ISPs must filter their traffic to block what seems illegal. We don't need more digital control, but less.

-- Read the full thread.