Florida woman accuses RIAA of fraud, extortion and conspiracy

Florida woman accuses RIAA of fraud, extortion and conspiracy
Yet another defendant in a copyright infringement case brought by the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) crackdown on file sharing has decided to fight back with strong accusations. Suzy Del Cid has filed a counterclaim against the trade group that mirrors one filed by Tanya Andersen in October 2005. UMG v. Del Cid is being heard in the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Del Cid has accused the RIAA of computer trespass, conspiracy, extortion, and violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in her counterclaim. It claims that, "these record companies hired unlicensed private investigators—in violation of various state laws—who receive a bounty to invade private computers and private computer networks to obtain information—in the form of Internet Protocol ('IP') addresses—allowing them to identify the computers and computer networks that they invaded."



Of course, if Del Cid had a shared folder on KaZaa, she may have a hard time convincing the court that MediaSentry trespassed. However, she did allege that the RIAA used private investigators unlicensed by the state of Florida to track her online activities in violation of Florida law. She also claims that the RIAA violated Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by "knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt," referring to the Settlement Support Center's attempts to settle the case before the lawsuit was filed.

Source:
Ars Technica


Written by: James Delahunty @ 5 Jun 2007 7:55
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  • 14 comments
  • DVDdoug

    If Cid and Anderson can win and collect some money from the RIAA... enought money to make their lawyers happy, lawyers will be lining-up to sue the RIAA!

    5.6.2007 10:36 #1

  • spydah

    Lady get em and I mean get they ass good. If more people hit them back they will have to back off or find a better way to deal with people they believe to be pirating. I could see if they said well we wont sue you unless you upload 100gigs something that would really matter but damn they be coming after people for a file that they believe is a pirated file. Thats just special in every sense of that word.

    5.6.2007 12:04 #2

  • 5c4ry_0p

    Quote:Del Cid has accused the RIAA of computer trespass, conspiracy, extortion, and violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in her counterclaim.Gotta love that woman.Go get those greedy bastards

    5.6.2007 13:26 #3

  • borhan9

    I am with everyone else here. Go get the nutters. Mayb this is like the Return of the Jedi.

    5.6.2007 13:47 #4

  • bobiroc

    This is all because the RIAA (and the MPAA for that matter) are afraid of the digital revolution. They know that people will be getting their music, movies, and TV shows digitally instead of buying them in stores. Since they cannot seem to embrace the technology and find a way to make it affordable and easy for consumers while still making a profit they will spend tons of money going after people that are allegedly downloading illegally.

    You hear all the time about how CD sales are down, DVD purchase are down, and Movie Theatre attendance is down. Well this is because people are using iTunes and other services to get their music and other multimedia. People are opting to do it that way more and more because it is convenient and easy. My only problem with the digital media services is that they are too expensive for what you are getting. You pay 99 cents for a song and you have restrictions, or you pay for a movie/tv show download and you can only watch it on your PC or it expires after a certain period of time. I think that since this is a digital file the price of these should be considerably less since it is not like they have physical media they are putting it on and many people can download the same file. Also at a buck a song you should own it and be able to move it and use it how you want to.

    5.6.2007 14:06 #5

  • jinggoy

    I'd love to see a digital revolution.

    5.6.2007 16:33 #6

  • WierdName

    Sue their [bleep]s off.

    5.6.2007 18:35 #7

  • lxfactor

    i wouldn't want to see a digital revo. blah too futuristic. i remember when people open trunks of hoods and sell u cds. now u gotta pay for Urls to where music is stored. whats become of the earth.

    5.6.2007 18:38 #8

  • spydah

    I dont think its because they are afraid of evolution i think the main reasons for all this BS we see in these articles is, because people got fed up of paying for over priced crap via music, movies, software, and etc.... When the first P2P site hit and then some more came up they got scared they were gonna lose consumers which they did but they always had some of those same people still pay for stuff. But once they were able to take down the first few sites then it grew into something that they could not control. So what do they do. They took down the P2P sites like Napster, Morpheus, Kazaa, Imesh, and whole bunch of single file sites that were popular earlier and replaced them with either the same named sites then slapped a price tag on them to get control content which aint worth shit. If nobody has really noticed or payed attention to is they are still doing that now. There are now torrent sites the same way and now sites like youtube they all want to come out with their own version to lure you into their controlled content to keep grabbing more money out of your pocket. Its all about conquer and control. So as for the lady thats fighting back all power to you on that i hope you can get them for whatever you can.

    5.6.2007 18:47 #9

  • WierdName

    Hopefully they will lose then realize that they should actually make sure that they actually know that the person committed the crime instead of going at people they THINK are guilty or people they gathered info from/for illegally.

    5.6.2007 21:57 #10

  • Blackjax

    Well I think this is just the start of the counter suit claims that are going to be filed against the mafiaa. THE only people truly winning in this p*ssing contest right now are the blood sucking lawyers. They are laughing all the way to the bank!

    5.6.2007 22:58 #11

  • edsrouter

    It's not like there's no monatary solution to this "digital revolution". There is, but the RIAA just doesn't want to accept it. They want to keep sueing to obtain the most profitable system in place. The RIAA could easily ask the U.S. Government for a technological solution for piracy, but they don't want government intervention. It's no wonder why when 80% of the revenue recieved is profit.

    5.6.2007 23:03 #12

  • wetsparks

    Originally posted by DVDdoug:If Cid and Anderson can win and collect some money from the RIAA... enought money to make their lawyers happy, lawyers will be lining-up to sue the RIAA!We can only hope. Best of luck to Ms. Del Cid.

    8.6.2007 12:15 #13

  • Unfocused

    I'd be willing to bet that most people turn to illegal downloading because of the high prices in the stores.

    23.7.2007 22:50 #14

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