Trade Group Efforts Against File Sharing - Criticism

Criticism

There is much criticism of the RIAA's policy and method of suing individuals for copyright infringement, notably with Internet-based pressure groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Students for Free Culture. To date, the RIAA has sued more than 20,000 people in the United States suspected of distributing copyrighted works and settled approximately 2,500 of the cases. Brad Templeton of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has called these types of lawsuits spamigation and implied they are done merely to intimidate people.

The RIAA was criticized in the media after they subpoenaed Gertrude Walton, an 83-year-old woman who died in December 2004. Walton was accused of swapping rock, pop and rap songs. RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy commented that legal proceedings had commenced before Walton died. "Our evidence gathering and our subsequent legal actions all were initiated weeks and even months ago."

In a Brooklyn case, Elektra v. Schwartz, against RaeJ Schwartz, a Queens woman with Multiple Sclerosis, the RIAA's lawyers wrote to the Judge that they were in possession of a letter in which "...America Online, Inc., has confirmed that Defendant was the owner of the internet access account through which hundreds of Plaintiffs’ sound recordings were downloaded and distributed to the public without Plaintiffs’ consent." After the defense received a copy of the letter, it turned out that the letter merely identified Ms. Schwartz as the owner of an internet access account and said nothing at all about "downloading" or "distributing".

The RIAA has also been criticized for bringing lawsuits against children, including 12-year-old Brianna LaHara of New York City in 2003. and 13-year-old Brittany Chan of Michigan. Under the threat of a possible defendant's motion for summary judgment and attorneys fees, the RIAA withdrew the case Priority Records v. Chan. while LaHara's mother agreed to pay $2,000 in settlements.

The RIAA's recent targeting of students has generated controversy as well. An April 4, 2006 story in the MIT campus newspaper The Tech indicates that an RIAA representative stated to Cassi Hunt, an alleged file-sharer, that previously, "the RIAA has been known to suggest that students drop out of college or go to community college in order to be able to afford settlements."

The RIAA has also filed a lawsuit against a woman who has never bought, turned on, or used a personal computer for using an "online distribution system" to obtain unlicensed music files. This occurred again in the Walls case;

"I don't understand this", said James Walls, "How can they sue us when we don't even have a computer?"

The RIAA filed a lawsuit against Larry Scantlebury, a man who had died. They offered the deceased man's family a period of sixty days to grieve the death before they began to depose members of Mr. Scantlebury’s family for the suit against his estate.