RIAA Pays Out $108,000 To P2P Lawsuit Defendant


[Tanya Andersen], the defendant in Atlantic v. Andersen, has finally been paid $107,951 for reimbursement of legal fees. RIAA lawyers had appealed to get the amount reduced and originally offered $30,000 then $60,000, but [Andersen]’s lawyers convinced the judge to uphold the six-figure sum.

This is a significant setback for industry lawyers who often use illegal discovery techniques and have been criticized for using overly-litigious legal strategies to force defendants to settle. Sadly though, the payout only covers [Andersen]’s legal fees and doesn’t offer any compensation for damages, but a counter-suit filed in Portland, Oregon seeks exactly that. Here’s hoping her lawyers [Lory Lybeck] and [Ben Justus] continue to set favorable legal precedents for defendants of these lawsuits.

As far as the technical side of the discovery methods go, there are many ways to keep the RIAA off your back. The simplest is to disable your P2P client’s available file listing or turning off outbound traffic altogether. Other ways are to use encryption (although this is usually to get around ISP blocks) or download to an offsite machine. Hopefully, though, this judgment and eventual payout will make the recording companies reconsider the amount of lawsuits they file and to use less aggressive legal tactics.

13 thoughts on “RIAA Pays Out $108,000 To P2P Lawsuit Defendant

  1. Portland 0regon?

    Portland or seeks exactly that?

    Come on, this is ridiculous, oregon are we to assume that you don’t use this font when you copy and paste news articles into hackaday.

  2. Why the hell do so many dis you?

    If you have a problem with hack-a-day, then don’t read it. You not reading it causes an actual blow to site.

    You rambling about what he does right or wrong get’s you no where.

    So STFU.

  3. @ AEX,

    I have no problem with the “hack”, in fact I quite like the news story. It is good to hear that there is precedent against the RIAA for their ridiculous practices. However, at the most they should fine you the cost of whatever you are distributing, if that is 3,000 copies of a $50 product, you need to stop and pay up.

    My problem was with the fact that if they were going to portland or than they should have put in 0regon so that we could read the damn thing.

  4. Sorry guys, I should have kept the lowercasing style sheet in mind when writing. I changed “OR” to “Oregon” (It makes sense without the style sheet, I promise).

  5. @miles

    Actually, I don’t think the RIAA should fine anyone for anything. I think the *only* thing they should be allowed to do is require the “defendants” to legitimately purchase whatever it is they downloaded. Perhaps at the worst, require they purchase the actual CDs. That way, everybody (except the /suits/) wins. The artist will get their cut of the CD sales. The retailer will get their cut. All the other people who market/distribute will get their cut. The one who “illegally downloaded” the song will still get their songs, but they’ll have to be punished by having to posses the extremely crappy rest of the CDs. Unless they choose good artists, in which case it’s not a problem.

    People would stop listening to crappy artists if they had to support them, and crappy artists would take a hit. At least in a perfect world ;)

  6. @srilyk

    I agree in a perfect world you should just force them to pay.

    Since it is easier to target one person making something available to 1,000’s of people than it is to target one person who steals it and then disappears, that is what makes sense.

    Think of it as targeting drug dealers rather than jailing all drug users. The only solution is proper parenting and a world that makes sense, but you need to go after the dealers anyway, it isn’t a perfect world.

    The irony is that they won’t sell it to people, they partner up with DRM distributors and crappy software.

    I wonder if they should open a paypal account and start giving amnesty and receipts to people who pay for the music that they already have. (Then use this info to force the board to offer DRM free music)

    @ross, thank you very much, I suppose if it bothers me so much I could change the style sheet. I just wanted to bitch about something I guess.

    Thanks Shadyman, I was looking for the link that let me do that, couldn’t find it yesterday.

  7. Has anyone bothered to look further on this? she won because they went after her, and she had not been doing anything wrong. she was not downloading media without the owners permission. this only changes the fact that they will be much more careful about collecting proof as to who the user is before they start legal action. read it yourself this is the court statement.
    http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDFfull.asp?filename=atlantic_andersen_080514AttorneysFeesOpinion107834

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