RIAA Counterclaim for conspiracy to commit extortion upheld

September 23, 2007 at 9:43 pm | Posted in asshole, RIAA | Leave a comment

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has a history of breaking into peopl’es computers, filing John Doe exploratory lawsuits and offering people a settlement in lieu of threatened fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars even when they know the defendants are not responsible.

It appears they may be getting their comeuppance.

The court sustained defendant’s counterclaims for

-trespass to defendant’s personal property based on the RIAA’s having accessed files on Ms. Del Cid’s computer without her permission,
-violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act based on the RIAA’s unauthorized intrusion into defendant’s computer,
-violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act,
-a declaratory judgment of non-infringement, and
-conspiracy to commit extortion, since defendant sufficiently alleged “a peculiar power of coercion possessed by Plaintiffs [by] virtue of their combination, which an individual alone would not possess”.

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/09/5-out-of-6-counterclaims-against-riaa.html