This is something important folks, the Oregon district attorney has twice now waded in on the side of alleged fileshareres to blunt the RIAA's cretinous law suit strategy.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140173-page,1/article#The state Attorney General's office this week filed an appeal in U.S. District Court in Oregon calling for an immediate investigation of the evidence presented by the RIAA when it subpoenaed the identities of 17 students at the University of Oregon who allegedly infringed music copyrights. It is the second time in a month that Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers has resisted attempts by the RIAA to force the university to turn over the names of individuals it says shared music illegally.
Officials at the RIAA could not immediately be reached for comment.
"It is a really huge step when the head law enforcement officer of a state wants to investigate the RIAA's evidence-gathering techniques," said Ray Beckerman, a New York-based lawyer who has been defending individuals in RIAA lawsuits.
"The RIAA has been bringing fake copyright infringement lawsuits, the sole purpose of which is to get the names and addresses of John Does,", they then drop the case and try to pressure these individuals into settling based on dubious evidence at best, he said.
The state also questioned whether previous cases suggest that the RIAA may have abused the judicial process by obtaining the identities of suspected copyright infringers and then choosing not to purse litigation. Rather, it used collection firms to leverage payment of "arbitrary sums of money, based on threats and evidence from the data mining.
As stated in the article a investigation of the rather dubious legal methods to obtain personal information that is then used for purposes other than the requested purpose is more than overdue, RIAA corrupt practices should be shown for what they are and they should be forced to compensate all those who have been subjected to strong arm money collection tactics as used by other thug groups like the mafia.
