The
Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) is being sued by a grandmother from
Texas after the organisation claimed that the woman was sharing files illegally.
Rhonda Crain, from Beaumont, East Texas, was accused of downloading over 500
files and threatened with a fine of $150,000 for each file.
An investigation subsequently revealed that some of the 'offending' files
were not even sound files, and that none of them belonged to members of the
RIAA.
Court
papers filed by Crain stated that the RIAA's actions "amount to extortion"
.
The case hinges on the RIAA's use of private investigators to track down
files which it believed had been stolen.
Under Texas law all private investigators must be licensed by the state in
which they operate, and it appears that the RIAA investigators had not obtained
a licence.
The last month has been a difficult one for the RIAA. The organisation is
fighting two cases, one for
malicious
prosecution and one for
extortion, both of which
arose after apparently mistaken claims of intellectual property theft.
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