Chicago lawyer Charles Lee Mudd Jr. will represent the Greubels. Mudd has represented multiple individuals who have been sued by the RIAA since 2003. He said, "The RIAA has misapplied existing copyright law and improperly employed its protections not as a shield, but as a sword. Many of the individuals targeted by the RIAA are not the 'thieves' the RIAA has made them out to be. Moreover, individual defendants typically do not have the resources to mount a full-fledged defensive campaign to demonstrate the injustice of the RIAA's actions. Today we are fortunate that principled artists and a management company, Nettwerk Music Group, have joined the effort to deter the RIAA from aggressive tactics - tactics that have failed to accomplish even the RIAA's goals."
Also fighting the industry is Patricia Santangelo of Wappingers Falls, NY, who has already spent $24,000 fighting an RIAA lawsuit, despite a settlement offer of $3,500. Santangelo says she never downloaded any songs, and if it was done on her computer by her children or their friends it's the fault of the file-sharing program that enabled them to do it. Because of the mounting expenses, she had been forced to drop her previous lawyer, and when she appeared in court on Dec. 22 as her own attorney of record, a lone babe in the legal woods.
But Santanelo too found an angel. Jon Newton, of "The Recording Industry vs The People" blog, said yesterday Thursday that $5,699.63 had been raised online for Santangelo in a campaign he started. That money has enabled her to hire a new attorney.
Newton told the AP by e-mail that the contributions have come from "ordinary kids, musicians, students, moms, dads, writers, waiters, programmers, bus drivers, artists."
"We're trying to help Patti take on what's become the common enemy - the corporate music industry, with its bottomless pockets and legions of lawyers," he said.
Article comments
1 - FYI
The idiot wannabe biglaw firm representing the RIAA in these ridiculous suits is Shook, Hardy & Bacon. Every week hundreds of new cases are filed by Shook, Hardy against average joes. Most elite firms wouldn't represent the RIAA on this, but this firm wanted the cash and the RIAA wanted the lower rates (their HQ is in KC, MO).
Don't like this sleazy wannabe big law firm doing this? Let them know.
The head of their IP department is Mike Gross. Give him a piece of your mind at mgross AT shb.com (you need to put in the @ sign)
A top associate there is Jesse Camacho. Give him a piece of your mind on this at jcamacho AT shb.com (you need to put in the @ sign)
Flood them with e-mails on how it's despicable for a firm that wishes to have a good rep in IP to represent the RIAA. It's a disgrace and extremely unprofessional.
2 - Mark Saleski
interesting how there's unethical behavior at the opposite extremes of this issue.
i've always been against the tactics of the riaa and major labels, thinking they more or less completely miss the point on downloading.
on the other hand (and you can see this in the commentary about downloading not being the end of the music industry) i'm not so fond of the attitude that everything must be free.
3 - Bliffle
Maybe Ford Motor Company oughta sue some of their old customers who switched to Toyota to force them to either pay for a Ford or buy one.
4 - FYI
"on the other hand (and you can see this in the commentary about downloading not being the end of the music industry) i'm not so fond of the attitude that everything must be free."
I'm not either, but instead of truly seeing the huge revenue streams that can come from legal downloading (itunes is one great example), the RIAA is just hell-bent on extorting average joes who get "Free" music. It's not like other civil lit where the plaintiff is trying to get rich: instead they are trying to ruin people, to beat them down.
I am shocked that with all this RIAA crap it doesn't dawn on the RIAA to have the labels under it sell CD's cheaper or to urge them to set up sites where you can buy songs cheap.
The RIAA thinks that stealing $3k from a joe schomo is going to make them buy $15-20 CD's, but in fact all the RIAA is doing is making people less accepting of purchasing CD's.
5 - Eric Olsen
I have thought all along the answer was to license sharing at the pipeline, divide the proceeds a la ASCAP/BMI, and then let people do what they want.
It astonishes me that the majors want to RAISE the price to iTunes, etc. in the face of relative success there. Do they think people will buy MORE music if the price goes up? It's insane
6 - Richard Allen
How about equating the RIAA as a racist organization only out to sue white people and force them into buying all the rap and hip hop music so the music business won't collapse.
Hundreds of people here in NYC selling all sorts of MP3's on DVD and hard drives and on Ebay...yet not a single black person gets sued!
20 white high school kids in rural Michigan...why not 20 black kids in Harlem or South Central....NEVER HAPPEN!
Notice only WHITE colleges.........name me one black college that belongs to the United Negro college fund.. that got sued?????????
Or that Black DJ who got into a fight and arrested in Pittsburgh.....all illegal music and a multi-op....but where is the RIAA???? out to lunch!
I would love to use this as a defense and demand discovery of their documents who they sued by race, location, and how much they settled for...!!!!!
And if any of my friends get sued....QUOTAS is QUOTAS, i want an equal amount of black people sued......if that happens Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will be all over the news saying why are they picking on young black kids????????
So how do we get the RIAA to start suing black people, lets see some 13 year old black kids on TV and their parents forking over $2500 to the RIAA.....????