The Register, the fun British tech news and curmudgeon site, has written about a quietly dropped RIAA lawsuit against a user accused of sharing 2000 songs.
The RIAA said Sarah Ward was sharing 2,000 songs through the KaZaA P2P network exposing her, at $150,000 per offense, to $300,000,000 in penalties. But not only had she never downloaded a song, but as a Macintosh user, she couldn't even run the KaZaA software, which only runs on Windows.
While there are peer-to-peer options for Mac users, this certainly lowers the credibility of the entire RIAA approach. I'm imagining a lawyer whose case goes like this. "So, my client was selected by the same team of elite information gatherers who decided that a 66 year old woman was sharing 2000 songs via a Macintosh, which could not possibly have run the software you accused her of running. What makes you think you got this one right?"
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Excellent point Michael, this really undermines the credibility of the entire operation.
2 - Taloran
Imagine ... undermining the credibility of the RIAA. How ironic is that?