Help Patti Santangelo Fight the RIAA!

20:36.43 - Monday 9th January 2006 (Link to This Entry)

I don't normally go in for causes, and even less so when it's something that doesn't affect me, but just recently the RIAA has gotten far too big for its boots and needs teaching a lesson.

From phpn2t...
Patti is the New York working mother with five children who's decided she's not caving in to Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music or EMI, the multi-billion-dollar members of the Organized Music cartel which has been trying to extort 'settlement' money from her, and more than 17,000 others like her, including school kids.

She is NOT willing to be blackmailed for something she didn't do and when she presents her case to a jury on an as-yet to be determined date, she'll be the first to meet these hard-core, multi-billion-dollar bullies with their teams of PR hacks, their bought-and-paid for politicians, their unimaginably vast financial and legal resources, face-to-face.

And she's doing it alone, without expert help or legal representation.

--- 8< ---

The RIAA is a front established by some of the major music companies to put fear into so-called 'music pirates'. They issue lawsuits like confetti at a wedding and generally settle out of court. They start proceedings not knowing anybody's name, then use bullying tactics to intimidate end users into settling for whatever they can afford... and sometimes everything they have.

This is the same RIAA that sued a 12-year old girl living in the Projects for $2000.
This is the same RIAA that sued a deceased grandmother.
This is the same RIAA that sued a woman who didn't have a working computer.

They've sued a 66-year-old grandmother, a single mother, MIT, Napster, MP3.com, a boatload of students. and even Internet Backbone Providers. Now they're even going after song lyric websites. Pretty soon it's going to be easier to list the people they haven't sued.