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Extort Reform
by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

Your Darling, Your Diva, Your One True Love cares about you and hopes you’re well. Summer is slipping away like a quiet blonde who attends high school in another town. The war plugs along distantly, poisonously. Turning on the news or opening a paper has long since become a minefield of confusing mental images. To escape, we plug in out iPods or tune to Jack radio: no commercials, no news, nobody with a Molotov since the seventies.
 
Funny then, when this rounds the corner: a 41-year-old disabled single mother was sued by the RIAA for downloading gangster rap songs. Tanya Anderson says she didn’t, and that the RIAA trespassed against her by rifling through her computer files without her permission. Further, Anderson’s countersued.
 
How long has the RIAA been strong-arming the essentially defenseless? Why has it taken so long for someone to sue them back? Have people been countersuing all along and nobody’s said anything about it? Your Delight can’t say, but she can say this: read the suit. It’s an eye-opener. Even if you know nothing about the law, you can understand this:

10. When Ms. Andersen contacted Settlement Support Center, she was advised that her personal home computer had been secretly entered by the record companies’agents, MediaSentry.

Or:

12. Settlement Support Center threatened that if Ms. Andersen did not immediately pay them, the record companies would bring an expensive and disruptive federal lawsuit using her actual name and they would get a judgment for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Or:

15. An employee of Settlement Support Center admitted to Ms. Andersen that he believed that she had not downloaded any music. He explained, however, that Settlement Support Center and the record companies would not quit their debt collection activities because to do so would encourage other people to defend themselves against the record companies’ claims.

You don’t have to be a genius to mutter under your breath, “If I did that it’d be called extortion. Where are the Feds?”
 
That, dear friends, is the best question of all.
 

 

©2005 Robin Pastorio-Newman

All material ©2001,2002 Sean Carolan, except as noted.

Today's NY/NJ Shows That Matter

Saturday, February 4, 2012
 
Skrillex at Terminal 5
 
John Wesley Harding's Cabinet Of Wonders w, Edie Brickell, Punch Brothers, Josh Ritter and more at City Winery
 
John McEuen (x-Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) at Sanctuary Concerts, Chatham NJ (sanctuaryconcerts.org)
 
Dixie Bee Liners, Glimmer Grass Band and Thomas Wesley Stern at Strand Theatre
 
Uli Jon Roth & Leslie West at Starland Ballroom
 
Laura Crisci at Brookdale Performing Arts Center
 
Raul Midon at Outpost In The Burbs, Montclair (outpostintheburbs.org)
 
Saturday Afternoon Song Swap w, Bruce Tunkel, Tom Kanach, Alice Genese, Michael Brett, Dale Burleyson and Brian Muni at Rockin' Joe, Millburn (4:30p)
 
Harper Blynn at Living Room
 
American Babies at Rockwood Music Hall
 
Joe Lewis Walker at Stanhope House
 
Tragedy at Asbury Lanes
 
Lightning Jar, Matt Witte and Devils Holiday at Trinity & The Pope
 
 
More NY/NJ Shows That Matter