Eminent Domain

The RIAA litigation juggernaut rolls on...

A federal lawsuit filed this week in Rome by the Recording Industry Association of America alleges that Carma Walls, of 117 Morgan St., Rockmart, has infringed on copyrights for recorded music by sharing files over the Internet. The lawsuit seeks an injunction and requests unspecified monetary damages.

The lawsuit states, "“Plaintiffs are informed and believe that Defendant, without the permission or consent of Plaintiffs, has used, and continues to use, an online media distribution system to download the copyrighted recordings, to distribute the copyrighted recordings to the public, and/or to make the copyrighted recordings available for distribution to others."”
...
"“I don't understand this,"” Walls said. "“How can they sue us when we don't even have a computer?"

Walls also noted that his family has only resided at their current address "“for less than a year."” He wondered if a prior tenant of the home had Internet access, then moved, leaving his family to be targeted instead.

Let's take a look at the apparent copyright violations...

[T]he RIAA'’s lawsuit maintains that Carma Walls, through the use of a file-sharing program, has infringed on the copyrights for the following songs: "“Who Will Save Your Soul," Jewel; "Far Behind," Candlebox; "Still the Same,"” Bob Seger; "I Won't Forget You,"” Poison; "“Open Arms," Journey; "Unpretty,"” TLC; No Scrubs,"” TLC; and "Saving All My Love for You,"” Whitney Houston.

Maybe the US Attorney will also file on bad taste charges.

I am a pretty strong supporter of property rights in general as well as intellectual property rights specifically. I do not participate in illegal file sharing for that reason. But this is just insane. If the RIAA has legitimate complaints against people, they are free to file the lawsuit. This situation shows that they might not be doing their homework before filing suit, though. Perhaps they should've investigated who actually lived at that address and for how long. They didn't and now this family has to hire a lawyer to fight this. Many members of the public already hate the RIAA's guts, and this is not helping.