Let me be among the first to wish a merry Christmas to Rhonda Crain, a grandmother who was displaced by Hurricane Rita in 2005 and has been under legal attack by the RIAA for roughly three years.
The RIAA dropped their monetary claims against her recently, not because of her housing situation or the fact that she adamantly denied ever participating in any illegal file-sharing. No, the RIAA dropped their claims because MediaSentry, the multimedia copyright law company hired by the RIAA to fleece Ms. Crain, is not a licensed investigator in Crain’s home state of Texas. Whoops!
Crain has filed a counterclaim, presumably stating “b-but you guys ruined my life for a pretty long time.” The RIAA is (understandably, I guess) trying to keep it from getting too far. In the meantime, the labels have asked that the judge issue a demand that Crain not engage in copyright infringement anymore and delete all of the files that she cannot account for to begin with.
I will end this story with a quote from Crain who, I will remind you, had her home destroyed by a hurricane in September 2005:
"For the last three years [I have] been living a nightmare, thanks to Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal, and Sony/BMG's RIAA," (Emphasis added)
