Eliot Van Buskirk

P2P Defendant Forces RIAA to Drop Case

Current and future defendants of RIAA lawsuits would do well to make a copy of a letter sent by Merl Ledford III, Esq., the lawyer representing one such defendant, to the record labels’ legal team. Ledford makes several strong points in his attempt to encourage the RIAA to step off. Among others, he points out […]

Stepoff
Current and future defendants of RIAA lawsuits would do well to make a copy of a letter sent by Merl Ledford III, Esq., the lawyer representing one such defendant, to the record labels' legal team.

Ledford makes several strong points in his attempt to encourage the RIAA to step off. Among others, he points out that MediaSecurity's tactics for identifying copyright infringers on P2P networks is faulty, that the RIAA lawyer who sent the letter is not licensed to practice law in California where his clients live, and that his clients should not be forced to explain why their internet account was used to download pornographic gangsta rap.

"Your client[s] take the position that my middle-aged, conservative clientsshould speculate regarding the identity of persons your clients' claimused their AOL account to download pornographic-lyric gangsta raptracks as predicate to possible case resolution. In an age ofWintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP
encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the onlytech-savvy response to such a request is, 'You've got to be kidding.'"

RIAA lawyers apparently dropped the case upon receipt of the letter.

(on recordingindustryvsthepeople; image from pponline)