RIAA Drops Claims Against Hurricane Evacuee Grandmother

RIAA Lawyers have dropped their monetary claims against Rhonda Crain, a grandmother who had been forced to leave her home due to Hurricane Rita and who claimed never to have shared music online.

Those factors didn't play into their decision. The RIAA withdrew its claims because Crain's lawyer pointed out that MediaSentry, the company retained by the RIAA to identify alleged copyright infringers on file sharing networks, is not a licensed investigator in the state of Texas. Crain had filed a counterclaim, which the RIAA apparently doesn't want heard. The Attorney General of Oregon is pursuing the same strategy in a similar case, Arista v. Does 1-17.

By dropping the claims, the RIAA doesn't have to risk having the judge invalidate MediaSentry's validity as an investigator, which could affect other cases. The labels have asked that the judge issue an injunction (PDF on ilrweb) that says she has to promise not to infringe on their copyrights in the future and to destroy all copies of the music she says she never downloaded.

The injunction would also bar Crain, who says she has "for the last three years been living a nightmare, thanks to Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal, and Sony/BMG's RIAA," from appealing the verdict
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