RIAA vs. The Kids!

A 16-year-old boy is accusing the recording industry of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats.

Hell yeah!

The kid, Robert Santangelo, is being sued by five record companies who are accusing him of online music piracy. Santangelo was as 11 when the alleged piracy occurred, and denies he ever disseminated music. In fact, he says it's impossible to prove that he did. He also appears to be the target of the record biz’s wrath and is being used as an example to others.

Check this out…

The kid is the son of Patti Santangelo, a 42-year-old suburban mother of five who was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2005. She refused to settle, took her case public and became a champion to supporters of Internet freedom. The industry dropped its case against her but turned around and sued Robert and his sister Michelle, now 20, in federal court! Even worse, Michelle has been ordered to pay $30,750 in a default judgment because she never even responded to the lawsuit. Ain’t that some f***ed up s**t???

Santangelo’s attorney is demanding a jury trial and filing a counterclaim against the RIAA that accuses them of damaging the boy's reputation, distracting him from school and costing him legal fees.

He claims the boy “never sent copyrighted music to others, that the recording companies promoted file sharing before turning against it, that average computer users were never warned that it was illegal, that the statute of limitations has passed, and that all the music claimed to have been downloaded was actually owned by his sister on store-bought CDs.”

Bets of all, they say that the record companies, which have filed more than 18,000 piracy lawsuits in federal courts, "have engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud the courts of the United States." The papers allege that the companies, "ostensibly competitors in the recording industry, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and public policy" by bringing the piracy cases jointly and using the same agency "to make extortionate threats ... to force defendants to pay."

My hero…

Hosted.ap.org: Teen Accuses Record Companies of Collusion