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By Eric Bangeman

A US District Court judge in Oregon has reaffirmed a magistrate's award of attorneys' fees and the dismissal of exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen's counterclaims against the RIAA without prejudice so that her class-action lawsuit against the record labels can move ahead.

Andersen, a disabled single mother who resides in Oregon, was sued by the RIAA in February 2005 for distributing gangster rap over KaZaA using the handle "gotenkito." She denied all of the RIAA's allegations and filed the now-dismissed counterclaims in October of that year. After over two years of contentious filings and allegations of misconduct by the RIAA's investigators, Atlantic v. Andersen was dismissed with prejudice after the record labels decided to drop the case.

Andersen was awarded attorneys' fees by the magistrate overseeing the case in September of last year, a decision that was quickly appealed by the RIAA. In a ruling noticed this morning by copyright attorney Ray Beckerman, Judge James A. Redden agreed with the magistrate's findings, writing that "the court's order dismissing Andersen's claims without prejudice provide a sufficient 'judicial imprimatur' on the 'alteration of the legal relationship of the parties' to justify conferring prevailing party status on Andersen."

Judge Redden also upheld the magistrate's decision to dismiss her counterclaims without prejudice so that they could be heard as part of a malicious prosecution lawsuit filed by Andersen last June after the RIAA's case was dismissed, citing the "interests of judicial economy and comprehensive litigation."

Andersen's malicious prosecution lawsuit accuses the RIAA of invasion of privacy, deceptive business practices, libel, slander, and a host of other misdeeds, saying that the RIAA has "engaged in a coordinated enterprise to pursue a scheme of threatening and intimidating litigation in an attempt to maintain its music distribution monopoly." Her complaint contains some very disturbing allegations, including one that labels attempted to contact her then eight-year-old daughter under false pretenses without Andersen's permission.

Andersen is seeking class-action status for her lawsuit, which would allow anyone who was "sued or were threatened with sued by Defendants for file-sharing, downloading or other similar activities, who have not actually engaged in actual copyright infringement" to join the lawsuit. The RIAA has denied any wrongdoing and has moved for dismissal of the lawsuit.

GREAT POST SHMOO..

MOVE FORWARD WITH THE CLASS ACTION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE SEZ I.
~Code

How about a new website " SCREW-THE_RIAA.com

Let us all not forget that before all this started Ms Andersen was a case manager at the DOJ, someone who knows what you have to do to run a class-action suit.

This is the proverbial "wrong person" that we all were waiting for the RIAA to sue.

"the court's order dismissing Andersen's claims without prejudice provide a sufficient 'judicial imprimatur' on the 'alteration of the legal relationship of the parties' to justify conferring prevailing party status on Andersen."

Could someone please translate this into English? My legalese is terrible. LOL

"Andersen is seeking class-action status for her lawsuit, which would allow anyone who was "sued or were threatened with sued by Defendants for file-sharing, downloading or other similar activities, who have not actually engaged in actual copyright infringement" to join the lawsuit."

Let the bodies hit the floor.... let the bodies hit the floor ...

*props to Tanya Andersen*

-Dave

""the court's order dismissing Andersen's claims without prejudice provide a sufficient 'judicial imprimatur' on the 'alteration of the legal relationship of the parties' to justify conferring prevailing party status on Andersen."

"Could someone please translate this into English? My legalese is terrible. LOL""

In the simplest of terms -- it means this judge decided he wasn't going to be good buddies with the RIAA and actually do whats fair. Where as a lot of the other judges shared the same political views as the RIAA. Even if this judge agreed with the RIAA's views (which has been neither confirmed nor denied) he did support the obvious in that the RIAA's actions against the infringement were unconstitutional, bias, cruel, unusual and overall completely unfair and a total crock of bullshit. He realized that what the RIAA is trying to do would be like giving someone the death penalty for doing 15mph over the speed limit.

-Dave

"How about a new website SCREW-THE_RIAA.com" ... no, the RIAA has done the screwing, including screwing themselves. lol

how about SUEtheRIAA.com? lol ... perhaps leflaw can register that and charitably donate the url to Ms. Andersen?

-Dace

"This is the proverbial "wrong person" that we all were waiting for the RIAA to sue."

Reminds me of something that happened in Chicago awhile back. If you have too many unpaid traffic tickets, they put a boot on your car. It's a metal lock that goes on one of the wheels that keeps you from being able to drive it. Which I think is unconstitutional. I think suspending a persons license would be better. If your license is suspended, you can always SELL your car -- which is your personal property -- until your license is reactivated.

Anyways -- one day they nailed the wrong person with the boot -- A LAWYER. Who sued the shit out of the city, and won. The boot policy was suspended for awhile and then put back into active enforcement. You'd think they'd learn from the mistake and replace the boot with license suspension, but nope. I guess they're just aching for another rich person to take them to the cleaners again.

-Dave

Dave, thanx for the explanation. Much appreciated!

You're welcome.

-Dave