[TankGirl]

Daily Texan has an interesting story giving a detailed account on how RIAA persuades people to settle their copyright infringement cases out of court.

Selling settlements

I found myself talking to a representative for The Settlement Service Center in Seattle, a business that conducts settlement negotiations with individuals who have been sued. I pretended to be a distressed student who just received a letter from Time Warner. I asked the man what the documents meant.

"There has been a John Doe lawsuit filed against your IP address. The letter you have received from Time Warner is an indication to you that the law firm of Mitchell, Silberberg, and Knupp in Los Angeles, attorneys for the record company, is seeking the personal information associated with that IP address."

I asked him what that meant.

"Time Warner will turn that info over to the law firm in a matter of days, and the letter is your opportunity to appear in court, if you wish to argue why or why not that information should be leaked. Nobody has won that argument, yet," he added.

Recalling what Sarwal said, I told him that it couldn't possibly have been me, that it was probably my roommates.

"If this is a roommate situation, you are still the one singled out, because you are the account holder for the Internet connection. You are responsible for activity on that account."

I told him that wasn't very fair.

"You should settle with us and dispose of the situation, sir. If your roommates were the ones who actually did the downloading, and you never partook in downloading or listening to music or what not, you might be able to approach them and say, 'we have a problem, help me out here.' But at this point in time you will be the one who will remain on the subpoena."

He didn't mention that this was a fact I could bring up in court. He was trying to sell me on settling.

"And the roommates. We don't have any information pertaining to them, and they will not be pursued at this time," he said ominously.

I asked him if my credit would be affected. Would I be reported to any agencies?

"Not at this time; you are a John Doe. If the situation moves forward where I am not able to negotiate a settlement with you, it will go into a named situation, where you will be named in a federal lawsuit."

My shoulders felt heavier, and I felt my heart beat, panicked, even though I was just pretending to be sued.

This would really, really suck in real life.

"You will be served with a complaint and a summons to appear in court, and by that time your name will be public knowledge to all those people interested in who's being sued by whom."

Was he implicating the media, or was I just feeling guilty?

"It won't affect your credit at this point," he continued. "But if you are named in a federal lawsuit, it could also affect your job opportunities, because on employment applications, many times they will ask, 'have you ever been party to a lawsuit?'

"And you would have to check 'yes' at that time, because that would be public knowledge," he said.

I thanked him for his time and said farewell, but not before he again assured me that I should settle.

In January, the Big Music Mafia boasted it had launched another 717 lawsuits against people who share music online, bringing the total number of those victimized to a shocking 8,423. If each one of these victims settled at the pre-inflated average of $3,000, then the RIAA is set to make an easy $25,269,000.

In the light of these numbers bullying people into submission with ligitation threats is starting to be a considerable source of income for the record cartel. None of this money goes to the artists, of course.