Florida defendant goes after RIAA for fraud, conspiracy, and extortion
June 4, 2007In this case, Del Cid accuses the plaintiffs of computer trespass, fraud, and abuse, saying that they "intruded into Del Cid's personal computer to obtain information." If Del Cid was indeed on Kazaa, or any other file-sharing network, she will have a hard time convincing a judge that MediaSentry trespassed. "There's no reasonable expectation of privacy, given [Kazaa's] settings," Rich Vasquez, a partner at Morgan Miller Blair, noted when discussing a similar claim in Atlantic v. Andersen.
Vasquez believes that in order for the RIAA to be vulnerable to claims of malicious prosecution in cases like this, someone involved on the music industry's side would have to flip. "It would likely take someone on the inside testifying that the RIAA pursued people that it knew were innocent," Vazquez told Ars. "Then there would be a serious risk of malicious prosecution. But you've got to have them cold."
This article was originally published in ars technica, June 4, 2007 issue, and is linked here by permission for web use.