16 year old sues the US record industry for collusion

Posted by PP on 01/02/07

Apparently there was a lawsuit going on where five undisclosed record labels sued a 16 year old for piracy which occured when he was 11 years old. He of course denies all this and says it is impossible to prove what he did, and has filed a countersuit against the record industry, accusing them of violating the antitrust laws and of conspiring to defraud the courts.


Here's a quote from the actual article:


A 16-year-old boy being sued by five record companies accusing him of online music piracy accused the recording industry on Tuesday of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats.


In papers responding to the record companies' lawsuit, Robert Santangelo, who was as young as 11 when the alleged piracy occurred, denied ever disseminating music and said it's impossible to prove that he did.


His defenses to the industry's lawsuit include that he 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.


Robert Santangelo also claims 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."

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