This article was printed in the Sunday July 1, 2007 Oregononian of Portland, OR. It is worth your while to read this article...
Music Goliath unloads on wrong David
A nontechie Beaverton mom, accused of stealing songs, turns the turntables on recording industry
Sunday, July 01, 2007
ASHBEL S. GREEN
The Oregonian
Tanya Andersen doesn't own an iPod. She didn't stand in line at the mall Friday to buy an iPhone. Until recently, the 44-year-old single mother from Beaverton belonged to the ultimate tech dinosaur: a mail-order CD club.
"I'm not a techie person," she acknowledges.
And yet, quite by accident she has become an Internet hero of sorts -- and an improbable legal pioneer in a battle pitting privacy and technology groups against a recording industry that has unleashed an aggressive legal strategy to combat widespread digital piracy.
Andersen suffers from crippling migraines, fibromyalgia, anxiety and depression. She lives in a modest two-story apartment and supports herself and her 10-year-old daughter with disability payments.
She certainly was not looking for a fight when the multibillion-dollar recording industry mistakenly accused her of illegally downloading music in 2005.
Andersen explained that she didn't know how to download music and offered to have her computer inspected. But industry officials said the only way she could end the case was to pay thousands of dollars -- money she didn't have.
She found a lawyer to take her case -- and that's when the fight got ugly.
Industry lawyers accused her of downloading rap songs at 4 a.m. When a computer expert determined no songs had been downloaded, the lawyers didn't drop the case, they demanded to interrogate Andersen, her friends -- even her daughter, Kylee.
The last straw was when a woman claiming to be Kylee's grandmother called her school to see whether she was in attendance.
"I just believe this is really wrong," Andersen said. "This just should not be allowed."
The recording industry finally dropped its case in June. But Andersen filed her suit because she said she has lost too much in the past few years.
"They've called me a liar, a thief. I've had to constantly defend myself. I've had to give up a big part of my own life. The fear I've lived with. My daughter. The things she's had to go through. It's messed with relationships I've had," she said.
"They've caused a lot of damage in my life, so I want to go after that."
Individuals targeted
The recording industry has lost billions of dollars in CD sales since the late 1990s, when technology made it easy to swap songs for free over the Internet.
After taking on some of the businesses that made it easy to illegally share files, in 2003 the industry went after individuals it suspected of illegally downloading music.
So far, the industry has taken legal action against about 21,000 people.
Those who support a free and unfettered Internet say the industry drift-net approach has scooped up lots of innocent victims. But most end up paying several thousand dollars to settle rather than mount an expensive legal fight.
"More often than not, they've sued a person who's never done any file-sharing," said Ray Beckerman, a New York copyright lawyer who runs a blog called Recording Industry vs. the People.
Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America, defended the campaign against music piracy.
"Our objective is to not be in court, it is to protect the rights of the labels who invest in music and bring it to the public. This is a community that has experienced a multibillion-dollar drop in sales over the last several years, primarily due to piracy, and that has led to real economic and cultural harm. Thousands of regular working-class people have been laid off. This is not a victimless crime," Lamy said in a statement.
Lamy said he would not discuss Andersen's case.
Began with a letter
Andersen said it started with a letter from a law firm in 2005 saying she had been sued and owed money.
"I thought this thing was a scam," she said.
Eventually, she started getting calls from an outfit called the Settlement Support Center.
"They started calling me and calling me and telling me you owe us this money and it's hundreds of thousands of dollars," she said.
It took a while, but Andersen finally learned that they accused her of downloading more than 1,200 songs, including a lot of gangsta rap.
Andersen, who listens to country and soft rock, was shocked.
"I told him that's absolutely not me," she said. "He said, 'Well, you need to pay anyway. You need to pay and we won't go away.' "
Finally, one official told her that he believed she was probably innocent. But Andersen says he told her that "once we started a lawsuit, we don't stop it because it would encourage other people."
She offered to show them her computer, but she was turned down.
"What are we supposed to do? Check everyone's computer who says they're innocent?" she was told.
Six months later, she was served a federal lawsuit while eating dinner with her daughter.
Andersen, who used to work in the Oregon Department of Justice as a case manager, knew she needed a lawyer. She did research. She found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which helped her find Lory R. Lybeck, a Washington lawyer who agreed to take the case -- and get paid only if he wins.
"He believed in me and was willing to take that on," she said.
Attorneys for the industry continued to refuse to inspect her computer.
"They didn't want to see it," she said.
Finally, a judge ordered an inspection, which found no song files.
"They still continued anyway. They didn't drop the case," Andersen said. "And all this time, you're still accused the whole time like you've done this."
Industry lawyers accused her of using an Internet name she said wasn't hers. Lybeck matched it with the MySpace account of a young man from Everett, Wash. The industry lawyers said they couldn't find him. Andersen said she found his phone number and address on the Internet in a few minutes.
Lawyers for the recording industry simply upped the pressure, demanding to interview her daughter under oath.
"At 10 years old, she had to go in and give a deposition," Andersen said. "I was in there five, six hours. Fell apart several times. Very much into your privacy. Asking extremely embarrassing, humiliating questions, and I don't even know why."
They contacted her friends, relatives, an ex-boyfriend. All had to take time out to submit to interviews under oath.
"It felt like you were being very violated and very interrogated," she said.
Industry lawyers tried one last tack: They would drop the case if she would drop the countercharges she had filed.
"I said no, because I've had a lot of damages through this. This isn't right," Andersen said. "That's two years of my life I'll never get back."
The stress of the litigation aggravated her medical problems.
"It was like they were always breathing down my neck," she said.
And it began to scare her daughter, who asked what would happen if they lost.
"Are we going to have food to eat? Are we going to have a place to live?"
Andersen's case gradually came to the attention of bloggers who write about technology and intellectual property law. They largely championed her cause. They saw her as a perfect foil against the industry's legal strategy.
They cheered when the industry dropped its suit against her in early June.
They roared last week when Andersen fired back with her own suit, which seeks to obtain damages for all she's been through, punish the industry for its bad behavior and put a stop to its legal campaign.
"Sue 'em out of existence, Tanya!" wrote one blog reader.
"Attagirl!" wrote another.
"She is my Hero!"
On a legal blog called Groklaw, Pamela Jones wrote: "We may be watching history being made before our eyes."
Andersen said she's still getting comfortable with her Web fame. She knows that there are other people like her out there, and she says it's important to keep on with the legal case.
"I'm hoping that it will help someone else," she said. "That's what I want."
Ashbel "Tony" Green: 503-221-8202;
tonygreen@news.oregonian.com
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