Does She Look Like a Music Pirate?

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What Pirates Want: The most popular content on the Web networks for sharing copyrighted material Week ending Apr. 18; Data: BigChampagne

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The SSC made its collections by hiring people such as Mark Eilers, an ex-police officer. He called Andersen repeatedly in February and March, she says, reiterating the demand that she pay thousands of dollars. Over the course of the calls. Eilers told her she had shared 1,288 songs on May 20, 2004, at 4:24 a.m. under the screen name Gotenkito. She maintained they had the wrong person and offered to let them look at her computer. She says Eilers told her Verizon had already verified that the illegal activity had come from her home, specified by what's known as an IP (for Internet Protocol) address. Andersen asked to speak with the record industry's lawyers and get a copy of the information they had about her. Eilers said no to both requests, says Andersen. Eilers, who no longer works for the industry, says he doesn't recall speaking with Andersen.

During the summer of 2005, after Eilers stopped calling, Andersen assumed the RIAA had moved on. Then on Aug. 26, while she was having dinner with her daughter, Kylee, there was a knock on the door. Kylee got up to open it, and Andersen followed. A woman standing at the door handed Andersen a piece of paper and said: "There, you have been served," Andersen recalls. In her hand were papers for a federal lawsuit filed against her. "I sat down and I read it. I'm like, "What do I do now?' I'm a single mom. I'm supporting a kid. This is going to destroy my whole life," she says.

Andersen quickly started looking for a lawyer. She searched the Net for a case like hers, although she wasn't sure how she would be able to pay someone on her $1,400 monthly disability check. One local Oregon lawyer suggested she accept a default guilty judgment and then declare bankruptcy. But Andersen had been through bankruptcy before, after her pregnancy with Kylee. She wasn't about to do it again.

Finally she called Lory R. Lybeck, a Seattle lawyer who was handling a similar case. They talked on the phone, then Lybeck sent one of his lawyers down to meet Andersen. "I said to myself, either she's a good actor and a good liar, or what they have done to her is really crummy," Lybeck says. He took the case on contingency, meaning he gets paid only if Andersen collects damages from the recording industry.

Lybeck is a compact 52-year-old with a brawler's attitude. He spent the early part of his legal career at a large litigation firm representing companies such as Chrysler, and in 1992, he set up his own two-person shop. Since then, he has gone after major corporations and government institutions for alleged wrongdoing. "I dislike arrogant bullies," Lybeck says.

What struck him about the RIAA was its negotiation tactics. The record labels accused people of downloading songs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, but they set the settlement price at a few thousand. Paying was cheaper than hiring a lawyer. "To me, that says this isn't about lawsuits, it's about an extortion campaign," says Lybeck. The RIAA's Gabriel says: "Our goal isn't to bankrupt people; our goal is to send a message that copyright infringement is wrong and get some compensation for the infringement."

As Andersen and the attorney prepared their defense in 2006, his conviction grew. Yes, Andersen had installed on her computer a software program, KaZaA, for sharing music over the Net—one reason the RIAA suspected her. But Andersen deleted the program after a few months and didn't appear ever to have used it. Plus, some of the music Andersen had supposedly shared online just didn't fit her taste. The songs included rap tunes with titles like I Stab People and Dope Nose.

NUMEROUS ERRORS

Lybeck also became convinced that there are fundamental flaws in how the RIAA uses IP addresses to identify suspects. MediaSentry is the investigative firm the record industry employs to track pirates. When MediaSentry sees people swapping music on file-sharing services such as KaZaA, it records their IP addresses and user names. Then it goes to Verizon Communications or another Internet service provider to find out who was using that IP address at the time of the piracy.