Exonerated defendant sues RIAA for malicious prosecution
Former RIAA target Tanya Andersen has sued several major record labels, the parent company of RIAA investigative arm MediaSentry, and the RIAA's Settlement Support Center for malicious prosecution, a development first reported …
Context & Ripple Effects
The suit flips the script on a two-year fight: Tanya Andersen, whom the RIAA pursued and who ended up exonerated, is now the plaintiff, naming the labels, MediaSentry's parent company, and the RIAA's Settlement Support Center as defendants and alleging illegal investigation of US citizens — the full enforcement pipeline rather than any single actor.
The timing matters. Weeks earlier, her own lawyer asked for sanctions and got sanctioned himself, leaving the defense side battered going into this filing. And the enforcement climate around her had been escalating: the RIAA filed suit on June 14, 2007 against college students who declined its discounted settlements, even as May NPD Group data showed its lawsuits had not stopped P2P file sharing. An exonerated target attacking the machine itself is a new posture in that arc.
First-order effects
- The RIAA, its member labels, MediaSentry's parent, and the Settlement Support Center now face direct malicious-prosecution liability, putting the investigative and settlement arms — not just the label plaintiffs — at risk in open court.
- Discovery in the Oregon case forces MediaSentry's evidence-gathering methods and the Settlement Support Center's practices onto the litigation record, where hard-drive inspection safeguards already negotiated in April 2007 show courts were already scrutinizing how evidence was collected.
Second-order effects
- Defendants' counsel across the RIAA's litigation docket gains a working template for counterclaims, raising the effective cost of every future suit just as NPD data showed the campaign failing to curb file sharing.
- The stepped-up campus strategy of suing students who refused discounted settlements now carries counterclaim exposure, complicating the Settlement Support Center's leverage-based model.
Third-order effects
- If the malicious-prosecution theory survives early motions, privately run investigative operations like MediaSentry would face de facto judicial standards for mass-P2P evidence gathering, and the industry's enforcement calculus shifts toward fewer, better-evidenced cases — though whether that means ISP-level remedies or simply slower litigation remains genuinely open.
The trend: The RIAA's sue-the-listener campaign is entering a phase where its own targets and enforcement infrastructure are becoming the litigated parties.