Fight erupts in N.Y. over RIAA efforts to nab music pirates

This is not the first time that the evidence collected by Media Sentry has been raised as an issue in a copyright infringement case such as this, said Ray Beckerman, a New York attorney who has represented several individuals in RIAA cases. However, this is the first time that a defendant has asked for evidence against them to be dismissed on the grounds that it was collected without a private investigator's license, he said.

Some of those cases were settled before the court dealt with the issue, Beckerman said. At least one other such case is still pending.

The pending case involves Arista Records LLC and 17 students at the University of Oregon. That state's Attorney General in November filed an appeal in U.S. District Court in Oregon calling for an immediate probe of the evidence presented by the RIAA when it subpoenaed the identities of 17 students at the University of Oregon for allegedly infringing music copyrights. In a 15-page brief, Oregon's assistant attorney general, Katherine Von Ter Stegge, questioned the tactics used by the RIAA's investigators in gathering evidence against those suspected of illegal file-sharing.

The first time the RIAA's evidence-gathering was challenged was in 2005, when Tanya Andersen was sued by Atlantic Records for copyright violations, Beckerman said. In that case, Andersen filed a counterclaim charging, among other things, that the recording labels had used unlicensed investigators to illegally gather evidence against her. That case was dropped by the music label before a determination was made on Andersen's counterclaim, Beckerman said.

In a similar copyright infringement case in Florida, an individual named Del Cid filed a counterclaim against recording label Universal Music Group, charging the latter with extortion and civil conspiracy involving the use of unlicensed private investigators in the state of Florida. That case was privately settled between the two parties, Beckerman said.

Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman, said the organization will continue to use evidence gathered by Media Sentry to go after illegal music downloaders. He argued that Media Sentry is not an "investigator" under the definition of the New York statute.

"Any evidence collected for our program would not be precluded from our complaints," he said in an e-mailed comment. "The Internet is without boundaries. And therefore the process of enforcing Internet offenses is without boundaries - for anyone.

"When we collect evidence, we do not have geographic information about the individual sharing the songs. We have public info -- an IP address, a sampling of the songs, and the time-stamp of the activity. We do not have their location," Lamy added. So it is not possible at the outset for anyone to know "that they are investigating someone or something in a particular state," he said.