Business Week throws some reporting power at the story behind one of the RIAA’s suits against file-sharers. It’s the seamy case of Tanya Anderson, who is a 45-year-old single mom living on disability in Oregon. The Anderson case has been a poster child in the protests against the RIAA’s Soprano’s-style tactics.

The RIAA uses an investigative company, MediaSentry, to round up IP addresses of file-sharers off the internets. It then extracts the names of the corresponding users from the companies that provide internet service, and then sends notes to the users, saying they’re about to be sued. Then it funds a debt-collection-style phone bank, which starts to dun the users with calls, trying to get them to settle the case before trial, generally for $4000 or $5000.

The RIAA seems to have made a mistake in Anderson’s case, and their tactics were reprehensible from top to bottom. Here’s just one example:

Over the next few months, [lawyer Lory R.] Lybeck and the record industry tussled over Andersen’s computer. The court ordered Andersen to hand over the computer, and the RIAA took it to an expert so it could be searched for signs of music piracy. But then the industry’s lawyers refused to release the expert’s report. Ultimately, Donald C. Ashmanskas, the U.S. District Court judge overseeing the case in Portland, ordered the RIAA to turn over the information, which it did in January, 2007. The result? No evidence of piracy.

There’s a happy ending, too:

Lybeck was convinced his defense was airtight. On May 14, he asked the Portland court for summary judgment. Ashmanskas gave the RIAA until June 1 to provide more evidence linking Andersen to the alleged infringement. In the week leading up to the deadline, the RIAA told Andersen it would drop its case if she agreed not to pursue counterclaims. She refused. Finally on the deadline, industry lawyers dropped the case without conditions and agreed not to sue Andersen again.

Worth reading. All that said, I thought one part of the story didn’t fit. For one, Anderson admits she had downloaded KaZaa onto her computer, though according to the story she didn’t use it:

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.”

An innocent single mom in Oregon, living on disability… who at some point knew enough about computers and file-sharing to download Kazaa to her computer. And if the RIAA got on her trail, it’s possible that she was actually running the program. It doesn’t quit fit. Her daughter, eight at the time she was sued, doesn’t seem to be a factor, but the story doesn’t ask the question of whether Anderson had ever let friends use her computer.

That aside, no one deserves to go through what Anderson did. Here’s what she told p2pnet in an earlier story:

Through this lawsuit, I’ve been humiliated, embarrassed, shamed, and my privacy has been greatly violated by the other side.

They not only deposed my 10-year-old daughter, but, deposed my grown step-kids (who I’ve long been divorced from the father), friends, etc.

At one point, they even tracked down and called my new landlord. I had been living here for only one month. They’ve asked and investigated quite a bit of extremely personal information, which was very humiliating.

As you know, I never did what the RIAA accused me of. There was no need for this lawsuit to ever even take place. I did everything humanly possible from the day I received the first letter to tell them there was a mistake. I even offered for my computer to be looked at from the beginning. They didn’t want to listen. I’ll never under why they continued to put me through the drug out nightmare that they have.

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Business Week: “Does she look like a music pirate?” [Link via Slashdot.]