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In many cases, RIAA has won through legal means the right to charge thousands of dollars people accused of copyright infringement. What is really irritating for many people is that there was no hard and definite evidence that the people involved actually committed those cyber-crimes like sharing music and films through peer-to-peer networks.

While we do understand the negative impact of the piracy on the sales of music and films, we cannot be but astonished on the methods and procedures employed by RIAA. For starters, we do not know for sure where are those money (coming from fines) going – because if we know that it is being transferred to the artists – that would be one great thing, but there are cases when artists themselves filed lawsuits against RIAA – so that doesn’t go well either. Secondly, the methods are very inappropriate and vary from threats to legal abuses – for example – there was a case in December 2005 that was filed by RIAA against an old lady who died towards the end of 2004 – obviously you can see here the ridiculous situation they were in. The old lady probably didn’t even know what MP3 was as she didn’t have a computer either, let alone use it. So, you see, this is more than a question of accuracy in how they get their details, but also of morality. RIAA’s response was:” "Our evidence gathering and our subsequent legal actions all were initiated weeks and even months ago.  We will now, of course, obviously dismiss this case." – I would classify this answer as “mechanical” and “typically generated” – as if they are robots, with no human traits whatsoever.

The latest lawsuit was intended by RIAA against Yolanda Rodriguez, who was accused of downloading and distributing copyrighted works, but they did not offer any specific evidence or proof of such claims. Another typical “boiler complaint” case as it was commonly referred to. For some reason, the Defendant did not show up at the court, however, the presiding judge, Jude Brewster, gave a very straight answer to RIAA’s claims: “The Court (…) finds that the complaint fails to sufficiently state a claim upon which relief can be granted and entry of default judgment is not warranted." So, finally, a wise decision – which might turn out into a precedent – RIAA will have to document themselves much better from now on and be ready with hard evidence before throwing out accusations.