RIAA facing legal woe

Just under a month ago, the judge hearing Tanya Andersen's claims of malicious prosecution against the RIAA dismissed her claim, giving her a month to refile. At some point today, she intends to do just that, promises her attorney Lory Lybeck. As the judge has said there won't be any more motions to dismiss entertained, this could mean the RIAA is about to have to reveal a lot of its innermost workings:

Lybeck tells Ars that he'll be digging into agreements between the RIAA, RIAA member companies, MediaSentry, and the Settlement Support Sentry. Part of that will involve looking at compensation, like how much MediaSentry gets from each settlement. "I'd love to know what kind of bounty MediaSentry got paid to supply erroneous identities to the RIAA," Lybeck says.

One of the allegations in the amended complaint will involve MediaSentry's status as a private investigator. "MediaSentry claims it is able to gain access to people's hard drives without their permission and collect information," notes Lybeck. "It's illegal because they're not licensed to do that work."

The RIAA isn't keen on having its secret deals revealed - and it's likely that the people at the labels who bankroll the organisation will be less than thrilled at being exposed in this way, too. Normally, if things get sticky for the RIAA on a case like this, they just abandon the case - but that's not an option when you're the accused. It could get very interesting.

[Thanks to Michael M]