THE TECHWEB BLOG

Chicago has figured prominently of late in the RIAA's "sue 'em all" anti-piracy jihad. Earlier this year, a local resident caught in the music industry's dragnet decided to fight back -- calling attention to the curious fact that not even one of these lawsuits has ever made it to trial.

And now, another Windy City resident who experienced a close encounter with a RIAA lawsuit, and who wound up paying one of the group's or-else cash settlements, has decided to file a lawsuit of her own. The target? Kazaa, the now-defunct P2P software maker that, according to plaintiff Catherine Lewan, bamboozled her into downloading and sharing purloined music files.

"Recording Industry Vs The People," a blog run by two New York attorneys who chronicle what they describe as the "RIAA's lawsuits of intimidation brought against ordinary working people," lay out the defendant-turned-victim's allegations against Kazaa.

In her complaint she alleges, among other things, that

- Kazaa deceptively marketed its product as allowing "free downloads" (Complaint, par. 30);

- It designed the software in such a manner as to create a shared files folder and make that folder available to anyone using Kazaa, while at the same time failing to make the user aware that it had done so (Complaint, par. 36-37); and

- It surreptitiously installed "spyware" on users' computers which made the shared files folder accessible to the Kazaa network even after the user had removed the Kazaa software from his or her computer ..."

(A PDF copy of Catherine Lewan's complaint against Kazaa is available online, courtesy of Internet Law & Regulation.)

The lawsuit also seeks class-action status -- an option that may be less attractive than it sounds, given that the average sixteen year-old burger-flipper probably has a bigger net worth than Kazaa at this point.

I personally wonder whether my memory is as sharp as it used to be; as I recall, the Kazaa installer clearly informed users about its shared-folder feature and gave them the opportunity to disable it. I also can't recall having any problem uninstalling the Kazaa client (although some of the "partner" software that sometimes tagged along with Kazaa could be a bit more persistent, to say the least).

Admittedly, computers in general, and networked software in particular, continue to intimidate and confuse far too many users -- often with good reason, given the profoundly user-unfriendly nature of so many applications. Even so, using Kazaa did not exactly require the sharpest computer skills -- and I don't envy anyone the task of convincing a jury that they are so completely inept around the sort of technology that the average nine year-old kid could grok without trying too hard.