RIAA under scrutiny in counter lawsuit

It turns out that the RIAA may have picked on the wrong customer. A single mother was mistakenly sued by the RIAA for pirating music. She decided to counter the lawsuit with everything but the kitchen sink. From the article [WIRED.com], she is going to hold the RIAA accountable for all sorts of heavy infractions ("RICO violations, fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation, the tort of 'outrage,' and deceptive business practices").

Of particular concern:
- How much the RIAA's lawyers make
- Why the average file sharing settlement fee is $4-5K
- How it decides which file sharers to sue, and which ones not to sue
- Where the settlement money goes (i.e. whether any of it makes it to the artists)

It's no secret that the RIAA is making tons of cash that is not reaching the artists. I don't have any strong feelings about that. It's just that I hate these parasitic, soulless, life stealing, misanthropic, pompous .... where was I?

Consider this: the Nine Inch Nails earned $750,000 [boingboing] in just two days in the Creative Commons download experiment they recently did. That's as much as they would have earned from an entire album cycle. That is a measure of the size of the cheat. I just can't see why the entire music industry hasn't thrown the RIAA out to the curb already. Perhaps this is the beginning.