RIAA Sued Under Racketeering Laws. This is an excellent idea. The actions of the RIAA are not very much different from extortion. The question of whether respondents have a case is never addressed, since our tort system favors deeper pockets, and almost all of the respondents choose to settle for a few thousand dollars rather than take on a huge and well-funded opponent in a legal battle that could cost hundreds of thousands.

The RIAA maintain that file-sharing is theft. However, the legal definition of theft is based on depriving an injured party of access or enjoyment of something they would otherwise have had. In perhaps 99.9% of the files swapped, the receiving party would never have purchased the file they received, even if they were somehow aware of the product and had a channel for buying it. In a surprising number of cases, people receiving the file become aware of new music they like, and go buy a product they otherwise would have had no knowledge of. So file sharing really only fits the legal definition of theft when someone receives a file that they would otherwise have paid for and fails to follow up with a purchase. File sharing is therefore sometimes a curious sort of contingent theft, at worst, and a free advertising channel at best.