P2P CEO and blogger Marc Freedman is serving as an expert consultant and witness in Sony BMG et al v. Kimberly Arellanes, a music copyright infringement lawsuit. Stay tuned here as he follows the case with news, background, and observations. More information on the case and an index of blog entries can be found at Save Our Music.

The U.S. recording industry has filed an outrageous 20,000 lawsuits against Americans for copyright infringement. They insist on $3,000 to $5,000 per settlement. And they get it because you have to spend ten to twenty thousand dollars in federal court just to defend yourself. Even if you're innocent.

Hollywood would have you believe that the record labels are the poor, defenseless, wounded victim. The truth is quite different. The recording labels lead a $10 billion industry. RIAA has a veritable legal machine, including a settlement claims division, devoted to processing these lawsuits. It's a cash cow. Assume 90% of these claims are settled at an average settlement of $4,000. That's $72 million that the record labels are making off the lawsuits alone.

The lawsuits aren't served against members of organized crime, pirates running CD factories, or indeed anyone with money.. They're filed against ordinary Americans. It includes grandmothers, children, and dead people. Many of them are unemployed or disabled. Many are totally innocent. Some don't even own a computer. The people, not the major labels, are the ones who are poor, defenseless, and wounded.

There have been so many people sued that it's easy to dismiss them as a sorry lump of losers. But they're real people just like you and me. So I'm putting a human face on this one lawsuit. Let me introduce the Arellanes.

Attorney John Browning and I met the Arellanes family one hot sunny Texas day in his office. They're a happy, typical American Family.

Mother Kimberly Arellanes is the party sued by the record companies. The only problem with that is that she knows almost nothing about computers, and certainly had never heard of file sharing prior to the suit. The family income is limited because dad's in the military. So Kimberly works at Home Depot as a service associate. She volunteers as the Chairperson for the Family Readiness Group (FRG) for her husband's Army batallion. The FRG provides information and support to U.S. service people and their spouses, children, and extended families.

Father Sergeant Frank Arellanes is an Information System Security officer for the U.S. Army. He has regularly served overseas. His job is protecting our American troops and their communications and computing networks. He could have settled with the recording industry to avoid the expense and humiliation of the lawsuit. But the settlement offer essentially is an admission of guilt, even though he's innocent. He considers the charge and the entertainment industry's tactics a personal, professional, and national insult.

Daughter Kaitlen is a sweet teenager. She's smart and friendly, despite suffering a lot during her life with nine serious surgeries. She loves both the old music of her parents and the current pop hits. The family owns a huge collection of CD's. Kaitlen has never used file sharing software.