The RIAA can download this

Yesterday, I heard a cable-news roundtable panelist remark that the United States most assuredly today is a plutocracy and an oligarchy.

Sounds about right to me: This country, and its government, is dominated by the wealthy and the powerful. That's the plutocracy part. And it's being run, often crookedly, by those plutocrats for the benefit of the plutocrats -- at the expense of ordinary Americans. That's the oligarchy part.

One example of this would be immigration, illegal and otherwise. The central question is not how many, and who, we ought to let legally immigrate to this country, for the greater good of all Americans. Including those immigrants who, the assumption used to be, would someday be Americans themselves.

How quaint. Now we ignore millions upon millions of illegal aliens because they're blackmailable, and thus will work really, really cheap and will keep their expectations in check and their mouths shut.

Great system. Employers pick up the extra profits; taxpayers pick up the tab for the "benefits package."

ANOTHER EXAMPLE of oligarchy would be this:

The recording industry sued Tanya J. Andersen, 44, in 2005, accusing her of violating copyright laws by illegally downloading music onto her computer. Andersen claims in a suit she filed last week in U.S. District Court in Oregon that the recording industry refused to drop its case after its own expert supported her claims of innocence.

Instead, industry officials threatened to interrogate Andersen's 10-year-old daughter, Kylee, if she didn't pay thousands of dollars. The intimidation included attempts to contact Kylee directly. A woman claiming to be Kylee's grandmother called the girl's former elementary school inquiring about her attendance, according to Andersen's suit.

The (Portland) Oregonian, in an article in today's paper, explains how the record industry's lawyers have been hounding the disabled single mother, who lives in Beaverton and -- coincidentally -- never illegally downloaded a solitary thing. Why? Because they could, and they thought she couldn't fight back.

Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the recording industry association, said he respectfully declined to comment on the specifics of Andersen's case.

But Lamy defended the recording industry's overall strategy to combat illegal file-sharing, which he said has stolen billions in revenues in the past few years. After taking on the Internet businesses that made it easy to copy music for free and mounting an education campaign, the industry was still losing lots of money, Lamy said.

"Despite all these efforts, there was still not a sense of risk by the individual person downloading music online," he said.

So the industry started taking legal action against individual computer users it accuses of illegally downloading music -- 21,000 people since 2003.

Tanya Andersen was one of those people.

KIND OF the record-label version of "shoot one, instruct a hundred."

But Mama's shooting back, and the recording industry shills dropped the lawsuit June 1.

She said she received a letter in 2005 from a Los Angeles law firm accusing her of illegally downloading music. As directed, she called the Settlement Support Center, which Andersen's suit called the "debt-collection arm" of the recording industry's campaign.

Andersen said she had never illegally downloaded music but was told she had to pay $4,000 to $5,000 or she would be ruined financially.

An employee said he believed she was innocent, according to the suit.

"He explained, however, that defendants would not quit their attempts to force payment from her because to do so would encourage other people to defend themselves," the suit says.

Andersen offered to have her computer inspected. Instead, the recording industry sued her.

The record industry claimed that she used a certain Internet name to illegally download music at 4:20 a.m. on May 20, 2004. Andersen searched the Internet for the name and easily learned that it belonged to a young man in Everett, Wash., who admitted on his MySpace account that he illegally downloaded music.

Andersen provided the information to the record industry, but officials responded by publicly accusing her of downloading a series of violent, profane, obscene and misogynistic songs. Andersen was an avid user of mail order CD clubs, so "defendants knew that Ms. Andersen listens to only country music and soft rock," the suit says.

The recording industry's expert finally confirmed that Andersen's computer had not been used to download music, but attorneys still demanded that she pay money before they would drop the case.

"They wanted it to appear publicly that they prevailed," the suit claims. "When Ms. Andersen declined to pay them, defendants stepped up their intimidation."

STREET GANGS AND THE MOB have a more highly developed sense of fairness and justice than this. And they do their own "enforcing." They don't fob it off on the courts, cynically turning the process of the law against the spirit of the law.

The lawsuit against Andersen went away only after her lawyers filed a motion to force the record labels' lawyers to ante up evidence that she illegally downloaded music. She continues to press her attack, though, seeking justice -- and reimbursement of legal fees -- from the courts the record industry attempted to subvert.

Here's hoping she gets more than legal fees. Tanya Records has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

That, however, is too much to hope for. We live in a plutocratic oligarchy, remember?

IF YOU ASK ME (which you didn't), there's only one way to fight rich bullies who sue their customers. Make them poor.

Quit putting money in their pockets. Don't buy new music from major labels. Do buy used music from your local independent music store -- you get music, the store makes more money than it does on new stuff, the labels get squat.

Makes sense, doesn't it?