Doe No Mo'

A big day at the races for the RIAA, who have veered from their practice of filing copyright infringement suits against John Doe defendants by filing complaints against...wait for it... ACTUAL NAMED PLAINTIFFS!

A look inside the RIAA's allegations:

A third-party investigator retained by Plaintiffs, MediaSentry, Inc., identified an individual, later determined to be Defendant, using LimeWire on the P2P network Gnutella at IP address [xx.xx.xxx.xx] on [date] at [time] EDT distributing [number] audio files over the Internet. The Defendant was identified as the individual responsible for that IP address at that date and time.

After learning [Named Defendant]'s identity, Plaintiffs’ national counsel sent [Named Defendant] a letter advising her that copyright infringement had been detected and providing a telephone number and e-mail address that could be used to contact Plaintiffs’ representatives to try to resolve the matter before the commencement of litigation.

The parties were unable to resolve the matter, and Plaintiffs are therefore filing their Complaint against Defendant for copyright infringement.

What a breath of fresh air!

[See, e.g., Zomba Recording, LLC v. Cancino, No. 2:08-cv-00074 (S.D.Tex. complaint filed Mar. 12, 2008). As of this posting, OTCS counted no-less than 33 complaints filed in various federal courts by the RIAA against named defendants on March 11-12, 2008].