If you've been following the court cases the RIAA have been launching against individuals, you'll remember they start out by saying "we have evdience that you have been stealing our music, if you don't settle, we'll take you to court."



People tend to be scared by this, and pay up.



Not so Mr. Wilke. He has asked for a court to provide a summary judgement, on the grounds that he's not the person the RIAA seem to think he is, he's never had one set of the songs on his computer, and the second set of songs he did have, but because he'd ripped them from his own CD collection.



The RIAA has filed a motion for "expedited recovery" to allow it to gather evidence.



Gather evidence?



Yes, that's right - although the RIAA sent a letter to Mr. Wilkes claiming to have proof that he'd been illegally downloading evidence, when given a chance to provide it to the court, they have to ask for time to start looking for that evidence:



"Plaintiffs cannot at this time, without an opportunity for

full discovery present by affidavit facts essential to justify their opposition to Defendant's motion"



It's not known if all the lawyers in the music industry turn up packed into one car, which then falls apart as they emerge from it, but there is something of the comedy outsize shoe about these proceedings. Once again, the RIAA has been caught launching speculative court cases without any proper evidence to back them up, in the hope that those they target will just cave in and pay up. We're sure this is totally different from blackmail in lots of ways.

