A judge today dismissed the RIAA's suit against the mother of a 13-year-old girl accused of file sharing. This mother was one of three moms who refused to settle out of court with the RIAA's "conference center." The conference center is like the Mexican police:

RIAA: Okay, that's ten shared songs at $10,000 each. That will be $100,000.
Defendant: But I don't have $100,000.
RIAA: So how much do you have?
Defendant: I have $5,000.
RIAA: We'll take that, then. And we'll make it $2,500 if you'll become a spokesperson for the new Napster and tell the world what great people we are. And then we'll kill you.

In the past, the RIAA has filed suits against anyone and everyone, and it's been profitable, since the money they get from the settlements more than pays for the costs of going after file sharers. But the moms who refuse to settle may put an end to the practice: there's a chance that a court might rule in favor of the moms, and in that case, the RIAA's technique would cease being profitable, and thus they would stop.

Patricia Santangelo was the first person to refuse to settle out-of-court with the RIAA. She contended that she didn't know how the files got on her computer, as she is pretty computer illiterate, and said that the account name didn't belong to any of her kids. The ruling today, however, concerns Candy Chan, mother of Brittany Chan. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan threw out the RIAA's lawsuit against Candy Chan back in May. The court dismissed the suit "with prejudice," meaning that the RIAA could no longer pursue a case against Candy Chan, but it could pursue a case against others.

To give you an idea of the kind of people the RIAA are, their next move was to file a motion to bring action against Brittany Chan, the defendant's daughter. Today, the judge denied the RIAA's motion. It's a funny business practice, isn't it? How many other industries make money by suing their customers? And they wonder why music sales have gone down. No one wants to do business with these people!

And now, on to TiVo. TiVo is a subscription-based service that allows you to record things from cable with a hard drive instead of a VCR. You can record at a particular time, you can cut out commercials, you can fast-forward and rewind. Back on Sept. 13, Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing -- along with lots of TiVo users -- noticed something peculiar going on with TiVo: it wouldn't save certain shows or allow users to move the shows with TiVo2Go.

Then, on Sept. 16, TiVo said that DRM had been enabled for certain shows by accident. Whoops! Even though TiVo said that it was an accident, DRM was still enabled for certain programs. Sounds like some content providers made TiVo an offer it couldn't refuse.

On Sept. 24, reports surfaced that TiVo was charging users $150 if they tried to cancel their newly-crapified service. Apparently, what was merely an "accident" was a mandatory "update" to the TiVo software that detected broadcast flags. These flags introduced new restrictions to certain programs and users were unaware and unable to opt-out of these restrictions. So one TiVo owner decided to cancel his service. He signed up for TiVo back when it did X, and now it wasn't doing X anymore, so he didn't want it. TiVo then charged him $150 as an "early cancelation" fee. Apparently, the download of a software update also caused him to be entered into a new contract for which the "early cancelation fee" was $150. Read any EULA and you'll find that it gives the licensor the right to alter the software at any time, for any reason, without voiding the contract. Read those EULAs! They're designed to take rights from you and make you do whatever the licensor wants you to do. ABC doesn't want you to be able to save Lost? So you won't, no matter what you -- the person who's paying TiVo and who owns the machine -- want.

And now the content companies are trying the broadcast flag again, only this time they're being sneaky about it: "One especially sneaky way to get an amendment passed is to smuggle it into a reconciliations bill. Reconciliation is the mirror image of appropriations. Appropriations is about taxes; reconciliation is all about making cuts. Because Congress dearly loves to appear thrifty, reconciliations has special fast-track status. It can't be filibustered, it's almost impossible to amend once agreed upon, and it only needs a plain majority to pass."