One of the people sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (our very favourite - yeah, enough of that) has issued a countersuit accusing the industry association of fraud, electronic privacy crimes and violating various laws of the state of Oregon. Tanya Andersen, a 41 year old single mother, was sued by the RIAA back in Sep 2003. She denies copyright theft, and seems very pissed that the RIAA employed an agency to spy on her personal PC prior to issuing legal action against her.
The lawsuit against the RIAA says: "The record company plaintiffs employed MediaSentry as their agent to break into Ms Andersen's personal computer (and those of tens of thousands of other people) to secretly spy on and steal information or remove files. MediaSentry did not have Ms Andersen's permission to inspect, copy, or remove private computer files."
The RIAA have dismissed the lawsuit, pointing out other people have unsuccessfully targeted their anti-piracy programme using privacy laws. It remains to be seen if Andersen's case is any different.