• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, April 1, 2008

RIAA foes can relish the irony: Sony BMG is being accused of piracy. French software company PointDev alleges a raid on Sony uncovered that software on four of Sony's servers in France is pirated.

PointDev says it first discovered the alleged piracy after a Sony employee sought tech support. PointDev then obtained a warrant to scour the company's computers.

For Sony, the development seems to mark a copyright-related public relations debacle.

As one of the big four record labels, Sony is responsible for threatening or bringing lawsuits against some 26,000 people, accusing them of piracy based on activity traced to their IP addresses. At least some of those defendants have said they weren't personally responsible for the piracy and/or didn't know it was occurring -- arguments that don't often carry weight with the RIAA.

When former RIAA defendant Cliff Thompson of Texas sued to recover his attorney's fees after the RIAA wrongly accused him of piracy, the group argued he wasn't entitled to recover those fees because his daughter was allegedly the one at fault. The RIAA took the position that Thompson wouldn't have had lower legal bills had he simply ratted out his daughter early in the proceedings.

And when Arizona resident Jeffrey Howell was sued by the RIAA, his defense was that he didn't know he had infringed anyone's copyright. Howell said he ripped his CDs into MP3 format, but that he never intended to illegally share them online. His position carried little weight with federal district court judge Neil Wake, who initially ruled in favor of the record companies and fined Howell around $40,500. (Wake later vacated that order and asked for further arguments.)

Another Sony copyright enforcement attempt resulted in the company being sued for installing spyware on people's computers. The company bundled CDs with software that, once loaded onto people's computers, sent information back to Sony and also prevented some people from copying music and loading tracks on iPods. The company ultimately agreed to pay around $1.5 million to settle the resulting complaints.