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RIAA Now Targeting Retailers
merodach writes "According to this story on Headlinenews.com the RIAA is now targeting retailers in it's 'war on piracy.' I think everyone will agree this is something that should be done if the retailer is deliberately pirating. The thing I wonder about in hearing this news is how many of the retailers include used copy stores. With the way the RIAA and some artists *cough*Garth Brooks*cough* have labeled these stores as pirates and theives in the past it seems likely they would be the biggest targets. Have any in the /. crowd actually seen one of the letters sent or know how many of the targeted businesses are used stores? Further - how would the RIAA know how much to demand in 'settlement fees' and is it possible these are being used to shut down the mom-and-pop outfits that trade in used CDs?"
Those mom and pop stores are merely selling plastic and aluminium disks...They are not selling/ the rights to play those disks in a CD player.
Now, if I remember correctly, 90% of record companies belong to the RIAA. What about the 10%? what gives the RIAA the right to pretend to represent that last 10%?
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I went to WalMart the other day and was told by the manager that it was against the DMCA to allow returns or refunds of computer software and/or CDs.
:-/
It took a while (and I had to go pretty far up the chain of command) to assure them that Congress never wrote "All businesses have to give refunds/returns except WalMart" in the DMCA.
Something to be on the look-out for.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
Last week, Secret Service agents in New York arrested three men and seized 35,000 illegally copied music discs, 10,000 movies on DVD and 421 compact disc burners that are used to make the counterfeit products.
I guess the "equivalent of 421 compact disc burners" has now officially become 421 compact disc burners.
+1 for the RIAA spinmeister team.
-1 for truth.
Just last week I went down to Geraldi's, my favorite local mom and pop sub shop (seating capacity of about 8, counting the outside table) here in downtown Portand, and noticed a handwritten sign taped to one of the coolers. It reads Now, I guess I'm still ambivalent/undecided about the greater argument here, but this particular injunction - visited upon a struggling and honest small business owner - just struck me as being thorough to the point of malice.
Obviously the owner isn't making any additional sandwich sales from having RIAA-approved background music playing as opposed to the TV news or whatever. Certainly not $265/year's worth.
Decentralization: the brief interval between the decline of one centralized regime and rise of another.
Isn't this the same RIAA press release that spawned a recent Reg article?
A lot of music stores near me, in predominantly Black neighborhoods, advertise that they sell "mix tapes". When I've been in NYC, I've seen mix tapes to be basically illegally recorded "greatest hits" from various artists, usually the popular songs of the day. These have always seemed fairly illegal to me.
I wonder if the RIAA is going to go after these people, and if this is going to raise an uproar in the Black community; these tapes seem to be part of the culture.
This is incorrect.
In the US, it's illegal for the government to ask you for this information without a law stating they can, and they have to explain to you why they need it and quote the law authorizing it.
None of this applies to the private world. A company is perfectly within their rights to ask you for your SSN as part of a transaction.
But you're also perfectly within your rights to refuse. In many cases, it just means escellating to a manager to see why they'd need something like your SSN, and whether they could use something else instead. In other cases, it means walking out and taking your business elsewhere.
Sometimes they just want a unique ID number and aren't smart enough to come up with something better than your SSN, and the clerks just don't know any better.