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RIAA Seeks Estimated $97.8 Billion From MTU Student
theodp writes "The Detroit Free Press does the math on the damages sought by the RIAA from the Michigan Technological University student. The total? About $97.8 trillion--yes, trillion with a T--or enough money to buy every CD sold in America last year over again for the next 120,000 years, according to RIAA statistics." Update: 04/05 21:58 GMT by M : The Free Press can do the math, but not very well: the numbers provided show the RIAA is seeking some $97 billion dollars, not trillion. I'm sure the student is *much* happier. Headline updated.
Well that explains the lawyers with frickin' lasers mounted on their frickin' heads...
i want 2 copies of each CD!!! :)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Oh, I just had to say it..
Throw me a frick'n bone, people.
But Dr. Evil, that kind of money doesn't exist in 2003!!!
U.S. gdp is 10.2 trillion...
Right, like the RIAA really lost $97.8 trillion worth of potential income from STUDENTS.
That could buy a really large Beowulf Cluster.
Are there any students here from the affected colleges? What has this done to the volume of swapping on your networks? Are people eager to jump in and replace them?
"or enough money to buy every CD sold in America last year over again for the next 120,000 years"
...or enough money to buy one enormous, city sized CD that contains music that's so incredibly pleasing to the ear that it displaces all thought and willngness to live... to the extent that the listener dies whilst 'rocking out' to it. The giant sized CD has only been produced and played once. To defeat Godzilla.
Asking for such a ridiculous sum of money is just begging for the courts not to take it seriously.
I'll just stop buying music all together for the next twenty years and convince 10 other people to do exactly the same. Even better I'll just convince ten people to only buy direct from small labels. This way the big record companies can shove those trillions up their ass.
Where do I register?
I want some money too.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
"DOH!"
"RIAA starts funding US military actions in countries with highest piracy rates"... you can buy many missiles with $97.8 trillion.
The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication - Homer Simpson
... at least give em a break on the Hanson tracks, we all knew they were a fad
Apparently no one has realized that 97 trillion dollars is far more than the record label has ever, or will ever, make off of any album ever. It's not like he took the albums and made people smoke them and get lung cancer! if the RIAA gets the money, then what? Do they sign every artist in the world?
stuff |
Why does it only hurt them back? Credibility. Consumers are not stupid. These type of scare tactics undermine credibility in the eyes of those not involved (like everyday consumers).
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
This seems a bit much to account for the "lost revenue" the music industry has been "suffering" from file sharing.
Presumably this is a scare tactic to try and disencourage college students from sharing across their networks. If they actually expect to receive all of this money they are more insane than I orginally thought
And we thought the prices of CDs were high before. If this is any indication of where things are going I doubt I'll even be able to afford a single cd.
http://www.maximum-cars.com - My little hobbie.
Assuming a person lives for exactly 76 years.... With that sum of money a person would have to spend $40.78 every second for his/her entire life, every day, and including during the night. That isn't taking into account the massive interest it would generate. Isn't that amount of money larger that the GNP of the US for a several year period. Honestly though, how do they expect to prove that each and every song did $150,000 worth of damage. If each album has 12 tracks and retails for $15, they'd have to prove that each album he offered caused 120,000 less copies of that album to be sold. Please!
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Where are those trillions which that "thief" has stolen?
nevermind, Slashdot does not have the time.
:P
looks like RIAA is loosing the lawsuit battle, so they wanna make an example outa this pooorr collage student.
welp, i have a great one for RIAA.. how bout bankrupsy??
To err is human, to really screw things up, you need a robot.
So, honestly, how much longer can the RIAA keep doing thid before *everyone* turns against them?
Do they think that people will even treat this as being realistic (even if you don't think about how big the sum is we're still talking about students here)
John Ashcroft says there is no such thing as excessive punishment! (unless if it's drunk driving and snorting coke and you're in Texas and... oh, never mind)
$150,000 * 652,000
... ohh, about a factor of a thousand?
= $97,800,000,000
= $97,800,000 thousand
= $97,800 million
= $97.8 billion
I think they're off by,
Dude, I'm thinkin' that if I were staring down the barrel of $97.8 TRILLION dollar lawsuit, I'd be tempted to find a country without extradition treaties. Preferably a friendly, inexpensive country with a tropical climate and lots of nude beaches.
What's the statute of limitations for copyright violations?
Brought to you by:
The United States of America(R) (A Wholely Owned Subsidiary of A Consortium of Multinational Corporations)
It really bugs me when the RIAA calls copyright violation, "Stealing." This is not stealing music. If I were to steal music, I would walk into my local Circuit City, grab some CDs, and run out the door. They lose their merchandise, I now have their CDs.
/. knows, is NOT stealing.
...I'm such a music lover that I'd be downloading probably 50 songs a month, probably more. That's $25 that the record industry would get out of my pocket that they would have never seen before.
Downloading or having mp3s, as I'm sure every person who reads
At the same time, while I understand the need for deterrent from downloading copyrighted mp3s, I still don't understand why the RIAA seems to be resisting the method of distributing music digitally. Are they planning on going back to cassette tapes? We've got this incredible method of getting into almost everyone's home to distribute music and reduce their costs, and all they want to do is sue people who are allegedly taking their business away.
Not that this is a justification of my downloading mp3s, but I wouldn't have bought probably 3/4 of the mp3s I have because I simply want one song off of the CD. If the record companies would just come up with a service that charged 25-50 cents a song,
Are they saying that the Music Industry lost more money in the past 3 years than the cumulative net worth of the middle easts oil deposits!!! (and probably the worlds!)
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
File Sharing/p2p is becoming more and more novel.
Bittorrent, for example, can integrate seemlessly through the web. This kind of file sharing would be very hard to stop--- to the point where the RIAA would have to crack down on search engines.
Well sure, it seems like a lot of money but at the rate concert and sporting event prices are rising this should be just enough to enjoy Paul's tour and maybe have a beer or two...
How else are they going to buy more laws? I mean, come on, buying laws isn't cheap.
That kind of money could buy a lot of laws.
Brilliant!!!
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
What happens if i listen to them in a way that isnt approved by the riaa even accidentaly? No thanks, the penalty is too high.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
... but they were violating copyright, and the RIAA has every right to go after them for whatever damages they see fit.
Though, whether this holds up in court (90+ trillion??) is another matter.
Pokey The Penguin!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
You know, like most people I have a bunch of CDs that I never listen to and have been too lazy to take to the used record store for a buck or two apiece.
Maybe it's time to just offer them to whoever wants them, for free. Just to show he RIAA that not only do I never want to buy another album (not hard, since I listen to adult music that gets no radio airplay so I can never learn about new artists anyway, except via word of mouth) - but now I consider the value of most of my collection essentially worthless. But maybe others will find it useful.
I could organize a swap, but it feels more important to arrange informal swaps. Some people are now leaving books in public places, with notes asking people to register where they found the book (and what they thought of it) on a website, before passing it on.
Maybe the same thing can be done with CDs. I just print out some labels, stick them on the jewel case, then leave them on the local pedestrian mall, at the local trailheads, etc.
What's the RIAA going to do, sue me for $150,000 for leaving a CD I purchased a decade ago on a park bench? Sue somebody else for picking up and enjoying that music, and leaving their own music for others?
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Its things like this that make me very unproud to be an American citizen. I can't believe the RIAA is not considered an illegal monopoly. It just goes to show how effective bribes are.
From the Article: "Stealing is stealing," Oppenheim said. "Those are major, significant networks. This was a student who created a piracy bazaar."
Yes, stealing is stealing.
Stealing is especially stealing when your corporate interests have bought and paid for laws, which are now being used to essentially ruin the lives of (ie: steal the futures of)students who never would have even heard your product had it not been for file-sharing.
I don't agree with most arguments for file-sharing. It is common sense that the artists and lavels should make money for the songs, and there should quickly set up some usable system - a good one does not currently exist. When it does, I and many, many, many people like me will eagerly use it.
But $98 TRILLION??? [choke] That's just stupidly extortionate.
Can somebody explain to me why an indexing system, which simply provides a catalog of what's on a network, is "a sophisticated network designed to enable widespread music thievery"? What if nobody was sharing music? I'm concerned, because if this precedent is set, then potentially any program whatsoever that can be used illegally will be illegal. I don't want that to happen.
That's how Bush has figured out how he's going to pay for the war AND include tax cuts. He's going to get his cut out of that... Hehehehehehehehe...
Surely if the RIAA insist on going after students and / or other people, they should seek reasonable amounts of damages that, if they win, could actually BE PAID.
Seeking this stupidly high amounts (so high they are hard to imagine in "real money") simply makes them lose even more credibility and makes the lawsuits laughable.
(opens pocket, pulls out lent, paperclips, bubble gum, 45 cents, and a cool indian nickle.)
ummm... how much more do i need to raise for Bail???
To err is human, to really screw things up, you need a robot.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Theft \Theft\, n. [OE. thefte, AS. [thorn]i['e]f[eth]e,
[thorn][=y]f[eth]e, [thorn]e['o]f[eth]e. See {Thief}.]
1. (Law) The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious
taking and removing of personal property, with an intent
to deprive the rightful owner of the same; larceny.
Note: To constitute theft there must be a taking without the
owner's consent, and it must be unlawful or felonious;
every part of the property stolen must be removed,
however slightly, from its former position; and it must
be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of
the thief. See {Larceny}, and the Note under {Robbery}.
Copying mp3's isn't theft, it's a copyright violation, something completely different.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Piracy \Pi"ra*cy\, n.; pl. {Piracies}. [Cf. LL. piratia, Gr. ?.
See {Pirate}.]
1. The act or crime of a pirate.
2. (Common Law) Robbery on the high seas; the taking of
property from others on the open sea by open violence;
without lawful authority, and with intent to steal; -- a
crime answering to robbery on land.
A pirate is a guy with a parrot on his shoulder who says "arrr.. matey" all the time.
The Eighth Amendment says: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Are we talking about a claim of actual damages? If so, the RIAA is claiming that it and its members would have made up about 99% of the U.S. economy had this one person not pirated that music. Or are we talking about statuatory damages? In that case I think the eighth amendment would come into play -- that part about excessive fines in particular.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
It makes me sad to think about someone facing that kind of lawsuit. So, to feel better, I'm firing up my Kazaa client and downloading some happy songs. I suggest you all do the same, just not on any school campus.
Sit back and relax as Windows 98 installs on your computer.
Sure...97.8 Trillion might sound like quite a bit upfront...
:-)
However, after all of the lawyers take their cut, the appropriate RIAA officials remove their share and court costs are assessed, I calculate the net gain for the actual artists to be somewhere in the neighborhood of about $20 bucks and smack on the ass!
- n2q
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
... isn't this exactly what we want the RIAA to do? Go after the big violators rather than make life difficult for the individual users by imposing access control?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
No we don't. 1000 million is a billion here in US. Dunno where the hell you were or who you asked.
The whole thing is ridiculous. Obscene and ridiculous.
Surely the courts can only laugh at this case. That is if there is any justice in this crazy world.
May the RIAA and all who subscribe to its ways burn forever in hell.
Seriously, this is the most mind-blowing and re-fucking-tarded thing I've heard in quite a while. What's the kid supposed to do if he's found guilty? Mow the RIAA's lawns for the next 10,000 years in order to pay back the money the RIAA's "lost"? We're not talking about a broken window from a stray baseball here...we're talking about a lump sum that's WAY more than just about every country's national defecit on earth!
I have a feeling that this will get dismissed (hopefully). These thick-headed RIAA turds can't get it through their greedy minds that chances are these students wouldn't have bought the CD's anyways. Why? Because they most likely are like every other CD out on the market these days...they SUCK! People aren't willing to drop $20 on a terrible CD these days so they can get the one song they like. That's a fact.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
As I'm sure many others have already stated.. the point isn't to make $100 trillion off of students; they're probably not crazy enough to think they can get more than a pittance from each. The point is to crucify these four scapegoats on the cross of copyright, and put all the rest of the 'pirates' on notice that they're next. It's a selective enforcement of a law, intended to serve as an example - and as such, is patently unfair to the few unlucky enough to be picked for martyrdom.
I just thought they were greedy, now I've come to realize they're insane. This is pointless. We are not even talking about real money at this point. Yes, there is an amount on it, but 97.8 trillion dollars? This is like the speed of light, or the size of the universe. It is just way too big a number.
Does anyone else get the feeling that the RIAA is being run by Dr. Evil?
- shazow
"If you agree that you're liable in any way, then you have no alternative to monitor the networks," she said. "You're putting yourself in a position that you can't possibly fulfill."
This goes with what many people said years ago, networks, and possibly search engines should be common carriers. They shouldn't care anything about the content, they should just locate it and move it around. If the content happens to be 'illegal', go after the individual.
This student, and the uni's network staff didn't pirate 10 gazillion songs, other people did. Go after them. The brain dead napster lawsuit didn't help matters.
I'm waiting for the RIAA to sue google for letting people find mp3s, and AOL for running a broadband network that facilitates the sharing of illegal files.
*sigh*
From the article '"Stealing is stealing," Oppenheim said. "Those are major, significant networks. This was a student who created a piracy bazaar."'
Meanwhile, in Feildsboro, NJ, the Mayor is comparing yellow ribbons to nazi flags - He is also enforcing the law.....
Where did common sense go? Do either the RIAA or the mayor of Feildsboro know when to stop, or how to choose the right battle? No...
Sig? We don't need no stinking sig....
How can they expect to be taken seriously when they make such STUPID claims!!!
It is tactics like this that make musicians, like myself, tend to look to the small indie lables or even cosign our own cds out to local music shops. It really bothers me the way the RIAA cotrols the artistic sense of a musiician. I will gladly put my own music on various P2P nets just to get it heard. I have downloaded many songs then turned around and bought that artist's cd because I liked what I heard. It seems the RIAA is more concerned with the almighty dollar that the beautiful sound of music.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
All four students are CS majors.
The systems in question don't appear to be much different than Archie or other fundamental tools for information discovery in a networked environment.
This is intended to send a message to all those with the capability and inclination to build and deploy networked information systems - and that message is that you'd better not think it's acceptable to build open indexing systems like Archie in post-DMCA 2003.
There's only one way to stop these thugs in their tracks, and that's to make it more expensive for them to file these sorts of lawsuits than it would be for them not to. Money is ALL these desperate idiots understand.
The way to make it expensive, of course, is to organize a campaign to decrease the level of CD sales in this country far below today's already low levels.
Such a campaign would require some organization, creativity and footwork. We'd need a simple-to-remember logo or slogan that could go on flyers, bumper stickers and T-shirts. We'd need some effective - and hopefully amusing - propaganda to distribute. We'd need people to go out to record stores, nightclubs and other places where music lovers hang out.
Does anyone know of any groups that would be good candidates for organizing such a campaign?
I'm angry enough right now that I could imagine standing outside the door to a Tower handing out flyers asking people not to spend their money inside.
-Doug
We definately need to take out the RIAA assholes. They rival Saddam with their dictatorship.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
40.48 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 = 97.7 BILLION.
So you'd have to spend $40,000 every second of your life, not $40.
100 T$ sounds like pretty much all of it!
Obviously they don't expect the poor kids to pay that kind of money. So, the only tactic really there is to try to scare people who have mp3's. But come on, with that much money, who can take this thing seriously? This is going to be more of a joke I tell my friends than a warning.
Ok, so I believe that the article is off in their calculations and it should be billion with a "B". At any rate, it seems that given the silly amount of money they are going after, the "accused" would simply laugh that sort of claim off. Yes, stealing is stealing. However, this sort of suit does nothing to help the RIAA's case. They would be far more effective by bringing more realistic suits in terms of dollar amounts that would actually perhaps frighten folks and keep them from posting media to the net for download.
This whole music suit thing brings up another interesting exchange I had last week. One of the campus network guys was asking if I had any music on my workstation. I said yes, about thirty gigs or so, to which he replied, I had to take it off as the RIAA was "querying" systems on the network to determine if they contained music files. I replied as every song on there was purchased, paid for, and personally ripped from CD via iTunes, and I had every CD for which there was music for, I was not going to remove the music. Additionally, while my workstation was on the network, it was not open, the songs were not available to the outside world and anyone wanting those songs would have to hack into my system. So, no. I would not remove them. Even if the RIAA does somehow "query" my system, (Is this somehow possible if the system is "secure"?) they would be barking up the wrong tree.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
However, one network searching site run by an RPI club is still alive and well.
Interestingly enough, network sharing has been way down this year. During my freshman year I could 'phynd' anything I wanted, but now in my junior year there only seems to be a handleful of popular divx movies and most mainstream mp3 albums. Certainly not the selection that Kazaa offers.
time to bring back slavery again, ok teenage doodz sittin in the dorm sippin coffee who wants to be RIAA's toy.
However, i really doubt that the RIAA would let this case get to trial, the jury would probably point at the lawyers and start laughing hysterically. But realistically even if the follow through with the maximum the kids will have to face is probably probation for about 2 years.
Yes, they sent a strong message. And to me that message is not to purchase any more CD's from major record companies. Why should I? I am a college student, those kids lives have been put on hold and for what a frivalous lawsuit. There are bigger fish to fry, what about piracy in places like China? GO after them, instead of your primary target market.
So sorry Britney unless you produce your next album on an independent recording company, and of course you sing a wee bit better, I would not be buying your CD.
$97.8 billions -- yes, that's like "trillion" but with a B.
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
You are all missing the point here:
Whether you are talking frigging Gazillions or about one single Dollar, it doesn't matter, because you have already conceded that the student has to pay *something* and is therefore considered guilty as charged.
That precedent, no matter how high the compensation for the RIAA will eventually be, will change the way people are going to use net.
Either you live by the rules set up by the RIAA, MPAA, BSA or you are threatened to lose your complete financial independence, because the rules allow for a "swift punishment".
Welcome to a world in which the consumer is criminalized to an extent that his risks of non-compliance are too high.
Even IF the corts upheld this, and even IF it wasnt struck down in an appeale, I have to ask, where do they expect a college student, who are in my experence the poorest people in America, to get 9 times the GDP of the US? Simply put all this does is to make them look like fools, and also look even more money hungry than they are now. They are like every other Dinisour Corperation, old and far to large to move to combat current problems. The technology is in place to make a huge proffit off of this. Offer a napster like program, charge a monthly service fee, and you know what? All that money that is being supposidly lost to pirates will come rolling in. More people will even be encouraged to use a service. Sure they dont pirate now, but if it was legal they sure all hell would. I used to be a pirate. I admit that. These days its just far to much of a hastle to do it. I simply dont buy CD's anymore. In the last year I have 1 new CD, and that was a gift. Napster and Kazaa actully encouraged me to get more CD's to hear the bands in better quality, all the tracks..yaddia yaddia. Simply put the RIAA is now in the position that IBM once saw itself faced with. They adapted to the current time, reduced ther size, started charging resonable rates, and became a real corperation, insted of bankrupt "big blue." Many other companies were in the same place, and failed to transition. At this point all we can do is hope the RIAA goes the same way, as they have already shown that they will not change their ways.
At Princeton, all the file-searching sites are down. Here's a list from a student's blog:
http://barillari.org/blog/2003/04/05/
Of course, they'll need to use Conway's chained arrow notation just to get the sum down on paper.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Trillion Bazillion. People should just use scientific notation if they can't agree on names for big numbers.
$150,000 * 652,000 = 97,8*10^9 (97800 million)
76 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 = 2,4*10^9
97,8*10^9 / 2,4*10^9 = 40,75
and now THIS is why I support Indie / Emo music. Also, there arent any major bands on major labels. plus its kinda looked down upon for 'selling out'. Most bands use the money for gas / food / etc. I _rarely_ buy a CD from a store, 99% is at a show, and I know the money is going directly to the artists themselves. most of the time I will go and have dinner with them afterwords. just plain insane. Ryan.
You're trying to confuse people with UK trillion vs US billion.
40.48 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 * 76 = $150,000 * 652,000
Which is all that matters.
Don't worry, if MTU is anything like my college, all he has to do is walk around campus signing up for pre-approved credit for a couple days.
News items like this piss off students like myself. If Canada allowed something like this, aka a huge multi-trillion lawsuit against four students for file sharing (something that the majority of people think is acceptable anyway, nevermind the legal ramification), you can best be sure that I'd be heading to China or Argentina.
And as for the recording "artists" who support the RIAA... I don't care how talented you fuckers are. If you support outrageous law suits like this, then you can forget my monetary support.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
By the way. All the songs i have gotten from kazaalite were deleted. Alot of them were just short term usage. Could i ever return a CD back to the record store if i didn't like it?
Hell no.
"Going forward, I wouldn't think there was a university in the country that wouldn't notice this kind of activity on their servers,"
I cannot give any indication of real-world reaction in the US, but I have conducted research in the UK on the subject. I interviewed network administrators from 5 UK universities last year when writing my thesis on business p2p. They indicated the impact of p2p downloading upon network resources was negligible in comparison to academic use of the network. I've also traded emails with other universities (who didn't have the time to see me or were a considerable distance away) who were similarly unconcerned by the amount of bandwidth used by p2p apps.
..is not, as I keep telling people, to stop 'copyright infringement' - oh, no. They know enough people will still consider themselves morally required to buy from them (since who wants to be a 'pirate'? Arr, matey!..). What they're really after is killing P2P as a distribution mechanism, painting it as only a tool for piracy. They're afraid people will realize that the RIAA and its shills are old-media companies that use an outdated physical method of distribution - and an outdated 'physical property' idea of music and information. They can't conceive of, and don't WANT TO conceive of, a marketplace without physical objects being bought and sold - especially since that's all they know how to do, and if music and art distribution moves to the Internet en masse, the diaRIAA will be up Shit Creek without the proverbial paddle.
Lets do some other math here using the following factors:
Moneys sued for my RIAA: $97,800,000,000
Average life expentancy in the US: 76 years
Average cost of a CD: $15
Number of Months in a year: 12
US Population as of April 1st 2000: 281,421,906
Which brings us to the following formulas:
97,800,000,000 / 281,421,906 = $347520 per citizen
$347520 / $15 = 23168 CD's per person in the US.
23168 / 76 = 304 CD's per year/person in the US
304 / 12 months = 25 CD's/month for their entire life from birth that each person in the US must by to be equal to the damages they are filing for.
Now there is a possibility that there was a math error as some have suggested and it might be 97.8 billion dollars instead of trillion.
If so that just breaks down to 23 CD's in each person's lifetime for every person born. Which there is no way in the world that one person could of downloaded that much.
Given that they are roughly charging $1 per track(23 * population * average tracks on a CD) is roughly 97.8 billion.
Then take into account that an average MP3 is about 5 megs, that comes out to 5 * 97,800,000,000, or 489,000,000,000 Also known as roughly 489 Terrabytes of music.
Which brings me to the question who's network attached storage solution did they use to store all that alledged music?
He was sharing more than half a million songs? I'd say he has more problems than just this lawsuit...
Fleur de Sel
I was going to say something like "Isn't it time we all just stopped buying music" but then I realized that it's been a while since anything worth buying was released.
Is this yet another "shock and awe" tactic ?
I'll change my sig when I have the time...
he's in college, just charge it to the old credit card.
97 Trillion dollars that this case gets thrown out.
Of course, if it doesnt im as screwed as the defendant here....
Anyone who reads the damages sought by the RIAA regards this as absolutley silly... so what to do? Countersue for 97.8 B/Trillion right back. Think if it this way... as the student you have nothing to lose, and most students and /.ers realise that IP laws need some modification, so if the RIAA wants to get silly, get silly right back.
Countersue for 97.8 Tr/Billion (harrassment) and and then hold the case up in court for the next forever... as someone with nothing to lose, use the situation to make the RIAA look really dumb. C'mon suing for 97.8 billion dollars just makes the media industry look really greedy (big suprise), so give them some of their own medicine... sue them for everything under the sun... malicious lawsuit/harassment/breach of privacy/violation of 1st ammendment... you don't have to be right... just contentious enough not to get thrown out of court immediatley...
Heck, if only one charge stays then it will impact the record companies, who will have to disclose the lawsuit in their financial reports... :) stock markets don't like lawsuits very much.
The costs involved could be relatively minor... considering the publicity you'd get, I'm sure a few lawyers would work pro bono, and heck, the legal fees are miniscule compared to the potential damages.
The real key, as I see it is to keep the case going... countersuing for 97.8 Billion will QUICKLY get the RIAA to back off their claim, and knock a few billion off the charge, but keep it up... make them look REALLY SILLY! The more news outlets hear of the battle of the Trillion dollar lawsuits, the sillier the RIAA looks...
And lastly, competing Trillion dollar lawsuits will definatley get the eye of congress... when an industry starts to sue for Trillions, congress starts to worry (save for Senator Disney).
_CMK
Bad spellers of the world untie!
What makes them think a college student even has two dollars, and not in change at that?
The greed of...fuck it I can't even finish this is so stupid. Anyway to moderate a topic off?
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
I help run a P2P network using direct connect on a somewhat large campus and we have about 3,600 users on it. We are a bit more sophisticated in that it's completely behind the school firewall and the only way to get on (besides sniffing the network, which is quite illegal to do with state equipment) is to register using a site that authenticates using the school's ldap server and e-mail. It's illegal to share user accounts / passwords with others because of this, making it difficult for an outsider to get on the network. It's amazing how this little thing we were running has blossomed into a center of activity, with us even moving to the point of having social activities every week (get the people who stay on the computer all day out :). However, this RIAA thing poses a real threat to it, and I know neither I nor the other people who operate it can really afford 100 Trillion dollar lawsuits. So unfortunately, we may just have to shut it down, which is really sad because we do enforce a lot of controls to prevent people from violating too many copyrights, along with the usual illegal kiddie porn and such. It really does have a lot of legitimate non-infringing uses and it's very sad that it's likely to get shut down because of this.
If you aren't already running a Freenet node, you should be, and if you can - make a donation.
Quit your bitchin and take it like a man!
I guess the only thing to hope for is that the judge will simply throw the case out of court because of the huge fantasy sum.
I can't think of anything else that would send them the message that it is not okay to pull this kind of crap.
I don't even know what to think about this.
From an artist's point of view, does this help the artist? I'm not a musician and have never seen any of the contracts that the RIAA makes with its musical talent, but from a select few artists that have spoken out against the RIAA, I get the impression that file sharing is definately not the thing that's keeping money out of the pocket of the musician.
So, if this kind of action isn't for the good of the artist, then is it for the good of the company? I don't run a business of my own, so perhaps I'm under some false impressions, but it seems to me that the number one goal of business is to keep your existing customers excited and to constantly be trying to pull in new customers. This action as far as I can tell does exactly the opposite on both counts.
And what about file sharing in the first place. I still don't understand why the people involved in this debate keep talking like a 128k bitrate encoded mp3 is just as good as the original wav. Now this is something that I've personally investigated and analyzed, and can concretly say they are definately not of the same quality.
And what about the statistics. Which do you believe? I've looked at the RIAA's statistics showing how much revenue they lose because of file sharing. I'm not a statistician, but I really don't understand how they can claim that every traded song would have equaled an album sale. I've also looked at the statistics of the number of album sales during the years of Napster. While Napster was running full tilt, albums sales were hitting record numbers. Napster gets shut down, and the sales plunge. Once again, I'm not a statistician, but it seems to me that if I'm to be asked to believe that every song download == a missed sale, then I must also believe that Napster _created_ song sales instead of decreasing them.
So, once again, I'm back to wondering why the RIAA is taking such a hard line. I think that until we understand the motivations of the RIAA that things will certainly continue to get worse instead of better. Of course there's always the possibility that the RIAA doesn't really understand themselves what kind of road they're choosing for themselves.
In a sense I hope things get much much worse. Perhaps when a school teacher gets thrown in jail because he/she played a copyrighted song in class the public at large will finally wake up, realize what they've lost, and take it back. I'm a firm believer that Freedom can never be truly lost, just temporarily suspended.
Anyway, that's my little rant on the subject. I appologize if it came off as a confusing diatribe, but unfortunately I don't see anything but confusion when I think about the current state of copyright.
RFC2119
In Canada, the music companies have actually been lowering prices on new releases and offering more to the consumer - many CDs contain DVDs with concert footage and stuff. When I went down south on vacation over the winter, I almost had a heart attack when the cost of music CDs was twice what I paid for them at home. Though, I still don't like the blank CD tariff the Canadian industry has pushed through. I remember seeing a roundtable discussion of Canadian music industry execs and they said that suing students for file swapping had to be the worst idea they ever heard for combatting piracy - they actually ridiculed the exec that put forth the notion.
Will you accept a check?
If there is any doubt in anyone's mind that the RIAA and other powerhouse copyright holders don't have lawmakers twisted around their little finger, this case should settle everything. Just look at the recent copyright laws in US:
Digital Millenium Copyright Act: It is illegal to circumvent copyright protection
Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act: Life of author +70 years or 120 years for corporations
Then look at the punishment for breaking these laws. For example, a maximum fine of $150,000 for each song, or $250,000 + 5 years in prison for each video. Excuse me, but LET THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIME folks. There are far worse crimes in this country that don't have nearly that stiff a penalty. For example, look at drunk driving, a crime which endangers people's live. Chances are, a THIRD offense will sock you with a mere $5000.00 fine and 1 year in jail. But, somehow, federal lawmakers have been convinced that a college student swapping a couple of songs deserves to have his life ruined.
I hope that the RIAA just continues doing what it's doing and shoots itself in the foot. The very college students that it's attacking also buy the most music. And they can also vote. All these pro-Hollywood, pro-RIAA Congressmen (e.g. Sen. Hollings) could actually be kicked out of office if more than 25% of college students actually voted. That's probably all wishful thinking... But still, high profile cases like these that show how ludicrous the copyright laws in this country are becoming might make some people think twice.
Grrr sorry, for the lack of formatting... in my last post
/.ers realise that IP laws need some modification, so if the RIAA wants to get silly, get silly right back.
:) stock markets don't like lawsuits very much.
Anyone who reads the damages sought by the RIAA regards this as absolutley silly... so what to do? Countersue for 97.8 B/Trillion right back.
Think if it this way... as the student you have nothing to lose, and most students and
Countersue for 97.8 Tr/Billion (harrassment) and and then hold the case up in court for the next forever... as someone with nothing to lose, use the situation to make the RIAA look really dumb. C'mon suing for 97.8 billion dollars just makes the media industry look really greedy (big suprise), so give them some of their own medicine... sue them for everything under the sun... malicious lawsuit/harassment/breach of privacy/violation of 1st ammendment... you don't have to be right... just contentious enough not to get thrown out of court immediatley...
Heck, if only one charge stays then it will impact the record companies, who will have to disclose the lawsuit in their financial reports...
The costs involved could be relatively minor... considering the publicity you'd get, I'm sure a few lawyers would work pro bono, and heck, the legal fees are miniscule compared to the potential damages.
The real key, as I see it is to keep the case going... countersuing for 97.8 Billion will QUICKLY get the RIAA to back off their claim, and knock a few billion off the charge, but keep it up... make them look REALLY SILLY! The more news outlets hear of the battle of the Trillion dollar lawsuits, the sillier the RIAA looks...
And lastly, competing Trillion dollar lawsuits will definatley get the eye of congress... when an industry starts to sue for Trillions, congress starts to worry (save for Senator Disney).
_CMK
Bad spellers of the world untie!
RIAA senior vice president for business and legal affairs Matthew Oppenheim said the suits are intended to send a clear message to anyone running these types of services
Is the message that you're a bunch of insane megalomanics? Because if it is don't worry we knew that before but thanks for reenforcing it.
I stole this Sig
Assume an average 3-minute 128kbps MP3 - about 3 MB. 3 MB * 652000 = 1956000 MB. About 2 TERABYTES.
Did this guy have a 20-disk RAID in his box, or am I missing something?
I stopped sharing music a long time ago when I decided to try and support bands I like and obviously because these companies are out to get us. Now all I download is Simpsons, South Park, and Futurama which I'm not quite sure if that is illegal.
I'm just wondering if everybody else is starting to realize that are people out to get you! Kazaalite is starting to get dangerous. Watch out!
This guy is way out there
Statutory damages do not require that they show any actual loss or that the infringer made any money. They only need to show that they owned the copyright and that infringment occured.
Also, this would be a civil case so the money is for damages, not fines.
Establish a legal p2p music network designed only for music that "wants" to be shared ( you have to identify yourself to inject a file into the network initially, p2p clients can be configured to look at cancellation notice lists from whatever sources they choose, etc).
When everybody has a free, easy, legal source for free music, you will (taking a page from the M$ book) "cut off the RIAA's air supply".
In the meantime, how come p2p clients don't require some kind of EULA to connect, so that connecting for the obvious uses is OK but connecting for any other purpose violates the EULA, the DMCA and subjects the violators (RIAA) to hefty fines and cyberterrorism jailtime?
C'mon, you're smart, you're young, you're quick, you should be able to beat them at their own game!
Listen, no organization pisses me off more than the RIAA. They are the most useless, uneccessary heap of vital organs I can muster which serves anybodies purpose (in this case musicians). Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I really don't understand the purpose of the RIAA, what the fuck do they do? And why the fuck can't the industry survive without them? This being said:
1. Letter writing campaign suggesting that musicians represent themselves without the RIAA. Perhaps even without their record companies. There are thousands of private recording studios (including the ones the musicians operate themselves) that can be used to produce music. Next there is distribution...
2. Stores which sell CD's for the most part, make little margin on them, they are there to entice buyers into making other purchases. So its a huge incentive for stores to get CD's regardless of where they come from. Stores which want to purchase CD's to resell order them from a central warehouse (s), which (yes) stores all musicians music.
3. Hack RIAA's computers, and place direct connect on each of them, generate a log of connecting to them, counter sue.
With this plan, artists would receive nearly 100% gross sales revenue from their CD's, with this they pay their recording studio's, and subsidize the cost of the warehouse.
Advertising? On the radio (they need to play SOMETHING), P2P (people will buy more since CD's will surely cost less), and stores advertising. Everybody wins, fuck the RIAA.
dumb (napster lawsuit), dumb-er going
after Universities, dumb-er-er going after
your target market. Notice that AOL-timewarner (CNN) doesn't carry this article.
Given modern technology artists don't need
record labels anymore!! Piranahs those RIAA
folks. Defintely evil-doers. Can't we find
a business model so everyone wins?
Just to pick on a different number for a while:
652,000 songs that the student was allegedly serving? Even at 15 tracks per CD, that's more than 43,000 CDs. Assuming they're just 3 minute long pop songs (no symphonic movement long tracks), it would take over 11 years to listen to them once, if you worked at it 8 hours a day.
I did a search on Amazon's "Popular Music" section for "CD" and got 4117 hits. 11023 hits on "All Products", which includes computer books with CDs, books about CDs, and whatnot.
Just how many music CDs are in print in the first place? No matter how dedicated a pirate, I doubt this guy has a collection of every track ever laid down on any medium by any musician.
And if the music industry really is churning out this many tracks: no wonder they're crap.
Incidentally, 652,000 * 150,000 = 97.8 billion, not trillion. But it's still a silly number.
according to some popular sites on the web, the human being is worth real rough about 2 million bucks, if you want to buy the parts, i mean. so at 2 million a person... (no really, at least one site told me 2 million- www.humanforsale.com).. er.. this is the part where i wish i finished high school math (i was worth about 850k so bear with me) 97 trillion = 97 000 000 000 000 divided by 2 000 000. so ugh. thats like 97 000 000 divided by 2, right? so 48.5 million people. So the RIAA should just collect those college students and their immediate and distant families and stop when they hit 48.5 million people. then they can just pack 'em up and drive them over and shut the hell up.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I don't agree with most arguments for file-sharing. It is common sense that the artists and lavels should make money for the songs
Hear, Hear. I don't condone the theft of media either, but the RIAA has behaved so poorly, I find myself unwilling to argue in their defense, even from a strictly philosophical *theft is wrong* sense.
The RIAA is of course going to be disliked by heavy p2p users, but things like this, and lobbying to make firewalls illegal just serve to alienate themselves from reasonable individuals, who would otherwise argue in their defense. This is absolute madness.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
97.8 Billion US$ = approx. Earth's accumulated GDP Nov 10, 1998 - Dec 31, 2001.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2000/02/ data/#1
What are busines school's teaching students these days???
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
Dont you know its against the law to convince other people not to buy music from the RIAA? Thats why napster is illegal, thats why mp3.com was sued, and you will be sued too if you share music and it stops millions of people from buying CDs.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
1. Plead guilty
2. Go bankrupt
3. ????????
4. Profit!
652,000 @ ~3meg per song = 1956000 megs or nearly 2 teras of hdd space. This kid must have had quite a setup. I'd love to see the method they used to calculate all this. Perhaps it could be used to develop time travel.
That's enough to pay off the national debt 25 times over. It's 200 times what Bill Gates is worth. Who do these guys think they're kidding? It should get thrown out of court just because what they're asking is so ridiculous.
correct my math if applicable but 652000 * 150000 == 9.78e10 or $97,800,000,000 doesnt that make it $97.8 billion?
s/trillion/billion/
*hopes his elementary school math skills pay off...
the kid having 650,000 songs on a shared network is pretty impressive but what are the origins of having $150,000 max penalty for the copyright infringement of each song?
/. will agree that these example cases will NOT deter piracy. The RIAA would have to prosecute millions of students in north america alone.
I'd like to know what the law exactlly says to inflict a $150,000 penalty.
Also, I think most of
But I'm thinking that in this guys defense does he simply have to ask that the RIAA prove that he didnt purchase the music ? I can see going after napster like they did. But on a one to one basis don't they have to prove that he didnt buy that music ?
I always thought that it was innocent till guilty ?
97 trillion would be a nice club to join.....
they don't know how to count for yet another reason: they said they traded 652000 songs. at 3mb per song that is 1956000 MB or 1.956 terrabytes. i highly doubt any student has that kind of space, and if they do? damn... if they don't though, the RIAA is overcounting for downloading each song more than once.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
For every copy of a song that someone downloaded frm this guy, it was copied at least 4-5 times in the router buffers between his computer and the downloader. And then there are the numbers of times it was copied in local memory and swapped to disk... if making a copy of music is stealing, then 100 trillion is not rearly close enough... Just think of all the numbers of times PI has songs recorded in it's digits? Every man woman and child who uses circles and spheres (cones too) owes the RIAA big time...
As always, Canada welcomes those of you sickened with the current state of American corporate chicanery. Just head north, you'll find us eventually.
That's not a soda... it's a caffeine delivery device!
The fact that an MTU student was chosen leads me to believe that the RIAA isn't going to stop with the students. Perhaps they are hoping to receive a billion dollar judgement that the student will be unable to pay so that they may go after the university itself, citing that they allowed this sort of thing to go down on their networks, leaving the RIAA with a large amount of 'unrecoverable damages' Now, IANAL- but as a former MTU student, I have seen how much the school has "cooperated" with the RIAA. As early as 1998, I was removed from the dorm LAN due to my operation of an FTP server with an easily remembered password, which generated alot of traffic. By going after students early, MTU has opened themselves up to lawsuits due to making a pseudo-admission that they feel it is their responsibility to monitor the networks. Serves the 'U' right, in my opinion, for attempting to help the RIAA.
I apparently forgot that sig != uptime...
The "Corporate Inquisition" supported by the "Law of the Land". Which of you want to be next. Speak, and your names will be written into the "TIA Book of the Damned". This will start the collection of evidence that will prove you are a heretic to "Corporate Interest" and the ruling "Capitalist Republic". All governments, religious institutions and people are but sheep and will follow what is deemed righteous by man to incarcerate, torture, punish, and slaughter the followers of the "Anti-Capitalist". Swift and horrible will be the sword of justice held by the Capitalist. REPENT, REPENT, be penitent, atone now for your "Anti-Capitalist" sins. You must put the Capitalist and Religion before all others and sacrifice your family and friends when commanded by the Capitalist.
May the "GREAT CAPITALIST" keep you wealthy and living comfortably; So that, you will not suffer illiteracy, hunger, and homelessness!
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The students could make a real statement simply by not defending themselves and accepting the 97.8 trillion dollar judgement. I believe that the result would get a *LOT* of press. It would go a long way towards convincing the world of what the RIAA really is (hired thugs and extortionists who only benefit the recording companies, not the artists).
-Chuck
P.S. Yo, I can take care of my own "--" sig mark. You don't need to add an extra one for me...
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
The article says that the estimated damages are $150000 per cd with 652000 cds shared.
652000x150000 = 97.8 billion...that right billion with a B, not trillion.
uh - who's going to enforce the money collection?
so if we take 652000 songs, and assume that they're 3.5 Mb each (a random number, but still - it's a reasonable average)
that's 3.5*652000Mb of songs. Divide by 1024 twice to get to terrabytes, and that's 2.176Tb - which, fair enough, is possible on a cluster of PCs networked with 2 or more 100+Gb harddrives each.
BUT this is a student here, not some consultant that can probably afford $XXX of computers to serve 2 Tb of stuff.
So how the hell do they expect this to be true?
Either that, or they've got 3510 CD-Rs sitting around waiting to be loaded into burners, and let's face it - that's not likely.
Andyboy_H
(unregistered here, but a proud member of http://bb.buhsnarf.net)
Perhaps this is it? They only need to win one of these cases every 120,000 years or so...
No, the $97.8 Trillion figure must be right. Otherwise it would mean that the music industry plays with numbers, making things artificially high when it suits them and artificially low when it suits the need to cheat the artists. Since it's an entire industry doing this as a collaborative effort, it would even rise to the levels of felony crimes including racketeering if it were shown that they have a long history of bogus math behind their accounting.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
How can I get in on this action??? The best I could do in the past was to get Microsoft on my ass for 500k. The RIAA knows how to party.
http://www.riaa.org/contact.cfm
Just something to think about.. what kind of jury would allow this kind of absurd sentencing on a college student, for a crime that's not even theft, but copyright infringement? Could any member of that jury honestly say that they've never done it themselves?
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
You know that when people file suit, the initial amount is always an insane amount. Now, what would be news is if they WON that amount. Like that woman who won 28 billion dollars from the tobacco industry. That amount was reduced by three orders of magnitude, but that's still a lot of money. I somehow doubt that the students will have to pay quite as much as the initial claim is for. That isn't to say that the RIAA is right or anything like that, but I just thought I'd let you know that before you jump to any conclusions... em, too late for that, I guess...
Danish != nationality
payments reduced to a comfortable amount.
And the payments may even qualify as tax deductable.
Here, in New York state, with the .08/dollar sales tax, that'd come out to 105,408,000,000 total.
Still outrageous. I've stopped buying CDs, partly because of the price hikes, and because having to worry about this sort of crap just isn't worth it. Who knows what will happen when the RIAA decide that it's time to target CD-holders. I mean, stranger things have happened.
Informatus Technologicus
Let's look at the numbers: 652,000 songs
If we assume there are 20 tracks on an album (that's a large number, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt), that gives us 32,600 albums. Now, let's assume that every artist puts out an average of 5 albums.
Using these numbers, we'd find that this ONE guy has successfully collected the entire repertoire of 6,520 different artists.
The storage space required for all those songs (stored as mp3s) would easily be in excess of 2TB.
I seriously doubt the RIAA looked at every single file to verify it was in fact a complete, *unique* song within the collection, and that the copyright to every song belonged to them. For them to do so remotely would require them to download continuously for ~23 days at 1MB/s.
Utter bullshit. I'm disgusted.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
Deportation? Deportation to where I hear you asking... Why the new colonies in Australia and America of course...
Wasn't that latter country (ostensibly) founded on the idea of stopping cruel oppression by a rich elite?
And drop it on the RIAA from a B-52........
If this is just a search engine well no crime here move along folks nothing here to see. It will get thrown out.
The Google Cache shows that Aaron developed a P2P indexing service. Is research now a crime? Is maintaining an index of publicly available services a crime? If so, then google is guilty of theft. Google Cache of FlatLyn resaerch paper
Surley the best thing for the RIAA would be to bring lots of cases with much smaller fines (~1$ for each illegal track). This would mean that people might actually scared about losing some (smallish) amount of money so would see it worthwile to buy the music they like. Basically I'm saying that the current punishment is far too harsh for the actual crime and if somehow they actually managed to prosucute EVERY person with uncopyrighted material they would just destroy the USA and any cooperating countrie economy.
I think they'll say to people "We could ruin you and bankrupt you, because look! you owe us $BigAssNumber. Instead, we'll cut a deal with you. If you pay us $SmallerNumber, like maybe 10k, 100k over your lifetime, and sign this thing saying that you're a worthless shit and that all your base are belong to us, and that you will suck our cocks any time we want, we will "Forgive you" this time. But don't ever become a terroristic IP-stealing pirating copyright thief again!"
:)
Then, once they've extracted their pound of flesh form a few people, they get the printer cranked up and send out a flood of those letters telling everyone in the whole world that they can be "forgiven" for their sins for the low low price of just $159.95 per month for the rest of their livse!
I don't know if they'll succeed, but if I were in their position, and had millions of people who each committed hundreds or thousands of acts (billions of acts) such that I technically could get 150,000 per act (technically hundreds of trillions of dollars "owed to me"), I would at least try it. Why the fuck not? It's free money if the legal system rolls over and goes your way. And if your ship is sinking, why not take everyone else with you? If you get even a small portion of this, you can retire to Mexico even if everyone hates you here.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
I am holding theshe mp3sh hoshtage until I get ... one zillion-billion goooabbbalalaiion dollarsh!
Muahahaha!
FLR
Maybe this might work out best in the long run. The way I see it, eventually they're going to get a life-ruining judgment against a student who isn't all that stable to begin with, and then maybe said student will snap under the pressure of owing a billion or so to the RIAA. Then, instead of being a good little debtor (slave) for the rest of their lives, they'll go get a Glock and shoot up a record company's headquarters, operating under the idea that they might as well take some of the bastards with them. If they get lucky and tag an exec or two before they're killed it might cause the record companies to back down a bit, seeing as siccing the lawyers on a poor student ultimately ended up with a bloodbath.
Or not, in which case the ultimate result might be even more dead record people.
To: hotline@mpaa.org;cdreward@riaa.com
:
// Happy Helper
Hello,
There's some serious music/movies piracy going on at
http://www.goatse.cx
Let's do the math:
If you have 97.8 Trillion, and you need to distribute it 545 ways (435 representatives, 100 senators, 1 president, 9 justices), you get to bribe each one with $179 million.
You could buy outright fascism and have it tomorrow with that kind of money.
Because that would be about 3.6 Sears Towers worth of pennies, at 26 billion dollars per Sears Tower.
It seems, offering music on filesharing systems is quite a risk.
I wonder that until now now really good _secure_ filesharing tool has emerged...
I mean, Freenet is nice but it's not intended for music sharing. Moreover the user community is just too small and dial-up users are somehow locked out.
A really secure filesharing tool would probably make an end to all these ridiculous lawsuits.
Regardless of whether he cost the artists and labels 98.7 trillion, billion, or $.98, we should condemn his actions as wrong.
As others have noted, including the poster, she got the math wrong; recall, however, that in England 1x10^10 is a trillion, and a billion is what we call a trilion (i.e., the two are flippled). However, looking at her Bio, there is no reference to any education or time spent in the UK, so we have to chalk this up to sloppy copy editing
OK, let me have some of what you are smoking. The article says 652,000 songs. I just averaged one of my mp3 directories and the result is 4.11MB per file.
That would give you 2677710 MB or 2.68 TB, a far cry from your 489TB.
Nevertheless, that is still an impressive number.
The RIAA has the burden of proving that 650,000 songs were "stolen" by this kid. Certainly the kid doesn't have records as to how many files/songs were traded, and certainly the RIAA doesn't know how many (if any) songs were traded. The University might have logs of connections and their ports to the kids computer, but even that doesn't say that what was traded was the RIAA's copyrighted material. So how does the RIAA prove this number? I don't see how they can; they're just pulling that number out of their @$$ -- They should put it right back where it came from.
Just settle out of court at $97+ billion and then declare bankruptcy. Total cost to the student: about $300 for the paralegal and paperwork. Seems like a better deal than about anything that he'd actually be able to get in a courtroom against the RIAA goon squad and he'll have a great story to tell for the rest of his life about how he once accrued $97 billion in debt. ;)
Shawn
Because you gotta bitch
1. Find student with mp3s.
2. Sue student for $97 Billion
3. PROFIT!!!
Holy shit, it works!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
For those of you who are a bit weak in the 'global experience' department, consider that the author may have a British background . . . where 1,000,000,000 really IS a TRILLION (vs the US designation of Billion)
The size of a dollar bill is 6.6294 cm wide, by 15.5956 cm long, and 0.010922 cm in thickness.
A stack of one dollar bills worth $97.8 trillion would be 10 billion meters high or slightly more than 25 stacks of bills that each would reach to the moon.
Laid end-to-end the bills would stretch 15.25 trillion meters. That's long enough to stretch from the sun to pluto almost three times over.
That many dollar bills would cover the entire 68 square miles of the District of Columbia in a pile of bills two feet deep.
Oh, wait. Now I get it.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
i've turned all of my cd's into mp3s. so, every mp3 on my hard drive i legally own. i really, truly, own all the mp3s on my drive. so, if i happen to have them in a world accessable place, say ~/public_html, and then people download them, who is ultimately responsible...rather, am I still responsible?
I only ask because I had this happen to me...I had all of my mp3s in an apache generated directory (you know, just no index page)..no one used the website but me, it was just an idex. I would only use the mp3 dir over HTTP if I needed to grab a song when I was at a friends house or something...
well..then, my website inadverantly got a LOT of traffic, and a LOT of people started downloading my mp3s, just because they were there kind of thing. then i got a lot of people who emailed me and told me i should take it offline or else the RIAA police will come and get me. I eventually password protected the directory for the sake of saving bandwidth, not for the other reason.
Just wondering what everyone thinks. The page is still at (mp3_content is still 401'd (?)) http://virga-x.adtn.net
The RIAA is seeking almost a hundred billion from him. What're they gonna do, sue him? He's just a student -- his combined assets may total to just over a millionth of that price.
I don't think it's heartless for them to sue... they have every right to, I just think it's stupid. But what I want to know is how are they are planning to collect?
[Obtuse refence to a common idiom] As an aside, I think the Red Cross would probably be very interested in knowing this too.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
That's Trillion with a "B"
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
RIAA: your horrendous attack against your customers is the last we shall accept. No more! Your blatant disregard for your buying public will cost you your business forever. We united against you hereby swear it. You shall cease to exist and we will listen to your complaints and whining about potential profits dwindle into oblivion!
And the judge will laugh at them. If they had sued for maybe $100 or so, the amount a student MIGHT spend in a years time, it would be better. The fact that they shared them might fall under some other clause, but not for attributable software losses, for that they'll have to go after the people who downloaded all the files indivually.
http://www.webster.com/mw/table/number.htm
An American Billion is what the Brits call a Milliard and it's the same as 1,000,000,000. The British Billion is actually the American Trillion.
So, by all accounts that I can find, 97,000,000,000 are no 97 trillion in either system.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
Give it to me straight! I can take it! What is that in Libraries of Congress!?!
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
mod it -1 Flamebait.
Here are a couple more articles about this:
The part of this that I find most disturbing is that the RIAA didn't even bother contacting the university to take action (i.e. taking disciplinary action, turning off his network port) before they filed the lawsuit. In several previous cases, MTU has cooperated with the RIAA to limit "piracy".
People are focusing on the wrong thing. The point isn't $97T, $97B or $100K. The point is that the RIAA is finally going after a law breaker. They went after colleges and other carriers for too long even though *they weren't breaking the law*.
Now they are going after the kids that actually broke the law and everyone is still pissed.
Hell with that. These kids should be the ones being put to trial. Maybe now the laws can be shown for the unmitigated sillyness that they are and either shown unconstitutional or at least have a $97B judgement against some kids show the public how out of control this all is.
This is the right suit. Let's make sure it's the right result by now dwelling on the RIAA and instead dwelling on the law.
Typical cost to consumer of your average CD: $15
Cost to the RIAA to actually manufacture the disc: $0.84
Damages sought by RIAA in suit against college student: $97.8 billion
The look of the RIAA when this blows up in their face and they are majorly embarrassed in front of the public: priceless.
(Hey, someone had to do this one ...)
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
I've got some downloading to do. I only owe them $687.3 million.
Anyone make a RIAA mod for HL yet?
Here is an idea:
Why don't you all just sod off and NOT BUY ANY MORE CD'S!!!!!!!
Then, the RIAA constituent companies will lose money and be forced to deal with the issue.
Listen to the radio, got to concerts, gad, get out from in front of the computer(yes I see the irony), put down the porn and go out and do something. Read a book. A real book. Not some Piers Anthony sexual romp.
Go to the library, sit, where it is free, and read book, for free. Grahm Greene's "The Power and the Glory" is good. Maybe "Heart of Darknes" by Conrad. Edmund Morris's "Theodore Rex" and "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" are good choices.
Like how are they going to collect?
...with Iran Contra...rememeber...oh wait he didn't sell them, he traded them...get it traded, hahahahahahahaha!!!!! head
If the students were being fined for the VALUE of their "theft", they would be much better off. They are aledged to have denied the RIAA income on some 650,000 songs. At 50 cents a song, they would only be down som $300,000 and mearly ruined insead of owning the RIAA the assets of a small oil rich country. Actually proving the value of the losses is impossible of course because, in reality, there were none. All the students in question did was index other people's shared files and the fault was not theirs if the was any fault at all.
The whole case is absurd and will eliminate any residual good will the major music labels have. It's so obviously stupid that 36 year old farts like me can see it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
... the RIAA has been heard screaming, "You are our BITCH!!"
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
Like a college student has that kind of money. A judge in his right mind would say yea, the student violated copyright laws his fine will be $1 to the US and $0.01 to the RIAA. These people are farging nuts.
$97 trillion would buy a heckuva lot of ramen noodles.
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
I would encourage ppl to check out some of the free music sites on the net. Download and listen. A CD is *FAR* to expensive IMO. What about artists making money on conserts and merchandise like T-shirts and stuff? I don't need to send my money to some rich ass-o'- ;)
Links anyone?
You can't really compare this to a "Library of Congress", so I'll try using the McDonald's coffee lawsuit as a unit of measure.
The plaintiff in that case suffered third degree burns over 6 percent of her body from one cup of coffee. A jury awarded punitive damages in the amount of two days worth of profits from McDonald's coffee- which turned out to be $2.7 million dollars. (On appeal a judge lowered the award to $480,000- or about a third of a day's coffee profits- and it was finally settled for an undisclosed amount. But just to be conservative, let's use the 2.7 million figure, since that's the one everyone is familiar with.)
$97.8 billion divided by 2.7 million means we're talking about the equivalent of 36,000 McDonald's coffee lawsuit jury awards. To get a punitive damages award against you this high, you would have to amass over 4500 gallons of overheated mediocre coffee- enough to fill 81 standard 55 gallon drums- and pour it all on an old lady wearing synthetic fabrics. Actually, more than one old lady. For that kind of money you could completely cover 2,173 old ladies in third degree burns over 100% of their bodies. McDonald's would have to sell coffee for 198 years just to break even if it did something this bad.
Remember kids, sharing files is wrong!
4 kids (or ringleaders of groups of kids, I guess) managed to get 652,000 songs together, with no dupes, live music, legal MP3s, or any original recording by themselves? Wow, at an average of like 15 tracks per CD, that's 43,467 CDs, or so. And at $15/CD, that means that various people spend around $652,000 dollars on music. Clearly, these are wealthy college kids, so it makes sense to get after their money.
If you figre a conservative 3MB/song, these kids also have 1,956,000MB of storage, or just under 2 TB. Heck, that's not too bad... you could do that for about $20,000 or less nowadays.
I suppose they could have just downloaded them all, and not purcahsed a single CD. If they ran a T3 full-out for 4 days straight, they could suck down 2TB. With the massive pipes most colleges have, I'm sure they wouldn't have even noticed the little bump in traffic.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
that it's incredibly unrealistic to say that suing the shit out of every pirate in the United States is going to have any bearing on the general trend. The other point is that the Music "Industry" itself is unnecessary - middle men whose only real job is to make themselves seem necessary. They need rouse themselves from their stupor and realize that they have to adapt to a new technological world or else die. The longer they think that scaring people and alienating customers will help, the more likely the eventuality of their death. They need to make it easier for the public to pay for online music than it is to get it at the moment. until then, they have no chance in hell. Moreover, RIAA serves corporations rights - if talent can proliferate naturally through MP3 file sharing, then why do we need corporations? RIAA is about protecting the profits of the music distributors, not the artists themselves.
All this lawsuit will do is cause this guy to file personal bankruptcy and he won't have to pay a thing.
The RIAA is just out to prove a point.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
In N. America, 1,000,000,000,000 is one trillion.
In Europe, it's one billion.
A N. American "billion" is "thousand million" in Europe.
Is anyone surprised?
The RIAA are litigating like a pack of rabid scientologits. The right thing to do here, is for the kids in question to say to the jury, "ladies and gentlemen, please tell the plaintiffs to get real, for christ's sake."
If the jury does it's job, it will award the RIAA about $0.10/song, and not award attorney's fees.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The RIAA claims Joseph Nievelt offered 652,000 songs. Assuming 4MB each, that's more than 2,600 GIGABYTES of data! Or, to look at it another way, assuming 12 songs per album, the RIAA is claiming this guy had equivilent of 54,333 albums online. I doubt that even a FYE/Sam Goody's/Musicland/etc music store has 54,333 albums in one of their retail stores, and we're asked to believe this college kid had that many? Rediculous.
Remember, too, these are the same folks that claim a fast CD burner is really equal to four "regular" burners.
I call bullshit on this one.
You missed the point.
It's not that it's not a crime, it's that it's not "stealing". Stealing is when you take something that belongs to someone else, hence depriving them of having it. You cannot "steal" something by making a copy.
How dare the RIAA sue for illegal piracy! Good thing micheal posted this under "Your Rights Online," because it is surely our right online to illegally download whatever the hell we want because it is there, it is convenient, and it has been so prevalent for so long, we have magically decided it is a-okay--despite the law!
Revel in the logic!
"Sufferin' succotash."
They've had us by the large boxes?
Or did you mean cojones?
And $12? Where are you getting CDs so cheap?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
noone seems to have mentioned the statutory damages for copyright infringement.. like when you watch a movie, the 'FBI' warning about 5 years in jail and 150,000 dollars in fines.. the RIAA doesnt have to prove that he made them lose 150k per song, its just the way the law is written..
I hope that people are reading thier complaints. for example at http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/riaa/arcopeng40 303njcmp.pdf
which is one of the 4 complaints point 33 which states that the lan sharing or files is a problem for the universities because of bandwidth. hmm last time I checked a lan means 10mb or a 100mb songs would only take up a 10mb connection for about 4 seconds and 700,000 thoudand seconds is about a week straight , and thats only between 2 computers that would be a problem. I hope the eff jumps in and puts a lot of these rediculous claims to the shame they deserve.
SHAME ON YOU RIAA SHAME ON YOU FOR YOUR GREEDY WAYS. NO ONE WILL STAND FOR THIS QUIETLY
you obviously have no sense of "right" and "wrong" buddy.
Copyright infringement isn't wrong. Since when, exactly, does an artist deserve money every time somebody downloads a song? Since never. That's just common sense. The whole model of intellectual 'property' is against the grain of common sense, and should be abolished.
Nobody 'owns' information unless they keep it a fricking secret, and nobody deserves money every time a book is read, a song is played, or my computer gets switched on.
I realize that this all goes against the grain of your American thinking, and clearly goes against your ridiculous American laws; however, you people think it's OK to terrorize foreign countries every time somebody doesn't kowtow to whichever retard is currently in charge - even a tux-and-cowboy-boots wearing double-speaker who can't read an expensive speech to save his life.
Remember when America financed al-Quaeda? Poured money into bin Laden's coffers? I do, and so does everybody else in the world with an inkling of world politics. Watch Rambo III, fast forward to the credits where the film is dedicated to "the brave freedom-fighters in Afghanistan," a reference to the friendly relations with Osama and crew - the way it used to be, man. Remember when Poindexter and his little faggoty butt-buddy Oliver North barely escaped jail (on technicalities, mind you) when they provided weapons (laundered, mind you, through the Iranians) to Nicaraguan terrorists? Notice that Poindexter is currently robbing you Yanks of your rights, think about the DMCA and the PATRIOT Act before you answer me. Remember who put Saddam Hussein in power in the first place, because he looked like a good puppet at the time?
You Yanks have it all backwards, from copyright to terrorism.
You and your bovine idiot mentality bother me something fierce. Fuck off, cowboy.
this timely bit of wisdom was brought you by p00p!
Breakin' it down for the common man since the late 70's, baby.
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
I've had a couple CS classes with him. He is smarter than the professors and I've never seen him not know what to do or not be able to answer a question. For proof of his work see, the Top Coder competition from last year.
n t. asp
h tml
http://www.cpwire.com/archive/2002/4/22/1045pri
He finished fourth at this nationwide competition at MIT. www.topcoder.com
If they even take a small chip out of him, he should countersue. MTU needs to stand up and not call him "dumb". See the link here:
http://wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,58351,00.
MTU watch yourself. If MTU continues to mess with you...Joe...transfer to a school that will protect your rights, or at least stand up for you.
May the RIAA burn.
See you at the MUB.
I remember going through college. Ahhh, the memories. I also remember how I didn't have enough money to buy cds, some times, even books for class. I think that the RIAA has jumped the shark tank. I can't even believe that the RIAA and thier pack of money hungry lawyers would think to do this. But, then again, I have seen the stupidity of lawyers and people skyrocket over the last 20 years. I wouldn't be suprised if all of us that shared music with out friends get a letter from RIAA saying that they are going to sue us for the same amount of money.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
The RIAA regularly claims more than 2.6 billion music files are pirated every month in the US. Assuming their number (not reasonable, but for the calculation) and noting $150k per copyright violation, we get $390 trillion per month. Perhaps this is how they plan to address their failed business model. ___
USA! USA! USA!
They got WHAT THEY DESERVED
Should have Thot before defrauding American companies
ALL who have messed with US have felt the PAIN.
DIE! ALL UNAMERICAN FUckers
WE ALWAYS WIN!
USA! USA! USA!
Trilliant?
Impressive indeed.
New business plan probably goes something like:
Consider:
1. The massive, much publicized, 1998 States tobacco settlement amounted to approx. $250 Billion over 25 years.
2. The GDP of a country like Egypt, approximately the total value of output by its 70 million inhabitants in a year, is $100 Billion
3. The net worth of Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, is approximately $30 Billion
After you consider this, think about the effects of the 'McDonald's Hot Coffee' judgement on people's opinions of punitive damages. Then my Subject line will make sense!
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Otherwise known as the year that the great experiment in Democracy/Representative Republicanism came apart, mostly due to attempts of the corporate hegemonies to take control of the citizens, with little or no historically noted resistance from the elected representives of said Republic.
This period was noted as being one of the greatest drivers of the Diaspora....
(From the Encyclopedia of History, Version 2, 2089)
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
The RIAA has posted their official position on their website. It's REALLY confusing!
These morons can't even decide if this is a "centralised server" or a "Napster-like network." They say it operates on a "local area network" (their quotes, not mine) and yet it's a "particularly flagrant way to illegally distribute millions of copyrighted works over the Internet."
Dear RIAA: GET YOUR LIES STRAIGHT BEFORE FORCING THEM UPON US!
In Soviet Russia, sig types you!
I have a friend at Michigan Tech(not this guy, I just talked to him) who got in trouble for sharing files from his computer. The network guys there bought a search program that searched the school network for people using p2p clients like Kazaa then searched their shared folders for copyrighted material. He had many (>10)GB of copyrighted stuff, so he got a letter from the net admin saying they were coming to check out his computer. They came, but didn't find anything, so nothing happened to him (he 'deleted' his files), but consider this a warning for those of you who are in college and do share things, they are looking for you and will find you if you're not careful.
Wow. Heather Newnan is Stupid - yes, thats stupid with an S...So much for trying to emphasize a point...
I'm a little late on the scene here but here's a couple of rather interesting links to the google cache.
All pages at mtu.flatlan.com
Stats page
Interestingly the stats page shows 650,000 files shared in total. Only 51,000 MP3s.
I wish they take the bill over to M$ for allowing all those network shares.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
You know, it's time that we, the people charge the RIAA and it's trusties as a trust plain and simple.
After this is over, I would bet dollars against dimes the RIAA still won't pay musicians anything more than a living wage.
they asked if i opened it. They checked the packaging. They ask questions. Just garbage.
So the formula for this is: ...
1. buy law.
2. pay laywers to sue piss poor college student for 97 billion.
3.
4. Profit!
actually, maybe they just have to wait for melinda and bill to have kids, send them to college, and catch the kid sharing a few trillion worth in mp3s, and they can actually collect on the damages instead of just forcing a college student to well die penniless, because you can't get lawsuit damages dismissed by a bankruptcy... (last i checked you couldn't anyways)
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Pay off the National Debt 20 times over.
Of course, this depends on the speed of his cd-burner.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Since this whole thing began years ago with napster, the only CD I bought was an Ozzy Osbourne CD that dates back over a decade. Music, like cars, were good at one point in history. I think the RIAA forsaw all of this, and started dropping decent artists. Why? So that CD sales would go down on their own because nothing on the market is worth a pig's intestines, and they could then blame whoever seemed appropriate at the time.
I think we should all get together and have an exceedingly large LAN party. Play games, test network progs, and share files. I don't mean malicously, as in only mp3s or oggs to piss off the RIAA. Just file sharing. That huge xml log of an attack on your network, a new HOWTO, etc. Some music sharing will go on, because that is the nature of the beast. But combined with the network traffic of Unreal, Quake, Starcraft, legitimate files, etc, even if the pigopolist bastards showed up, there is no way in hell they could log that traffic.
if each song is only about 2min in length, encoded as an MP3 this network would have to consist of 1.2 TB of space taken up solely by non-repeating tracks. that was alleged for one student. i'm assuming they're getting him for all of the files shared on his network as well. even then i have a hard time believing 652000 songs. that's about 2.5years non stop of music, non repeating, no commercial interruptions. i think the RIAA is trying to bring up the numbers in their suit as an example for others, as a poor tactic of intimidation.
...would I have every thought I would be so happy for my campus' overly protective firewall.
-CPM
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
...the RIAA has now calculated that total sum of money owned by all the pirates in the world now exceeds the total value of Earth. Because of this, Earth today filed for restructuring under Chapter 11, making RIAA the supreme dictator. All hail RIAA!
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A troll, a MS one no less, gets modded up to 5. Now I've seen everything!
File trading is so easy and so desirable on the small scale, that it's impossible to deter it using the courts. You can't haul in everyone who trades files -- so you have to increase the deterrence by really walloping the few that you can. The problem is that there's little difference (to a student) between having to pay 97,000 dollars, or 97,000,000 dollars. Upping the ante by another factor of a million, to 97,000,000,000,000 dollars, isn't any more of a deterrent -- at that point it devolves to abstract numbers.
Another millieu that shows the same kind of saturation deterrence is the drug war (spit). It's easy, cheap, and desirable enough for many folks to smoke pot, that the courts literally could not handle them all. Stiffer penalties don't work so well, because the penalties are already so unreasonably stiff that they don't affect most peoples' risk assessment.
When this phenomenon occurs in photography, it's called "reciprocity failure" normally, each additional photon hitting a piece of film exposes the film the same amount, regardless of the actual intensity -- so you can photograph a dim object, with a longer exposure time. But for very long exposure times, that picture breaks down: the partially-exposed silver halide grains repair themselves in between photon strikes, so exposing film to a weak light source for a very long time doesn't have the effect you'd expect. It makes sense to think of file trading and the drug war as examples of deterrence reciprocity failure.
People are going to realized how unreasonable the industry is. Suing a student for billions of dollars is going to cost them AT least that much in ill will, and that, is a good thing.
... that Bill Gates has enough junk change to pay for this! Just curious! :/
This will be a good lawsuit anyway to discuss Internet privacy. Technically, browsing someones
LAN for non-routable protocols (like SMB)
consists of trespassing and hacking.
I mean what other purpose would that serve?
So charge the RIAA with hacking! counter sue.
And of course the press release is full of lies,
damn lies, and statistics.
(apologies for the US-centric nature of this post)
We live in the best place in world. Sure, there's some dumb copyright laws, some dumb surveillance laws, some dumb drug laws ad nauseum, but as of right now (forgoing the orwellian near future, for a moment), there is simply no better place to be.
You live in a country with an incredibly good road system. You can get *anywhere* in the continental US by road. You can't get more than 15 miles away from a road in the continetal US.
You have running water. Reliably. You have indoor plumbing. You have readily available food. You have electricity. You live in a place that has as many cars as families, because cars and gas are just that damned cheap here.
You have the best military in the world. You don't have to fear for your life walking down the street (well, in some places, you do, but it's safer here than much of the rest of the world).
This is a nation in which *anyone* can get a job. Not necessarily a good job, or the job they want, but you can land a job that'll pay well enough for you to eat every day.
I can drink the water anywhere in this nation without fear. Some places it looks a little brown, or have hard water, etc., but you can drink it without *dying*.
You have incredible medical care. I know many places have better systems for covering payment, and it's free in many places, but there's very few places in US where you can't get immediate medical care.
It's simply that, the particular set of advantages you get by being an American and living here on American soil is almost impossible to get anywhere else. Many places have worthwhile tradeoffs, but you can't get all the above just about anywhere else.
I realize that many of the above comments don't apply to everywhere in the world, and I apologize to the denizens of any nation that may be that much better, but I think that most of them apply somewhere.
And I hate our government as much as the next guy; more probably. I think we've made some very, very bad decisions, but I see every day how much worse it could be, and I'm happy for what we have.
SCO vs. IBM sure looks a lot more reasonable now, doesn't it?
It hard to target the poeple who simply download, and a bit easieer to go after the folks who are making music available for public consumption without a license (a student is't a radio station). It is much easier to go after the people who facilitate the prior two people's ileagle activity, and I have no sympathy for the student. He obviously wan't very smart, and dind't need to go to school anyways.
I do think the $$$ amount is a bit excessive, but this fellow "created a bazzar of illeagle activity", as the article says. I would place the fine at $20 per unlicense song swap! Depending on the actual amount swapped it would bring the fine down into the hundreds of millions instead of billions.
Encryption; Thats is what the file swappers are going to have to resort to. Terrorism in the eyes of the Justice dept, since only criminals/terroris use crypto! Hehe... They had better watch out cuz they might go from bad to worse, from the pan to the fire as Tolkin would say. I mean it seems obvious to me that in order to swap files people are going to have to embrace crypto on a person by person basis until crypto is a common notion in America. on second thought, what am I saying... this would hinder crypto... stay away file swappers! stay away!
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Copyright laws were never meant to be abused in this way. Its a shame that our society has let this situation progress to the horrible condition that it is presently in. Reading this article reminds me of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, I really feel like never paying for a CD again. The thing that really boils my blood is that its a giant corporation that is sueing these poor college students, not the artists - the ones who should really own the music that they produce. The artists get ripped on their own works of art, and the consumer gets ripped off paying for it. The only people that win are the recording labels. I'll "steal" all the stinking music I want. Copyright laws were intended to protect someone from claiming that they produced an original work or idea, not to give mega-corporations the right to rip everyone off. Thomas Jefferson wrote about copyright laws and he said that the right of owning property is something that a society grants its citizens and it is not a natural right. The society can change how it looks upon property (copyright laws) at any minute. I think its time that we change the way our copyright laws work. If Congress won't listen to its citizens and only to corporations that pad their pockets, they it is time that we rebel! We have a right to rebel and change our government when they listen to corporations over citizens. This is something that our founding fathers, and many intellectuals throught history would support. Why are we letting ourselves get walked all over, when our country is supposed to be one of "freedom", "democracy", and "rule by the people"? We need to change this now before it is too late!
SIGFAULT
We used to have a setup like this at my school, but then the admin shut it down saying that the RIAA was itching to prosecute students with such programs. We didn't really believe them...
the numbers provided show the RIAA is seeking some $97 billion dollars, not trillion.
So you meant trillion with a b! It all becomes clear.
Could any member of that jury honestly say that they've never done it themselves?
I doubt the judge or anyone on the jury would even own a computer.
Where you can experience the worst parts of French *AND* American cultures, at the same time!
Where do I sign up?
how long are we the people going to let they the corporations steal our country from us? what will they have to do before we stand up for ourselves?
652,000 songs? This guy should get a medal for all the ID3 tag editing he did...
RIAA must be out of their mind to seek that much of money from poor college kids. That's more harsh than BSA! Boy..what has the world come into ..
The utter obsurdity of the RIAA hurts my head. I fail to see why millions of pissed of Americans haven't formed a militant coup and taken over the RIAA. It blows my mind that we as Americans continue to allow a FOR PROFIT organization to not only influence law, but practically write law to support their own monitary interests. I'm disgusted... I need to go calm down and download some songs (out of pure, unadultered SPITE.)
and must say that he is indeed a very smart guy. But, while it's unfortunate that his is being singled out in this incident, having a large number of files freely avaliable is "dumb" in my opinion. Especially, on Tech's Resnet where every computer has a static IP number.
Most people seem to be forgetting that there are two aspects to his suit(actually all the suits): that he had files avaliable and that he ran SMB indexing service for other students to use. One of those is illegal no matter how you look at it, and the other is a "gray area". I don't see how you can possibly advice him or any of the other students to countersue, on what basis?? They didn't have any of their rights infringed. They were leaving their computers open for anyone to access, as well as the indexing service, so there is no claim of "hacking" by the RIAA. There doesn't seem to me to be any reason they could file a countersuit.
It seems to me, based on all the articles I've read, the University is actually doing a very good job at standing up for one of their students. Curt Tompkins made a statement that he felt the RIAA should have alerted them before this problem grew so large, so that they could alert him early (remove his resnet). The fact is, there is no reason the University should have to stand up for someone who breaks the law, and I don't see where you get off bashing this fine school as you did. If you don't like it here, you're more than welcome to leave.
As for Joe, all I can say is good luck man. It is very unfortunate that he's the one singled out in this case because he really has a lot of potential in his future.
Uh, sorry. The recording industry (Vivendi Universal, in this case) BOUGHT mp3.com a long time ago and has steadily making it more and more unpalatable for artists since.
DNA just wants to be free...
way to gain compasion RIAA. lets sue kids for billions of dollars.
only in corporate america, ladies and gentlemen.
Actually, buying legislation is quite cheap these days. For about $12,000 you can get a congressman to introduce almost any legislation, (no matter how bad it is). In fact when I send my rants to my legislators now, I simply ask them, "How much would it cost to get this legislation implemented?"
Note to all elected officials. I will personally raise $12,000 for the congressman that introduces legislation the eviscerates the DMCA. I actually think the Slashdot has enough critical mass in terms of readers to form a PAC (Poltical Action Committe) and get some serious work done in Washington. It's time for the geeks to unite and kill off the dinosaurs so we can get the *NEW* economy moving. Geeks were able to get it moving before and I am quite sure we can do it again. Also, if you are offended by the word geek, replace "geek" with "enlightened user of technology."
Who is getting the contracts to rebuild Iraq again? As a matter of fact I do get my news from the Daily Show.
Didn't the total projected cost for the war with Iraq come to 97 billion dollors? Maybe this is how they plan to pay for it.
Why don't they just launch an attack. Kill anyone who shares music. Seek and Destroy the Violators. Supress all knowledge and show unmerciful might in the name of victory.
I hope this kid gets the case dropped and then sues the damn RIAA for malicous prosecution and gets a big pay day. These assholes are wasting this persons time, costing them legal fees, and draging them across the news nationwide. You can not expect, this person to be responsible for someone downloading something without a license. The best they can ask for is the actual cost of obtaining all that music. If the RIAA wins this case there is something severly wrong with our legal system. If I leave my house open and someone robs me is it still a crime, yes. So why is it any different how is this person fiscally responsible for some one elses actions.
Lawrence Lessig has a good response on his blog...
Time to write my Congressman again...
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
Ok, your credit rating will be shit for many years, but that's probably better than paying legal fees for this kind of lawsuit.
It probably would set a new record for personal bankruptcy, 97 billion dollars. He could probably go around to all the talk shows, go on Oprah, Jenny, and all the other daytime dreck.
Who should i make out the 100 trillion dollar check to?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Actually, the farthest place from a road in the Lower 48 is near the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park. It's about 30 miles as the crow flies.
Before people don't buy cd's anymore? For every server or normal person that they go after how many hundreds others will the industry alienate because they don't like the industries tactics?
I've already stopped buying cd's. Its a waste of money for 1 or 2 songs out of 15. I got other sources of entertainment I'd rather spend my money on.
I want to know what sane judge would ever take this case? How could you be such a boob to believe that one person, a student no less, could cost anybody 98bn in lost revenue?
Is it just me, or do RIAA lawyers have absolutely zero grounding in reality? I guess when you deal with nothing but vaporous "intellectual property" all day, you kind of lose your hold on things.
Join Tor today!
If you are I am in shock. He is an excellent public speaker and golfer and has several children. He is an honest an upright person not above doing an hones t hard days work. You are likely confusing him with mobster racketeers from New Jersey and Nevada entertainment industries (which are based on gambling). The music industry and movie industry has left its old days of fire bombing theatres, strong arm tactics with independant distributors, and payola far behind. Jack Valenti was deeply involved in cleaning out the offending companies.
His hair has been a lovely shade of white for years. He's a man to admire and I for one hope he runs for president.
a person would have to spend $40.78 every second for his/her entire life, every day, and including during the night.
That's about how much money my wife spends!
I'd countersue for $1Googolplex for "pain and suffering."
Or maybe I just want to see a court document with ten pages of 0's on it.
If nothing else, it would highlight the ridiculousness of the entire affair when the student charged that $150,000 of pain and suffering was owed for every nanosecond that the case lasted.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
never underestimate the ability of the politicians to appeal to the Christian majority to build more prisons and put more "violent marijuana smokers" behind bars.
MORTAR COMBAT!
WOAH! that must of taken one big ass raid server to house 4TB (4TB = 652,000 * 6MB/song). I wonder how he could handle the load of that. He may be able to pay off that Trillions/Billions of dollars by producing his load balancing system that dont obey the laws of physics, but does obey riaa's laws.
If Aaron is in fact related to RIAA Cary Sherman and is involved in setting this up, it will demonstate how desperate the RIAA to resort to this.
subject says it all.. just cause he d/l's all those songs wouldn't mean that he was gonna buy the cd's anyway, which is kinda obvious seeing that even bill gates couldn't
Simple, unmitigated, unprincipled, Stupid Greed.
They are more eager to destoy one persons life than to come to grips with the fact that they have missed the boat - are out of touch - aren't with the program - I could go on but I think I've made my point.
It's like that old bit about a drowning person, carefull or they may take you down with them. They seem to be trying their damnedest to do just that, all the while not admitting that they are the ones drowning in an ocean of obsolecence.
Yes. Per quarter.
Totally wrong, it's annual, 10 trillion or so. See the government stats. The table clearly says "seasonally adjusted at annual rates." You should also realize this number makes sense because otherwise:
1) the national debt would be like 15% of GDP (I wish); and
2) US fixed asset values (the value of frickin everything everywhere - about 30 trillion) would be less than one year's GDP.
These kids are in school and are going to graduate. When they do the RIAA must since it wants their money employ them and garnish their wages. Simple solution and they have lifetime employment...
We have 24569 Tracks in our online mp3 collection.
I guess we owe about $6,142,250,000
Somebody send me some money via pay pal, please.
AnonymousCoward@paypal.com
thanks
They're not going after a big violator. All these people did was provide an indexing service- yes, it's contributory infringement, but they're not going after the real violators, namely the people providing the file shares.
Also worth noting is that they're going to pursue violators AND impose those controls. This isn't about copyright infringement, it's about control- and they'll do their level best to have it no matter what the cost is to their customers.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I'm a texan dammit! And if we here in Texas can get away with snorting coke and drunk driving without any trouble, then by god ... I, I got nothing. Nevermind.
Do you carry a gun to work?
(apologies for the US-centric nature of this post)
... laws ad nauseum, but as of right now (forgoing the orwellian near future, for a moment), there is simply no better place to be
Americans wonder why people could hate the US so much they flew airplanes into buildings. Americans can't grasp with their limited intelligence and stunted ability to reason why most of the world despises them. They are so out of touch with reality, they have to repeat your little mantra constantly to try to keep the truth at bay. The complete fiction of your post shows exactly why America is in for a long, rough ride over the next decades, until it once again learns humility and respect.
Sure, there's some dumb
Start with the fucked up state of the American justice system, which allows (encourages) large corporations to write the laws. That's the original topic of this thread, the RIAA has turned a simple copyright dispute into a major theft crime, with punishments far exceeding any other property theft crime. Its not just a few laws which are fucked up, its most of them. And its not just americans suffering under those orwellian laws, citizens in other countries also have to fear the long reach of American laws. The FBI, the military, the CIA, and other enforcement groups have kidnapped citizens from all over the world to bring them to the US to stand trial, but the US threatens any country which puts a US citizen on trial. The US constantly demands extradition of other country's citizens, but hasn't once in the last 35 years extradited an American to another country to stand trial.
You live in a country with an incredibly good road system.
America has overextended its road system, which has led to a huge shortfall in maintenance. I've driven around the US twice now, and found the roads away from the interstates to be in appalling shape. Big cities in the poorer parts of the country have really poor maintenance, lack of street signs, non-functional traffic lights, potholes big enough to break axles. Most western countries have far superior road systems, you just have never left the US and driven on truly well kept modern roads.
You have running water. Reliably. You have indoor plumbing.
You obviously don't live in a large east coast city. About 5% of americans in large cities don't have access to indoor plumbing. That figure climbs to about 8% in rural areas. Compare that to the UKs 3% figure, or Denmarks less than 2% figure.
I can drink the water anywhere in this nation without fear.
Then you have never been to western Nevada, where the arsenic in the tap water is well above lethal levels. Or Love Canal. Did you see the movie Erin Brockovitch, about a power company poisoning the water table for a whole bunch of communities in California, which killed hundreds of people over a couple of decades, with the "authorities" ignoring all tests showing how bad the contamination was?
You have readily available food.
Unless you look at statistics on malnutrition in the OECD countries, and realize the US has the highest per capita problem of starvation and lack of proper food distribution. Paradoxically, Americans are the most overweight, and the most obese people on the planet. 69% are overweight, and 32% are obese. The next highest countries have figures like 40% overweight and 12% obese. France has declared a national problem, because 5% of the population are considered obese, when the number had been less than 2% until the last decade.
You have electricity.
Unless you live in the western US, where due to criminal actions by a number of large corporations, the electicity supply over the last few years have brought the US down to 3rd world status for reliability and price. Most of the world has reliable electricity.
You don't have to fear for your life walking down the street (well, in some places, you do, but it's safer here than much of the rest of the world)
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Obviously, the RIAA is alienating the biggest consumers of music by making them bankrupt.
Oh, wait, it's been doing that for years.
"Time is an illusion.
Lunchtime doubly so."
-Douglas Adams
David Borowitz
1) Why hasn't an organization arisen to challenge the RIAA? I mean, it's my understanding that being a member of the RIAA is *not* legally required of a record label. When one considers the tons of indie labels out there that, thanks to free downloading off websites and through p2p networks, it makes me wonder why large groups of independents that have good talent and catalogs, like Caroline, Epitaph, Six Degrees, all the way down to little labels like ESL, tru thoughts, fork in hand and others haven't forged an alliance simply to combat this insanity. This seems like a golden opportunity to seize the thunder of the big six and woo bands to the "free music" side of the aisle. But then, when one considers how often bands tend to jump around labels, maybe the problem is more endemic to record labels than just the big six...
2) Speaking of bands, where are "the talent" in all this? why don't we hear from the bands beyond the occasional (apparent) nutcase voicing his opinion then going back to the label lounge? We keep hearing about how the big nasty RIAA is pimping their work and buying out their right to their creative work (if I have to hear Tom Petty's sob story one more time I'm going to puke), but why aren't so many top label bands coming out in favor for/against the RIAA behavior? Many of the A-list acts can certainly get along just fine no matter what label they're on, so if they can extricate themselves from the labels, why don't they? If Fred Durst really thinks mp3's should be free, why doesn't he just jump ship and release his band's own stuff on his own terms? Oh wait, he's VP of Interscope. Nevermind....
B
"I'm payin' taxes, but what am I buyin'?" -- James Brown
Phynd and Flatlan are Local Area Network Topography scanners. They indiscriminately catalogue all information on a network and give that information a searchable web frontend. Its not like these services were designed to pirate mp3s specifically, they were designed to provide a cumulative list of a network's content. Just because students are sharing mp3s on the network shouldnt make the student running the website responsible for the network's content. It isnt up to him to selectively remove offensive content. Its up to the person who is sharing the information. I for one know that this tool has been used by my university to stop the spreading of the Nimbda and ILOVEYOU viruses from spreading all over our network. It was possible to search for all computers sharing infected files and their IPs, disable their network connections, and wait for them to call to complain about their internet not working. At that point the school's tech support staff could inform the user they were infected with a virus. Overall it took about a week or so, but the network is now free and clear of the viruses. A feat I do not think would have been possible without services like this being run.
Too bad they're gone now.
-- -=innocent ramblings from the mind of an insomniatic programmer=-
That's a spicy meatball!
BOYCOTT RIAA
I can't wait for the jury to award $1 in damages to RIAA.
-- $G
Yeah thats what the record companies want. The would love nothing more than to have everyone running scared. Looks like their tactics have worked at least on you.
97's a bit low isn't it? what about c64 tapes?
/before/ you pay for the media but that agreement is always vague - "Oh, yeah you can't resell it without the packaging because via advertising that's partly how we make our money."
since we're putting a price on thoughts, er I mean media might as well charge what we want eh?
chuck in the price to make a film, times it by the emotional guilt and resulting off-time from work that viewers have, just chuck it all in.
Ok, there is an agreement
Remove IP. I'm sure now.
A blog I run for the wealth
I am not modded down for "Flamebait," "Troll," or "Offtopic"...instead, it is "Overrated." When it started at 1.
Very interesting. Someone wanted to be subtle with the fact that they mod down comments they simply disagree with.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I have had mp3s out for years now, and in a database of half a MILLION songs, I'd say that the chances are reasonable that one song or more of mine is in there.
Is this grounds to sue the RIAA for my $150,000 for the song of mine that is among the other songs they're suing over? Or do they get to directly profit (through suing) over music that is not in fact their property?
He had a bunch of 128+Kps MP3's, so one of those is the equivalant to about 100 MP3's.
When I put 150,000x652,000 it equalls 97800000000. No correct me if I am wrong, but is that not 97.8 Trillion? So who's doing their math wrong? The Free Press or michael?
Without music, life would be a mistake. --- Nietzsche
Rick: "All property is theft Vivian!!"
Vivian: "So I'm nicking it!"
I go to Princeton, and it actually has had a pretty big impact on filesharing. The site's down, of course (I know the kid, he really was a moron for not restricting access to the princeton domain), and since that means our indexing service is gone, it's hard to find stuff you want. The network still works for sharing files, of course, but things aren't as easy. Thought I'd let you all know.
they lost the equivalent of 97.8 trillion dollars, because they were on a fast network.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
terrible. corporations DO have all the money. Never has such an entity existed. An entity that exists for one reason and one reason only... to maximize profits. One of the liabilities of exploiting this lucrative opportunity to amass profits of mass dimension is that you are accountable to the courts of law for harming the consumer. Lawsuits only seem frivolous because they are condensed into byte sized pieces for mass consumption. Read a complete case, see the amount of time, number of people, and steps followed to sucessfully pursue a case in court and tell me that the damages awarded in such a case are frivolous. Extreme damages awarded are the ONLY and I again stress ONLY way to get companies to change their ways. Only when an award is enough to erode shareholder value is the issue big enough to warrant immediate action by top management. Were it not for so-called frivolous lawsuits many of the corporations which you depend on daily would be exploiting your inaction and lack of legal recourse. hugh
that the claim's only for $10 million or so, but these are particularly fast dollars.
Next up....
McDonalds sues fat people.
I've got an idea. Let's attack our customers. That should help.
These kids are pretty much financially screwed. If it's not the $98B, or whatever it will dwindle down to, it will be the lawyers fees and settlement.
.
On the upside, they do have an opportunity to take this to the press. They should call Time, Newsweek, 60 Minutes, etc, and show the average joe how ridiculous and insane the RIAA really is - suing students for billions
Is recording music from radio and sharing that illegal?
"Another millieu that shows the same kind of saturation deterrence is the drug war (spit). It's easy, cheap, and desirable enough for many folks to smoke pot, that the courts literally could not handle them all. Stiffer penalties don't work so well, because the penalties are already so unreasonably stiff that they don't affect most peoples' risk assessment".
I read an article a while ago about mandatory urine testing in schools. One school in the article had announced that it intended to introduce regular random testing amongst its students as part of a clampdown on drugs in its area. This got me thinking about laws and how they are enforced. Testing children unwillingly for the presence of 'illegal ' drugs is an issue that can be hard to speak out about ,on the surface it would appear that if you are defending the teen in questions right to privacy that you are in fact saying that it is all right for children to take drugs at an early age.
The real issue can be hard to see at this angle. The issue comes more into focus when we look at the practice of urine testing in the workplace. Now it is easier to become vocal about the issue of drug testing among the workforce than it is about drug testing among the school going populace. If a person is a good worker and performs all of the tasks assigned to it and perhaps even more, then what difference does it make if said person takes drugs or not ? The difference is one of perception, the perception of the company and those who scrutinise it. Remember what they say, winners don't take drugs.
However, it is not drugs they care about but more the life style of their employees. There exists a varying perception in the majority of the business world as to what a good employee is. A good employees works hard, puts in good hours and does not do drugs. A good employee does not drink in the middle of the week, a good employee does not read socialist propaganda, a good employee does not read left wing news papers, a good employee plays golf and a good employee promotes 'family values'. A good employee is something some one else thinks you should be, it is up to you to decide if you want to be a 'good employee'.
What is my point ? My point is that if a company says 'we do not want people who take drugs and refuse to submit to drug tests' then what is to stop that company from saying 'we do not want people who exhibits behaviour x ' ? You can take the line, 'well if you do not like the companies policy then go some where else ', but what happens when there is no where else to go? What happens when people start believing a stupid perception and you are forced to submit to that perception or go without work.
My point is that the war on drugs just like the war on mp3's are in a way battles of perception. If enough companies deem something as an undesirable trait in their employees then people , people who wish to do more than work in Mc Donald's for the rest of their lives , will try to avoid such 'undesirable traits'. My point is not that Companies would refuse to employee people who download songs which they do not own (they might) but that it is possible to control or moderate how a person behaves In their free time by holding them to ransom with the prospect of unemployment or Low paid employment.
With drugs it is easy to see how this could be achieved. Lots of companies in a particular field start introducing drug testing, the share holders of the companies that are holding out wonder why their company is not doing the same ? Management from other companies mingle with management from the hold out companies, the companies that hold fold one by one. It is good pr to be clean. It is good pr to fit a perception.
With mp3s what you do is hit companies with fines and legal treats concerning what their employees are downloading during their lunch breaks thus forcing them to clamp down on file sharers within companies. Then what you do about the home down loaders is to have a law passed that states
_________________________________________________
Government has a terrible flaw, and that flaw is that it has the potential for democracy. Coprorations are perfect tyrannies.
The problem with setting up a tax is that this is exactly what these corrupt, free-loading assholes want you to do. My response is, "Fuck you!". I'll pay their fees as soon as they reduce copyright terms down to 20 years, and give a substantial portion of their money to fostering competition in this corrupt, price-fixed industry. Until then, no thanks.
I know a couple of other Tech people replied but there were a few inacurracies. Not only is the dude that got sued the brainchild of CS, he practically runs ResNet (the dorm LAN ISP). His service (some sort of SMB share searching utility) was widely used by everybody because the downloads are much faster than through Kazaa or whatever. So fast, that we frequently watch high quality porn streaming over the LAN. I'm talking watching an hour long 1GB porno. It was fucking awesome until it was shutdown. And as far as porn goes, its a necessity at Tech being that guys outnumber chicks 3 to 1 (76% are guys), most of them of are fat, ugly snowcows and the only other forms of entertainment are drinking and doing drugs (which is what everyone does so the girls at least look fuckable). One nice thing about Tech though is that anyone with a Tech ID can drink at nearly any of the nightly fraternity parties.
Not that it'll happen this late in the discussion, but it's nice to see a more reasonable explanation of this otherwise insane allegation.
Maybe the RIAA could do something productive such as donating their loss to reduce the national debt. That would certainly take a big byte out of it and even if it was 97 Billion it would still be a bit out of the debt!
Cheers!
--
~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~
In any respect, it's absurd. The RIAA makes another stupid move which will cause it to lose even more credibility. Now, they're even worse than those evil fucks at Monsanso multinational biotech, who bankrupted a farmer.
Fact is, the RIAA can stomp their feet all they want, nothing's going to change. What do you mean the RIAA didn't make these laws? Bullshit. They paid for these laws. The RIAA and the MPAA don't get off the hook just because you say, "the laws are the fault of our government". The RIAA and MPAA are the one's who bribed the politicians to make those laws. As for changing these laws, let's not pretend that donating a few hundred -- or even thousand -- bucks to the EFF is going to change anything. Nor is protesting, writing letters to Congressmen, or anything else. Nothing we can do is going to compare to the billions of dollars that the RIAA and MPAA and BSA bribe our government with. Trying to get our government to do the right thing is about as pointless as trying to get John Gotti to do the right thing.
Really, the RIAA must think we're all stupid. That college student isn't going to pay a dime to the RIAA. He'll declare bankruptcy and they won't get shit. In fact, they'll be in the hole quite a bit, on the cost of the lawsuite, and the negative press this is getting them.
We can't make a difference in the political world. These people who say, "rather than whining, change the law" are complete idiots who obviously have no idea as to how things work in our fake democracy. Money talks. It's simple as that. We can, however, make it impossible for these evil fucks to get to us by coding around their legislation. FreeNet is a prime example, which allows us to bypass our draconian government. Other examples would be better P2P software, so as to preserve anonymosity.
**note: When I say that our government is draconian, I mean it is draconian in the same sense that Hussein and Hitler are and were draconian. Our government is no more legitimate than theirs. It is not a difference of kind, only of magnitude. If Hussein is analagous to a serial-killer, then the US Government is analagous to a one-time killer. Not as bad, but still worthy of execution.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Hello
look what happend to sadam for haveing weapons of massdisteruction. the government declared war on him and bombed his city's.
be-warned people having weapons of massdistribution can get you monetarily nuked into oblivion. and no u.n to stick up for you.
im afraid to log onto a p2p service, since the verizon incident(were the riaa requested the ip of someone who trades 400 songs for a lawsuit), now this shit?!
im afraid the net is no longer the new free world
For The Best Jazz/Hip-hop fusion > COlD DUCK
it would be a grate head line would it not?
any palistinians reading this?
iraa is a jewish out fit lol
Does this mean we're gonna legalize slavery again? :D
Oh dear, Mr. Flibble, we can't do anything like THAT... who would be left to clean up the MESS???
http:\\citron.resnet.mtu.edu
The motives behind RIAA's lawsuit is very simple: The big 5 are losing money in such great rate, that the investors are prepared to sell them out. Any good sign is important to thier survival.
The big five is merging into four. Top execs were replaced by new execs under pressure to turn a profit in a tough market. The RIAA has no way to prepare for the big change in technology.
In a way, MP3s are a tide changing "dominant design." When dominant design happens, the old industry dies. Digital cameras killed Polaroid just like CDs killed vinyls just like mp3s kills RIAA. What you are seeing is the last struggle of the dying industry.
The RIAA is frantically looking for a new way to make a profit, and I'm sure they've heard your argument. But it's too late. It's like teaching a 20 year old elephant to dance: What is the point?
Does anyone else think that the RIAA thinks that by suing several students for enormous amounts of money that they won't make in a lifetime, that the RIAA will be able to recover all it's lost profits from the last couple of years.
It's not my or your fault that artists in the RIAA put out crappy cd's that only have one good track on them that no one would buy.
It's also not our falts that the RIAA doesnt want to accept the fact that they may have to change the way they make profits.....
The recent lawsuit against four college students by the RIAA is a damaging way to usher in a positive digital future for artists, corporation, organizations, and their stakeholders. It is especially self-defeating for the RIAA to attack the very age group (8-18 year old) that will be the most technologically literate, and most voracious digital consumers of entertainment content in the next decade as they move from student to knowledge-worker and also knowledge-consumer. Under 21-youth are not the passive consumers that their older siblings were. They are 3-WAY stakeholders in the phenomena of digital media - they create content, they architect efficient methods of diffusing content, and they ultimately consume content. The question is will the RIAA continue to punish its most ambitious consumer demographic and future customer base? Or will the RIAA realize they can indeed lead and shape youth positively and profitably with new models of collaborative commerce rather than FOLLOW with locked down litigation.
> Why don't you all just sod off and NOT BUY ANY MORE CD'S!!!!!!!
Quite. There's also a lot of very good music that's freely downloadable from the artists' own websites - I've found some good bands that way.
More importantly, remember how musicians get their money in the US: concerts. If you like a band, go see their concert. If they're a more-or-less indy band, they'll have CDs on sale that don't support the RIAA, so feel free to pick one up.
I don't buy major label CDs anymore, I won't until this mess is cleared up, and I'm _hardly_ alone in that. Yet the RIAA _wonders_ why their sales aren't so good...
i wonder how he will pay it off, maybe a debt of lifetime service to the RIAA, a few more suits like this and they could virtually have an army of lifetime employees trying to pay off 100billion dollars.
Seriously, it's becoming more clear every year that the RIAA (and to a lesser degree, the MPAA) is becoming more obsolete and trivial. Now that the video game industry made more money than the recording and movie industry combined, how much more will it take to put them in their place?
IF the RIAA provided a real service to musicians these days, I'd be supporting them. I know several musicians, and they all hate the RIAA with a passion. If the people they're supposed to be representing can't stand to work with them, why do they still exist? More to the point, why do they get to abuse the legal system at the expense of everyone else except the lawyers?
Hint -- law suits won't bring back your CD sales guys.. in fact, it will just drive more people away. You already missed your chance to capture and sell the mp3 music trading concept... try coming up with the next big thing instead of clinging to old models that are doomed to eventual failure.
Think I'm just ranting? Well, I am... but if the RIAA took all the money they sunk into lawyers and put it into technology research IN THEIR FIELD, we'd probably have working crystal-storage by now. I mean, this is from 2000, and this is also not new.
How many people would shell out YACHB (Yet-Another-Couple-Hundred-Bucks) for a small cartridge with the Beatles entire collection on it? Instead, we get the White Album, repackaged 12 times on the same CD media, and we're all guilty until proven innocent and have to deal with copy protection (which the thieves, BTW, just strip out and ignore).
Write your congressional representative! complain, whine, make a stink! we can make a difference if all of us work together and get active. find out about your representatives and also how to contact them at http://www.congressmerge.com/
Don't let the RIAA buy anymore of washington, if congressman want to stay in office then they will have to listen to their voters.
They won't collect the full $97 billion, obviously, but most of that would be punitive damages, which are immune to bankruptcy. So, if they won, the students would be in debt to them for the rest of their lives, unless one of them gets very, very rich. (IANAL)
Have you even looked for your eternal salvation today?
and are therefore preferred for dicey modding
or so I understand
Try squeezing cheese instead. You can't get something from nothing.
Move faster
Like 15x more than the US National Debt.
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
Very interesting information; thank you. I'll look into this when I get some time.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Microsoft, the RIAA and the Ashcroft Justice Department have set aside their differences and announced a new campaign to enhance network security at home. The title of the campaign will be "Innovation: Isn't it suspicious?" "Anyone writing code that may infringe on current ideas and established doctrine will now be prosecuted extensively." Mr. Ashcroft said upon announcing the new campaign. "This new campaign will target academics in particular, given that those pinko commie student types are a threat to the homeland security of the United States anyway." "Remember", Mr. Ashcroft said as the Battle Hymn of the Republic played in the background, "When you download music files, you listen with Bin Laden." Mr. Ashcroft later declined to comment on his efforts to reopen Vatican investigation of Galileo Galilei for his heretical views published in "Commentary on two new sciences" several hundred years ago. [-)
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Maybe it's just me, but I think the RIAA is telling us that it's time for a Richard Stallman-like character to pop out of the woodwork in the music industry to start a Free Music Foundation label.
It'll help put an end to sell-out artists, and instead promote those artists who really want their art to be distributed and enjoyed by others. Then we'll finally have musical art for art's sake, which might raise the quality of music, just a notch.
It'd be nice if the FMF used a non-encumbered music format, since the MP3 format clearly has its issues in that regard.
-- Dossy
Dossy's Blog
I spoke with a friend from MTU has now shut off all internet access going to the dorms, and doesn't have any plans to reactivate it. This is pretty sad. I hope the RIAA burns in hell.
I met Joe (the student from MTU) once at the 2002 MTU programmer competition. He took second. Bad things sure do happen to good people.
>
> OK, ultimately they'll get the cash value of a futon and an old stereo....$15...and the
> student declares bankruptcy. Are they attempting a deterrent...?
>
Exactly! College students might be _pleased_ to declare bankruptcy, and ditch their student loans *and* the laundry list of minimum-monthly-payment credit cards they've been using to buy all that computer hardware in one fell swoop! I mean, what's it cost to go to Princeton or RPI these days? These kids get free tunes _and a free ride.
Fake statistics are just as convincing as real ones
On these principles, we should encourage parroting of this 97 trillion dollar (120,000 year) figure as being The Truth until the public believes it and starts yelling for their scalp.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
England? We had one earlier this year. A kid shot his teacher. Er... ball-bearing guns do count, don't they? The teacher was rather unhappy about it. Those things sting.
Oh, hold on, that was in Wales. Damn. I'll try to think of one.
Seriously, though, there were about 17 killed in a school shooting in Erfut, Germany a couple of years ago, and 16 I think in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996. Both provoked legislation. I don't know of any in Japan or France.