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RIAA Settles Suits Against Students
wo1verin3 writes "Cnet's News.Com has reported that the RIAA has settled the suits with four students accused of sharing songs. The settlements will see each student making payments to the RIAA totaling between $12,000 and $17,000, split into annual installments between 2003 and 2006."
Unfortunately, this is the way it had to end-- the RIAA would lose face to the public if they went for criminal charges, and the $12-17k is a realistic warning to other file traders. If they suit had been for a hundred million trillion dollars (or however must Hilary--err, the RIAA-- estimated as damages), it would have also been a defeat in the public's eyes. $3000 a year, hmmm $300 a month for "unlimited" MP3 downloads? Sounds like a marketing campaign!
Actually, that does sound pretty good, would you pay, say $59 a month or something for unlimited mp3s? I might...
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Probably only slightly.
:)
But on another note, Kudos to apple for pulling off a service I might actually use one day
They seem to have a nice selection of some of the rarer stuff I'm interested in, which is very neat.
Was Daniel Peng the same student who was threatened with the $98 billion lawsuit? Because after reading Joseph Barillari's analysis of the lawsuit it seemed like Dan would have had a pretty good defense to either have the case dismissed or to be acquitted.
Was paying the $17,000 really in the end the wiser decision? It just seems like he had a solid argument, especially given the recent development with Morpheus and Grokster.
Goal? Intimidation.
The legal forces of the RIAA have been tasked with something impossible. Control everyone.
Every dictator who's ever tried to do this before has eventually fallen back on the same tactic: Terror. If you make people fear for their lives for doing what you don't want them to, you can control and them more easily.
Unlike fascist dictators, the RIAA doesn't quite have the power to randomly make people dissapear. They haven't quite bought those laws yet. They're working in it, however. This is just an interim step.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Both sides? Obviously the kids probably couldn't afford attorney fees and the RIAA would have dragged it out forever, but doesn't this just make the RIAA look like they were in it for the money instead of a lesson? Going after poor college students for nothing more than downloading music? I hope the RIAA is happy because of this they probably lost a couple hundred customers and everytime they do it they'll lose more.
Please comment on this idea.
It is legal for me to listen to a CD and then sell it to a friend, buy it back, etc, over and over.
Let's say that we form a Co-op with 100 members. Each member kicks in $100, giving us a budget of $10,000 with which to purchase CDs. $10 from each member is reserved. The CDs are ripped and encoded.
Let's say I want to listen to a CD. My $10 on reserve buys that CD from the Co-op. While I own the CD, I get to listen to the encoded music (I do not take physical possession). During that time, no other Co-op member may listen to the CD (unless there are additional copies available for purchase due to popularity).
Essentially, a locking protocol would maintain a 1:1 relationship between the listener and physical media.
Once I am done listening, I sell the CD back to the Co-op and my $10 is freed for the next selection.
Is this legal? Has it been tried? Thanks!
Seriously - let's set up a fund to help them pay off their debts to RIAA. I'll put in a buck for that.
Anyone?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
If the RIAA keeps talking about how "we" are hurting the artists, what measures are they taking to give the artists restitution?
:-) The answer to your question is: None! I mean come on, if the RIAA gave some of that money to artists, that would mean less money for the record companies, and that just wouldn't be fair, since it's the record companies perpetrating the extortion, not the artists.
Ahh, a fresh mind unspoiled by the cynicism that comes with watching the RIAA's and MPAA's actions
Okay... I'm really confused about the legality of everything now...
;)
If I buy a CD, I am legally allowed to listen to it. Correct?
Am I legally allowed to play it for a friend while I am present? I would think so.
Am I legally allowed to lend it to a friend for his sole listening? I should think so.
Now... Can I listen to a CD with a friend via the telephone? Doesn't seem illegal to me? Is it?
What about streaming a CD via a webcast to a friend and myself? This is very similar to listening on the telephone... Probably not legal... Why? Is this considered a "public broadcast"? What about the telephone version? Nobody would consider a telephone conversation to be a public broadcast would they?
The line between illegal and legal seems to be very arbitrary, and rather contrived.
Maybe they should follow the Open Source model and give the music away and make money on concerts, t-shirts, etc.
This would also be similar to the way Art sells... $$$ for an original painting, $$ for a limited print, and next to nothing for a poster. I figure it's just a case of particular industry that has become over-inflated in comparison with other industries and is facing a market correction... You can see the panic in their eyes!
Piracy these days is like liquor during prohibition. It may be illegal, but that's not stopping the masses. I wish the RIAA would just accept that and stop wasting their money busting harmless college kids who just want to listen to music. The RIAA is fighting for a lost cause.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Napster provided an index of only MP3 files and means for people to connect and talk to each other to swap files. These guys were running an indexing program that searched all the shared drives on the local network and produced an index of the files.
Doesn't matter.
Contributory infringement: if you know or have reason to know of direct infringement, and induce, cause, or materially contribute to it, you're liable too. You don't need knowledge of specific acts of infringement according to the Napster court; just infringement generally. Providing the technology isn't enough to give you knowledge if there are possible substantial noninfringing uses. But if you know or have reason to know for some other reason than the capabilities of your technology, that won't really help you. Particularly if you know of specific instances of infringement and don't purge it from your system insofar as you're capable and legally able to.
Vicarious infringement: if you have the right and ability to control the direct infringer's action, and get a direct financial benefit from the infringement. There can be financial benefit if infringement is a draw for paying customers. In Napster it attracted users who might someday be paying users, so it qualified. If you were a landlord for an actual place where this occurred and got a cut of the profits (as opposed to a flat rent that never varied) that would count too. Helping to sell ads might qualify as well. And if you have a legal right to control what's done over your system, and the actual ability to do so, you must be forever perfectly vigilant to never let any infringement occurr, or at least persist once you know of it. A system that didn't let you delete stuff off of it might help you, but it would probably be hard to build one that really worked like that and certainly to avoid the court not really believing you since it seems like such bad faith thing to do, viz. willful blindness. Even if the material isn't quite on your system, the index of material still has to be policed, since it basically corresponds to the infringing files and is what's actually helping the infringement occur. Wrong spellings don't help, since you have to police with common sense, just as users can decipher the typos with common sense.
So this still seems wrong to me, as contributory infringement. Maybe not vicarious, but I don't know all the details of what the people here were doing or planned to do. Most important was what they actually knew -- but unless these guys were naive pollyannas, I don't see much wiggle room there.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The only thing that really concerns me about the RIAA and MPAA is copyright protection technology.
I buy a CD, I rip it and store it on my PC, I put the CD in a binder. I then listen to it via my PC (which has much higher quality stereo components than anything else in my house). If I want to listen to that CD in my car, I burn it to a CD-R so I don't have to worry about damaging it and I listen to the CD in my car.
AFAIK this all falls under fair use. So copyright protection would essentially force me to either A) spend more money and buy a new CD everytime I damage one and have to lug thousands of CDs around or B) force me to circumvent those measures so I can use fairly a product I've legally obtained.
Copyright protection is illegal.
All opinions aside, this is a devastating fine for these kids. We should start some sort of paypal donation jar for them. In fact, wouldn't it be neat if the Kazaa people added a new button that said, "Donate here" so that way, we could all band together, make a donation, and essentially nullify the RIAA's fines, rendering them useless. That would be a BEAUTIFUL smack in the face to the RIAA... :)