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Interview with Student Sued by RIAA
TinoMNYY24 writes "Jesse Jordan, owner of chewplastic.com, was on CNN this morning discussing the RIAA settlement. You can read a poorly spelled transcript of the interview. Jesse is one of the two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that were sued by the RIAA."
So what did the government... I mean the RIAA [claim you did]
Sounds like something a slashbot^H^H^H^dotter would say about them. I agree with the goatse man post a few comments up.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Such threats are called baratry, and as has featured prominently on /. serveral times it is now a viable economic model for some companies (especially those wielding unenforceable patents).
The most disturbing issue about the RIAA's work to shut people down, is that they're going after those who do little economic harm in order to frighten their uninvolved or only marginally involved (in the file trading scene) supporters into compliance somehow. Why do you want to threaten your customers?
Any spoon would be too big.
For the first time ever, I actually felt like protesting something. I showed up at around 1:40 (it should have started at 1:30) and there was absolutely no one there. Shame. Though it was probably because it was poorly advertised (a few posters and an email to a handful of people) and during finals week.
I'd like to see the legal system set up so that neither party can spend more than the other, with some minimum allowance. For instance, if the RIAA wants to sue a student, and the student doesn't want to spend more than $100, the RIAA can't spend more than that, plus some basic allowance, say $1000. If the RIAA wants to spend more, they have to get the student's permission to loan him the money, and if they lose, they don't get the money back.
Apply it to governments too, so a state can't send in the well paid DA and his staff to prosecute some illiterate scum bag for a capital offense, while the public defender is only budgeted for one hour of time.
And yes, I do know about snowballs and hell.
Infuriate left and right
that's a mighty convienent mistake considering the media attention this has gotten.
I'd have to agree with the father, this was just a big PR trick for the RIAA and its a shame they aren't suing someone with the $$$$ to fight back.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Really, a more applicable analogy would be "if people use Google to find child porn, is it Google's fault?"
In 2000, the RIAA claimed that sales dropped 4.1%. Meanwhile, they cut their album inventory by about 25%. They are making more money per release in the past three years than in the history of CDs.
How, exactly, have the RIAA stolen music? If they have, then that's quite interesting, but if you're just talking about paying the artists next-to-nothing, then that's not stealing. The artists signed the contracts. If they didn't hire all sorts of lawyers to go over them and make sure that there weren't loopholes, then that's their problem.
I actually met a contract lawyer once. He said that out of all of the recording industry contracts that he had reviewed, not one had been payed correctly. The artists were almost always owed significantly more than they had been payed.
For what it's worth, I lived down the street from RPI for two years, and it is a "hotbed for piracy," however the kid's father may protest.
What you have, basically, is a campus full of geeks and alpha geeks, and the half-secretive tradition of cracking that goes with it. Years ago it was phreaking the telephones for long-distance calls (I got this straight from an alumnus), and people I know who still go there have told me that tons of students ("everyone" is the phrase he used) have hard drives full of MP3's.
However one feels about so-called "sharing," it's only honest to admit that plenty of it goes on at RPI.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
And twice the interviewer thought the student was being sued by a government body. Has the RIAA so ingrained themselves in the collective unconscious that reporters now think them part of the US govt?
This disclaimer found on the Altavista MP3 Search page:
Disclaimer
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42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
For the record, those they chose to use as examples were not casual fil traders, they had (in general, can't speak for all of them) chosen to set themselves up as some sort of central clearing house, operating some sort of website/index to help/encourage their fellow students.
While I don't condone the actions of the RIAA, their "victims" are hardly innocent, and were almost certainly aware that trading MP3's is not an ethicly "pure" pastime, and that they were treading on thin ice by operating their sites. The RIAA has played nice, they made their point and now have settled. If you don't think its a reasonable agreement, keep in mind these are adults (over 18) who clearly had the resources to operate these sites (not running on dad's old 486, or relying on school systems, or spending 4 hours a day putting themselves through school). They made a choice, same the kid busted for selling grass to his "friends".
If you really think this is such a travesty, create a fund to pay their fines, but honestly, don't you think your money would be better off going to the EFF, making sure we don't loose our rights to copy music that we PAID FOR to alternate media such as MP3 players or backup discs we can carry in our cars?
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Let's call a spade a spade. It's stealing. We all do it, but it's stealing.
It is not stealing. Copyright infringement is NOT STEALING. It is a crime. It is wrong. But it is a different kind of crime from stealing. Calling it stealing is like charging and assailant with murder when nobody actually died from the event in question.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Note the parts in bold. Morpheus and Grokster just won a suit by claiming the exact same thing. Of course, they have lawyers
It would be beneficial if instead of just telling me I'm stupid you'd help out. Based on what I saw in the interview, it looks to me like he has the same defense as Morpheus and Grokster, just not the funds to present that defense.
So, I'm "lying"? Nope. Misinformed? Often.
Details would be nice.