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RIAA Not Done With Jesse Jordan
digime writes "In a recent Slashdot article it was reported that 19-year-old college student Jesse Jordan gave up his life savings to the RIAA for running a campus search engine. He has recovered over 83% of his savings lost to the RIAA, and his search engine is back up. "The RIAA started yelling and tried to rescind my order of dismissal after they signed it because of comments that I made on CNN.", Jordan says on his site. "A very well-known top lawyer at the RIAA, while making threats of further legal actions, referred to himself as a 'dentist' that I would not want to 'have another visit with'"
And a clearly-spoken public campaign to discredit these scum at the RIAA. The "dentist" can go fuck himself. The threat by this "top" RIAA attorney is assault and he needs to be criminally prosecuted.
One of the big problems with our legal system is that it is easy to bully someone with a frivolous lawsuit when they can't afford the time or money to defend themselves. As the defendant pointed out, a lawsuit against AltaVista would have just as much justification behind it (little to none) but they didn't go after them because AltaVista can afford to defend themselves.
Hey now, the RIAA is just the Recording Industry Association of America. There are plenty of foreign labels like Century Media, Spinefarm, and Nuclear Blast that have plenty of artists to offer.
Keep in mind that it is companies like this, aggressive, immoral capitalists, that run the USA through their lobbying organisations. No wonder daddy's boy has also started his way to bullying the world into WW3.
"06/19/03: The ChewPlastic Campus Search Engine is currently available to the public as a demonstration of the site as it was. NOTE: The files listed through the results on this site are fictitious - they DO NOT EXIST. This means that you cannot download them because they are fake computers on a fake network. While there is a small assortment of files listed in the search engine, they are not meant to represent the actual assortment of files available during the Search Engine's operation."
Oh, how useful.
If I read your dismissal action correctly, you are prohibited from trading/transmitting/etc/etc/ad nauseum any sort of copyrighted works via your phynd service.
It also states that the "defendant shall not engage in or sell" software that encourages copying, trading, blah, blah, blah.
How are you keeping your Phynd service up again(or are you just offering it for download)? Is it your contention that your software is intended to do nothing of the sort (ie. just a tool to be used for good OR evil)? That's the only loophole I can see in that document... anyone better with legalese than myself find something different?
I'm a little confused here.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Not if you do it twice.
Well, the MPAA is horrible and is taking away rights! But hell, here comes X-2, The Hulk, Lord of the Rings, etc.
The Slashdot crowd is all about boycotts, except when it makes life inconvenient for them. Then they'll pony up to the bar faster than... something that ponies up to the bar really quick.
...well, the RIAA was caught price fixing, and settled rather than face conviction, so I guess it's only expected that they should behave like criminals :)
... he makes example of RIAA, RIAA makes another example of him, blah blah blah. Why don't they just get it over with and have one of their labels sign him to a 3 album deal - that way they can fuck him whenever they want!
Um, this has nothing to due with flaws in the American system. If his comments to CNN violate the terms of the settlement, then the RIAA is fully in its rights to rescind all benefits from that dismissal.
Now, I am not sure - glancing at the interviews and the dismissal agreement - whether or not he's violated it or not. Frankly, thats for someone with a more precise legal background to handle than me. But thats the key issue: we simply cannot rant against the RIAA unless we first confirm that they're doing anything wrong.
"Stumble before you crawl"
So, he recovered 83% of his lost savings through donation.
Good for him, nice of the donators !
But I don't think we ("the community") will be able to support a lot of people in its situation.
Does it mean that we (all of us) should find in our usual insurance contracts if they cover our responsibility wrt to our programming activities ?
I know, but in the age of the USian megacoprs owning almost every recording company on the planet, it's hard to figure out which ones are the good guys.
If there are any. I'm not sure, it seems like most recording companies are getting buyer-hostile these days.
Maybe the RIAA would back off a bit if most of their legal attack squad and mayhaps their fearless leader all had glorious meetings with a large bullets.
...which is exactly why organized crime families should run p2p networks.
Oh, and strategically placed "campaign contributions".
If that bit about "visiting the dentist" is accurate, I hope he gets his teeth knocked out in some unfortunate freak accident with a ballpeen hammer.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
The European companies are just as bad. Indies might be ok, but most of them are pretty deep in bed with the biggies just to survive too. I only buy from bands directly. There are actually some really good musicians out there selling CDs pressed on their own computer. Go to gigs. If you like em, buy their CD.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Where can we get a list of RIAA mailing addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses?
Sounds like another SLAPP suit on the way.
To those that are still buying RIAA music or MPAA movies, how does it feel to be part of the problem, jerk?
To those that are not buying RIAA music or MPAA movies, feels good being a small part of the solution, doesn't it?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
What the have in common, also, is something that really pisses me off - they always invoke "the artist" and the artists rights when they pull this crap. The Sonny Bono act was touted as a victory for, exampled, Harold Lloyd, the silent film star whose films were going to go into public domain. He's been dead for years, but it was being treated as his victory because his grand-daughter would be able to restrict distribution of his old films, and make a profit on them.
The idea that "the artist" - which is really a misnomer, since the term should be "whoever happens to own the rights to a work" - has some God-given right to perpetual profit from and control of their work - is untenenble. I certainly don't: I do my work for hire, and if I want more money, I have to do more work. But the Bonos and the RIAA and MPAA seem to think that an "artist's" granddaughter not having to work for a living is more important than an open society and a free discourse about the cultural works in it.
When the Danes first came to England, they were paid to leave without looting. The next year they were back, saying "pay us to leave again."
It makes no sense to give anything to these litigational terrorists. Not money, not in taking down a web site, and definitely not in buying their CDs.
Or they'll just blame pirating on continuing loss of sales, and use it as an excuse to hijack our rights even further.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
This quote from his webpage says it all... The RIAA obeys the laws when it benefits them...and flouts them when it benefits THEM!. It's only too bad that they have such deep pockets with which to bribe Congress. Their arrogance will prove to be their undoing in the long run though. Only freaks like Orrin Hatch will be left once that happens..and frankly I think Hatch is so far out on the lunatic fringe that he's more a liability then an asset for them these days