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RIAA To Sue Hundreds Of File Swappers
Shackleford writes "The Washington Post has an article saying that the RIAA is preparing hundreds of lawsuits against Internet users who illegally trade copyrighted music files. The lawsuits will target people who share 'substantial' amounts of copyrighted music, but anyone who shares illegal files is at risk, RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a conference call today. The first round of lawsuits will be prepared during the next eight to 10 weeks. They will ask for injunctions and monetary damages against file swappers. It seems that after a federal judge ruled in April that file-sharing services have legal uses and thus should not be shut down, the RIAA has found that it must go after individual users rather than the services that they use." palmech13 points to a similar article on Yahoo News.
At the Oregon State Bar CLE Seminar on Intellectual Property, they mentioned a provision of the DMCA that states, as I understand it, that someone can only be sued under the statute if their financial gain from the activity can be shown to be over 1000$ during a period of 180 days. This would imply that people who swap a couple of songs a week would be safe from prosecution. In fact, 1000/180 = 5.55$ a day, which would be five songs (and an NSYNC song) at the Apple rates of 1 song = 1 dollar.
Another interesting fact was that there is a three year statute of limitations for infringement for civil suites, so all those college collections of music you made should be free and clear.
IANAL, but I'd like to be one day, mostly so I don't wind up in jail. Again.
Your understanding of the costs is incorrect. A finished CD with jewel case and printed artwork is closer to $0.50 than to $0.01. You may be confusing the pricing on CD-Rs and pressed CDs. CD-Rs are much cheaper. You've also misestimated the royalties. Compulsories can be $0.70 for one CD alone.
Record companies sell CDs into the channel for less than $10.00 each. The margin structure for the CD industry is similar to many, many other industries.
You have plenty of legitimate reasons to crucify the recording industry. This isn't one of the good ones.
They simply don't have the resources in lawyers and the like to take this to a widespread level.
/. mindset is generally opposed to the idea that sharing copyrighted music files is breaking the law, but I think that you will find that the courts will disagree.
You have no idea what you are talking about. I saw Directv do this to a bunch of people in federal court over access cards.
What they do is hire an el-cheapo lawyer with some federal court skills and they file a complaint against 50 or so people. Then they use the logs that they have generated to convince a judge that the case should be decided at summary judgment.
Half the plaintiffs ignore the pleadings and get hit with default judgments and the other half talk to a lawyer and find out that, yeah, they broke the law and there is no reasonable defense. Then they negotiate a deal on the order of several to ten thousand dollars (which is what Directv was doing in my area).
The lawyer gets a percentage of what he collects for the big company, and the consumers get slammed for stealing.
I'm sorry that the
That being said, I think copyright needs some revision, but I think you seriously underestimate the exposure that real people have here and how it can fuck up their lives. I have actually seen it happen to others and I know several attorneys (who are good attorneys) who could do nothing to stop it in the Directv cases. I expect that the RIAA stuff will be almost verbatim in how it works.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Let's go over this again. Repeat after me:
"Copyright infringement is NOT stealing"
"Copyright infringement is NOT stealing"
Make sure you say NOT really loud. Copyright infringment is only that, copyright infringement.
In fact, if you will search the complete version of the U.S. Copyright Law, you will see, throughout all the chapters, amendments AND appendicies, the words steal nor stealing DO NOT APPEAR A SINGLE TIME.
Yes, downloading copyrighted materials is illegal, but it is NOT STEALING. There is an entirely different law that applies to stealing. If you would like to go over the US Copyright Law, all 290 pages of it are available in PDF and HTML form here
4. Stop being taken in by the RIAA FUD-O-MATIC
U.S. Code, Title 17, Chapter 11, Sec 1101, (a)(1), Distilled:
Anyone who, without the consent of the performer or performers involved fixes the sounds or sounds and images of a live musical performance in a copy or phonorecord, or reproduces copies or phonorecords of such a performance from an unauthorized fixation shall be subject to the remedies provided in sections 502 through 505, to the same extent as an infringer of copyright.
Because downloading entails making a copy to your local machine, I expect this is the basis of the argument that downloaders may be treated as infringers.
Disclaimers: IANAL, RIAA Sucks, Linux Rocks, etc...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
They're only suing SHARERS, not downloaders.
That's probably because only sharers are breaking the law. Downloaders are not. Copyright law is about distribution rights.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Even though the RIAA and MPAA are claming that p2p sharing is killing their business, you never hear the adult industry complaining about p2p.
It's true that the adult industry can't haul out a soap-box and scream bloody murder the way the RIAA and MPAA can; the adult industry has enough trouble with the wrong sort of reputation already. If the adult industry publicized how easy it was for Little Johnny to download pirated copies of hardcore pornography, it could backfire and trigger a new round of anti-porn legislation, rather than a wave of protect-the-porn-biz sentiment.
In any case, I have read at least one interview with a top adult-industry photographer (Suze Randall, I believe) who has been battling on-line piracy of her material for years, and who claims that the situation is increasingly out-of-control. Adult magazine sales are down - heck, Penthouse very nearly went under about a year ago - in part because all the photos in them are readily available on the internet within a week of publication. SR said that the glory days of her business were over - the fancy sets and high production values of her best stuff were no longer economically viable, because the prices she can charge for her pictures is falling. It's arguable that piracy has had a more dramatic impact on the adult industry than on the record industry.
Of course, it's also true that the internet has made it possible for any yahoo with a camera to start a porn site, and the resulting flood of bad, cheap-or-free porn that results probably has a lot to do with the flagging fortunes of the big names, too.
Clean-Hands Doctrine only applies when conduct in question is related to the suit that is being brought. In this case, the RIAA's shenanigans about fixing CD prices are wholly unrelated to the separate claim over lost profits due to file swapping. So while what the RIAA did previously is reprehensible, because it does not stem from the same transaction or occurance, they can still bring the suit.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur