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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.
Have we ever slashdotted the Washington Post or Yahoo?
Help, we're not making money during this recession. We better start suing our customers. I can't wait for the recession to become a depression. Then maybe the RIAA can pay politicians to change the laws to put people into jail.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
If they go after enough people, those people will probably organize and be able to put together a decent defense, unlike the lone college students they've been harrassing to date.
At the very least, if this happens, the RIAA could be stuck with a significant legal bill...
Follow the adventures of the new wandering jews
If we all boycott RIAA members products (yes downloads too), we can hurt them.
There is room for a meeting of the minds. RIAA members basically charge $15.00 for something that costs them $.25 ($.01 for the plastic and $.24 to the artist). No industry that has to mark up raw materials 60 times to cover marketing and distribution can expect to survive.
At the very least a boycott of just a couple of months would defund the RIAA.
Can all of us file a lawsuit claming that the RIAA continues to overcharge for the sale of CD's even after courts found them guilty, rapes its musicians of duly earned money, and for blatent infringement on our rights as a consumer pertaining to free personal use of music purchased? You know only cause its like calling the kettle black to say they are so high and mighty and we are all evil law breakers
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
This could potentially be a good thing:
Out of the hundreds of users targeted by these lawsuits, all it would take is one to stand his/her ground and fight. Once one rises to the challenge, a following will form. Once the following is formed, more and more attention will be levied on the case. The more attention the case recieves, the more people will become aware of the monopolistic and grossly unconstitutional actions of the RIAA. Once more people become aware, Congress will have to start paying attention to the people again.
Keep in mind, up to this point all the people (or students) the RIAA has sued have settled. What would happen if at least one stands up and goes to court?
The constitutionality of the DMCA and associated laws would undoubtedly be the first things reviewed, and again, given enough attention, could be soundly defeated.
Heres to crossing my fingers.
I thought it wasn't the sharing that was illegal, but the downloading of material you don't have rights to. This looks like it's just going to fall under safe harbor...
Nephilium
Enough cases and favorable precedent will be set somewhere. Some of these precedents will make their way up to district courts, and could eventually make their way all the way to the Supreme Court, a risk the **AA's just can't take. We've seen this before from the **AA's where they were afraid of a precedent going against them and dropped the case. They know about this, and don't dare make this as widespread as many people seem to believe they would.
I only use file swapping services for new release movies, software and pr0n. I have nothing to fear from the RIAA.
Funny that, isn't it? Even though the RIAA and MPAA are claming that p2p sharing is killing their business, you never hear the adult industry complaining about p2p. Perhaps they have modified their business model so that p2p sharing has only limited negative effect (or maybe even a positive effect). Boy, that would be something, wouldn't it? If all the fancy RIAA and MPAA business managers couldn't figure out something that Ron Jeremy did! Man, talk about humiliation!
GMD
watch this
Who's doing the copying? He who shares, or he who downloads?
Say I rip my CD collection (I have). Every mp3 I have is legit as a backup (this is going under the assumption that fair use still exists -- the argument about THAT can go on later). I go on KaZAa and sit there, looking for those GPL'ed parod songs I've heard so much about. My legitimately created files are open for the taking. An RIAA drone comes along and copies one to his computer.
Who has done wrong? Who should be sued?
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
This is precisely and exactly what they should be doing. Their attempts to ban useful technologies just because they can be used for copyright infringement can and should fail. Their attempts to mandate technologies of control ("My Computer" indeed!) can and should fail.
If you are caught violating copyright law hundreds of times with a flagrant disregard for that law, you can and should pay for the crime.
The laws we have are adequate. We don't need new IP law (unless it be to roll back terms -- retroactive extension should never have been allowed).
I have tons of MP3 and Ogg files, all cut from CDs I purchased. I've never downloaded a song. Really and truly.
What the "content industry" needs to wake up and realize is that the digital technology has changed the marketplace. People no longer want to pay $20 for a CD that costs $0.35 to make (marginal cost). Peoplw want to download music. They want to use it, convert its format, burn it to disc themselves, store it in SD cards, whatever. The music industry should be doing market research and offering "Napster-like" subscription services ($5/Gig/month, for example). People want to be legal.
Meanwhile, I'm all for suing the actual people violating the law. My gripe has been attacking ISPs, P2P server operators, etc. who are not actually engaged in violation of the law. By the RIAA's logic, there should be no such thing as a copier or a fax machine. They can be used to infringe copyright, therefore they should not be allowed. Mind you, they tried to say that about copiers, and abaout VCRs, and about cassette recorders, and...
If jack valenti were the drug czar of the US, he would put botanists and horticulturalists in jail and wonder why illegal drugs still proliferated.
I don't buy it, though. The MPAA and RIAA cabal isn't stupid. I believe they've been refraining from visibly targeting 'dealers and users' so as to keep illegal piracy high, to serve as an argument in lobbying efforts for further legislation, which they (mistakenly) believe is the real answer.
However, now that the cabal is facing much greater opposition to legislative 'remedies', they are being forced into the role they should have taken all along ... pursuing pirates. The action against the college students recently (although still against programmers and not pirates) was the first step. They were chosen because the high damanages allowed guaranteed a settlement ... note that usually secret settlement amounts became very public.
This will hopefully turn into a better, friendlier entertainment cabal. Still users of scare tactics, but no longer backward opponents of technology.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
It never was about money. They're only suing SHARERS, not downloaders. They're deliberately trying to kill P2P. If it was about money, they would sue the DOWNLOADERS. More revenue stream from that, wouldn't you say? It's about power and who determines what music gets to be popular.
And they don't want that who to be *you*. They want it to be THEM. THEY control the media, THEY control the masses. Screw you for picking the music you like. You'll take what we give you and LIKE IT!
My journal has hot
Plus, if I share 10,000 txt files renamed to 'song-artist.mp3', will I get some papers? Sounds like a good way to countersue.
Or, place a disclaimer on all your shares - "This is for personal use only under the Fair Use Act. Unauthorized use or download is strictly prohibited. Do not download if you are not the owner of these files." - perhaps this could also be a challenge to EULAs...
Last I checked, it's not illegal to have a PC open to the net - if it was, many Windows users would be rubbing sholders with drug offenders in prison.
Is the RIAA downloading these songs to check if they are real, correctly labeled and such? If so, they are breaking the law (IANAL). Do two wrongs make a (copy)right? If not, wouldn't this be considered barratry/harrasment?
IANAL and it probably shows, but how does the RIAA distinguish between legal and illegal sharing? If i bought a CD, don't have the knowledge necessary to "rip" it to listen on my computer, am I allowed to download a digital copy? And if so, how does the RIAA prove that I did or didn't purchase the CD in the first place? Doesn't the burden of proof lie on them?
Well, it's actually not a horrible argument, though. If substantial amounts of people are driven to do something irrespective of laws passed regarding that thing, then is it a good law in the first place?
Keep in mind that there are two generally accepted sources of law, those generated by behavior that is inherently criminal, and those generated for other societal reasons (check here for the definitions of mala in se and mala prohibita) and that we're talking about the second kind when we are talking about copyright law. Clearly, a large chunk (I don't know if it's a majority or not) of society doesn't agree with the law on the books. So, by that reasoning, maybe it should not be a law, Congress just hasn't caught up with society yet.
But I think the reasoning of the person you were replying to is not so much that, but that many of the violators are violators only because they lack the resources to buy legislators. Given a level playing field in monetary terms, the RIAA would lose out in a heartbeat, which does offer a whiff of moral justification to the traders.
No relation to Happy Monkey
Shareware DOES work.
Or maybe you mean unlimited-use shareware. Sure, that's less likely to bring in sales than normal shrink-wrapped software.
But publishers that release limited evaluation/shareware versions of programs and games are allowing everyone to kick the tires before plunking down $50 for a program.
I've bought probably 20-30 shareware programs over the last 4 years. And many of those I wouldn't've purchased if I hadn't been able to evaluate them first.
Same goes for music, except there's no good limited-use version of music.
However, I've purchased more CDs now that I can preview music than I ever did before.
Amazon has the right idea with their track previews, but I want to hear it in decent quality before I commit to it.
If I could somehow preview good-quality music legally from the content producer, then I'd have no use for downloading illegal rips from p2p sources.
'Course, I'm also the guy that bought Photoshop when I graduated from college instead of using the warez version I'd been using up until then... so maybe I'm not the norm.
0x0D 0x0A
Saw this quote on News.com...
"It's one of the few strategies left," Radcliffe said.
The question I have then is, what's the RIAA going to do when this doesn't work? What do they have left? And how long before they realize that this strategy, like all their others, is a massive failure?
How the fuck am I supposed to support indie music WHEN I CAN'T BUY THIER CDS because no store can carry them? When radio cannot play them for fear of RIAA retailation? Break the cartel and these guys won't be indie music, they'll be mainstream.
Ummm...try an independent music store. Screw the big record store chains while you're at it. Or buy directly from the record label. Most smaller indie labels sell direct for less than you'd pay in a store, and some don't even charge shipping. There are also online stores (Cheap CDs comes to mind) that have a very good selection of indie music.
And radio? How many non-independent radio stations aren't owned by a huge media conglomerate anyway? Stick to college radio....
Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. --Ludwig Wittgenstein
I'm posting this after the big "primetime moderation" window, but I think it's worth saying...
The RIAA's most recent action will motivate p2p programmers to introduce anonymity into their trading system, either by creating a new protocol or (more likely) modifying existing protocols and clients.
It's inevitable.
The veil of anonymity will prompt more people to share their entire music library. This will increase the diversity and wide availability of files.
In a p2p app, diversity and wide availability of files means that users a) find what they want and b) can download it quickly.
P2P trading platforms that a) are easy-to-use, b) offer multi-source downloads (for speed) and c) basic anonymity will thrive like never before because many p2p users will open up those massive libraries that are currently unshared out of fear of lawsuit.
The threat of being tracked down will have been removed by the always-responsive p2p programmers, leading to wide-spread sharing by people currently to scared to share, people with something to lose: adults with incredible collections... and a former fear of the RIAA.
I would love to have someone accuse me illegally possessing those MP3s. I would produce the original CD from which I ripped the track, show that I OWN that source, assert my fair use rights, and promptly counterclaim for substantial damages of my own. Think about this: If I have paid for the content, and can legally rip an MP3 from whatever source for my own use, why can't I get a copy of an MP3 version of content I already paid for from another source? That sounds like a FAIR use of the content to me. In fact, I think that prohibiting such conversions to force consumers to repurchase the same content in a new format is an UNFAIR and deceptive business practice. In court, suing individual file traders has the potential to quickly become a bottomless pit of evdentiary and other legal issues for each file alleged to have been illegally downloaded.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
I think this whole problems stems from the way copyright law has developed over the last century. Currently, organizations such as the RIAA and the MPAA have a "natural rights" position: We own it, and you'll pay us what we want or else.
Unfortunately, consumers don't think this way. We tend to take a more utilitarian approach. The authors of the U.S. Constitution have a short sentence about this very issue, and that leans towards social compromise: limited exclusive rights for author, use by the general public.
I find it ironic that some take the position of "it's against the law so I won't do it." Problem with this reasoning is the fact that the content industries have been writing the laws for years, pushing them through with donations, and uniting to block any legislation remotely negative.
My last comment is about the punishments faced by those accused. I would hope one of the cases goes all the way to a jury trial and have some high school kid possible "fined" millions of dollars. How "fair and just" would that seem to the average American? Later.
Piracy is a cost of doing business when dealing with mostly intangible goods. The fact is that piracy directly correlates with popularity. If nobody wants it, nobody would pirate it. Chances are that the DOOM phenomenon would not have caught on without shareware, which is basically the equivalent of singles on the radio. As a matter of fact, DOOM is a big reason that shareware games got so big in the mid-90's. DOOM and DOOM II are two of the best selling computer games of ALL TIME. Of COURSE they are going to be heavily pirated just like Eminem and Linkin(sp?) Park are heavily pirated. This comes with the advantage of being able to produce a product that has a physical marginal cost of practically $0 once it has been designed.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
More true than you probably realize. Most P2P applications don't make it terribly obvious how to disable sharing (as opposed to how to download files). The result is that it would be entirely plausable that major Sharers are providing files unintentionaly.
Granted, the file they are stored in is "My Shared Files" or whatnot... but does shared there mean files I'm sharing or files that were shared with me? There are ambiguities here that definately prevent criminal charges (to say nothing of the fact that Copyright infringement is, in most (all?) cases a civil violation anyhow).
Point being that some of these people will have clever lawyers. Many of them will get off or have charges dropped. The final point is this.
There is no legal way to kill these networks
You can discourage people from using them through scare tatics (which is what the RIAA is trying to do), but nothing they can do within the United States is going to have much of an effect. As long as I can stick a server in Zimbabwe and serve files off of it there's jack shit the RIAA can do about it. They don't want to run the risk of sueing the actual downloaders because that exposes a lot of their policy to judicial scruteny. How well would the idea that you own the rights only to files ripped from your copy of the CD hold up in court (as opposed to my right to download rips of the content I own)? They don't know, and won't risk it.
Once again the RIAA proves itself little more than a collection of jack booted thugs engaging in terror tactics to frighten its market into compliance with its desires. Unfortuately, much like the undertow of a sinking ship, the death throws of a dieing regime can be dangerous to hapless bystanders.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
4) Learn about and use additional tools that may be useful for blocking "enemy" scans of your system.
Something like Peer Guardian
From the site:
PeerGuardian is a simple P2P-enemy blocking program. It was initially just made for a few friends on XS.
It has aggression control so users can control the CPU versus their connection (dial-up users can use it with 20% aggression) and works in conjunction with the PG IP Database, an on-line database of P2P-enemy IP addresses which users can submit to, vote on submissions or add comments on existing ranges. Latest version is compatible with the 'Bulk Update' feature of the WWW-based PG2-IP-DB.
PeerGuardian is freeware.
There is an interesting review of Peer Guardian that also highlights some interesting points regarding blocking "enemy" IP scanning.
From the review:
"PeerGuardian blocks out known IP ranges used by MediaForce, MediaDefender, BayTSP, Ranger, OverPeer, RIAA, MPAA & NetPD by default," says Method on the app page."
Also, the PeerGuardian site also has a listing of "enemy" IP's that is updated periodically (not sure of the frequency).
Ppl left Napster and went elsewhere, ppl are about to .
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... Good luck .
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leave kazaa and go elsewhere
DRM won't let you play your CD in ur PC?
You can always buy a MP3 player/recorder with line in
and jack it into your boom box etc
The next flavor of the week for the RIAA will be either
I-mesh, WinMX, etc, etc, etc ad infinitium
What will be the end result ?????
An encrypted network, and or ppl going 0ld sk0ol
on them and using SSH2 dump sites
VPN's also come to mind
PGP mailing lists with atachments come to mind,
like subscribing to a certain "artist"
and when something new comes out the holder
of that mailer-list broadcasts/multi-cast mails it
I am sure there are MUCH brighter ppl than me already
making plans to make it happen as well
All encrypted too
As for the RIAA, necessity is the mother of invention
and out of it will spring stealthier ways to trade
For the unfortunates that get fried, I pity them
I swear its like trying to prosecute ppl for FAXing pages
out of a book to friends
I am not saying copying is right, I am just saying they got
one hell of a battle to beat it , I just don't see it
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"