Slashdot Mirror
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.
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."
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
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...
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?
Not quite. The best analogy I can think of off the top of my head is drugs. You don't target the users, you target the dealers. Once the supply is removed then the users are out as well. It's far easier to go after the one person who supplies 10 or 20.
If this succeeds to any degree perhaps people will actually start thinking about the consequences of their actions instead of thinking that while it is illegal, the chance of being caught is so small they might as well do whatever they feel like anyway.
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
Not really. As I understand it, copyright law says that you cannot distribute, not that you cannot receive. They are going after those who they are clearly allowed to go after. Before anyone decides to correct me and say that distributers are not profitting and so are not clear targets; the RIAA has already won/settled that lawsuit. They can now go after/sue those people with impunity. I'm not saying that they will win, just that they are not prohibited from sueing.
Downloaders are in a grey zone.
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 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.
Actually it's not really easy, at present, to legally find out who's downloading what. There is so-called packet sniffing, e.g. spying on users' access to the net, then you can see who's downloaded from someone else; or you can make a bunch of fake files and look to see who downloads it, which misses a lot of users.
Or, you can search for something and look at the list of search results: people who have the file (are offering it). You can do this legally.
Once you get a person's IP address, you can contact their ISP, and try to force them to disclose user's names. This only happens rarely, e.g. Verizon, and it is THOSE users being sued by this - not anyone who's using p2p now.
Of course there is a way around all this: using a proxy. Search google for MultiProxy (but the legality of using open proxies is questionable).
Then, they can't go after you too easilly. One alternative is the anonymizer - search google for it - it's a proxy you pay for that claims not to keep logs.
If a proxy is used, the RIAA gets the IP of the proxy serving files - and they can't force the proxy to disclose the user's names with a given IP at a given time, because they (I think) don't keep track of that!
Of course proxies introduce another issue. Proxies know who you are (they know your real IP), _and_ they can spy on you legally, to tell what you do. What if the RIAA bought the anonymizer?