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RIAA Now Targets Pirates' Parents
cecil36 writes "In a follow-up to the subpoena silliness by the RIAA, the Associated Press is now reporting that the RIAA is now issuing subpoenas to family members of suspected online music swappers."
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First of all, Pate is fully within his rights to videotape movies off cable! It's called Fair Use!
The fact that he 'zealously respects copyrights' only means that he is misinformed, and most likely has been taken in by **IA propaganda that would lead you to believe that there is no Fair Use.
Secondly, I am looking forward to several things: The death of CD sales and painful realization of the RIAA that they are going down. The explosion of indi artists and methods of distribution, and no more focus-group artists!
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, let the 80's die a noble quick death, not a lingering bedridden death like the 70's. Ironic that I would say that, as I played in a 80's cover band, friends don't let friends share Def Leppard.
The RIAA is demonstrating it's power, right? I think the consumers should demonstrate back. Here's what you do:
- Pick a day.
- On that day, everybody buys a CD. Doesn't matter which, though a newly released highly publiscized CD would be preferable. (Like the newest Spears album or something.)
- DO NOT OPEN THE CD.
- On the following day, return the CDs for a refund. Assuming the store will take back unopened CDs.
If a significant number of money is passed and then refunded, it'd be hard for the retailers not to take notice. I'd be surprised if that info didn't bubble up to the RIAA. If enough money moves, the RIAA will have a pretty good idea that this type of action will cause them to endure losses.
I personally have $100 I'd be willing to pump into this right now this second if I knew other people would be participating too.
"Derp de derp."
why does sound so much like the infamous (not for positive reasons) "war on drugs".
i feel like this will never end, and there will never be any resolution with the current approach at stopping file sharing.
what's the classic line? "the tighter you grip the more that slips through your fingers"
R.I.P.
I have been following this story with some interest, and I am still wondering how much of this story is real, and how much is so much legal FUD.
Consider: Even assuming that the RIAA proves some kid (or even his parents) has made one of their copyrighted songs available for download, how do they prove that anyone other than the copyright holder actually downloaded it?
Even assuming that they did, how do they then go show that the person who downloaded it actually turned the song into a sailable format? (MP3s are not the same quality as WAVs - how would this substandard quality be factored in?)
Even if someone did, presumably at most they'd be liable for the proportional cost of the song off the CD. Would the Judge give them credit for anyone who downloaded the song and then decided to buy the CD?
Understand that I am perfectly aware that the present U.S. political system has a strongly plutocratic component (e.g. the rich get to buy the laws they want), but I still think there are a lot more hurdles the RIAA most cross before they can start collecting that absurd "$15,000 per song" that's being bandied about in the articles about this.
Actually, you might not be guilty of the criminal act of murder, but you might very well be civilly liable for negligent supervision or some other negligence with respect to control and operation of the firearm.
Torts primer:
All torts have five elements, a duty owed, a breach of the duty, causation between duty and harm, any harm caused, and any defenses.
A parent who owns a computer might have a duty to supervise her children to ensure that the child doesn't cause a harm (copyright infringement, harassment, etc.), in the same way that a parent who owns a gun might have a duty to superviser her children to ensure that they don't shoot someone in the face.
Now, where things get screwy is in the damages caused. If the negligently supervised kid shoots someone in the face, the survivors ("heirs", though that's not the right term) of the deceased might be able to sue for that negligence. Maybe they'd win $1,000,000 out of the negligent parent's homeowners insurance policy, or something of the sort. The problem is that even if you can show that the parent has a duty to the RIAA to ensure that the child doesn't use the instrumentality (computer) to cause harm, that the parent failed to do so, and that the failure to supervise then CAUSED (very important word) some quantifiable harm to the company/organization, it's hard for me to understand the dollar amounts attached to these lawsuits.
But that argument's been rehashed a thousand times. I just wanted to give a little primer on how the parents could be implicated in the wrongful acts of their children.
(IANAL...Y) (figure it out)
Alot of people have idea's that they should 'boycott' the RIAA buy not buying CD's or buying them and returning them, or even buying from indie artists, but they all ask the same question: Who are RIAA members? Well I'd like to point you you this page which gives you a nice list of all the labels.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Try your best to do this with a copy protected CD and maybe kill two birds with one stone in the process.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You have the responsibility to rescue the woman if you are the owner of the pool, or the lifeguard. If you aren't there are no must-assist laws in the US, so you can be a shmuck and watch her drown.
Actually, even the owner doesnt have the responsability to rescue. They just have to try. There is some assumption of risk on the part of the user.
Negligence generally gives weight to who can avoid the risk most easily. Also taken into account are cost to eliminate risk, vs damage if risk happens.
Therefore if it costs $1M to clean up my ice patch, but only $1K if someone slips, I am not negligent, even if I could have cleaned it up.
Of course, the opposite is true, it costs $5 to clean the patch, and $100k if someone slips, so in fact I am negligent.
IAAL - so for the 500th time I will mention here - this is civil law versus criminal. Here RIAA is filing lawsuits for violation of copyright. And it is called deep pockets - if I am a typical filthy trial lawyer, I sue everyone, knowing that even if say the infringer is 90% guilty, but the computer owner is 10% guilty, I can enforce the entire judgement against the owner. That is the state of law today.
That's why you see these huge lawsuits in cases like drunk driving for example. They'll sue the driver, and the bar and car maker and anyone else. Then using the obvious guilt of the driver, they get a jury to find him 90% liable, and toss the bar and car maker in at 5% each. But opps - the driver is a broke drunk asshole. Guess what, in many cases and in most jurisdictions, they can enforce the whole judgement against the guys who are only 10% liable.
This is the fun, much trial lawyer loved doctrine of joint and several liability. It leads to great stuff like the driver intentionally sabotaging his case, having made an under the table agreement with the plaintiff that they will not try to pursue the judgement against him.
Or the very common case where the supposedly evil insurance company pays as required for the scumbags defense, and he tanks his own case having made an agreement with the plaintiff that they will only pursue whatever part of the judgement is owed by the insurance company. The trial lawyers love doing that one against the homeowner's insurance companies. In fact, I bet that will be a big line of attack for the RIAA - going after the homeowner's policy of parents whose kids are downloading.
In light of this, please give generously to John Edwards campaign - over 60% of his current contributions have come from trial lawyers. That's where "The Common Man" John made his millions of dollars.
As if music sales aren't getting worse as it is, the RIAA is only hurting itself and its artists with this move.
As the article states:
"If they end up picking on individuals who are perceived to be grandmothers or junior high students who have only downloaded in isolated incidents, they run the risk of a backlash."
Run the risk? I'm sorry, but they just created even more backlash by mearly mentioning the POSSIBILITY of going after these individuals.
How can they possibly go after the parents of children who are downloading music illegally? Most parents have no clue what P2P applications are, what they do, and what kids are using them for. If your son or daughter steals a CD from a store, you don't get fined for it, your child takes the blame. And even then, in most cases, the child involved pays a small fine and are left up to the parent's discipline. Sometimes the penalty can be community service, or juvinial court. At this point it's less risky to steal physical media than it is to steal digital work from the comfort of your own home....
Once again the RIAA is throwing their weight around, and once again the DMCA is burning people who don't deserve the law on their backs. I'm sure this type of action scares some, but it also makes many others want to buy less and share more just to stick it to "the man."
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word to your moms... I came to drop bombs...
The standard for arrest is probable cause, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. "More likely that you did it than the other 6 billion people on the planet" is an acceptable working definition of probable cause.
No it isn't. e.g. if my roommate is found murdered, it's more likely that I killed him than one of the random 6 billion people who _don't_ live with him, but that's pretty damned far from being sufficient cause to get an arrest warrant.
Probable cause is not just a greater possibility that someone could have committed a crime--e.g Lectlaw says "The test the court of appeals employs to determine whether probable cause existed for purposes of arrest is whether facts and circumstances within the officer's knowledge are sufficient to warrant a prudent person to believe a suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime."
http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/p089.htm
Sumner
rage, rage against the dying of the light
I wonder how many of these subpoena's have to be sent to ISP's before they simply stop recording the IP info? Already it has been reported that DePaul University in Chicago is saying that it no longer has the user info for that IP...
Are there any laws that require ISP's to keep track users & IP's? From the laws that I have looked over (without doing any real research) it looks like the law only requires them to turn over any relevant info availble.
With what has to be mounting cost I can imagine that small ISP's are dumping this info so when the request comes in they say- "Got nothing". How much longer before the cost gets to high for the larger ones?
Just a thought
Huh?
Hey RIAA!
I have over 100 GB of commercial works by many of the companies you represent on my network. Two computers my roomates use run Kazaa and Winmx non-stop sharing from the network drive. LimeWire runs on the server itself. We share over a cable connection, and I recently had DSL installed. Typically during the day there are thousands of uploads, so many sometimes LimeWire crashes.
And guess what? I have the money to fight you. The fact is folks, that if the information on illegal acts was obtained illegally and unconstitutionally, the evidence cannot be admitted into court and without evidence there is no case. It is unconstitional for private companies to issue subponeas because due process is not observed and there is no legal forward.
Sorry, but I am just begging they come after me. I have the cash ready and I come from a family (yes, it's sad I know) of very sucessful lawyers.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95