2191.78 Years for the RIAA to Sue Everyone

este writes "According to an article in the Inquirer, if the RIAA maintains its rate of lawsuit issuance, it will take more than two millenia for them to sue evey P2P file trader. The author accounts for many additional difficulties facing the RIAA in this daunting task."

Comments

Sounds like a profit model to me...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Hell one could make a career from dragging out litgation. Look at the folks at Caldera, er, SCO.

Re:Sounds like a profit model to me...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

On the contrary. Humans expire just like copyrights. What are they going to sue, the person's heirs?

No wait, don't answer that...

Re:Sounds like a profit model to me...

[i8urtaco]

And we had to program in the snow! Uphill! And every five minutes we'd have to give the hamster inside the power supply an electric shock to start his heart, but that was only after we kick started the backup motor!

I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist.

Re:Sounds like a profit model to me...

[Rhubarb Crumble]

Thus the cases RiAA has would to deal with would grow exponentially every year.

And so would the amount of damages they could (potentially) claim.

Which basically means that the RIAA can stop publishing music altogether and just turn itself into a consortium of lawyers. After all, with infinite future income (from damages) guaranteed by Congress and Disney Corp., how can they lose!

Re:Sounds like a profit model to me...

[Divide By Zero]

Humans expire just like copyrights. ...which is to say, not at all. So when I'm about to die, I can be renewed in perpetuity? Cool.

If the RIAA can milk recording artists for money well after the artist is dead, I should be able to, erm, liberate the music well after I'm dead. Not that I will die - I'll have my friends renew me.

Re:Sounds like a profit model to me...

[ediron2]

Luckily for **AA, copyrights will still be in effect for all currently-protected songs even after 2000 years, thanks to the Son-of-SonnyBono Act of 2010, Bono-Back-from-Beyond (2055), I-was-a-teenage-mutant-ninja-Bono Act of 2173, and Bono-until-the-year-2525 Act of 2225.

On the contrary. Humans expire just like copyrights. What are they going to sue, the person's heirs?

No wait, don't answer that...

RIAA: Who says copyrights expire!? Damn liar, step up and be seen!

PS: Has anyone else ever chuckled at the irony of perhaps lobbying for copyright to be extended retroactively forever, just so Mickey Mouse (and Sonny Bono's estate!) could get the bejeebers sued out of him by the estate of the Brothers Grimm, et al? It'd force a reality-check on the lobbyists who are whitewashing congress with this belief that consumers are the only cheap-ass nigglin' thieves who want to use stuff without paying a royalty.

Why even try?

[mschoolbus]

As put by Rage Against the Machine:

"You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."

Re:Why even try?

[KReilly]

This is assuming that
A) They actually maintain this level of lawsuits, they could easily step up the amount.
B) All file sharers remain online, I read a while back that their has been a dip in kazaa usage since the start of the lawsuits.

They never intended to sue everyone that uses p2p, they are intending to scare everyone out of using p2p.
Put simply, if they sued half, I could almost guarentee the other half would stop. Thus cutting their time to 1 millenia

Re:Why even try?

[Kneo24]

The dip that was reported was done over the fourth of july weekend. Of course there's going to be less people online during that time. Just more propaganda to fuel their machine, that's all it was.

Re:Why even try?

[felis_panthera]

I read a while back that their has been a dip in kazaa usage since the start of the lawsuits

On the contrary. Although there was a short dip in Kazaa useage after the RIAA announced their new program of suing the pants off of everyone who even looks at copyrighted material, yesterday WinMX came back on-line with a vengeance. Something in the nature of 4000 trillion (is that a quadrillion?) songs went on-line for download over WinMX. My room-mates and I went on a DL/UL spree, filling many gaps in our respective collections (combined total somewhere in the 50 GB range).

As mschoolbus said (quoting Rage, all hail Rage!!): "You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution."

Re:Why even try?

[ahfoo]

I personally did notice what looked like a dip right after they announced that subpeonas had been served and they started posting screen names. At one point last week my client was showing only about 3.1 million but then this weekend I glanced at the screen and saw 4.3 which is about as high as I've ever seen. I was surprised to see it pop back so fast, but then again not too surprised. I think one thing the RIAA is failing to perceive is the utter lack of attention span amongst the people they're trying to shock.
I think this is a real obvious flaw in their strategy. Their biggest artists are best known for their shock value. Using the "scared straight" tactic on a group of consumers who are specifically self selected as seeking out shock as entertainment is questionable.

Re:Why even try?

[shane_rimmer]

We're working on it. We just need more lions.

When am I gonna get served?

[JDark]

Great.. with my luck I'll be served in the first 200 years.

It's the deterrent, stupid.

[LazloToth]

It's not about getting them all - - it's about nailing a few and scaring the rest. State highway patrolmen are effective pulling over maybe one of every several thousand cars that pass. Ditto, in principle, for the RIAA.

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[darien]

It's not about getting them all - - it's about nailing a few and scaring the rest

Reminds me of my days in that co-ed dorm.

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[Dutchmaan]

It's not about getting them all - - it's about nailing a few and scaring the rest. State highway patrolmen are effective pulling over maybe one of every several thousand cars that pass. Ditto, in principle, for the RIAA.

...and yet people still speed regularly.

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[garcia]

and amazingly enough it doesn't deter anyone. Have you been on a highway recently? Average speeds are in the low 80s.

Fines are usually in the $150 range for speeding (which could possibly kill someone).

Fines for downloading music are $750 to $150k PER OFFENSE.

That's just wrong.

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[91degrees]

...and yet people still speed regularly.

Whereas if they didn't pull anyone over for speeding, even mnore people would speed, and probably speed a lot more. I know I stick to the speed limit because I don't want a ticket. I don't think I'm the only one.

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[Bonker]

Correct. The RIAAs goal here is to make a big deal out of what happens to the file sharers THEY sue.

Lawsuits have been mostly targetted at Verizon users and have been 'mysteriously' targetted away from AOL/Time Warner users. (Hmm... I wonder why?)

The goal here is to create a scare tactic. They want to be able to say 'If you share music, we'll do this to you!'.

Like TheInquirer said, though. Our current legal system just isn't up to prosecuting over a sixth of our population and probably isn't up to prosecuting over a thousandth. The RIAA companies KNOW they can't do anything about the reality of file-sharing. They also know that if they do much more, then they're going to start seriously alienating their customer base. (If they haven't already. I haven't spoken to ANYBODY about the recent lawsuits who didn't say they felt upset about ever buying records or CDs.) The only way they can acheive their goal is to create the peception of a new criminal class, and sadly for the RIAA, it's not working. CNN is running a story this morning more or less martyring Justin Frankel and talking about the bonuses of using WASTE.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/07/29/privat e.fileshare/index.html

Even the people who are theoretically on the music industry's side-- CNN being yet another AOL/TW company-- are standing against the RIAAs wave of mass stupidity.

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[dlur]

The fines aren't between $750 and $150,000 per offense. These people are being sued for that amount in civil court cases. The vast, vast majority of these cases aren't criminal cases, they're civil. Huge difference. If they were criminal cases you'd pay a fine and go to jail for a while, but you'd also get a court appointed lawyer if you couldn't afford one and have the option of a jury trial.

In a civil case there's not much for a limit on damages and no governmental checks and balances on what those limits are. So basically the RIAA can almost literally sue the pants off you for doing something that doesn't physically hurt anyone and just has minor monetary effects on their being. Isn't America great?

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[Dutchmaan]

So in essence the RIAA uses tactics of a police state... I'm sure glad they don't have influence in our government! (for the humor impaired that was tongue in cheek)

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[jmo_jon]

Fines for downloading music are $750 to $150k PER OFFENSE.
Well, lives aren't worth as much as property. You're allowed to shoot someone for breaking in to your house, even without being threatend.

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[garcia]

I don't care if it is civil or criminal court. They are treating you like a criminal and charging up to $150k per song.

Proof is Here

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[BrynM]

no, i just keep up with the flow of traffic! everyone else is doing it, why shouldnt i?

You're stealing time! You can call it "saving time" or "being in a hury", but you are outright stealing! How are the county clerks and local legal system going to get fed? Just because everyone else is doing it doesn't make it moral!

Sorry, someone had to give a mock anti-filesharer response.

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[dasmegabyte]

Actually, there seems to be a lot of evidence that speed limits are not effective in reducing average motorist speed or in reducing accidents. Reduced speed increases survivability but not the likelihood of a crash, so it's a noble goal. But speed limits aren't the way to do it (http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html).

The most effective method of reducing speed is a visible patrol car. People are guaranteed to slow down when being watched. Which is interesting, because many state policeman seem to think that sneaking around is going to slow people down -- around here, they love parking in the shadow of underpasses and the like. Which is silly, because here in NY people flash their beams to indicate "hey, hidden cop ahead." The fastest guys slow down, while the rest of us play it cool.

Average traffic speed around here is 70 MPH. I mean, all three lanes are doing at least 15 MPH over at all times during the day. Only bluehairs drive the limit, and that's not hyperbole -- I bought a beetle with a max speed of about 63 and I get passed by people on the damn offramp. HOWEVER -- when a cop is visible in the U-turn lane, speed drops to about 60 MPH average for at least a mile before and after. Which is good, because during rush hour they lurk in the most dangerous parts of the throughway.

The parable here is this: the RIAA could save a LOT of money by simply sending a letter to people "caught" file sharing that says "Cut it out, or we'll sue you." I think most of us would be sufficiently scared to curb out practices. And those of us sharing legal files (there's got to be somebody else besides me sharing Proj. Gutenberg texts on KaZaa) wouldn't have to worry about some fool legislature BANNING peer to peer.

Re:It's the deterrent, stupid.

[theLOUDroom]

Sorry... I just have to say this. Songwriters don't make a dime unless a physical cd sells. So to them it is stealing.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. CDs aren't the only source of royalties. They aren't even a good one. They are plenty of ways to make a dime without selling CDs. If you really know any songwriters, you should know that.

Most artists would make more money if you mailed them a quarter than if you bought their CD. Many artists have actually lost money by releasing an album.

As far as the songwriters you know, you've already explained why that example is worthless.

Of course maybe the songwriters you know consider copyright infringement to be rape and murder as well. They could possibly be some pretty messed up individuals.

Maybe your friends should get involved in live performance, instead of expecting to do a small amount of work once and get paid for it the rest of their lives.

I perfectly willing to pay $20 to go see an artist I like perform. I am not willing to pay $20 for a CD, of which $19.50 or more will go to a few megacorps which want pass laws I don't like and promote bands which suck.

Prior art:

[Thud457]

Jason Fox has them flummoxed.

Excellent!

[Lumpy]

That means that everyone that their last name starts with a letter greater than B has absolutely nothing to worry about!

Stupid analysis

[JohnGrahamCumming]

That's a totally boneheaded analysis if ever I saw one. The RIAA does not have to sue every file trader, they just have to sue that ones with large caches of files (because they can get the biggest bang for the buck there... more files, more damages) and then they have to make a noise about what they are doing.

By suing a few, they'll scare the many and reduce file sharing to a background noise nuisance... at least that's what they hope. Their point is to be very public about the fact that they are willing to go after individuals so that many individuals will simply stop file sharing because they are afraid.

John.

The real reason CD sales are down!

[Wacky_Wookie]

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/news_story.php?id=3654 4&rel

It turns out that it's the Record Companies themselves. It's not loss of profit that the RIAA is worried about anyway, it's always been about loss of controll. If the RIAA can't force the public to think the artists it hand picks are cool, then they can't be sure of profits from manufactured bands.

My .5 pence ;)

Re:The real reason CD sales are down!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not loss of profit that the RIAA is worried about anyway, it's always been about loss of controll

I've been saying that since they started complaining about Napster.

It seems rather obvious to me because they want to sell one artist's music to a million people, not a million artist's music to a million people. People claim they buy the music of the artists they like, but the RIAA doesn't care if you buy those albums they want you to buy the flavour of the month.

Yes, I realize

[TedCheshireAcad]

I realize it's just humor, but the point of the RIAA's suits is to deter people from using p2p under fear that they will get sued.

But if there are 60 million p2p users, the probability of getting sued is pretty low, even if it does depend on the number of files you have shared.

Perhaps the next version of KaZaA will have a suit-o-meter, that will actively display your probability of being sued by the RIAA ;)

But won't most of the copyrights expire by then?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Last I checked the copyright termes were 90 years after the death of the artist. Oh god, they must be planning on keeping the Backstreet Boys in suspended animation.

Should have read THAT on the contract before signing.

Re:At that rate...

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

From the article: 219 years! They'd have to sue our great grand children!

I wouldn't put it past the RIAA. Imagine how much money our grandchildren will have. They can pay it all in damages to the RIAA with interest.

Maybe they will make vague SCO threats against our grandchildren telling them to pay for their grandparents licensing, or face litigation.

What bothers me

[phorm]

Is not only are they at many times taking the law into their own hands (and somewhat frivolously I might add), but could also be tying up mass amounts of the legal system in such a venture. In the end, will hurt not only those being sued unjustly, but all of the country as the legal system gets bogged down by idiotic cases.

A Different Approach...

[mgcsinc]

I'm gonna be the first to make some crazy numerical speculations to bring this number down to a more sensible time in which the RIAA can disable national file sharing. Please, these numbers are meant as argument-starters, so by all means, argue against them. Let's say of 75 people a day who are subpoenaed, 25 are scared shitless and settle. They each have 15 close friends each, who they also scare shitless, and who stop sharing (I say sharing, because it is those who are sharing who get subpoenaed, and they keep the networks alive). Also, publicity from the settlements brings 50 sharers down per settlement. That's 1650 sharers gone, per day. Then let's say 25 of those who are subpoenaed battle it out in court, and lose. A loss will have much larger publicity, so let's say we lose 200 sharers per loss, and the friend effect should bring down another 50 people a piece (think about seeing your friends lose thousands of dollars to the music industry after a court ordeal). That's 6275 sharers down per day. Finally let's say 25 people never see continued legal battle, or just win. That inspires 100 sharers to get back online, apiece. This all makes for 5425 sharers lost per day, net. Finally, there is an effect whereby sharers will be generally afraid of being subpoenaed in general. We can probably safely bet that for every 10% of the current sharing community which is subpoenaed, 2% of other sharers will be scared out of sharing, and that proportion would probably grow exponentially as the RIAA gains monster effect. Finally, consider that once the community loses more and more sharers, sharers are able to download less and less music in return for their contribution, and will share less and less. With all these effect coupled, I dare say that two millennia is a bit of a longshot...

There is an obvious solution

[heironymouscoward]

And that is for the RIAA to use the P2P network to sue itself. Perhaps we will see an RIAA-sponsored feature in upcoming releases of W2K3: 'autosuit', in which your computer automatically formats you an appropriate lawsuit and sends a log of incriminating evidence to the RIAA.
Maybe the most effective resistance against the RIAA would be for 10,000,000 people to voluntarily go to the authorities and confess to having downloaded exactly 1 song. "I did it, and I can't sleep cause of the guilt, please punish me."
Kind of like burning ID passes in Apartheid South Africa. If everyone does it, punishments become unenforcable.

RIAA is turning me pirate.. arrr

[KrancHammer]

I am a strong supporter of property rights, intellectual and otherwise (yes I know the IP rights situation is a bit more complicated). However, the RIAA's strongarm, bullying tactics are pissing me off. I would not vote for any politician who supported that organization. Yes, people have a right to make a dollar or thousand for their intellectual contributions, but people also have a right to such as "innocent until proven guilty," and "freedom from unwarranted search and seizure" and a dozen other rights the RIAA, MPAA, and their highly funded Washington lawmakers would trample on in the rush to stamp out music piracy. I used to have sympathy for the RIAA's viewpoint. No longer.

Unfortunately they don't need that long...

[Alkarismi]

It is simply the chilling effect of the *threat* they are after.

You only need look as far as slashdot to see posts suggesting that kazaa et al usage is declining. Speaking with non-geek users of these services also shows that the threat is slowly being taken seriously.

Of course the **AA are merely playing King Canute as usual, in the long run suing the f*ck out of their customers will not restore their fortunes, merely delay the inevitable.

I used to spend several hundred a month on DVDs & CDs. Now... well I guess I never did like bullies much!

Re:Unfortunately they don't need that long...

[garcia]

Kazaa use is declining? Funny, I just logged on the other night for my daily dose of pornage and found that there were nearly 7TB's of files available. Last time I checked it was in the low 6TB range...

Some people have gotten a clue and moved to other methods (like BT) for getting their TV episodes, porn, music, etc. BT speeds are BLAZING fast compared to most of Kazaa (not for music, for movies, etc). I average about 100kB/s for most songs on Kazaa, I can download entire albums from BT at 200kB/s+

Distributed Sueing !

[da5idnetlimit.com]

In an unheard of move, the RIAA has decided to use a basic P2P scheme to have its law ordinance sent to everybody.

A cascade chain of Court Letters will be sent from Lawyer branch to Lawyer branch and only the lasts in the distribution tree will have to send the letters.

After the close observation, the RIAA has been put to court by Bittorrent inventor.

Also, the Courts are looking at this apparent pyramidal scheme as a new, innovative way to collect money from unsuspecting lusers.

See you later, this was AN, from Slashdot News Channel...

Re:I told ya so

[KillerHamster]

Who will they sue when they can't sue the p2p or it's users?

The ISPs.

the solution is obvious

[leekwen]

this is obviously too much for one person to handle. we need to create a distributed network among kazaa network users.

i will start by suing myself. you can help too by donating your spare cpu cycles towards our cause.

Doing the math

[borkus]

Let's see -

• 60,000,000 defendants at ten defendants per attorney is
  
• 6,000,000 attorneys at an average height of 5'8" is
  
• 33,960,000 feet of attorneys laid end to end or
  
• 6,400 miles of attorneys laid end to end
  

That's enough attorneys laid end to end to cover every sidewalk in New York.

Let A Man Do The Calculations

[tds67]

She said: "I pulled out my calculator to see just how long it would take the RIAA to sue all 60 million P2P music file traders at a rate of 75 a day. 60,000,000/75 = 800,000 days to subpoena each person or 800,000 days/365 days in a year = 2191.78 years to subpoena each person".

Hey babe, let me show you how a man calculates all this: After whipping out my sliderule and factoring in the size of the aforementioned subpoenis', I come up with 2200.25, a much bigger number.

Lawyer's Job Security

[LoneStarGeek]

Well at least the RIAA lawyers will have work the the the next 2,000 years.

In my opinion there is no logical way they can sue everyone file sharing songs around the world. The courts would be so blocked up from these frivilous lawsuits that no real trials could be heard. To be fair they would have to raid everone's cassette tape collection from the 70's/80's and sue people that made taped copies of albums and CDs then gave them away to friends.

The RIAA and it's fleet of lawyers are insanely greedy. If only the artist got their fair share of what a song grosses then maybe they would get more sympathy.

Re:if their objective is to sue everyone

[LostCluster]

P2P networks rely on their network externiality to be effective. That is to say, a P2P network doesn't work very well if there are fewer people on it. So, they don't need to sue everyone... if they just knock out the biggest sharers the network will become useless so that the small people stop using it too.

I suggest an opt-out model...

[jkrise]

RIAA says: We sue the whole world for P2P misuse. Those who think they've been sued wronly, please opt-out by visiting the nearest court, depositing $5 towards opt-out costs and inform us over Kazaa er.. e-mail.

Failure to opt-out would mean that you plead guilty, the penalty for which is 95% of all earnings, including future earnings, over the next 2191.78 years...

PS: If you have paid our associate SCO, you have been automatically opted-out.

Done.

-

You'd be more believable

[Microsift]

If you weren't bragging about your past sexual conquests on a site whose subtitle includes the words "News for Nerds"

Re:At that rate...

[Anonymous Coward]

People have kind of missed that fact that (at present) they are only able to sue American P2P users). As the world stands today, they can't sue everyone.

Many of us outside the USA are increasing what we make available via peer to peer -- out of sheer vindictiveness.

Re:Article text

[cheeseSource]

They didn't include the extra day in a leap year in the calculation. That'll shave some time off...

Fuck the RIAA and Mitch Bainwol

How to profit from the RIAA

[tekrat]

Just like with the terrorists, we should start a website for betting on who the RIAA will sue first. Then, if you bet on yourself, and place a good bet, you'll win enough money to finance your defense.

It's a futures market for RIAA lawsuits, aka "America's New Economy".

File Sharing will Evolve

[merkel]

Like everyone else, I first thought all this legal hoopla by the RIAA and other private, quasi-governmental and the U.S. Congress would eventually put an end to file sharing, but thinking about it more I realized that file sharing will just evolve. It is simply becoming too easy to transfer bits of data for file sharing to stop.

What are some of the likely outcomes?

1. Anonymous file sharing. I think the technical challenges to this are pretty huge. There are legitimate reasons to allow anonymous information exchange, and even the US government seems to desire this to promote favored political dissidents. If someone can geninuinely overcome the challenges, I imagine peer-to-peer networks will survive, but I'm not very sanguine about this.

2. Private networks. Rather than letting just any yahoo search the files on your computer and suck down your precious bandwidth, I forsee private networks where friends and family can share files, but strangers can't. As long as you keep your list of buddies under reasonable control, it's going to be difficult for anyone to track file back to you.

3. Local exchanges. Even more extreme than a private network, people might make direct device-to-device copies. Go over to a friend's house and download their entire music collection to your laptop. Meet someone at the library and sync up your iPod. Whatever - by cutting out the middleman, there are no sticky subpoena issues with your ISP. Think about it - as data storage and data transfer rates improve, it'll be feasible to exchange files with any person you casually meet. Instead of meeting for the coupon swap, you can bring your PDA/iPod/laptop/hard drive and swap with your friends.

I really don't see how encryption, watermarking, or stronger enforcement of IP laws is going to put this genie back in the bottle.

The music industry, just like every other content provider, is going to have to adapt their business model, by providing a reasonably priced service that provides consumers what they want.

I think the only viable business model is subscription based access to a music catalog. For something like $10 or $20/mo., subscribers will have access to the entire catalog - and maybe special features like "webcasts", web radio, etc. But the current distribution system is done.

That and the music indutry needs to turn out something better. Honestly - I haven't downloaded ANY music and I've still only bought about 2 CD's in the past year. It's all crap.

Re:File Sharing will Evolve

[MImeKillEr]

I think the only viable business model is subscription based access to a music catalog. For something like $10 or $20/mo., subscribers will have access to the entire catalog - and maybe special features like "webcasts", web radio, etc. But the current distribution system is done.

I'd buy that, but only if it were a conglomorate site (eg. has more than one label's catalog) and didn't require a contract.

If consumers had to pay separate fees to each lable's site in order to get music that they want, this would cut out some of their potential clientel.

How ong until they sue someone who can fight back?

[markh1967]

The RIAA seem to be playing a very dangerous game and we have to make sure that they can't back out if things don't go their way.
What I mean by that is that they are picking IP addresses at random and starting legal procedings against the people these IPs belong to without knowing who they are.
We should really be making sure that every IP that is listed is followed up on. We can't let them discover that one of the IPs belongs to someone with power and money and let them quiety drop that case while still prosecuting people who are unable to defend themselves.

If they want to play Russian roulette like this we have to make them suffer the consequences if they pick the wrong IP. We can't let them find out who these IPs belong to and then cherry pick cases to fight - it should be all or nothing.

Re:if their objective is to sue everyone

[felis_panthera]

I see it as a neverending cycle though. They knock off a huge sharer (say 500 GB of shared, copyrighted material). The next in line is someone with 400 GB, who has most of the same files the 500 GB sharer had. The new big fish downloads like mad until he has 600 GB. He gets sued and the next in line already has 500 GB since she was on a DL spree.

The only thing this will accomplish in the end is a slight and temporary vacuum at the top end of file sharing. No one has managed to stamp out crackers (the guys who break copy protection, not the pasty white people) yet, because for every one at the top that gets knocked off, three more rise up and take their place. For serious file sharers, the ammount you have to share is status, just like 0-day warez.

"You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike." --Mentor's Last Words

Imagine if the Scriveners tried to sue?

[asscroft]

Remember scriveners? They used to hand-copy important legal documents because there was no other way? They were paid fairly well too, and had great skill and talent to copy with speed and legibility. Imagine if they sued to prevent Carbon Paper or Type Writers or Xerox Machines or scanners or Magnetic Media. I mean, hell, you can copy a 1000 page document in a matter of seconds on most modern HOME computers. There's no way even the fastest scrivener can compete. They could have formed an Association of America back in the 1800s and passed some DMCA-styled legislation making carbon paper illegal and we never would have progressed past the 1800s. Sure some people in free worlds would have used carbon paper, but the Interpol treaties and such would have made it clear that they were rogue states full of pirates. No God fearing American would have ever been caught using such a terrible device. Not only that, but these laws would have saved and entire industry and tons of jobs nation wide. Instead, look at the way things are. Most of you didn't even know what scrivener meant and those that did owe it all to Melville, not because you have ever met a scrivener. Can we allow the RIAA to go the way of the scriveners? I think not. We need to legislate their existence for eternity. After all, that's what this is all about. They are as obsolete as the scriveners. I need to pay the RIAA to make a CD as much as I need to pay a scrivener to make a copy of a document. All I need is talent and an IMac and I can record, encode, market world-wide and distribute world-wide and the RIAA doesn't need to be involved at all. That's what this is all about. It's not piracy and never has been. It's about losing their stranglehold on the market, and losing their usefulness all at the same time.

Face it RIAA, you're dead as you exist today. You can sue all you want and claim Piracy all you want and hire as many republicans as you can afford, but you'll never ever ever be the necessary evil you were for most of this century. Take your money and get out of the cartel business. The world is wise to you, and all it wil take is a few brave musicians who won't use you to make millions and you'll never survive the blow. The people you're calling theives today are the musicians who'll drive the nails in your coffin tomorrow.

2200 years...

[Quixadhal]

That seems like about the right amount of time to finally play something original on the radio. I'll consider that a promise!