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RIAA Prepares Legal Blitz Against Filesharers
Sayonara writes "The RIAA are now well and truly gathering their forces for a financial onslaught on file sharers in the US, with a "fear and awe" campaign targetting college and high school students in particular. The strategy can be reduced to 'We should really charge you $150,000 per song you have downloaded. Pay us $50,000 now, and we'll say no more about it.' In a related article, the BBC describes how the netizen known as 'nycfashiongirl' is now attempting to delay the RIAA's case against her by claiming their investigation of her online activities was illegal. The RIAA has dismissed these arguments as 'shallow.'"
How on earth do they think they are going to get $50k out of a student? I certainly don't have $50,000 in the bank, nor will I have it anytime soon. I think this is more of a case of going after those least able to defend themselves.
How do they know you don't legally own all the MP3s or movies you are downloading?...
They don't care. Unless I missed something big, they still aren't suing you for DOWNLOADING anything--I don't even think that they can track what you download. AFAIK, they're going after folk who SHARE the files--i.e., what they've got for upload.
You may very well have a perfectly legal reason to download that MP3--but you certainly don't have a justifiable reason to place it on a P2P network.
One already exists.
It's called CD-Baby.
Here's a free and easy tool that will let you know if a cd is from an RIAA affiliated company:
http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/
Read. Sign up. Send email to your representatives.
yeah, like FREE Health Care, a government with no long history of corruption, and the actual ability to speak out minds without being called a terrorist.
No wonder I can't sleep at night
Serious discussion and comparison of SCO and RIAA.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The defendent is claiming their 4th Admendment right was violated (unreasonable search etc...). RIAA is saying that they are not a goverment body so it does not apply to them.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
That is the day that the RIAA will be sueing some of the people they subpoena'd. According to this article.
I can't *wait* to see what happens. Of course, this is only because I'm not on the list.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
www.Furthurnet.org it is p2p and target only bands that allow free distribution of their work.
I think its pretty 'shallow' of them to bring people to court over this issue. How do they know you don't legally own all the MP3s or movies you are downloading?...
The RIAA is not going after downloaders, contrary to what they, and the media, would have you believe. The ONLY people they go after are those who OFFER tunes for OTHER PEOPLE to download, in other words, distributing.
I don't care what the headlines say, read between the lines for gods sake and check it out. In every case where someone has been threatened legal action by the RIAA, they were DISTRIBUTING, not just DOWNLOADING.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
This exact thing took place in Denmark in November 2002.
Here is what happened:
'Antipiratgruppen' (Danish RIAA organisation) scoured KaZaA for Danish users sharing files and took to court a database of IPs and the contents of shared directories.
Danish court granted them a per-case order forcing ISPs to resolve IPs into real names.
The ISPs coughed up, and the anti-piracy group sued 100 kids for their illegal MP3s.
Each sharer was offered a deal - pay a substantial fine, or be dragged through court and be hit with serious financial ruin.
A few people got nailed pretty hard, and the story got the large amount of press that had been planned. One college dorm settled at $15.000 per user on the network.
(...and one friend of mine stayed up one night, destroying 150 CD-Roms in his possession with a rotary sander *hehe*).
The Anti Piracy Group did NOT get what they have been campaigning for all along - vigilante powers: They still obviously have to go through court every single time they want ISPs to resolve an IP number into a user name.
This ruckus has just had the effect that people turn off sharing and turn to the encrypted P2P clients.
Now is the winter of our disco tent
If you have a server running with files visible that allows me to download those files, then your server (or filesharing software) is making and sending me a copy. I am not doing the copying, the server is. It is literally duplicating the stream of bits on your HD and sending those duplicate bits down the wire. On my end, the client is only receiving a single set of bits and transferring them to the HD. At no point am I in possession of more than one set of bits (caching and temporary file issues aside).
Furthermore, you DO NOT have a right to display copyrighted works on your front lawn or the internet. The right of public performance is limited to the copyright holder and its licensees.
In the case of the library, the person who actually makes the copy is not the library (and in any case, there are actually exceptions in Title 17 that allow libraries to make copies under certain circumstances). In your example, the person who takes the book home and copies it is at some point engaged in the act of copying. It does not matter where or how they obtained that book.
I do not have a signature
BOYCOTT MAJOR LABELS Boycott major labels, please please please please please.
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/artists/
PLEASE!
And remember thats part of CRIMINAL law.
I could sue you for unlawful access to a website (slash). It's civil then, and bill of rights does not apply.
Actually, you cannot add student loans in a bankruptcy. Your stuck with them. The govn't won't forgive loans from them.
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
Under some circumstances they can dock a big percentage of your pay for the rest of your life.
Seriously. I know a guy that was accused of a hacking type crime by a large company, he will be paying off that $2 million for the rest of his life most likely.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Wrong.
Direct profits are taken from the record label's hands because a downloader decides to NOT buy a item and INSTEAD snag it for free.
Don't believe that anyone who downloaded the album was too poor to buy it in the store.
what to do if they sue you, what they can actually legally do, etc.?
Well, if you actually did it, and they sue you, you're pretty hosed. Your best bet is to settle. There's little chance that you'd win if you went to court, and the expenses of a court battle are significant anyway.
As for what they can do, they can sue you, civilly, for copyright infringement. And there might be some other possible causes of action related to what you're doing, but the copyright one is the biggie.
As for the $150,000 number, that's from 17 USC 504. Basically, copyright infringement causes some damage to the RIAA members in terms of their ability to commercially exploit the works they hold copyrights on. They can sue for either their actual damages, or since that can be difficult to compute, statutory damages. The maximum possible statutory damage amount is $150,000 per work infringed upon. Of course whether the maximum will be applied is largely up to the judge. In these sorts of cases, it could be as low as $750 per infringement. But you'd be taking a big risk if you were betting that you could get it to be that low.
If you go into a record store, steal the CD, go outside the store with your laptop, and start burning free copies for people walking in, would you fine be nearly as high?
Hm. Maybe.
Stealing the CD is a fairly minor act of conversion. I'd be more worried about criminal penalties for shoplifting than for a civil action.
Burning it though for others is certainly a copyright infringement again, however. Depending on the precise circumstances involved, there might be a defense based on 17 USC 1008 (but you HAVE to read 1001 for the definitions of the terms used in 1008) but I doubt that a court would accept that defense if it saw any way around it.
Anyway, the big difference between SCO and RIAA is that RIAA appears to have a legitimate complaint, and is not doing this to make money, but to discourage infringement. I suspect they're losing money doing this. SCO is less likely to have a legitimate complaint, and is really after money.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The problem is that its hard, if not impossible, to stop your money from flowing to the RIAA, especially if you want to compete with them. Blank media taxes, recording device taxes, professional recording device taxes, and a few dozen other hidden fees go straight to their coffers.
"Thus far, the RIAA has been fine, the geeks boycott and everyone else goes about their merry way."
You seem to be totally unaware of the major labels' sales figures verses the sales of the Independent labels over the last year.
While the RIAA members are whining about poor sales the independents are having a banner year.
My daughter uses Kazaa to hunt down really strange stuff from individual artists, and has been doing this for years now. (Why not Kazaa Lite, I ask?) I'd guess that she has an occasional song the RIAA would have claim to, but the ratio is certainly less than 1 in 10.
Furthermore, how are you to tell if the author is asserting their free speech right to be heard or is asserting some obscure federal statute?
If Joe Filesharer needs a lawyer then the words "no law" have become meaningless.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Let's assume that I want to be a nice law-abiding consumer. (quit snickering) When I find a file on Kazaa Lite how do I know whether the copyright holder wants to express their free speech right to be heard or they want to assert some obscure federal statute preventing me from hearing what they have to say?
You can't expect those who wish to use their free speech rights to put up notice. That would chill their rights to free expression in an intollarable way -- especially if what they wish to express is a political condemnation of the notion of IP.
I am put into a legal quandery. Even assuming I wish to do the right thing both morally and legally I cannot do it. Not only I, but the author have a constitutional right to free speech and assocation. The author also has a statutory right to copy. But there is no way I can distingush between the author who is asserting their constitional right and the author who is asserting their statutory right.
If Joe Filesharer needs a lawyer then the words "no law" have become meaningless.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Using the internet to hype musicians that haven't made it yet is a great thing too, but it has a problem. The RIAA's members spend unbelievable sums of money to promote the artists that they think they can make the most money off of. They're good at it, and they have managed to stack the deck pretty well in their favor (just investigate who controls the top-40 stations in any given city).
They promote the artists, advertise them, merchandise them, overplay their music until people get used to it and decide it's good, and then send them on tour so they can squeeze a bit more money out in ticket sales.
THAT is a pretty efficient money-making scheme, and it helps to keep most small labels and most talented but unknown artists (at least those that aren't a sure bet) off the air and away from the money.
Buying used CD's is a good step, albeit a small one in fighting this. Figure out how to battle the big Labels' advertising machines, and we might make some real headway.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Under federal copyright law, the statutory damages for a knowing and willful infringement are $150,000 per infringing event. Because the damages are statutory, there technically is no need for the copyright holder to prove harm. From a practical perspective, however, judges will look at a number of factors when determining whether or not to go the entire $150K route (including how many copies were made, whether the infringer sold them, whether the infringer stopped once the holder made an express demand, plus a few other factors).
Even if the nature of the infringement does not merit an assessment of the full $150K statutory damages, please also keep in mind that the statutory damages are generally only the tip of the iceberg. Copyright holders who prevail in court will invariably have their attorneys fees awarded to them as well, which is often much more of a hammer to use against infringers than the potential for statutory damages.
So no matter how you look at it, being named as a defendant in a copyright claim really sucks.
This is complete crap. The US does not, and has never had debter's prisons.
All that happens in court is that a judge will enter a judgement against you. This just says that you do indeed owe the money. That's all. It is the debter's problem to collect, and they are fairly restricted under the law.
Been there, done that. You left out a few details:
Step 6: It is illegal for them to call you at work. It is illegal for them to call abusively, i.e. multiple times a day. It is illegal for them to call before 9 am or after 9 pm. If you tell them to stop calling, they MUST stop. If they break any of these rules, you can sue them. Look at the fair credit collection act for details.
Step 7: more than 7 years go by, and the credit reporting agencies, by law, must delete those bad entries. Your credit is clean once again.
Step 8: last time I checked, you don't need credit to get married.
Step 9: If you have ignored it this long, they will be settling for 10% or less. Of course, at this point, I would simply ignore them completely.
Learn your rights, folks.
Yes, the issue is the absolutely ridiculous penalties that "our" representatives have put into place.
What is needed is to direct the attention against the Senators, and Representative that have been drafting these Bills. Some names:
Senator Conyers (Michigan)
Senator Berman (California).
Senator Hatch (Utah)
Senator Biden (Delaware),
Senator Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin),
Senator Scott (Virginia),
Senator Coble (Nth Carolina),
Senator Feinstein (California)
Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas)
The proposed Conyers-Berman bill for example, would mean you could be put in jail for up to five years for sharing a single file or for giving false information in a domain name registration.
If the next time these wonderful fellows are up for election they face grass roots action over this there may be some hope to get the message across.
Maybe the first place to start would be a targetted publically announced campaign to ensure that John Conyers and Howard Berman never get elected to so much as a dog-catcher job ever again. That would get the attention of the others.
Snopes is your friend
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Can you show me where you get your stats when you say "corporations are the largest means of election funding"? You may be right, but I find that hard to believe. Also, who runs these "corporations"? I'm not sure that I know of one sentient "corporation". Corporations 'give' about as much money to campaigns as they pay in taxes. The truth is that all campaign donations, just like all taxes, are paid by people (whether it's through a corporation or not.)
This ammendment only applies to CRIMINAL cases. I don't think there are any such limitations on civil cases, as that might be inviolation of the first ammendment.
The CB App. What's your 20?
I agree with you. It's the authors right to publish his works (speech) how he sees fit. He can put it on T-Shrits, the web, or hand out CD's like AOL. Go to town, this is America after all, have fun.
However, by downloading files from a file trading service you are no longer an "hapless bystander", you are part of a transaction. The transaction is between you and the person you are downloading from. Someone has to be responsible for that transaction as far as copyright issues are concerned.
Now is it you, or the person your downloading from? Honestly, I'm not sure. However, the reality is, the person providing the file can't possibly know if all the many downloaders actually own a license to the tracks they are providing. So practacly, it falls to you to make sure all is well.
"Failure is not an option, it's part of the standard package"
For those interested, I contacted nycfashiongirl's attorney and asked how to help pay her legal fees. He sent this information. I'm going to send $50.
Please note that donations are not tax deductible.
McDonough Client Trust Acct. f/b/a Jane Doe
McDonough Holland PC
555 Capitol Mall
Sacramento, CA 95814.
Only on