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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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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?