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.'"

Comments

Re:shallow?

[Planesdragon]

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.

Re:Non-RIAA Music Reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

One already exists.

It's called CD-Baby.

Use RIAA Radar

[reptilicus]

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/

How to Not Get Sued By the RIAA

[Gareman]

Go here now: http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/howto-notgetsued.php

Read. Sign up. Send email to your representatives.

Re:RIAA and SCO

[David Gerard]

Serious discussion and comparison of SCO and RIAA.

The reason why they said it was shallow

[GoofyBoy]

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.

Re:shallow?

[Le Marteau]

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.