Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I really can't see anything positive coming out of this, people are going to be screwed (pay up because they can't afford the lawyer), the pblic won't care, and the RIAA will just gain more momentum.
The laws that make it possible won't get changed either.
*sigh*
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Except these guys are actually dangerous. Can we stop feeding the SCO trolls, and have more articles about this? Maybe some ask slashdots with actual lawyers about what to do if they sue you, what they can actually legally do, etc.?
Someone's really gotta put a stop to this. Where are they getting this $150,000 number from? 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?
Why the bias against people who "steal" (or infringe copywrites) with computers?
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
The tactic is broadly to remind those it catches of the truly draconian penalties the law in the United States allows ($150,000 per song - and you don't have to be a Berkeley mathematician to multiply that a few times to get more dollars that any student loan could cover).
...
Then when the poor student has picked himself up from the floor and the blood returns to his face, the lawyers will say broadly: "OK, we'll let you off the fine if you agree to pay, let's say, a mere $15,000".
Furthermore, in one recent case, a college student was told that just by filing an answer in court, the cost of any final settlement would rise by $50,000.
If this isn't extortion, By God, I don't know what is.
Most High Schools use proxies...if the kids are running Kazaa at school and using a proxy, then it would be unethical and highly illegal to divulge their names to a non-law-enforcement-entity such as the RIAA. Anyway, an intelligent administrator would flush their logs every day.
This isn't an issue because they are targeting users who share MP3's, ie make them available for upload. Though one can argue that downloading an MP3 is legal and fine if you already own a CD with that song on it, but it's hard to argue that it's legal for you to make that freely available for download on the assumption that whoever downloads it is doing so legally.
./ crowd has said all along that the tools shouldn't be attacked, the violators should be attacked. That's what the RIAA is doing. They're not targeting downloaders (yet).
I don't know why anyone is complaining about this campaign... the
Why are they just going after P2P filesharing? Why not vigorously prosecute those who download music off of Usenet? Or those who copy CD's from friends? How about people who make bootlegs?
I'll tell you why. It's because P2P is an alternative distribution model that threatens their business (in the long term) much much more than a little music piracy by college students who wouldn't be able to afford to buy the thousands of songs they steal anyway.
This is, and has always been, about controlling music distribution and not about stopping piracy. Piracy is a side effect of the real problem: Loss of Control.
Public libraries make books easily available to the masses...these works are legal for them to own, but they are copyrighted and it is illegal for someone to copy them verbatim. If someone did that, the person who copied the book is held liable, not the library.
Show me the difference.
As far as I know, *no one* with any legal sense (including the EFF, Lessig, etc.) thinks that distributing copyrighted files is legal. If you have evidence to the contrary, please post it. The people the RIAA are going after are making hundreds of files available - they're not just downloaders. So I have no sympathy for these people, especially since they were warned. It's like hearing the cops say "we're going to set up a speed trap here" and then complaining when you get pulled over for going 90mph.
The library has one copy of the book. When they loan it to you, they dont have it anymore. They make you give the book back.
That'll make the world a much better place.
You know, if the RIAA and the anti-RIAA weren't being such destructive, pointless, vengeful, nutjobs, maybe something sane and wonderful in the world of music might happen.
But not for corperations. People are free to not buy you products. They don't buy your stuff, you don't make money. You don't make money, you go out of bussiness. Companies must be careful about not making their consumers angry enough to start a serious boycott. Thus far, the RIAA has been fine, the geeks boycott and everyone else goes about their merry way. However if they anger the public at large, they'll quickly find they have no market to sell to.
Will this do that? I don't know, but it is somethign they have to consider.
And Caligula had such a long and prosperous reign.
Oh, wait, no, he was assassinated by the entirety of the Praetorian Guard when they revolted.
Maybe it's not a good idea to take political advice from him after all.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
No, if they go out of business they lose. I could care less what an expired, non-existant bankrupt recording industry cites as the reason for their demise. They can say whatever they want. If they no longer exist, they lost.
Your logic is, unfortunately predicated on belief that the RIAA's policy will trigger a large scale consumer backlash, an anti-record company jihad, if you like. Well, it may, but it may not. I suspect that the wider non-Slashdot-reading audience, the small-scale downloaders already feel uneasy about the morality of 'stealing music' they've done it because: (a) it has appeared to be a victimless crime (b) they have had a feeling of invunerability to capture. The RIAA's tactics are designed to eat away at both of these perceptions. I suspect that they will work well enough to make a goodly proportion of file-swappers more nervous and reduce activity on the networks. So far so good for the RIAA. I'm dubious about there being a widescale backlash, however I'm also very very dubious about any consequent increase in music sales. The RIAA believes that filesharing is the main culprit slowing industry sales, I think it is wrong. It needs to realise that the idea of packaging artists works into monolithic albums was an accident of format, and not something that its customers really want.
Mr Oppenheim also said the RIAA was immume from rules on unreasonable searches on the internet, because it did not have links with law enforcement agencies.
So if you aren't affiliated with a law enforcement agency, you can do whatever you want online? Seems to me they could be charged with a real crime then. What's the on-line equivilant of being peeping tom?
Reminds me of the story (urban ledgend?) about the lawyer who insured his cigars, smoked them, and won the insurance claim in court because the contract didn't specify what kind of fire. Then the dumb bastard was charged with multiple counts of arson and fined 10x what he got from the insurance.
You're never as smart as you think you are.