RIAA Offers Amnesty to File Sharers

Mister Dre writes "Apparently, the RIAA is planning to offer amnesty to file sharers who promise to delete copyrighted material from their computers. To take advantage, of course, you 'have to send a completed, notarized amnesty form to the RIAA, with a copy of a photo ID.'" Hey RIAA, how about I just stop sharing files, and we call it even? I know I own most of the CDs for the files I listen to, but I stopped buying those too so you'll know where I stand.

Comments

How about you not "share" copywritten materials?

[Dancin_Santa]

Just because you can "share" copywritten materials doesn't mean that you are legally permitted to. The RIAA is completely right about this.

Disregarding whether filesharing leads to lower sales or whether the RIAA could support better artists or whether or not the RIAA is approaching this thing like total jackasses, the main thing to remember is that filesharers are violating the law.

It is foolhardy to think that you could flagrantly break a law and suffer no retribution.

The point is obvious

[The Evil Plush Toy]

Isn't the point of this obvious?

They're building a database of known but "repented" filesharers, so they can "check up" on them later. Basically takes the busy work out of hunting down Kazaa users. (How many people will actually never pirate another song after this? Exactly. Now you've just made your copyright-infringing ass known to the RIAA. Nice one).

Ah yes, the bluster of the losing side

[Txiasaeia]

Oldest trick in the book. Faction A is fighting faction B. A is losing, so they say to B, "Okay, okay, just give us this territory and some money, and we'll call it quits, okay buddy?"

Perceived weakness *is* weakness. Time to go for the jugular. Anybody thought about using www.riaa.com as an MP3 server and getting them to subpoena themselves?

Phunny

[tmortn]

You know the RIAA's refusal to embrace new technology reminds me of the scene in blazing saddles with the toll booth..... only they actually expect everyone to line up and pay the toll when they have the option to ride around.

Photo ID

[ttyp0]

A Photo ID to help the police arrest the right person... that or the sniper on the roof across the street.

Show your hate for SCO. Get a cool t-shirt and donate to the Open Source Now Fund.

Sorry, you filled the form incorrectly ...

[pvera]

Which means we now have a full confession (which btw is notarized too) AND a photo id. Ouch. We gotcha.

Re:At the end of the day

[turnstyle]

"Why is such flamebait scored 5 insightful? You can say that file trading is copyright infringement. Others will say it's fair use, but when you call it theft, or call it immoral, "them's fightin' words." Morality is subjective."

Anybody that calls it fair use, if that's supposed to mean Fair Use -- the provision that permits using a portion of one work within another to make a criticism or parody -- would be wrong.

And if by fair use you mean reasonable, providing unlimited access to others' copyrighted works isn't reasonable anyway.

If you don't like the words "theft" or "immoral" no matter, "illegal" will suffice:

il-le-gal: 1. Prohibited by law.

pro-hib-it-ed: 1. To forbid by authority.

Copyright law grants copyright holders the exclusive rights to distribute their own works. When somebody makes unauthorized copies via file sharing, it is indeed illegal. You may not like it, and the people who get hit with lawsuits certainly won't like it, but sharing copyrighted work is illegal, and sharing thoousands of them is going to get some unlucky people into a load of trouble.