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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.
first, they drop the price of CDs. now they're offering amnesty.
somebody call satan to see if hell froze over.
Mike
For your viewing pleasure: A copy of a subpoena from the RIAA.
Tcd004
So, in order to buy amnesty from the RIAA, I have to sell them my identity? Sounds fair...
I won't even get off my ass, go store and buy a CD so what makes them think that I will get something notarized?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Keep in mind the RIAA is not the only organization that owns copyrights on music. Whats stopping some other company from taking advantage of these admissions of guilt?
This is the same trick I use when I am trying to fire an employee. I make them reread the company policy, and sign that they did, so the next violation, I can boot them legally.
Now extend this. You sign your soul to these folks, and they catch you sharing files again. Water tight case as far as they and the court systems are concerned.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
To NYCGirl
We'll forgive you for your evil-doings. Just send us Photo ID, address details, mother's maiden name, breast size and we'll let you go free. We promise.
Love,
Your Friends, The RIAA.
XOXOX
Does this cover all the naked pictures of Hilary Rosen on my hard drive too?
F***. You.
That is all.
Dear Filesharer,
We know we can't possibly track all you bastards down in order to put you (or your parents) into financial ruin just like you have done to our starving "artists". So instead, just give us your photo, name, and address and admit you are pirating music and we promise nothing will happen. Really.
-The RIAA
-R
or is it copyrighted too?
Send in your notarized form with photo ID IQ: 50
Send in your notarized form w/o photo ID IQ: 60
Send in the form with only your first name IQ: 70
Use the form to line the kitty box IQ: 80
Ignore the whole thing IQ: 100
Send in the notarized form with a local politician's name IQ: 130
Actually, three lefts make a right. Or, if you wish, the equation can be represented as 2w=xr, where x is equal to the number of wrongs necessary to equal a right. In this instance, x equals 1f, where f=finger. Which is what my response would be to such a request.
I've got so many people that I know personally that hate the RIAA. We're going to have a field day sending them all kinds of joke photo ID's.
Hey, keeps us off the streets.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Concurrently, they've also ignored the astonishing width and breadth of ill will that they've engendered with their supposed buying public. The majority of people involved with sharing still care about music. They are probably more inclined to purchase music they like then the average person (they just want to be sure it is music they actually like). And the RIAA has done everything it possibly can to build such a seething level of hatred towards them that they are probably losing an entire generation of potential customers.
Calling them idiots would be deeply insulting to idiots.
The RIAA today announced sudden gains in profit due to an undisclosed source of income. This comes on the heals of collecting names and photo id's of file traders during an amnesty period.
In completely unrelated news, identity theft claims in the US jumped sharply. Officials are baffled as to the sudden influx.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
There was also the episode of The Awful Truth with Michael Moore, in which he went to a county in California (forget which...) that had a particularly bad reputation for cutting out the courts as middleman between arrest and jail. The results of which leading to almost one thousand arrests in a year, of which only one person actually stood trial due to the completely lax attitude of the public defenders (ie, you're going to go to jail anyway, you might as well plead guilty).
So what did Mike do? Went around town getting people to pre-sign their own plea bargains, and took them all to the D.A's office, dumped them on his desk so that if any of the local citizens were ever arrested, it'd be even easier than before to get them straight into jail...
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What would be an acceptable course of action for the RIAA? Here is an exerpt from dontbuycds.org:
To sum it all up, the recording industry needs to reform itself. Our boycott will end when they meet these demands.
* Stop using copy protection schemes. Using them denies us our fair use and personal property rights, and accuses us all of being thieves. If we buy discs, we have the right to play them in the player we choose. If that is the CD-Rom drive of a computer, so be it. We have the right to copy them to a personal MP3 player, or make a custom CD-R of favorite songs.
* Leave file traders alone. File trading gives artists, and the recording industry free promotion. Radio used to be a great promotion, but now rarely deviates from limited play lists which labels must pay to get onto through independent promoters. While Napster was online, CD sales were up. File trading is a legitimate way to try before buying. Music fans need it, and so does the industry.
* Stop selling music at such an obscene mark up. The cost to press and package a disc has continually gone down. It is currently less than one dollar. We realize that there are production costs beyond manufacturing, but that doesn't justify gouging. When CDs were new, they cost twice as much as LPs and cassettes. The industry claimed that the cost to produce this new format was high, and promised that as their costs came down, so would retail prices. This price drop never occurred. Instead, retail prices have gone up. In stores where vinyl records and cassettes are still sold, they are priced lower than CDs, even though they cost more to manufacture. A movie on DVD frequently sells for less than its soundtrack on CD. The industry has colluded to fix prices, and was forced to settle a class action law suit over this practice, yet CDs in suburban malls can retail for more than twenty dollars. In many countries, CDs cost more than that. In Iceland for example, a CD can cost 2500kr, equal to 29.50 in US dollars. This is unacceptable.
How ya like dat?
First, the RIAA doesn't own the copyrights. The record companies and/or the artists own the copyrights. You might just as well have the ASPCA give you amnesty for copyright violations.
Second, (in the US, anyway) copyright violations are violations of a federal law. They can be prosecuted by the federal government - in theory even without the consent of the copyright holder.