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RIAA Sues 12-Year Old Girl
tcp100 noted an article running at fox about
The RIAA suing a 12 Year Old girl: "'I got really scared. My stomach is all turning,' Brianna said last night at the city Housing Authority apartment where she lives with her mom and her 9-year-old brother."
Owwww !!! My foot !!! My foot !!! Owwww !!!
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Super move RIAA: attack children. This will certainly endear you to the masses. They must be millipedes to have all these feet they keep shooting themselves in.
OK, cheap shots aside; what will this lawsuit serve? They obviously know they won't get much money, if any, from a girl living in a city's subsidized housing system. This is nothing more than a tactic designed to instill fear into file-sharers, call it an attempt at Social Engineering.
Trolling is a art,
More nonsense from the media to generate hyped headlines so that retards buy their newspaper. They're not suing the 12 yr old.. they're suing the person responsible for the internet connection. The headline is entirely misleading.
Even funnier is the fact they paid $30 for KaZaA instead of just downloading it from somewhere.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Finally, the RIAA finds some real justice!
All hail the RIAA, champions of the U.S. legal system!
so /. must have been hacked. Or everyone is on vacation and the monkeys are running the show. Everyone thought they would come up with Hamlet but it appears they instead wrote a story on /.
see, downloading files is just a gateway crime... by the time this girl is 17, she'll be knocking off liquor stores, and in her early 20's she'll be doing banks!
nip it in the bud!
Damn! and I'd nearly completed the whole Barney catalogue in mp3. Anyone got a copy of barney_and_the_squirrel.mp3?
PGP KeyId: 0x08D63965
"When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna..."
WILDCAT?!? Is that yuo?!?
You can tell a lot about the RIAA based on the fact that they are willing to pick on a 12 year old girl!
At least pick a fight with someone CLOSE to your own size.
That's just one more would-have-been future customer that how hates the RIAA and won't be buying their CDs when she has money.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Suing children!?!?! This one will really make everyone so much more likely to buy new CDs, won't it.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Sueing 12 year old girl? They should be ashamed of themselves.
Typos aside, this doesn't even read like fox news article.
Way to go RIAA. You're now worse than the boogey man. Go ahead and take the candy from babies while you're at it.
Suing a 12-year old? If this is not ridiculous I don't know what is. It's not even funny anymore; we should all just boycott the RIAA and their crap.
I've stopped buying CDs, and even ripping those that I own. This lunacy has got to stop. Let's hit them where it hurts most: their wallets.
Never underestimate the predictability of human stupidity...
She's stealing music. She deserves everyting she gets. She should be tried as an adult and the death penalty shuld not be ruled out.
If the piracy continues the recording industry may we wiped out, then would would all those poor executives do? The can't all join SCO.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
An RIAA spokesperson said that they expect the piggy-bank to arrive anytime.
As a 12-year old, can she really be prosecuted?
I am wondering why they are suing a kid living in city housing. It not like she has any money. Her parents might have some, but she doesn't.
Maybe the can take a cut of the income from her paper-route.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
These bloody little girls with their door-to-door cookie sales force, their road side lemonade counters. CORPORATE SELL OUTS! An underground copyright violation network is only the beginning; these mafiosos in the making will soon move to extortion and racketeering like the big boys (SCO).
Carpe Daemon
The New York City papers are all over this -- it's on the cover of both the Post and the Daily News. They skew really sympathetically towards the girl and her family, who apparently were paying $29.95 a month for Kazaa "service", and apparently thought there were thereby legit.
This is really going to help the cause against the RIAA's draconian retributive lawsuits, as it will appeal to the hearts of the populace at large. Bad PR, RIAA, baaaaad PR.
:wq
This would be laugh out loud hilarious if it weren't so horribly tragic...
And in further news, the RIAA and SCO have teamed up to kick a 6 year old's puppy. Film at 11!
"I got really scared. My stomach is all turning," Brianna said last night at the city Housing Authority apartment where she lives with her mom and her 9-year-old brother.
This is precious, just the kind of screw-up the RIAA didn't need. They sued frickin' Tiny Tim. That's about one degree shy of suing the burlap sack boy. Way to go RIAA, we couldn't buy better press.
.. The more they attack defenseless young kids, the more they'll alienate public opinion. Maybe, just maybe this will get it through their thick skull that their strategy is wrong.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Your grain of salt for the article:
Fox is one of the four motion picture studios in the MPAA that do not share revenue with a major U.S. record label. (The others are Disney, MGM, and Paramount.) Anything that makes the RIAA look like the bad guy benefits Fox indirectly, as every dollar spent on recorded music is a dollar not spent on a Fox movie.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Slander, liable, emotional distress...someone get this kid a lawyer! (like they won't be lining up offering to help, heh).
And the amazing things are:
1. The RIAA honestly believes this is justified.
2. This is an accepted part of the RIAA business model.
Now I wonder how much music this girl will actually buy (and influence her friends to buy) as she enters her prime music consumer years. What about all those magazines, posters and concerts she will never buy because of this? Who is really getting hurt?
She's to young to be a pirate. Too female to be a cabin boy. What is the RIAA going to label her? a wench.
Okay, this is not only a 12-year-old girl, but a 12-year-old girl LIVING IN THE PROJECTS. Her family is dirt poor. How exactly do you think this is going to play on the evening news? The American public will be OUTRAGED at the RIAA and this is going to be over soon. There will be a demand that Congress intervene and stop the RIAA from this course of action. The cries will be "will someone PLEASE think about the CHILDREN!" You watch.
My journal has hot
I think I saw little Brianna selling CD's out of a briefcase in the East Village this past weekend. I scored a great deal on some Justin Timberlake CD's...
Way to go RIAA!
100% Insightful
He's whoring karma with an AC post... Right...
This is the legal equivalent of a spanking. Anyone remember the good old adage about sparing the rod...
While this is a PR blunder (and who said they were trying to score brownie points anyways...) this is going to enforce the message to parents -- watch what your kids are doing online.
Let the courts sort this one out, looks like one heck of a legal mess.
You will see that the RIAA will *only* go after the poor.
They will not go up against anyone with money who can mount a legal defense since this will cost THEM money to bring the case to court.
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres.
Well, I guess the whole DLing of copyrighted works w/o reimbursing the copyright holder isn't illegal anymore...
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. "This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
Public perception is that file sharing is NOT illegal. When there's a gap bewteen public perception and law, public perception usually wins. Public perception was that alcohol was not worthy of being banned. We no longer have prohibition. Public perception of drugs is that 'Drugs are bad, M'Kay?'. The negative effects of the drug war are felt more by non-voting minorities than the white majority, so the horrific drug crime laws we have in this country are allowed to continue.
The RIAA and other **AAs aren't convincing anyone. Young mothers and children beleive that file sharing is an OK thing to do. Therefore, it is and will continue to be. Law or no, public perception is going to win this one.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Like you (and in this case, me), he or she is posting anon, that's hardly for Karma is it?
12 year old kid: Mommmmeeee come quick! There's a big bad slobbering RIAA-man under my bed! *sob*
Mommy: Don't worry sweetheart, we will make the big nasty RIAA-man go away. Take that *biff* *bash*. There you go honey, go to sleep now, he's dead.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Super move RIAA: attack children. This will certainly endear you to the masses.
It's almost as though it was a setup. The only thing that was missing was the fact that she wasn't in a wheelchair.
"When reporters visited *teh* apartment last night"
I know you cut and pasted this...but jeez is Fox News really that bad at editing?
And who in their right mind pays ~$30 for Kazza?
sue a few more kids, maybe even a 9 or 10-year-old, and see how fast the main-stream news jumps all over this. Sueing your customer base is a PR nightmare as it is - now things are just going to get worse with each "incident" like this.
Is there any reason that thousands of us can use to file small claims court cases against RIAA, like perhaps theft of my tax money by abusing the court system, harassment, slander of music listening internet users, etc?
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. "This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
Welcome to the new world order.
When reporters visited teh apartment last night
teh apartment? teh? I know this is FOX News, but I figured they still at least employed people who could read and write.
The RIAA knows what its doing here. They hope the publicity will cause every parent in the country to yank file sharing off the family PC, so the kids can't download MP3s.
Ok so this girl could now get sued for $150000 a song. In reallity unlikely, but just who is going to get the benefits of this cash windfall.
Will it be the artist that has been "ripped off"?
will it bollocks, bet your ass that all the money goes right back into RIAA profits, to push the next clone boy band through their one hit of fame and (RIAA's) fortune.
CJC
This could have more negative impact for the RIAA than a thosand slashdot-inspired protests.
This is the first time I've seen a national media article from one of the major networks portraying the RIAA clampdown in a negative light.
Watch how quickly the RIAA backpeddle on this one...
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Watch out children!
Be nice kids or big bad monster RIAA will get you while you sleep!
When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna -- who her mom says is an honors student -- was helping her brother with his homework.
First it's your 12 year old honor student who helps her brother with homework. Next it's the boyscout who walks old ladies across the street. Then, when there's no boyscout to protect her, they go for the old lady. This is why everyone considers them wolves.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Plenty of 12 year olds get busted for shoplifting on what I am sure is a daily basis. You all can sympathize more with her because you are not shoplifting CD's on a regular basis. Stealing music is a crime and I'm the illinest mack in the hood.
From the article:
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. "This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
I disagree with the RIAA's ability to serve its own subpoenas, and this article might throw a little sympathy Brianna's way, but let's be totally honest here. Yes, Mrs. Torres, your daughter was doing something illegal. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.
... to be DDOS'd to hell and back. Their actions are getting to be a bit stupid and lack of common knowledge to check _first_ on who they are suing (or attempting to sue) is just plain ignorance.
Boycott the RIAA and all musicians that support them on their means & measures.
CNN Pharse - Todays Date 2003 - New York - Parents of the 12 year old girl and childish RIAA henchmen have come to a settlement in the case of the 12 year old being sued for sharing MP3s using a paid version of a popular file sharing application. The settlement is reported to involve the girl giving up 3 barbie dolls, 2 pairs of shoes, and 4 pieces of bubble gum. In return, the RIAA will stop throwing mud and pulling her hair.
Well, even though they say the girl was targeted, it'll be the parents that are sued.
My first reaction was "they won't pursue this". But consider the reason behind these lawsuits: to make an example of people. Now they can also show that parents are responsible for their kids' downloading. Obviously the family can't pay out too much, but don't expect them to be let off the hook.
Not sayin' I agree with it... I'm just sayin'
My sig sucks.
On behalf of many people, i can only congratulate you on the choice you made to sue someone.
Suing a 12 year old girl, and a 9 year boy, paying for Kazaa is by far the best choice you could make.
Thank you again for helping us to fight yourself!
Pelops
Where did you get that from? She lives in the upper west side. That's the second most posh part of new york city, after the upper east side. Calling it the projects is like calling Steve Jobs a dirt-poor unemployed slacker.
This was a really cheesy move on their part, but it seems almost as traumatizing to single this poor girl out as the poster-child for RIAA abuse...
The article says: The family signed up for the Kazaa (search) music-swapping service three months ago, and paid a $29.99 service charge. So why isn't the family (read: the parents) sued? In the end, they are responsible for their children's doings anyway. Besides, does anybody still truly think trading copyrighted material is legal? It may be a nice (if weak) defense, but I have my doubts believing that, with all those 'awareness campaigns' the **AAs are running.
Unless you are portrayed as a greedy billion dollar industry that sues kids
Don't you need to be over 18 or something to be sued ? or are they sueing her parents for not preventing her actions ? If this is actually possible (for a large corporation to be able to sue a minor) then perhaps the US Legal system is almost as crazy as the RIAA...
I was thinking about the possiblity of something like this last night when I was listening to NPR's report on the RIAA. All these lawsuits and going after downloaders have already created a bad identity for record labels. Before all this, most people didn't know about the labels, they primarily knew the about the artists. Now there are major negative connotations with the labels.
So, now the primary demographic they need to spend money, teens and college students, will now associate labels with persecuting them, asking colleges to violate their privacy, suing a 12-year old, and going after grandpa. Grandparents, a large part of the senior citizen voting group, will start to see themselves as potential victims.
If the studios want to make money from selling CDs again, they need to both drop the price and start really creating albums again. I remember albums that were created very well that the flow from song to song made listening to the album a joy, but now with pushing the crap they are now, they make an album just a collection of tracks of which one or two might be neat to listen to for a few months.
The RIAA needs to sack the lawyers and send their marketing people back to school for the fundamentals.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Her parents should have known better than to let her collect thousands of mp3s she doesnt have rights too. They're probably smell VW bus driving hippies...
If they were, wouldn't conventional wisdom say they'd have a Mac (on which Kazaa does not run)?
How hard is it really to go a year without buying a single CD? It's not food. Or if you absolutely must - get the used ones on amazon or wherver. I haven't bought a CD in at least a year, seriously, they are a ripoff.
:-) ).
(though it's also because when you have small kids you don't have a lot of time for music shopping anymore
grisha.org
We're impressed by this maneuver and in the light of Bruce Perens' admission, we are examining similar opportunities for SCO to capitalize on the violation of its own intellectual property.
This morning, we took our first steps with the deployment of SCObully, also headed up by Chris Sontag, and already the program is a success. A 14 year-old boy was spotted outside our offices with a Linux-based PDA and was pushed down repeatedly until forfeiting his lunch money, and a young girl of 8 was seen with an MP3 player that rhymes with Linux and so was rightfully divulged of the remainder of her candy necklace.
"The family signed up for theKazaa (search)music-swapping service three months ago, and paid a $29.99 service charge."
:/
Wow, all this time I've been paying $49.99 to use Kazaa!!
Yup - they decided to really go for the most hard-core downloaders: They're suing a 71 year old grandad as well....
Check the BBC article out
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
Not to be out-done, SCO today announced that they were suing a 9 year old boy who commented he liked "that funny red hat on the box" he saw while visiting a local Best Buy with his dad.
McBride, of SCO, was quoted as saying "Clearly, we own the rights to everything behind the hat, and we hate the hat, so the kid is goin' down."
God I hate RIAA, this is getting WAY out of hand...
EFF Action Center
Send a leter to your Senator:
On August 15, Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman formally scheduled Congressional hearings on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) campaign against the users of file-sharing technology. Senator Coleman has expressed concern over the RIAA's evidence collection tactics and whether thousands of lawsuits are an appropriate response to file-sharing. Tell Congress that you want the public's voice to be a part of these hearings and that you support a search for real plans to compensate artists, not the destructive legal thrashing of the RIAA.
RIAA v. The People: Ask Your Senators to Stand Up to the RIAA!
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
The RIAA fully realize that they are the 'bad guy' and that they are seen as such by the eyes of the world. They have one goal in mind, and one goal only--protect their way of business and revenue stream at any cost.
I agree this looks really bad on the RIAA (I don't remember minors being targetted before), but those who think this spate of publicity is going to stop them are dead wrong. They've already shown that they're willing to go to any length to kill the file-sharing phenomenon.
I can see the outcome of this case right now: The RIAA will probably have to respond to the negative publicity and probably drop the suit against the twelve-year-old girl. The rest of the cases will go on as planned. One poor target isn't going to be the downfall of their enforcement operations.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
.. but if you don't nip listening to Britney Spears in the bud, who knows where it may lead.
"Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," said Cary Sherman, the RIAA's president. "But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action."
EVEN IF IT MEANS SUING A 12 YEAR OLD.
Agreed that they shouldn't sue a twelve year old girl but that aside the media are REALLY milking this:
When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna -- who her mom says is an honors student -- was helping her brother with his homework.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
the more slips through your fingers.
12 year old and a 71 year old have made the news this time.
When are they going to get it that CD's are too expensive and that there is a lack of good music ?
They just keep inventing these cute front boy/girl groups completely on image, and there is less and less good new music coming out.
But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action.
It's not stealing. It's still annoying to see representatives of the RIAA spinning it this way.
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. "This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud.
Emphasis mine.
Plenty of people are quite simply ignorant of the fact that downloading music for which you havent already paid for is indeed illegal.
That's not to say I approve of filing suit against a preteen. I'm also fairly certain that Kazaa has up in big black letters somewhere as a CYA that downloading copyrighted music is bad, mmkay.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
"When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna -- who her mom says is an honors student -- was helping her brother with his homework."
omg wtf hax
The point surly is that if a law is so draconian that people don't want it applied, then its time to change the law!
By all means make redistribution of copyright works illegal, but make the punishment fit the crime too.
1. "ignorance of the law" is no excuse
2. I suppose the girl might have been lying about not beiing aware of breaking of the law.
Ignoring points 1. and 2. for the moment, one of the main issues with file sharing is concern that people are losing track of what "intellectual property" is. I don't mean this as a "KaZaA is evil" or "Damn the RIAA!" rant, just that this seems like very concrete proof that we have reached the stage of the game where some people who are trading the files are unaware that they are doing anything wrong. (And please don't respond "I'm only hurting an evil corporation so it's okay." I mean entirely unaware of violation.)
So if you are totally, totally aware of wrongdoing, does 2. apply?
Pfah. I was trying to come up with some grand conclusion for my brilliant point above, but I really can't. At best, it's proof a sea-change in the concept of intellectual property, but it would sound a tad pretentious to make such a claim. And filesharing advocates have already been making it for years.
It wasn't me, it was the one-armed
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. "This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
I won't be the popular one around here, but I thought this quote was the dumbest thing I have ever heard. The mother thinks the daughter's age allows her (the daughter) to do whatever she wishes! Hey, she's 12, give her a gun and tell her to shoot the number - it's not like she's doing anything illegal, she's a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud!
As the law stands, she IS doing something illegal and the law is (pseudo) blind to age.
This has been all over the NYC radio news this morning, and yes, they are slanting it towards Brianna being the victim.
(Don't mod me a Troll, just because I have a slightly different opinion...)
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
Anyone remember the burning times? Nothing like staking out 12 year old girls. RIAA is showing their true colors, who would have ever figured they were so petty and money-hungry as to go after little people who really don't even hurt the industry??
"Sheep just follow the easiest path and run from scary noises and intimidating creatures." - Me
<spoiler>
But will the RIAA get to the point of realizing that laughter is more potent than fear?
</spoiler>
Will I retire or break 10K?
You could not ask for a more Pr nightmare then this. The questions is how many more children are going to be sued?
This could turn any precepition by the general populance they are right against them. I think this is all getting out of hand, hell they are all over CNN and MSNBC for the suing actions. Wait until the sations get there hands on this one. DarkIzzy
This is like an early Christmas present for RIAA detractors. Their lawsuit-by-scattergun approach has caught the worst target possible: A 12-year-old honor student who had no idea she was doing anything wrong ("But we were paying for it!"). What a PR nightmare.
Too bad it won't last. This particular case will get resolved as quickly and quietly as possible. You'll be able to feel the breeze from the RIAA quickly brushing it under the rug. Or, worse, if they're smart they will dismiss all charges (and give little Brianna lots of free music) in exchange for her too-cute 200-word essay on "Why Filesharing Is Wrong".
The EFF and other RIAA opponents could get heavy mileage out of this case if they tried, but I fear they just aren't coordinated enough to counter the RIAA's spin.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
About paying for the fee the family did. This summer my mother had signed up for mp3.com, which involved a monthly fee, and the directions they provided for accessing "their" music was to download kazza lite. IF the family did pay some kind of fee to a site like mp3.com, then that company needs to be held responsible since they misrepresented their service.
Any case, I though the whole flap was mostly about people getting "free" music. Doesn't sound free to me.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
What a way to start a Tuesday! Yaaaaaahoooooo!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Now, first off, this probably just is a screw-up, an unintended hit by the shotgun scatterblast of lawsuits, BUT:
The RIAA could still be in a good strategic place if this girl is found not liable for her actions. Think about it: if it's assumed that there IS an illegal action here, but the girl is not liable due to her age (among other factors, maybe, too), then that liability may lie with the provider of the materials that made it transparently easy for a *little girl* to engage in criminal activity.
The provider, in this case, would of course be Kazaa. It seems to me that if the little girl is found not culpable for this, that it could give the RIAA a new angle to attack Kazaa et al on.
Her parents should have known better than to let her collect thousands of mp3s she doesnt have rights too.
Quoth the article:
Usually, they listen to songs without recording them. "There's a lot of music there, but we just listen to it and let it go," Torres said
So, I guess the RIAA lied when they said they were only targeting users who shared a substantial amount of music files.
That, or the mom's lying. Who are you prepared to believe?
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
We declare filesharing of any file wether music derived or not as being legal
Don't Tread on OpenSource
"This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
And since when is it even legal to bring a lawsuit against a minor in the US? (IANAL)
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
I don't think the average consumer will do any boycotting as the result. The girl is quickly forgotten, the fear of being sued isn't.
This article is great at scaring parents, and others as well. I'm pretty sure quite a few people will ensure that no files get shared on their computers anymore. **AA mission accomplished.
To the extent that making and enforcing laws is "social engineering," you're right. The whole concept of private property is social engineering (see Locke's Two Treatises of Government for a detailed explanation). Most of us approve the sort of social engineering that gives us government, laws, and property. Under this system, "instilling fear" into lawbreakers is exactly what lawsuits and criminal prosecutions are about. It's called deterrence. This is one of the principal purposes of the law.
Welcome to the future...if the RIAA/MPAA bought legislators get their wishes.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill the RIAA
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Oh my god that is funny.. from "teh" article: ...
"When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna -- who her mom says is an honors student -- was helping her brother with his homework." ...
As this drags on, I expect the RIAA to actually drag very few individuals through court. It's interesting that they've already announced their amnesty program... all you have to do is swear on your mother's grave that you'll never ever ever ever do anything horrible like file sharing again.
What this will accomplish is to scare off all those borderline-computer-literates who found a neat program called Kazaa and thought downloading music was fun. Most of these people have never even considered the legal ramifications of what they are doing. Simply being threatened a little, or sued and then "mercifully let off" will cause people who have no interest in the issues at stake to delete their kids' Kazaa clients to make sure that never happens again. These people will then go back to watching television and shaking their head over this whole Internet thing.
Since this same demographic probably buys 80% of popular music, the score will stand: RIAA 1, angry informed minority 0.
. . . is that ANYONE is surprised.
A blanket lawsuit approach like this is inevitably going to involve an incident like this. If the RIAA and their cronies express any surprise, they're either lying or idiots.
OK, possibly both.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
If I were representing some of the larger fish in the suits, I'd be looking for a way to pay for representation for Brianna and help her beat the suite.
Why? Her case has the best chance of beating the RIAA suit. Her family probably had a dial-up connection, making it unlikely that they could have served up many files. By their own admission, they were only previewing the files. And lastly, the mother is being sued for the actions of her 12 and 9 year old children. Lastly, a New York jury may be pretty sympathetic to a mother in subsidized housing being sued by multi-billion dollar companies.
Remember, McDonald's lost their famous coffee burn case not on the merits of the plaintiff's complaints but because of the jury's disgust at their obvious callousness and disregard of the 81 year old plaintiff. The RIAA may very well be stupid enough to take a single mother to court.
"The law had thwarted my earlier attempt to take candy from a baby, but with the DMCA, I was free to wallow in my own crapulence."
The RIAA tells Brianna in the flashback to drop the lollipop.
"But the old axiom was misleading: taking the candy proved exceedingly difficult."
Who knows? Maybe Torres will just shoot all of them. C'mon, no jury in the world's going to convict a 12-year-old girl. Mmm...maybe Texas.
c-hack.com |
Of course, just because you're paying for something, does not make it legit to use it.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
the only way to stop all this crap from the riaa is to hit 'em where it hurts. their pockets...
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/
"including a 12-year-old New York City girl who thought downloading songs was fun."
I can't wait for "Sorry your honor, I though takeing CD's from Wal-Mart was fun".
Where are the parents???
"Failure is not an option, it's part of the standard package"
Are they suing her (and the others) for downloading? I thought it was only sharing that they could see, Or are they getting ISP logs?
... lest they download stuff they shouldn't have.
I feel bad for the girl, and I know we've been down this road on other RIAA threads, but where were the parents? And speaking as a parent, how do you keep up with all this tech stuff?
I am assuming her parents will get sued. If Little Timmy steals something from the 7-11, the parents usually have to cough up the dough. The same should hold true for cable theft, letting your kids drive drunk, and a whole slew of other offenses. I don't know if the RIAA's "remedy" is in this circumstance, and *that* will probably be unfair in a huge way, but that doesn't take away from the fact that someone somewhere wasn't getting their money.
The fact that the product is overpriced in an outdated financial model with draconian legislation makes little difference (unfortunately). Brianna's family is going to get the screw.
This space for rent.
This looks like a bad job of research by the RIAA lawyers. You would think they would have confined themselves to unsympathetic looking guys with long hair, past criminal histories to include beating of their wives, drowning of kittens and possible ties to the KKK. NO, instead they find themselves a twelve year old girl in a single parent home. Personally I love it. I want to see more stupidity. I want the RIAA lawyer to come out and tell everyone a twelve year old girl is responsible for their 31 percent decrease in music sales. That decrease in sales has nothing to do with the overpriced crap they put out. I want him to say with a straight face that the 20 dollars for a Brittney Spears CD is worth the same as that 20 dollars I just paid for the Lord of the Rings Two Towers DVD. I want that lawyer to be on CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX and even the BBC telling us how this twelve year old needs to have her life ruined so that Justine Timeberlake can get another SUV. Please please, bring on more stupidity, I need to be entertained.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
This shouldn't have been posted on Slashdot... It should have been posted on The Onion...
Hmmm...
That's a pretty low thing to say about a 12 year old girl.
Sueing kids, they must be kidding. I can't believe that they are goingo to sue a kid by doing what most society are doing right now.
Information (yes, music is nothing more then information) sharing is not a simply criminal act, it 's much more then this. Information sharing is about this information revolution we all see today that started with internet, and will be each time more and more present to everybody life.
RIAA is excluding itself from this revolution by doing this. They need to understand that adaptation is need, instead of trying to stop the revolution. They can't simply stop a train!
The most amazing of all this is that laws give RIAA ways to avoiding adaptation. When a new technology comes up I have to adapt myself. When a new machine enters the factory, employees have to adapt themselve or be fired. What about RIAA? when a new social organization comes up they'll run to the laws to avoid their adaptation? That's not fair!
IMHO RIAA must find a way to exist with this new social revolution. They can't stop the revolution, and if they don't adapt themselve they'll die as an organization. The biggest problem here is that they ruins innocents lifes in the process of their own ruin.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. "This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
I've worked with lots of 12 year olds. Being twelve doesn't prevent kids from breaking the law. The two are not linked.
Hopefully, though, the public will see this as an extremely heavy-handed approach and the backlash against the recording industry will cause the dinosaur to rethink its business model in today's electronic age. I mean, even $3,000.00 for the smallest settlements seems steep. But supposedly they're only going after the most prolific traders who have downloaded hundreds of albums or thousands of songs.....
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Delete those MP3s or the kid gets it!
That certainly seems to be what the RIAA's plan is becoming. As information like this gets out to the public, they are just gonna become more irate at the record companies. As noted earlier in Slashdot, it has been shown that the decline in CD sales has ACCELLERATED since RIAA started sueing downloaders and this is despite a DECREASE in downloading. Yes, downloading copywrited material without permission is wrong but the RIAA's attempts to stop it are WAY off base.
As for me, I haven't downloaded illegally for about 2 years now and I haven't bought a NEW CD in that time either. That is the ONLY way the RIAA will stop this nonsense and start persuing other avenues like iTunes, which I will use after it comes to the PC.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Hang on a minute, the family Paid for the service, so far as they are concerned what they are doing is perfectly alright. The people they should be suing is Kazaa for selling stuff illegally.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
According to the article:
The family signed up for the Kazaa (search) music-swapping service three months ago, and paid a $29.99 service charge.
In that case RIAA should be suing Kazaa for providing service and content which they have no authorization to OR the family should be suing RIAA for misleading them OR maybe the family didnt read the License agreement...
But this makes me wonder as to what RIAA is doing about the websites that charge users fee and tell them they can download any number of unlicensed MP3s from their P2P application ??
An example is this site that I found by clicking on 'Search' hyperlink in article text:
Site offering unlicensed music for $0.97 a month
In case the site gets slashdotted, I am copying and pasting the content of the site (without any HTML formatting):
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Huh? Isn't that a bit like holding up a bank, and then saying "It's not like we were doing anything illegal".
Copyright theft is illegal, you may not agree with that, but it illegal.
First off, let me say... I do think the RIAA are a bunch of right bastards! That said, this article is a friggin joke, written with the intention of pulling at the heart strings.
First off... they wouldnt be sueing a 9 year old girl... they would be sueing her mother. Her mother got dupped into paying for the Kazaa service, her mother owned the service, and her mother is the childs legal guardian. The article should read "RIAA suing the mother of a 12 year old girl". Also, the article says "we" not "she"... if the mother listened to the music, and from the sounds of the article, she was active in downloading it... she is the guilty one.
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. "This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
Ummmm... yes... it was like you were doing something illegal. Its called theft.
Like I said, im not pro- RIAA, I think there a pack of dinks... but I hate journalistic drivel like this. Who gives a shit that mommy is an honour student? That she was helping there son with homework when they got the notice... Its all designed to villify the RIAA and deflect that fact, that yes, this household was infact commiting a crime.
Really... do you have to frame the case in the way they did to vilify the RIAA? Is there not already enough hatred of them already?
Oh well, >shrug I hope the average reader is smart enough to see through the emotional fluff of this article, although somehow, I doubt it.
When you have hundreds of thousands of people committing crimes, and you try to stem the flow. There's going to be oddities like this, bureaucratic mixups, etc.
What the RIAA is doing may or may not be good business sense, but what were they supposed to do? Give people 10 years more notice? "C'mon, people, we're _really, really_ going to start holding you liable soon... stop downloading... we're serious..."
The more and more I read about these RIAA lawsuits the more it gets the appearance of being a child throwing a tantrum. Let's face it the RIAA profits have decreased as much do to their decrease in producing quality products as it is through these file sharers. They have had plenty of time to grab the internet distribution medium by the horns, but so far have fallen well short of the starting line. The reality is that most companies choose to adapt their business models when they realize they aren't makeing the profits they once did rather then sue their consumers for not buying their products
Ok, so the majority of /. readers are on the side of filesharing - but a 12 year old girl or 72 year old makes no difference.
The RIAA will ALWAYS see filesharing as breaking the law - so give them a fair unbiased look here -
Would you want your local police to let the 12 year old girl off for burning down your house? I know you wouldn't let the 22 year old girl go without pressing charges!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
- I have Asperger's, a mild form of autism. My "empathetic intelligence" is comparatively low. However, I'm not using that as an excuse.
- I did get the joke. I myself was making a joke about people who don't get jokes.
- Is this your typical reply to "Informative" responses to "Funny" comments?
-- yerricde, posting anonymously because this comment is tangential to the topic at hand.and how exactly do you know her exact address?
if all the media says is that she lives in the upper west side, and 80% is higher-than-average-income, you can't state as a fact that she lives in the projects, without citing the source for the exception.
And I love your new subject line: your an idiot
Why suing college students for illegal music downloading is right
I was impressed with this lawyers lack of any facts in her argument. It certainly shows that they are doing there philosophical homework.
Their website seems to be down. I was thinking of going there to see if there was a feedback form or email so I can let them know that I plan to continue my boycott that I began a few years ago. (I think I bought my last riaa CD in 2000. It was either Shannon Curfman or Moby...)
gg lol
Usually, they listen to songs without recording them. "There's a lot of music there, but we just listen to it and let it go," Torres said.
I don't know about this. I thought they were targeting people who are sharing buttloads of music. They make no mention of how much they were sharing.
So, this 12-year-old has been identified by the RIAA as a major copyright infringer...I'd like to see what sort of half-assed process made that happen.
Could it be that they are just targetting people at random? Naah, can't be. If the RIAA says they're targetting the major infringers, it must be true...
This is exactly what I had in mind when I posted yesterday about how suing people that ON AVERAGE are sharing 1000 songs is going to also catch people, who are sharing way less than the 1000 songs.
But the RIAA lies well. With all the media publicity about the 261, the way it's being played out, everyone thinks every single one of those people are sharing 1000 songs or more.
Well done RIAA...until you nazis sued a 12-year-old girl living in subsidized housing authority apartment. Let's see how this goes, should be entertaining (except for the little girl, that is).
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill the RIAA
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Last I checked that's perfectly legal, if she'd distributed songs then the RIAA MAY have a case, as it is, not realy. I feel sorry that her mom is going to have to pay for the legal fees to defend her.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Im in no way sure of the legal facts about this, but I have a question maybe someone can provide some insight into. Isn't there something wrong with the RIAA in a sense profiting off of someone else's product.
.00, but this who situation seems shady to me. If I'm way off base please try to right my ship instead of burning it down.
Someone had to do all the coding and programming to be able to transfer the songs off of CDs and onto computers. Now the RIAA is going to try to make money off a product (mp3s) that were created by someone else? Call it a lawsuit or spin it however you want, they are trying to MAKE money, not recover lost money, it's not like someone broke their arm and they cant go to work for a month.
Isnt this almost in a way like an author trying to get all of the money from people who buy his book without paying any of the profits to the publishing company? Well thats my two cents, and it might be worth
What exactly does it give you?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
all hail the US legal system and their corprate masters!
Must be the work of a hacker...
When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna -- who her mom says is an honors student -- was helping her brother with his homework.
Only a hacker would spell the like that.
by having to pay for the program, whatever kazaa ripoff company she paid was in fact the one doing something illegal by alluding to the idea that the content on the service was legal. the parents were paying for the service including the content. its more akin to walking into a bank, already under the control of bank robbers who happen to be standing in the teller booth, making a legitimate withdrawl and not having the withdrawl taken out of your bank account.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
All that is needed to complete the effect are pictures of the RIAA lawers "PIMP slapping" the girl.
And here I thought that lawsuits shouldn't be dropped out of airplanes like propaganda flyers. Hell, why don't they just send out notices to everyone they won't be suing, it would be less paperwork.
It may or may not have been this girl who downloaded the music, this point is moot. The parents are responsible as they most likely set up the account.
To the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars? That is some pretty big punishment if you ask me.
Yeah, I recognize this story as RID (My new term - Reactionary Incendiary Demonization) towards the RIAA, but if anyone ever deserved it, it was them. I'll bet the little girl has a wooden leg too.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The article states that the girl (and I assume her mother) set up an account with Kazaa for their music download service. Couldn't they then say they were mislead by the service? Of course Kazaa probably has its back covered by some fine print. "...service shall not be used in the exchange of illegal software or files..." some such.
Kazaa seems to be an anachronism held over from the late '90s: all venture capital, free product, and all Underpants Gnomes three step plan to Profit!!!
What is music when you despise all sound?
We should be asking who charged them for KaZaA. After all, that's charging for pirated music, in a sense.
RIAA targets school bus full of nuns taking handicapped childern to puppy farm with Hellfire missle.
RIAA spokesperson said, "We have no personal information about these people we just know that they have been file sharing." Under the DMCA they where terrorists and we had the right to protect our interests.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I agree 100%. The RIAA saw 1000s of mp3s being shared, not listened to and thrown away as the article suggests - else they wouldnt have been noticed.
They subpeonad the ISP for the account holders information, and sued that person. You mean to tell me the 12 year old holds the account with the ISP?
Show me some proof, show me the subpeona, that names the 12 year old girl. You can't, because they're suing someone who has a 12 year old.
What Dickens-wannabe wrote this tripe?
They might as well have thrown in a quote like this:
When questioned, an RIAA spokesperson said "Are there no prisons?! Are there no workhouses?!"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
copyright theft? they stole the copyright?
Did anyone else read the article but me? That story can sum up everything that "geeks" get wrong about user interfaces and assumptions about "levels of knowledge" when it comes to computers. Let's look:
She's paying $29.95 for KaZaA service. Now, unless they paid for the application (didn't specify), maybe they were referring to their ISP service? Kinda like when users point at their computer and say "My modem".
Dig deeper (paraphrase):
"We just listen to the songs and then just let them go. We don't save them."
Obviously these folks do not realize that KaZaA saves the files to their harddrive and automatically "shares" them. They don't even know they still have the song! Not to mention that they probably download the song over and over if they want to hear it again. Don't laugh, I've seen my dad do that. He didn't know, literally, that just because he downloaded a song via napster that he still "had it" and had no idea on how to find it if he didn't use Napster to get to it.
I cringe at the thought that my own dad can't use a computer and has no inclination to learn. I've literally shown him a dozen-times how to open up windows explorer and browse through to find stuff, but he doesn't use his computer very often and by the time he wants to find something, he's forgotten again. It's not that he's stupid (to the contrary, he's a professional musician, a retired machinist, etc etc), it's just that computers are something he very rarely uses and he just doesn't have the dedication it requires to learn the basics.
But that's Joe Average User.
This little girl might know a bit about IM and kazaa and how to use Internet Explorer, but I doubt it goes much beyond that.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
... did she run Linux?
Anyways: she's twelve, so she has her whole life left to devote to paying back the enormous damage she has caused.
If they sue her, then they'll have the PR nightmare of suing a poor 12-year-old girl living with a single mom.
:)
If they drop the case, then all of the other people they're suing will (quite publicly) ask: "How come it's okay if a 12-year-old does it, but not if I do?" Because really, if it's unjust to do it to a 12-year-old girl, it's unjust to do it to anyone. Little girls just catch the public eye more because they're sympathetic characters.
It's a lose-lose situation for the RIAA. I love it.
+5, Insightful
This is the most intelligent commentary I've yet seen to this story.
It didn't detect my sound card, a creative audigy gamer. So no sound or music.
Either download the alsa EMU driver or install a newer distro.
It detected a video card but it's not MY video card. So no games.
You probably have a newer radeon. Just search google for the fglrx drivers.
It detected my ethernet card but couldn't initialize it. So no network or internet.
Check your DNS settings. Are you behind a router?
Any admission by this family of illegal activity is likely to get them evicted from City Housing.
Interesting indeed http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3092854.s tm
The fun goes on and on and on...
A grandfather has said he was wrongly accused of illegally downloading music online at the start of a legal campaign by the US music industry.
Durwood Pickle, 71, of Texas, said his teenage grandchildren used his computer during visits to his home.
"I didn't do it, and I don't feel like I'm responsible," he said.
Mr Pickle was among 261 individuals accused of sharing music files on the internet without permission.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed lawsuits in federal courts across the US on behalf of major record companies Universal, BMG, EMI, Sony and Warner Brothers.
It warns those found guilty that they face fines of up to $150,000 (100,000) per song swapped. Critics have accused the RIAA of being heavy-handed.
Activities
Yale University professor Timothy Davis, who was also named in the lawsuits, said he would stop sharing music files immediately.
He said he had downloaded about 500 songs before his internet provider notified him about the music industry's interest in his activities.
Another defendant, Lisa Schamis of New York, said her internet provider warned her two months ago that record industry lawyers had asked for her name and address.
She said she had no idea she might be sued but acknowledged downloading "lots" of music over file-sharing networks.
RIAA president Cary Sherman said he hoped the legal action would prompt parents to pay more attention to potentially illegal activities by their children.
"We expect people to say 'It isn't me, it was my kid,' but someone has to take responsibility," Sherman said.
The music industry says file-sharing is a violation of copyright laws and blames the practice for a drop in CD sales worldwide.
But critics say the recording industry could face the wrath of its audience.
Georgetown University Professor Michael Ryan said: "They are sending, on one hand, sending what they think to be a powerful message and, on the other hand, they are risking alienating their primary customer."
Media analyst Ian Campbell, of Lovelacemedia, said the lawsuits " smacked of desperation". Positive measures were needed to encourage people to buy music online.
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
The real need here is education. I have a coworker who buys CDs every week; I let her know that the people making and selling them them would sue her, have already called her a liar and a thief, and that she is supporting an industry that treats its artists in a similar manner to her working for a year and getting paid $100 dollars.
Sadly, our conversation was not preserved for posterity, but the end result was disappointing (not that I expected a different outcome).
Her CD purchases are continuing unabated because she, like most other Americans, *don't care* about things outside their paycheck every two weeks, what's going to happen on Big Brother 12, and how to protect their children from the 'evil world' without leaving the comfort of their reclining fat-cradles.
I don't buy CDs, and haven't for almost 10 years. I can't even give price as a reason, as I could get a wide variety for $5 (due to where my wife works - a subsidiary of the Big 5). I don't trade RIAA music, because I make my own.
Read my Journal and buy my non-RIAA CD you pirating whores. Put your money where your mouth is. Or go and tell someone why they shouldn't buy CDs. Educate the mouth-breathers, because in the end, when they are forced to struggle out from their comfy chairs, cheese-fed Americans can still fight for you.
The RIAA is not just limiting their lawsuits to children, but evidently the elderly as well: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3092854.s tm
--Ear Phantom
While this in and of itself is horrible, so is them going out and blanket suing people. Maybe this will make the law makers finally wake up and realize that give an origanization like the RIAA the power to do this is not as good as they thought. I don't even think that the RIAA's deep pockets can fix this mess.
Maybe, just maybe this is the begining of the end for this type of behavior. One can only hope.
> When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna - who her mom says is an honors student - was helping her brother with his homework.
I couldn't help but feel the author included this line about the "honors student" as a bit of humor, the word "teh" and all... Like being an honors student, of which everyone's kid is one and like it makes a big deal when you're 12, make you exempt from breaking the law or being ignorant.
Awww, she was helping her brother. I guess that means they can let her off the hook but not the other defendants who may or may not have been equally as ignorant. This story reaks of sensationalism.
She was paying to Kazaa!!!
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PAY FOR MUSIC!!1!
Dear pirates, have no doubt! Pay anything to anyone and you WILL be sued! Music wants to be free!
O woe!
"I don't mean to insult you, but your mom posts on Slashdot"
She lives in a Housing Authority project in New York and she's worried about the RIAA suing her? I'd think she'd have bigger things to worry about!
It's not just the children, they're also apparently suing a 71 year old grandfather:
As far as RIAA and I are concerned, this "little girl" is a RAPIST who should be PUBLICLY EXECUTED, William Wallace style. Then TicketMaster could sell tickets, and RIAA could set up opening gigs and give amnesty to anybody who got tickets or watched the webcast. /I love our corporate government. I wonder what percent of people think RIAA is a gov't body.
The RIAA should cut their losses with the high school and college age kids who will always steal (before eventually growing out of it) and concentrate on providing a better value to retain the rest of their customer base. Overhauling commercial radio to actually play new music would be a step in the right direction.
So two nights ago I went to the Andrew WK concert here in Toronto. 2000 or so people in a small club, watching my favorite artist perform on a stage barely big enough for the 5 members of the band. When he went body surfing, he was 12 feet away from me.
http://www.awkworld.com/
Tickets were only $15 CDN, plus Ticketmaster tax plus tax, about $25 CDN. Damn cheap compared to say $70 CDN Def Leppard tickets for a huge venue.
He loves his fans and people in general and has a super attitude towards life and things in general, I've been impressed by him as a person each time I've heard him interviewed. Look at the super huge replys he gives to fan-mail. He's a person full of energy, life, and goodwill towards others.
I'm just dying to get my hands on his 2nd albumn that came out TODAY.
HOWEVER, I feel that from what he said in this Onion AV interview that he has totally bought into the necessity of his label and his recording contract - the one that requires an expensive studio, expensive equipment, expensive people, etc etc.
He's currently doing one show a night in a different city every single day, for months on end. I'm beginning to think that he's got some serious debts to pay back to his recording company. A lot of this matches the horror stories you hear about artists.
I hope not. Even if he is, I'd bet he got into it by convincing himself that it was worth it to bring his music and happiness to a ton of other people in the world.
Right now, I'm just totally trying to keep myself from going out and buying this one CD.
Note - I discovered his music on Kazaa, a year ago.
Definitely time to go looking for the new replacement for mp3.com. mp3.com is where I got half my trance a few years ago. (Stupid morons, there was 20 year old case law against doing what they did that got them sued into oblivion and put them in a situation where they could get bought for peanuts by a major label.)
We (music consumers, software techies, and artists) need to create and/or pick the "one successor" service that we can use as a legal free and semi-commercial alternative to the RIAA distribution system, one where amateurs like this guy and put their music and get donations/direct-CD-sales, where amateurs can turn into semi-pro, and even make a living if they're producing something of enough value.
[[ plug for my fav melodic trance artist and all his mp3 downloads - search kazaa/etc first before you slashdot him please ]]
So I think it's time for me to do my duty, go find said service with said semi-pro and amateur artists, do what I can to make this alternate distribution service/mechanism a success, and spend my music bugdet on them.
F*CK THE LABELS
Mob Mentality
Mod Parent Down
(-1, Being a Dumbass)
Everybody thought that slavery was right. So why didn't they just keep it like that, you moron?
Copyright is an intrisnic necessary. But you want to rip that apart. Go fuck yourself.
In reality they are suing the mother. She is the one who owns the computer and who paid for Kazaa. Whether the mother did any downloading or not doesn't make a difference. I hate the RIAA as much as anybody but this is really just sensationalistic reporting.
I think it is time we the people start hitting back. 1. Send a letter to your country's trade commissioner and protest the monopolistic practices and unfair trade practices of RIAA. 2. Send a letter to RIAA stating your opinion of there practices and that 3. You will not buy any music until they have reformed there practices including pricing. The radio is still free to listen to, but I am sure RIAA is trying to change that also. This will cost you nothing but a little time to write (or Google) a protest letter and 2 stamps. If RIAA received millions of letters all complaining about there policies it may not change there mind but they know that each letter represents a CD that was not purchased.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Go Go Gadget innocent smile.
Now I wonder how much music this girl will actually buy (and influence her friends to buy) as she enters her prime music consumer years.
Hardly an issue, from the RIAA's perspective.
The real question is, "how much music will this girl ever download again -- and influence her friends never to download again?"
And the parents? You think your average parent of a twelve year old is up on the righteousness (or lack of same) vis-a-vis music downloading? Not one whit. But what this story does do is get them all running to have a sit-down with their children to discuss whether or not they have downloaded music on their Dells, and instruct them never to do it again. Why? Is it illegal, immoral? mmmmmaybe, maybe not, but you can be damn sure they don't want to be on the front page of the Post...
Guys, remember, always: SlashDot and the popular views expressed hereon are FAR from the mainstream. EVERY single one of us here could never ever buy a CD again, and take turns urinating on the steps of the Sony building, and it would mean jack-all to the RIAA if they could convince a FRACTION of the current generation of pre-teen parents to "properly educate" their kids re downloading.
For those here saying this is bad PR for the RIAA, I say just the opposite. The RIAA does not want to be loved; in fact, the artists and labels are paying them to take the heat so they don't have to. The RIAA wants to be feared, and if they are not feared, they at least want to become so annoying that your average kid sez, "My parents are hassling me, my school is hassling me... y'know what, it just ain't worth it. I'll go to iTunes (or wherever) to download music." It is clearly no accident that the real pogroms have begun only after a certain critical mass of legal download music sources have been established. (And it's interesting to note that the "meaner" the RIAA gets, the richer Apple's coffers are likely to become; there's a "slashdot moral dilemma" for you, eh?)
Could you possibly have mixed up any more of the details in your post? Mommy is an honor student? 9 year old girl? What article did *you* read?
And you talk about the article's intent to pull at emotions, just shortly after repeating the RIAA's description of copying being theft. You might as well have mentioned "piracy" while you were at it. Copyright laws have nothing to do with theft.
Stories like this will only quicken the RIAA's death IMO. They are nothing anymore but a redundant giant empire fighting their inevitable death, and instead of trying to embrace this new technology of distribution they are attempting to squash it by litigation and forcing defendants to prove their innocence. How do they know the defendants don't own the cd's to all the songs they have on their hard disk? I know it's not likely that most do, but don't they have to have some reasonable proof, or can you just sue anyone anymore and expect them to prove they are not guilty of what you claim?
The record companies are fighting something they cannot win. At one time they offered a service that was very much needed and there was no alternative, but now that there are easier means of distribution they should instead focus on adapting, rather than quashing, to this new means. Stories like this will only further alieanate the public from the RIAA's cause.
In Canada, where I live, the record companies have just announced a big cut in price of all cd's they sell in hopes that it will combat file sharing. This shows that they were already marking up the price substantially when I can remember that they once promised cd's would be cheaper and better quality than the old cassetts and albums we used to use.
I myself cannot wait until internet distribution becomes the defacto standard, and we can buy the song we want rather than an entire cd of crappy songs just so we can have the 1 song we like. Thanks go to the RIAA for speeding up there demise and good luck to the 12 year old living in the housing projects in New York. Last I read, the RIAA was suing upwards of $150,000 per copyrighted songs...is Barney's "I love you" really worth that much?
I couldn't agree with you more. This is great. I heard the RIAA dude on NPR saying he wanted this to be on the news every week, well it's going to be. Nothing the press likes more than big business going after widows and orphans.
In Fast Food Nation, E. Schlosser explains how McDonalds once tried to sue a consummer group that critized them in the U.K. At first, it cost the group money, but then, the trial dragged on, McD was called to testify, show confidential (and damaging) data which the press publicized for months at a time. The negative publicity ended up costing them hundreds of millions of dollars.
The RIAA deserves the same treatment. Bring it on!
there's no place like ~
Setup or no, when a law is passed that automatically defaults the majority of citizens as being criminals, there's something wrong with the law, not the people.
Depends on how you define citizens. If by citizens you mean those that can vote, then what happens when they lose their right to vote after a criminal trial? I guess they aren't citizens.
maybe slave labor. My favorite is all the things that require a criminal background check. They won't even be able to get an apartment without lying.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
So they decide to sue a 12 year old girl. Brilliant PR move. Might as well use orphans for firewood.
From the story:
"When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna -- who her mom says is an honors student -- was helping her brother with his homework."
Who knew that Slashdot trolls were writing articles at FoxNews?
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
In other news, the RIAA will be filing subpoenas in the court soon in their attempts to take candy from a baby.
"We've always been told it's easy. It's about time we rolled up our sleeves and found out. We can't just stand on the sidelines anymore. " said RIAA spokeswoman Amy Wuss.
According to industry insiders, the Recording Industry Association of America may soon target kindergartens as well.
"All across the country they are teaching these kids: share this...share that," said Cary Sherman, the RIAA's president. "This is a very disturbing trend. One day the kid is sharing his spiderman toys. The next day, it's his Britney Spears album. People should be held accountable. This can't be allowed to go on unchecked."
between Sony, Universal, and Time Warner:
Sig Applied For
At least they paid for Kazaa.
That's good, isn't it?
I might be dumb here, but how is the RIAA getting information about the users? Last I head/read, the RIAA was in a suit with Verizon to hand over user information which Verizon was not doing.
It sounds like a deep data-mining exercise to map a DHCP-generated IP Address to a user's ISP login info / MAC address / session to a P2P username.
Where is the RIAA getting all these log files to parse? And furthermore, how can they prove WHICH user was using the software under a blanket login account for the ISP or Kazaa?
Last I heard, nobody on the internet knows if you're a dog or a human...how the heck can they know WHO was downloading the songs? I say blame it on Rover....
"Public perception is that file sharing is NOT illegal"
The public knows perfectly WELL it's illegal. The public just doesn't care.
The attitude has always been "what are they going to do? Come after me?" Ummm, well, yeah, actually, they are.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
By "let it go", I suspect she means "forget about it, having no idea that it's sitting in My Shared Folder for anyone else to download". So yes, if they are that ignorant about how Kazaa works and have been downloading songs every time they wanted to listen to them, they might well be sharing thousands of files.
The fact that a twelve-year-old did the downloading does not make it less illegal. If the girl's mother thought it was legit because she payed a 'Kazaa' service fee, she did not check into what she was actually buying -- it is no excuse, unless Kazaa sold her indemnity. If they did this out of pure ignorance, the judge may well just decide to a symbolic fine or excuse her for this time.
It is a good thing that the RIAA is suing *after* the crime (ie: copyright violation) occurred. Way better than treating everybody and their mother as would-be criminals by using copy-protection schemes and depriving people of their fair-use rights.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
It's pretty common for corporations to include in their contracts with artists and entertainers a "morals clause". This lets the corporation break the contract if the artist does anything illegal, or widely regarded as immoral, or something that would reflect badly on the corporation.
I wonder if those clauses work both ways? That is, if the corporation -- or its associated entity, the RIAA -- does something scandalously immoral, can the artists use the morals clause and break the contract?
If so, a lot of artists might start finding it to their benefit to break their contracts. Soon the RIAA might not only be ticking off their customers, but their suppliers as well.
When reporters visited teh apartment last night...
/.
This is teh perfect story for
If these walls could talk they'd probly still ignore me. --MF DOOM
Some of us have already maxed out our Karma so it doesn't matter anyway. We just post as AC to see if we can troll for some mod points and get moderated up from a 0 to 5. It's the new hotness.
Quite a few people are saying that 12 year olds aren't stupid and can perfectly see what's wrong and what not most of the time, and that being 12 doesn't make things very different.
Maybe, but how about we stop looking at it so rationally? The RIAA is now pushing their "P2P is used to share child porn" idea. So let them taste their own medicine. Any time you get an opportunity to speak about it, just yell "The RIAA is evil! They sued a poor 12 year old girl!".
Apparently, these ways of explaining things are very successful with the vast majority of the population, who never stop to consider issues logically.
You know, its this exact "Fsck You" attitude by the RIAA that breeds terrorists around the world.
We could have asked her to dress up as the Wicked Witch of the West (Hollywood, that is) for Halloween...
They claim they were paying to access the music.
Depending on how sympathetic the courts are they could get off pretty easy. They paid for software that (may) advertise listening to music on the internet.
This sounds like a pretty reasonable and fair defense.
What if iTunes users suddenly get sued?
Shouldn't they be doing something about a service that has people paying for something that they know may potentially get them sued?
I mean, it sounds like they bought this Kazaa service because they thought the money they paid was going to get them the legal ability to download, like as if it were iTunes or BuyMusic.com
At least she has her whole working life ahead of her and will be one of the few who might be able to earn enough to pay off the huge fine.
The RIAA are NOT suing the 12-year old girl. They're suing her MOTHER.
Sheesh. Get informed. The RIAA is suing the ISP subscribers that are engaging in massive copyright violation. Unless the 12-year old has a credit card and has purchased the ISP account in her own name she is NOT the named defendent. The mother is.
However, like the cowardly thief she is, the mother is throwing her 12-year old daughter on the altar to be sacrificed in a propaganda campaign to save her own butt from the lawsuit. What a wonderful human being. But, then again, she illegally downloaded and uploaded thousands of music files, so why should we be surprised?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
All we need now is for Michael Moore to roll with this as his next feature documentary.
What the RIAA wants more than anything is for 12-year-olds to get the message the they are breaking the law and that someone could come down on them hard. This is exactly the kind of case that they hope to push to the forefront of the issue. They're not interested in a 12-year-old girl who's very sorry and didn't realize that what she was doing was illegal. They're interested in 5 million other 12-year-old girls being too scared to download music in the first place because they've heard the stories of the girl whose parents had to send their entire life savings to record executives because she downloaded a couple of tracks and then Christmas didn't come to her house ever again and nobody got to go to college and there was no milk for the baby and the girl was sent away to juvenile hall where she was made to do her homework and clean enormous bathrooms 16 hours every day . . .
A story like this is gonna grab everyone's attention. Does anyone else expect CD sales to plummit nationwide as people hear this. (Too bad that CD sales for non RIAA labels will probably fall too since people don't know the difference.) But seriously, when you have Fox News, the channel whose main purpose is getting my idiot countrymen to go along with some really stupid governmental policy spinning for the forces of good you know something big is gonna happen. ;)
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
It's not the legality that should necessarily be questioned here, but the amount of damages. In my book, the members of the RIAA have suffered to the tune of 50c per song (average price of an album divided by avergae number of songs on an album - YMMV) which means they should be suing for $250 plus punitive damages of another $250. WTF is the $150,000 per download all about - that's just crazy talk, complete nonsense.
There's no "age" in KaZaa, so this was bound to happen. They'll drop the suit, but you jackasses make sure that you milk it for all the lame barbs you can while it lasts, mmmkay?
I don't know if this qualifies as a "lame barb", but notice that the family was willing to shell out $29.95 a month to pay for the music. This whole nasty business over downloading music could have been avoided if the record industry would have had the forsight to embrace new technology instead of trying to hang on to tired old business methods.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
1. I wonder if this 12 year old got the "What the F*ck do you think you're doing" message from Madonna?
2. How is it that a single mom with 2 kids in city housing can afford $30 just to avoid seeing advertising while stealing music?
3. If the RIAA are in fact only going for the flagrant downloaders - people sharing thousands of songs - then that would mean that A) They must have broadbank and B) They must have a good sized hard drive - See #2 above.
4. Anyone who lets a 12 year old use the Internet, especially Kazaa, unsupervised, should be investigated for child endangerment. And if she was supervising her daughter 100% of the time, then she's the one they should be going after.
I'm sorry, I hate the RIAA as much as the next guy, but this is BS. If anything, this is better than the other 260 lawsuits because maybe it will call attention to the fact that this mother, probably on public assistance, is letting her kids run wild on the Internet and blowing money on broadband and ad-free Kazaa access.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
I was writing a malloc routine, on the PC, and it was like bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep. And then, like half of my malloc was under the GPL. And I was like... huh? It devoured my malloc. It was a really good malloc. And then I had to write it again, and I had to do it in Greek letters, so it wasn't as good. It's kind of... a bummer.
I'm Darl McFeiss, and I'm a CEO.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
Okay, I'll freely admit this put a smile on my face as it was exactly what I was hoping would happen (like the grandpa that was also sued), but let's not get carried away here.
I find myself asking how a 12-year old became the target of the lawsuit. Supposedly RIAA subpoena's are based on IP addresses only, so does this mean that the 12-year old girl signed up for her own internet access? How else could they have gotten her name?
I think what's actually going on here is that the parents are actually named in the lawsuit but we're just seeing FOX put a spin (suprise suprise) to turn this into "news".
I'm not sure what FOX has to gain from this type of spin, but I'm not going to complain about the bad PR this will generate.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
IANAL, but isn't it possible for someone to take this to court and win with Jury Nullification?
It seems to me that this is the intent of the law - to allow our peers to overrule the Tyranny of Law when the Law itself is found to be unjust
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
You appear to be making the mistake of assuming that the RIAA give a toss about the masses. From what I've seen, of the RIAA reports and my personal encounters with the UK's similar PRS, they don't give a shite.
The RIAA "care" for the masses like a farmer "cares" for battery hens.
Their point of view is that the masses are mindless scum who are stupid enough to pay over the odds for regurgitated populist crap. As far as the RIAA is concerned:
the masses exist to be exploited.
And to be fair, you can see how they might reach this conclusion.
There is an important lesson within all this glib despondancy. We have to figure out a way to make them care. Pissing them off isn't going to work, they'll treat us like flies, minor annoyances to be swatted by heavy-handed action until the rest of the swarm learn to keep clear. What we need is something much bigger. We need to change the law to put the filesharers in the right. We need to a root and branch review of copyright. "Intellectual" property law needs to be rewritten from scratch.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I went legit about a year ago. I decided that downloading music was theft, and I felt morally obligated to do the right thing. I stopped downloading music illegally.
/.)
I have even bought some CDs in this last year! Not many. Not nearly as many as I used to, and not even as many as I was buying when I was downloading music illegally!!
It is disgusting to hear that they are suing a 12 year old girl. Its outrageous to hear them say they don't know any personal information about the people they are suing! I think that's bullshit damage control, but if it's true, I wouldn't be surprised if there are other minors on the list!! Man... put yourself in her position. Imagine you are 12 years old and being sued out of the blue (I doubt she keeps up with this fiasco on
I can't stomach the idea of giving money to a company like that. I'd sooner buy Unix from SCO. And you know what, the movie industry is no better, and you can bet they are monitoring this closely to be sure when their time comes, they don't make the same mistakes.
Here's a simple, realistic plan for letting these businesses know how you feel:
1. If you must own music, buy used.
2. If you must own movies, buy used.
3. DON'T BUY FROM ITUNES, BUYMUSIC, or any other online service!!!
4. Don't rent movies from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video!!
5. Don't go to the movie theater, except when absolutely necessary (LOTR)
Don't waste your time with worthless online petitions, or stupid letters to the RIAA that make no difference. Hit em where it hurts, and do it legally. Amazon z-shops and Yahoo! stores are the best online sources for buying good quality used music and movies that I've found. They are fast and easy to use, and NOT ONE PENNY of your purchase goes to the record or music industry. Netflix is the best way I've found to rent movies. Going to the movies is almost always a frustraiting waste of time and money, and I am usually happy I waited to rent a movie that I considered seeing in the theater.
This is not an advertisement for any of these businesses. This is intended as a public service. But mostly, this is just me venting, and if I get modded down, so be it.
Which is worse: the RIAA suing a 12 year-old for downloading music, or the media using her as a martyr to undermine the RIAA? The parents are obviously the responsible party here and are offering up their duaghter as a sacraficial lamb in hopes of garnering public sympathy. While it may not be a popular law, the fact is that the law is in place, and until it changes, you are responsible for what happens with your internet connection. Suck it up and pay attention to what your kids are doing, or be prepared to deal with the consequences.
It would be more effective if people and newspapers stopped saying "RIAA sued a 12 year old girl" and instead said something like "Sony and other labels through the RIAA sued a 12 year old girl". Currently the use of the term RIAA allows the labels to keep themselves at a distance from most people's perception. The general public doesn't equate the two. The labels would hate to get bad press directly.
how fast could there connection be??? if they truely are on subsidized housing then they are most likely using dial-up. maybe they didn't notice kazaa's icon in the start bar, but how much could they truely share on dial-up versus the tens of thousands of college kids on T1 connections?
Sensationalistic reporting from Fox News? Never! That wouldn't be Fair and Balanced!
SCO have filed a lawsuit against the RIAA, claiming that the RIAA are infringing on SCO's copyrights over filing absurd lawsuits.
"One could also quite convincingly argue that it is this girl's guardians' responsibility to find out what their charges are doing, and the illegality if any."
I want to see you argue that in front of a jury of parents.
I double-dare you, in fact.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
In the article, spokesperson Weiss (who cares if I spelled the demon's name wrong) claims that they didn't know the girl's age because they don't have private information on their victims (he didn't use word "victims", obviously).
So, we're obviously not people to them but mere money bags, and it's not like they don't have any money!
Anyone seen the MPAA commercial with the freeky looking set painter? He stated that millions of US$$$ lost isn't much to the executives, but to someone like him. If that is pocket change to them, then they have WAY TOO MUCH F***in' money! The RIAA - being of the same evil *AA nature - is no different. Artists get crap from CD sales - only the executives truly prosper.
This is an outrage, and any government that allows it is just as corrupt. But we already knew that not a single congressperson had good moral ethics.
Hopefully this tradgedy meets with heavy opposition. I know the government doesn't really care, but perhaps it'll force their hand because everyone is starting to take notice and will soon start pointing fingers at the government that allows this kind of terror. Besides, didn't Bush say that all terrorists would be killed or imprisoned the other night? Isn't the *AA's terrorizing the US citizens. Hey, there's something to consider.
Remember guys - X Home taping is killing music X - NOT!
How is this "sharing" different than going to Yahoo's Launch Network and finding most popular songs and downloading/ripping from the stream?
Simple searches on Windows Media Player bring up many popular songs and of good quality, better than radio in many cases, and definitely good enough to listen to, unless your an audiophile.
Watched the news last night... Anchorman said "But this sort of thing won't happen here -- worst you can expect is an instant message from the gov't saying that 'file sharing is bad and increases the cost of music to those who don't use it'".
Gotta love this country. Share on!
Have EVDO, will travel.
They weren't paying 29.95 a month for Kazaa, what the hell is that? They might have bought Kazaa, and they might pay 29.95 a month for internet service.
This issue probably could be resolved, if both sides were willing to meet in the middle. The way I see it, leeching mp3s is like listening to the radio, sharing is like broadcasting. So have leechers pay the same fees that a radio station would, which IIRC is something like 7 cents a song.
Of course, where "meet in the middle" comes in is song quality. FM radio is obviously not CD quality, so charge based on the quality of the shared files - radio fees for radio quality, maybe 50 cents for "CD quality", or a buck for a 1:1 true CD copy.
Just work out their own P2P engine or whatever tech is needed to make the system work. We get cheap convenient music, they get paid. Everyone's happy, except the lunatic fringe on either side, those that think they shouldnt have to pay for anything, and those that think they should pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to share a song.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Well, the Slashdot crowd seems to be of one mind this morning. But I am disappointed that 1/2 the comments seem to revel in the fact that the RIAA supposedly sued a 12-year old girl; like this will somehow turn the tide, now that are suing "regular" people.
Well, if it's illegal, it's illegal. The parents may be hoping for "boys will be boys" (or in this case, "girls will be girls" attitude, but that may not happen. If a twelve year old vandalizes his school, do we suddenly call for overturning vandalism laws? I concede that copyright violations are not in the same category as property crimes; but the point is, she's 12 years old (not 5), she knows right from wrong, etc. It's perfectly conceivable that she thought she was paying Kazaa for the service, that's a different story.
My point (and I do have one): the fact she is 12 is irrelevant, and it does not make the RIAA any more or less evil.
"When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna -- who her mom says is an honors student -- was helping her brother with his homework."
:) I really got a kick out of that when i saw it :)
I luv that spelling mistake
If people download music cause its free but won't buy a real copy cause it costs too much money, why do they listen to it? Getting stuff for free is admitting its worthless to you.
You live in a very scary country. Get out while you can.
1992 - "America Must Be Destroyed".
A fine band, GWAR.
Sieg
I was ready to write this same post. There is a mindset prevalent today that we have the "right" to a long list of things, when those should actually be privileges. You are not automatically entitled to do whatever you want with recorded music. I will admit up-front that there's too much confusion between taping a song off the radio or borrowing a friend's cd while they listen to their legal, fair-use mp3 copy, and I won't argue that. But a parent that would say "we didn't do anything illegal" because of the age of their child is just deceived.
The question is not the age of the child but the legality of the action. Whether the child does some community service or the parent pays a fine is the very last decision here. The first decision to be tried in court is whether Kazaa's $29.99 service fee to download music indemnifies their users. You can't just offer a for-pay service when your users will be criminally liable for using it. That's like selling permission to speed on the freeway. That's interstate commerce fraud.
The age of the child is irrelevant, and this parent needs to quit making excuses and learn the difference between rights and privileges. She has the right to remain silent. She has the right to an attorney. She has the right to drag Kazaa into this, kicking and screaming. She at least deserves her $29.99/mo back, but she is not scot-free because her daughter's 12.
-j
If she were thieving from a supermarket or record store, shouldn't she be held accountable? Why is this any different? And please, no pedantic arguments about "fair use" or "music should be free because it costs too much". I don't buy into those spiels.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
RIAA suas a 3 month old baby and his mother, who sang lullabies w/o paying the license
A RIAA representative said "SInce this kid is not going to forget this lullaby ever again, were thinking of lobotomizing it so we get back our intellectual property"
how long until
Dude, I think your trip is going bad. Hey, I have a good way you can avoid those horrific laws - stop doing drugs! Goddam hippies...
How our country has changed... No longer is the will of the people bieng represented, but that of the allmighty dollar! Our legislators are in the pockests of corporations and bow to thier bidding, but this has been the case to a certian extent allways. But now Coproate Imperialism has run rampant, they use "our" elected officials (because the RIAA does not vote) to Further thier own agenda. Now they seek perscute the people in the most facist of ways, how long untill they knock on your door and come goose-steeping in to sieze your systems? Does not anyone see they have usurped power only give to police and law enforcement?? Today is a sad day fo america when our economy in in the shite, jobs are down, IT workers are out, and the Recording industry bought the power of our congress. Is there no one willing to stand up to them? I weep for the common man who knows no better
-For it is the very essence of imperialism to turn information systems into wild, bloodthirsty animals-
The only thing that was missing was the fact that she wasn't in a wheelchair.
That can be arranged...
You can't take the sky from me...
When reporters visited teh apartment last night,...
Is this just evidence of sloppy journalism, or is the reporter deliberately targeting h1z sp3c1f1c 4uDi3nc3z0R?
What I want to know is who was getting this $29.99 service fee for Kazaa, a free P2P program. :-P
how fast could there connection be??? if they truely are on subsidized housing then they are most likely using dial-up. maybe they didn't notice kazaa's icon in the start bar, but how much could they truely share on dial-up versus the tens of thousands of college kids on T1 connections?
If they had 1000 files on a dial-up connection they would still be sharing 1000 files, just not very effectively. I'll bet the RIAA's bots just get the list of files and don't actually try to download them.
this:
and this:
They had no idea they were breaking the law. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, blah, blah, blah, but the people usually think that it's ok and the artists are being paid somehow. Jesus to most of them Kazaa is just like the radio, and nobody feels they're criminals when they tape musics from radio.
Making fun of people is really nice, even if they just commited a mistake.
Disclaimer: If I disagree with you I'm probably trolling...
It makes me want to train a monkey to download songs all day. I want to see them sue my fucking pet hamster.
"Oh no Baxter! Looks like you're going to do some hard time unless you don't come up with $150 million dollars quick."
That's 1000 songs at $150,000 a pop. Makes the $20 you're paying for 10 or so songs seem cheap, now doesn't it?
Is downloading music illegal? Sure seems that way, Baxter. But is it fun? Oh yeah!
it's illegal. not knowing about it doesn't make it legal. complaining about the sued one being a child? do you want the RIAA to be able to gather that much information to determine who exactly they are suing? Give me a break.
For god's sake won't SOMEBODY think of the children?!?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I made this website, after disrespectcopyrights.org came out. I haven't bought the domain name so I'm just seeing what people think about it.
. or g/
http://www.tcnj.edu/~pompeli2/respectmonopolies
So isn't this act of downloading and listening equivilent to the listening bar at the record store?
Why does this sound like a quote from a drug dealer?
But that's not how I read it:
Usually, they listen to songs without recording them. "There's a lot of music there, but we just listen to it and let it go," Torres said
The key is the 'they listen to songs without recording them'. Now, I don't remember Kazaa offering streaming, but I could be wrong. I believe that you have the ability to play the media as its downloading and maybe this is what they're referring to.
Maybe what they're doing is downloading the song and using Kazaa as their media player, not realizing they're actually retaining a copy of the song and sharing (which is turned ON by default if memory serves me right). If this is the case, they're probably sharing quite a bit.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Why not just rip it free from Yahoo's Launch Network? That or do a quick search with Windows Media Player. Most songs are of good quality.
If they're paying $30/mo for Kazaa, they ain't that poor.
...that fox is reprinting.
The URL for the slightly more indepth new york post article is http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/5349.htm
After countless flimsy excuses being thrown around constantly for years now by willful copyright infringers ("my CDs were stolen!" "I only listened to them for 24 hours!" "the RIAA steals money from artists so it's OK!" "it helps me discover new music!" ad nauseum), I'm very much inclined to disbelieve more of the same, and this sounds very much like more of the same to me.
Oh, I forgot:
Happy 09/11
Sieg
Where are the musicians in all of this?
Frankly, I'm appalled that more *musicians* haven't spoken up and said, okay, we don't want you stealing our files -- but, for fuck's sake, I don't to part of anything or any entity that sues 12 year olds and 71 year olds.
Me, I'm a writer, not a musician, but if I heard that 12 year olds were being sued by my publisher, I'd be pissed off, appalled, and shocked -- at my publisher, not at the 12 year old.
Of course, I want to paid for my work. But I don't want my work to used as a political leverage for fat cats to get even fatter. The musicians are being used and taken advantage of by the RIAA. They're pawns, and they have a moral -- yes, I said it: "moral" -- responsibility to speak up and tell the RIAA to back the fuck off the fans.
must have recently hired a /. editor to write articles for them.....
"When reporters visited teh apartment last night,....."
this:
and this:
They had no idea they were breaking the law. They thought the artists were being paid somehow. Jesus to most of them Kazaa is just like the radio, and nobody feels they're criminals when they tape musics from radio.
It's murder if you press a button knowing you're killing someone, but it's an accident if you believe to just be turning the light on. There's a big difference in thoughtfully breaking the law and mistakenly breaking the law.
Disclaimer: If I disagree with you I'm probably trolling...
The guy is doing a perfect foaming impression of an RIAA exec. A must read. You will laugh hard enough that your teeth will show!
Where is the lawmaker that is going to take the bold position to introduce legislation that 57 million americans would agree with?
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
> My first reaction was "they won't pursue this".
Like the MPAA didn't pursue a Norwegian boy for releasing a few lines of code you mean.
Default judgement, chapter seven.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
I can't think of a better person to go after.
We're taxed to death--up to 35%+ fed income tax, 9% state income tax, "Alternative Minimum Tax", 8.5% sales tax, and these po folk are living rent free and listenting to free music.
Throw them in jail and toss away the key!
Best Buy can have you arrested
This would be a good time for the People invoke jury nullification, assuming any of these go to trial. (Note that the Bill of Rights grants any RIAA victim a right to jury for lawsuits worth over $20 if they decide to take this to trial.)
So what is jury nullification? It is the principle that jury's may find a defendent "not guilty" if the law is unjust. This harkens back to British colonial days and is the primary reason we have juries in the Bill of Rights: both the defendent AND the law are judged. It is the Peoples' last check against unjust law when the three branches of government fail.
A prominent case of this was when William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, was charged with assembling Quakers for worship when only the Church of England was permitted to assemble. (Again, pre-Revolution colonial days.) Though the jury found that he did indeed do just that, they gave a "not guilty" verdict on the grounds that the law was unjust. The judge held the jury without food and water for a couple of days and imposed fines, demanding that they give a "guilty" verdict, but they refused to budge. Events like this are what inspired our nation's founders to recognize the right of juries over the judge and the law. Jury nullifications also played an important role in overturning Prohibition. Juries often ruled against the law even when finding that the law had been broken, thus making Prohibition unenforceable, and I believe some regions of the nation still regularly have non-violent marijuana prosecutions lost due to jury nullification.
Jury's are unfortunately not informed of this right when they go to trial. I believe during the slave days the government realized that it was near impossible to get a conviction for violating the Fugitive Slave Act since people in the northern state juries, which was the only place the law really had any use, would rule "not guilty" on the grounds that the law was unjust. And so the government sadly decided to stop telling juries of their right to jury nullification.
So how does this apply to the RIAA? Well if enough 12 year olds, or any one else for that matter, being sued millions of dollars for downloading music take it to court then the People (ie-the juries) could toss out the cases as being unjust. Given enough of these rulings, the law could be forced to change to reflect what the People consider just or the RIAA could be forced to change tactics. Though this will remain unlikely if we do not go back to informing juries of their rights. (Plus stacking the jury by having the prosecution quiz them instead of making it truly random also undermines things...) So write to your state and federal legislative representatives today and demand that they pass laws requiring judges to inform juries of their "jury nullification" rights!
"The State is that great fiction by which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else." -Frederic Bastiat.
I don't think people here had that much sympathy for the young minor from Quebec? Her parents are responsible in this case, though I suppose it is still bad PR for the RIAA.
It is interesting to see Fox News coming to the rescue here. I thought it would be more like....
"Evil non-conservative parents in an inner city neighborhood encourage child to steal music..."
Is someone asleep at the wheel at FOX? Geeze they should hire me to prevent these liberal whiney stories from making it to the air! At the very least, put the right spin on it Fox!!
I believe this is another approach on the part of the RIAA to deal with the Kazaa service. sinec they couldn't get Kazaa shut down like they did Napster, they are trying to scare people away from subscribing to the service. I think they picked this girl deliberately.
I think the EFF should team up with 2600 and share enormous quantities of brittany spears music from the spoofed IPs of terminal, pre-teen leukemia patients.
"You're plainly a moron. "
Let me speak for him by saying, thanks, Fuck You Too AND the horse you rode in on.
"I don't know about you, but here in civilised countries.."
And where would THAT be? Doubtless, it's better than we barbarian Americans are used to, huh?
"we have this idea that children below a certain age aren't sufficiently mature to understand that what they're doing is wrong and therefore they can't be held accountable. "
Wow, we barbarians have that idea too! And with all of your genius, if you had realized that Taco was trying to inflame opinion by playing up the "scared little girl" aspect, you'd also know that in American courts, up to a certain age, parents are held accountable for the actions of their children. It's not little Miss Tummy Ache that will be sued, it's her parents.
"If anyone's guilty it's the Kazaa for charging the fee for a service they couldn't legally provide"
Well, whaddaya know? Barbarians and "civilsed" people can agree on something!
Next time you want to come back and taunt us Bronze age cavemen, just fire off another insult to our country. We just looooove that here! Yall come back now, hear?!
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"B..b..but..b...but SHE'S A CRIMINAL!! She's stealing OUR intellectual property! *snivel* *whine*"
In my opinion, with the massive amount of contempt that RIAA gathers by their draconian methods, there must surely only be a question of time before one of the record companies behind RIAA says "enough is enough" and pulls out. This isn't gaining them -- if successful, it may give the bureaucrats in RIAA and their lawyer golf-buddies some more money, but how much is flowing back to the record companies?
And what price does this have in long-term relations with the customers?
Already, we see a marked rise in sales of non-RIAA labels and "foreign" performances outside RIAA's control.
Yes, performances -- the only right RIAA has is to individual performances. They do not own the copyright to the songs or the lyrics -- the artists do. The record companies own the copyright to the performance, and let the RIAA handle the enforcements of the rights.
The solution for consumers is to shun anything that's RIAA-controlled, whether it means exploring independent music, or buying foreign pressed CDs where RIAA won't get a dime, even if they control the US releases.
And Sony, BMG, Warner and others -- please take a look at what this is really doing to your cause. You want people to LOATHE you this much? That's what the RIAA is causing right now. Remember that you don't have a monopoly, and that it's not a product that people MUST buy in the first place either. People will only take so much. Be the first to do the honourable thing -- pull out of the RIAA and offer the public a way to download their music in a *pleasurable* way, the way *they* want it, without fear of litigation or being treated like a criminal until innocence is proven.
Regards,
--
*Art
Until you are 18 years old, you don't exist as a legal entity in the US. You cannot sign binding contracts, cannot sue or be sued, etc. They can sue her parents who are legally responsible for her actions. It is completely inaccurate to say that she will be sued because that cannot happen in US courts.
-- Adam
Wow, those RIAA sure know how to clean up the streets to make it a safer place for the rest of us!
That 12 year old girl is definitely a menace to society and should be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law. That'll teach those criminals.!
If you're saying, "Oh that's bullshit they're suing a 12 year old girl," then just think of how safer the streets would be without this internet thug running around downloading songs left and right.
Helping her brother with homework? BAH! That's an innocent facade that's used to hide her true nature. She's a HORRIBLE MUSIC DOWNLOADER!!
[/sarcasm]
I wonder how these assholes can sleep at night.
I was never really pro-piracy.. always kept a level head, "Yeah sure, I'll pay for a CD to support my favorite artists," but shit like this just makes me want to pirate more and more. That's all it does. Brewing animosity.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I've gotten a few hard to find tracks here and there from KaZaA, but the minute I heard of the lawsuites, I got rid of KaZaA. I don't agree with the RIAA, but I can't criticize them for taking the legal action that they have the right to take. If you had a business, and you felt someone was stealing from you, wouldn't you take legal action? It is unfortunate that it has come to suing a 12 year old girl from the projects who can afford a 30 dollar fee for the service, but I can't side with someone because they got in trouble for thier own ignorance. The RIAA is trying to make an example. They've tried suing old men, and hundreds of other people, maybe people will wake up and realize what they're doing isn't legal, even if it takes a 12 year old girl to prove it
Thats all, troll me if you must.
"and the law is (pseudo) blind to age"
It most certainly is not.
Since you miss this basic point about the law, one must assume you're as well thought out as a swimming pool at the north pole.
Please, go back to sleep. Drink the hemlock first. Save me from having to type any response to you again. You're tiring. Boring. Cripes. Please just blow away.
I'm gonna go out and get me a 12-year-old and have them do all my file sharing.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
I don't understand what they are trying to accomplish by charging so much per song ($150,000?). Who in their right mind has that sort of money. They are counting on an out of court settlement, anything else would bankrupt the common person.
At this rate, I might as well start breaking into cars and stealing CDs. If I got caught, I'm sure the fine would be no where near $150,000 dollars.
You would think having people pay for the songs they have ($1 or 2 dollars per song), then sign some "promise not to file share again" form would be most beneficial.
No jury in the world would convict a 12 year old!
.......Maybe Texas.
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
Now, Mr. RIAA-Stooge-Congressmoron, who is really exploiting the children? P2P networks? Or the RIAA itself? Get thee back to 1984.
We can blame Fox all we want but they are really the only ones who could do an article like this. Who else:
CNN - Owned by AOL Time Warner (Warner Music, etc.).
MSNBC - Joint Venture with Microsoft (not about to attacked RIAA).
ABC News - Owned by Disney (we know how they feel about Copyrights).
CBS News - Owned by Viacom (also owns MTV)
Fox, as far as I can tell, is the only one not totally in bed with the RIAA and if there is anybody who can piss them off and get away with it it is Rupert Murdoch.
Out of curiousity, and to find a list of labels & artists that I won't be supporting until the RIAA crumbles, I browsed on over to RIAA.org to look at their party line and see if I could find any heartfelt tributes to influential members of the Nazi party. I came across this, which says that in order to obtain a subpeona "The copyright owner may then present a subpoena request to the Clerk of the Court..." and then, farther down the page, states that people who object to the RIAA getting information about their identities should realize that "Simply sending a letter to the Clerk of the Court has no legal effect." In addition, "The DMCA does not require ISPs to notify subscribers that they've been served with a DMCA subpoena."
Now, I don't feel any better about a young disadvantaged honors student getting sued (they pay close to $30 a month for what? someone theorized that it was internet access and not KaZaa, but isn't that kind of steep unless the people in the friggin' HOUSING DEVELOPMENT can afford some kind of broadband?), but it seems to me that we're all 12-year-old girls, here. Forget the fact that the **AAs have millions of dollars that they're willing to throw at this, and few (if any) individuals have even a thousandth of that earmarked for defense against legal horking. The simple fact is, even if you and I are both on the exact same legal budget, I (as the copyright holder to 6 million lines of Windows code and the author of 17 Britney songs) have the high ground when the game starts if I decide to come after you. Of course that's only if I have "a good faith belief" that I might be able to get some money out of you.
That being said, I can't wait until this whole mess comes to a head, hopefully not in the RIAA's favor, and becomes the source of a new generation of really bad jokes. (So the top brass of SCO and RIAA are on this plane, right, and it's about to crash and there's only one parachute for every third person...)
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
+1 Hilariously Awesome.
-- Presidents are not elected by popular vote --
Otherwise, states like California (that give driver's licenses to ILLEGAL ALIENS) would have too much influence over elections.
Heheh, this girl will have her income garnished for the rest of her life. The RIAA has gained a lifetime slave. I predict further targeting of children. Waiting for them to reach college age is inefficient, because the RIAA misses out on all those wages from summer jobs, paper routes, and Christmas gifts from grandparents.
The RIAA really is taking its cues from Zappa's JOE'S GARAGE.
Before you can issue a subpoena or sue someone don't you have to know who they are first? If they already had the child's name, couldn't they have found out other basic information. At the very least, her age, residence, etc...
Otherwise, couldn't RIAA mistakenly sue someone for filesharing, by not having all of the necessary information or the individual they plan to prosecute?
PaladinBLZ
QUOTE
When reporters visited teh apartment last night,
/QUOTE
Glad to see that the mass media has learned to spell like a 12 year old.
Today's civil tort system serves the role that the machine gun-toting Pinkerton guards served during the Gilded Age - crushing profit-threatening dissent . I don't see how anyone could think otherwise. If suing someone who is not particularly wealthy is guaranteed to bankrupt them, I simply cannot understand how anyone has any respect remaining for the civil tort system. One thing that an honorable person can do to fight this practice is, if serving on a jury in a tort case, simply refuse to vote in favor of any corporate plaintiff, no matter what the evidence, i.e. nullify. On the scientific side of the question, contribute to research on anonymous/encrypted communications that could make electronic censorship irrelevant, no matter how fanatical or well-funded the censors are.
It's already happening. Many first-rate musicians are taking on the publishing themselves, and offer their own music streaming over the net and/or mp3 download as well as providing direct sales of hard-copy CDs.
It's a nice model, and I don't mind paying for CDs when the proceeds are actually going back to the artists rather then being dropped into the bottomless coffers of mega-corporations.
They pulled a "Won't somebody think of the children?!" stunt a few days ago, now they are going to get hurt by the same tactic. I would imagine a lot of people will write to their politicians, and we all know politicians react quickly when voters might stop supporting them.
Most Wi-Fi hubs have a default password or are otherwise left open to the world. What happens if people just hook it up and someone shares a file through that connection?
Legally, what position are they in?
Because if it were me, I'd immediately run out, put in a Wi-Fi connection and then claim complete ignorance (but I don't share files... too many idiots think 128kb MP3's sound good).
That's how I read it, yes.
Some people on slashdot point out that copyright infringement is against the law and that file sharers are the problem.
In my two above linked past postings, I argue that file sharing is merely a symptom of the problem. The real problem is that nobody respects copyright anymore. And it is only going to get worse.
If copyright holders want some respect, they need to act in a fashion deserving of such respect. Let's see. We have
I just don't care about copyright. Sort of like prohibition. If the copyright holders, like the government, want respect, then they need to set a better example.
What is the purpose of copyright? When does anything ever fall into the public domain?
In my above linked posts I argue that...
- It is not that people don't understand that what they are doing is illegal, it's that they don't care. There is no respect for copyright or copyright law.
- Someone argued that the RIAA will put fear into them and that this would fix the problem. The problem is not lack of fear, it is lack of respect. The RIAA may generate more fear, but they will at the same time get even less respect.
- The only way the problem will really get fixed is to fix the broken copyright (and patent) system.
- The RIAA is fighting a losing battle. They are guaranteed to lose. (We now have alcohol to drink, and a 70 MPH speed limit on roads where it matters.)
- Someone pointed out that slashdot is full of knee jerk paranoia. I responded to that in one of my above linked posts with a long list of the abuses that justify such paranoia. They ARE out to get us.
The latest efforts seem to be that even mere compilations of facts should be able to be copyrighted.I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Many of the posts so far seem to be saying that someone so young should not be responsible for these actions. I wonder what we would say if she were responsible for Blaster?
Song fees have towns singing their own blues
a .a scap08sep08,0,7988693.story
..
Writers', publishers' groups want communities to pay for using music!
http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/carroll/bal-c
This is almost as bad as when ASCAP went after the Girl Scouts a few years ago
Never buy RIAA music!
From the website:
"The RIAA Radar is a tool that music consumers can use to easily and instantly distinguish whether an album was released by a member of the Recording Industry Association of America."
RIAA Radar
Wax on, wax off baby!
"Anyone who lets a 12 year old use the Internet, especially Kazaa, unsupervised, should be investigated for child endangerment."
You are equating using the internet with child abuse? What next, jail the parents for buying the kid twinkies?
"But what about the children!? Won't someone please think about the children!?"
-- Mrs Lovejoy
The arrogance and carelessness of the RIAA's actions are astounding. The media has picked up on it, and it going to make its displeasure known through near unianimous editoral policy. Do not expect to see very many pro-industry articles in the near future.
On a positive note along these lines, three previously-uninformed coworkers brought up today's story to me on separate occasions, and expressed their outrage at the 12-year-old-martyr situation. Consumer alienation is spreading faster that a RPC worm.....
============
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
This girl is a TERRORIST!! She is STEALING from musicians who will now DIE of poverty because of her, that makes her a MURDEROR!
Surely a minor can be taken to court for serious crimes? Like murder and terrorism?
Did you guys actually RTFA? First of all, it's on FOX news. That should raise a couple red flags right there. Secondly, the "article" has typos in it. "When reporters visited teh apartment last night, [...]" Thirdly, the headling is a bald-face lie: "12-Year-Old Sued for Music Downloading." The RIAA is not suing anyone for music downloading, they're suing them for music sharing. FOX couldn't even get that right.
And I love little gems like this one: "Brianna -- who her mom says is an honors student" LOL! I'll bet she does. Wouldn't a real journalist put forth at least the tiniest bit of effort to verify things in their stories? Couldn't they have asked to see a recent report card or something? Newsflash: EVERY parent will tell you their child is "an honors student."
This article is pure, emotional, irrational crap. Maybe if Mom was half as smart as her "honor roll" daughter, she'd have clued in that downloading music you didn't pay for was wrong, and maybe she should have paid more attention to what her genius (yet thieving) daughter was up to.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
checking out the news @ .google.com i noticed something sketchy about the number of related articles..... hrm...?
"US, filing a lawsuit against 12-year-old Brianna LaHara.
Music industry suits hit a sour note here Cincinnati Post
Recording Industry Launches 261 Lawsuits Against Individuals WinInformant.com
InternetNews.com - FOX News - Slate - Sacramento Bee -
and 666 related
The article claims that the defendant signed up for Kazza's $29~ service.
The mother was the one who signed up. The mother *must* have been the one paying... hence it was the mother who was the target of the lawsuit.
IF the mother really used the childs name... She is neglegent for revealing a minor (under the age of 13) over the Internet. Must wonder about the competency of the mother.
Now why would a 12 year old be the subject. It would be the mother. So one of two things happened:
- EFF paid her to make her daughter a media focus
- She's just looking to get her face in the news.
Secondly. If she's living in "Housing Authority apartment"... why is she paying Kazaa? Doesn't she have other things to use her money on? If she can afford luxuries like buying music over the internet (with internet access, and a computer)....[rant about wasted resources on moochers]
This article sounds mostly fabricated for shock factor.
Theres something a little strange about that... you pay for your ISP you dont pay for kazaa.. and if theyre in a housing authority apartment what are they doing spending that money on something like that?? They must be paying $30/month for internet because you'd have to be really incompetent to pay for kazaa. As far as not knowing that the RIAA thinks its illeagal- even if the girl was maybe too young to understand what was going on when napster was around if her mother is internet savy enough to input a credit card number to 'pay for kazaa' then certainly her mother would have heard something about the mess and debate that napster started!! It doesn't go together right. Age has nothing to do with it. I was downloading stuff in 7th grade and I knew what i was doing and i could have been on the honor roll if i didnt think computers were more important, theres no reason a 12 year old girl who is intelligent enough to be on the honor roll wouldnt be competent enough to understand that possibly a $30 fee wouldnt be enough to cover the equivalent all those downloads would be in store bought cds. Its crazy..
"Asked if the association knew Brianna was 12 when it decided to sue her, Weiss answered, 'We don't have any personal information on any of the individuals.'" Sure, no personal information other than your name, address, ISP, music tastes, etc.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a 12 year old girl...
Time for EFF to do a "reverse-sting" - have 12-year old girls pose as 35 year-old male file-sharers with the goal of drawing more RIAA lawsuits.
(The reciprocal of how law-enforcement snags pedophiles in chat rooms - they have 35 year-old men posing as 12 year-old girls).
If you were being sued by the RIAA for $15,000 for stealing music, and you rebuttled by going out and buying every single CD that you had on your HDD for approx $2,000 would they still have a case?
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Next stage is that the parents say "shit", we're in trouble, let's contact the papers and try to get out of this mess by way of our 12-year old daughter.
Plausible, but based on my experience with 12-year-old daughters, not likely.
With the current state of technology, it's really not that difficult to install "stuff" on a PC, if you're interested in doing it. That "if" is the difference -- her parents probably aren't interested, and therefore have no clue. The kid (and her friends) are very interested, and IM even gives them a free tech support network. So she's able to install whatever she wants. If it costs, she just bugs Mommy, who comes over to the PC just long enough to type in that magic 16-digit number.
On the other hand, she still has no clue what she's actually done to her PC. She clicks, she gets music. As a poster in another thread noted, she's probably downloading songz without realizing that Kazaa is saving them on her PC -- and to her, "peer to peer" means chatting with friends at lunch.
If I weren't a geek myself (I'm on Slashdot, after all), I'd probably have no clue what my daughter does online. Which means that 99% of her friends are basically surfing on their own.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
"I've worked with lots of 12 year olds. Being twelve doesn't prevent kids from breaking the law."
Weren't you Sport in Taxi Driver? Go on admit it you're Harvey Keitel.
The best thing we all can do is to keep talking about this story.
Contact the news organization(s) of your choice, and tell them you want to see this story covered and investigated.
Every story that runs will contain a phrase like "12-year old girl" or "grandfather" in the headline. The general public will eventually respond to these headlines -- but they need to be reminded over and over.
Every time you talk about this, or get someone else to talk about this, it's just one more tiny wound for the RIAA. Death by a million paper cuts!
What the 12-year old's mother should do is sue Sharman Networks (KaZaa) for conspiracy (inciting attempts to break the law - they PAID for kazaa while Kazaa AFAIK has no safeguards).
Also, how could you expect a single parent to monitor all their childs activities while they are out working to pay all the expenses.
Even so, sending the single parent to jail is more wrong than copying a few songs and not knowing what you were doing was illegal because you paid for it.
If Kazaa was causing so much grief for the RIAA/MPAA, why not sue the makers of KaZaa (Sharman Networks). It happened with Napster, and other P2P networks.
>>The only thing that was missing was the fact that she wasn't in a wheelchair.
That's BRILLIANT! Put her in a wheelchair, push he into court and let the RIAA make her to cry in front of the jury. Who could convict her? Nobody!
Result? Instant court precident!!
granted this is coming from FOX so there is already reason to doubt the accuracy of this story, but does anyone else think that some of this could have been fabricated? I mean, what twelve year old comes out with something like this: "I thought it was OK to download music because my mom paid a service fee for it. Out of all people, why did they pick me?"
Is it just me or does this -not- sound like language a normal twelve year old would use (honor student or not).
Anyway, I hate the manner in which the RIAA conducts its business however I don't share music or download it off the net (unless the band has agreed to release their music free of charge - see archive.org for tons of good music for free) because it is against the law. 12 or not, the law was broken and some osrt of punishment should be administered.
The public perception is that it isn't wrong. My $.02.
meh.
Replying to myself (sigh) I meant to include an example from this excellent lutenist
Yeah, but Fox seems to be the only of those that would publish something like
:)
"When reporters visited teh apartment last night"
Yeah, "teh sux0rs r3p0rt3rs, LOL".
And we are not counting Slashdot.
Not to be rude to anyone who has been poor and made a better life for themselves, but from experience living in shady neighborhoods, a lot of people are really uneducated and don't understand the intricacies of what's involved with the law.
KaZaa is available without banner ads and with product support for $29.95. If you're not bright and you don't read quickly, you may miss any disclaimers, etc. (Most people don't read click-wrap licenses.) It would be natural for someone uneducated to assume they'd paid for a service to listen to music, which would be a LOT cheaper than buying CDs.
And as regards being on the honor roll, well, thanks to the ALL CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND ACT, that don't mean shit. It's not like when I was in school. Inner city schools now suck more than ever. You can be on the honor roll and be able to read, write, and do math without any comprehension of what you're doing.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
This may very well be an attempt at social engineering but it's backfiring miserably. As if we didn't need more evidence that the RIAA was a bunch of greedy jackbooted thugs, they now go out and sue people who are about as far from being pirates as you get.
The DVD-CCA lawsuits is, unfortunately, an example of how you do this sort of thing the right way. You go after people who look direptuable. Why sue the New York Times when you can sue 2600? Suing a 12 year old girl living in public housing and a 71 year old grandfather is just prooving the point that they are thugs.
This is the sort of thing that could finally stir the masses to make intellectual property an issue that the masses will consider. If they think, "it could be my child next", it's much more likely they are going to bug their congressman about it. This could ultimately lead to legalization of file sharing networks.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
It's nice cover when the AOL/Time-Warner or any of the other two or three conglomerates can cower behind a front organization that does not sell anything and thus is fairly immune to threats or boycotts.
The question I have is... does the RIAA have standing to sue? *They* do not own the copyrights, the labels do.
I like that. "Appropriate" as in sueing CHILDREN?
Somehow taking money from a 12 year old girl to give it to some Rap star to buy another gold neck chain is enough to make me never buy another CD again.
"Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," said Cary Sherman, the RIAA's president. "But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action. This 12 year old girl stole from us and we are going to make her bleed. When we are done, not only will she and her single mom be homeless and destitute, but music fans worldwide will be afraid to cross any line we draw."
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Old folks living on pensions!!!
m l
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96796,00.ht
C'mon whamee!
What worries me about this whole RIAA-sueing-everyone-on-earth thing is the effect it is having on our culture. When people have to spend money just to get what in every other century was freely provided, one has to wonder what the effect will be. Will the poor not have music in their lives? Will the young no longer be inspired by great stories simply becuase they can't pay the publisher his outrageous dues? Will the average man on the street have to be worried about the song he hums to himself on the street for fear of being sued? Perhaps the furure of music isn't on cd's at all, perhaps it is the street musician. Maybe, in 100 years when they look back on this time, they'll discuss the rise from the streets of the great musicans and the RIAA and all its assembly-line produced music will only be a footnote.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Our community is under attack by acronyms!!!! WTF??? When will it all end???
If a sufficiently large number of people - more than it takes to elect a president, say - do not understand a law or its basis to the extent that they regularly break it, eventually it falls into desuetude. That's why Prohibition ended: it was unenforceable. Equally, if enough people decide that certain people shall not be rewarded for certain activities, that business plan is doomed. (and vice versa, of course, hence the fruits of the cult of celebrity.) In the UK, you cannot legally make money selling handguns to people. In the US you can. I do not believe there is any absolute moral standard for this difference: it reflects different views of different societies. If the RIAA pushes things to the point that a lot of people turn round and say, in effect "We didn't understand that was what copyright meant. Now we do, and it sucks", then ultimately that business model will fall.
Perhaps successful musicians will only be rewarded for live performances. Perhaps music will only be sold in conjunction with some other service, as has been suggested by the guy who thought the telecoms companies should buy up the studios. Just as a record company can lay off an exec because of a downturn, incompetence or whatever, we the people can decide to lay off an industry. When we started to travel by air, the railways could not impose a tax on air travelers to recover their lost revenue. But the airlines were certainly taking away the railways' monopoly on long distance intracontinental travel.
I think one thing that obsesses some people here is the idea that the most sacred thing there is, is property, and that anything which apparently removes my property is theft. (Strangely, many of them will claim to belong to a religion whose founder was extremely anti-property, but I leave that one for the psychoanalysts.) Yet things are constantly encroaching on my property. It gets old, it wears out, it falls out of fashion, and one day I will die and it will cease to be mine in any very meaningful sense. Somehow, the suits in the RIAA need to realise that they need to adapt to society, rather than the other way round. But they won't...they are actually frightened, and behaving like frightened men in a position of power.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
In the good ole days, pirates were hanged.
Hey, why don't we all band together and copyright the letter 'R', or something. Then we can sue the life out of the RIAA!! Let them know how it would feel!
1) Educate the family of copyright issues and illegal software/data
2) Give them one more chance. If they blow it, fine them. Don't send them to prison.
3) Publicize the case as much as possible. Yes, social engineering is the reason.
If you ever made something and seen it pirated across the neighbourhood, you would know how much it hurts. It's the same about an artist that worked hard to produce a song.
The problem though isn't that the artist isn't right. The problem is music companies rip us off. Virgin Music decided to lower the price of music CDs by 2 euros(there is a story at www.theregister.co.uk). So what ? from each CD sold, after the productions cost are met, 99% of the CD value is NET profit. The CD costs a few pennies to make.
So, the problem isn't that of piracy, it is that of prices. We shouldn't let rich people get richer and poor people get poorer. In the US alone, 5% of the population owns 80% of the world's wealth. That's ridiculus. They are after a little girl and her family...they won't to milk every last penny out of us...let's not give them excuses for doing so!!!
>>they'll have the PR nightmare of suing a poor 12-year-old girl living with a single mom.
If they're so poor as to be living in welfare housing, why do they have a COMPUTER and INTERNET ACCESS? Or are we giving that away with the free food/shelter/check these days, too?
Just wondering. I'd hope that if someone were that broke, they'd focus their priorities (read: "budget") a little better.
[rant]
What are you talking about? Did I say that I thought Gore should have won? I don't care that he had more electoral votes than Bush did. I know the rules of the election, and I support the outcome.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic at hand. The point is that (if you believe the source quoted above) more people use file sharing, mostly for "illegal" purposes, than voted for EITHER of them.
The Digital Black Market has existed long before Kazaa came around and every media company on the planet has been pressing charges against people who participate in it.
Stealing (copyright infringment is a form of theft) has been illegal since forever. Book publishers have been cracking down on thieves since the inception of printed material.
Just because Kazaa came around and gave a warm fuzzy name to the Digital Black Market lulling people's minds to shut down resulting in massive amounts of participation in the Digital Black Market, doesn't make the laws wrong.
Kazaa has just brought the phenomenon to the mass market in first world countries. Every media company has been cracking down on all forms of the black market (from street corners, to personal servers, to hosted pages, and now P2P) in 3rd world countries for a very long time.
It sucks she's 12 in which case, her mom should be prosecuted for being an accessory to the crime. There's no excuse for her mom not knowing that downloading the music was illegal.
Just because everyone else is stealing, doesn't make the laws against stealing unjust.
It's funny that Slashdot whines about a 12 year being potentially sued by the RIAA and yet when a 12 year old running a warez site is slapped with a fine or the site is simply removed, nobody says a word.
Kazaa is no different. The only difference is that now since "everyone" is doing it, history is being rewritten to justify it. This is just another example of why society is going to shit and the Slashdot community is becomming more and more of a laughing stock.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I'm in the United States, and every day I and everyone else I see breaks the law routinely. It doesn't surprise me and it doesn't appall me except for lawmakers. Why? Because the laws are so arbitrarily constructed and enforced that there's no point in worrying about breaking them until you actually get caught (look at the speed limits - does anyone actually obey them? No. Since everyone does it, it just becomes a question of whether you are the arbitrarily caught person today), and once you get caught, there's no point in looking for "justice" because the punishment is totally arbitrary too. A married couple in California is looking at 25 to 50 for making their own pornography and selling it under some new "obscenity" act that some lawmaker made, though the couple is of legal age. Again, arbitrary and overkill. I could get off easier for murder. Similar comparisons could be made for filesharing vs. corporate corruption or vs. fraud or bank robbery.
*Conspiracy Theory On*
Sometimes I wonder if the laws weren't constructed this way so that those in power could choose the people they don't like since everyone routinely breaks some laws and then put that person away for a ridiculously long period of time. The sad thing this time is that the judicial system was largely thrown out the window into the grubby hands of copyright holders. Yeah, Cary Sherman. Now I respect the laws a lot more.
~Ben
Sorry I don't have any mod points, today.
You'd get some.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I don't care that he had more electoral votes than Bush did.
I meant to say popular votes, not electoral. Thinking about my next reply before I finished writing this one...
Slow down cowboy!
It's also the fault of the unborn that their host carrier is downloading music illegally. Full story at 11.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
The funny things is that RIAA is trying to fsck this 12yo girl, while preaching that p2p is for child porn and is evil
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Whay didn't I think of that?!
- Darl "I put the C back in AC" McBride
there go the last few people who thought the RIAA wasn't evil...
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
The anger has less to do with the electoral college and more to do with the incredible discrepencies and shady goings-on that overshadowed Florida. There were reports of entire districts being turned away at the polls. The state of Florida admitted to not only having a truckfull of ballots go completely missing for a matter or hours, but that they also completely lost a few of them. Add in 1 Catherine Harris coming up with creative ways to avoid, omit or close down recounts and 1 supreme court which, in its incredible fairness, stopped the entire process until it decided on the case, and then gave them 2 days to finish it after that.
On top of all that, Earlier in the day I had already checked Florida off because every single exit poll had Gore completely clobbering Bush. Those are the things that the public should be outraged about, not the electoral college, and I think that those who are complaining are complaining about that.
Nope, they're actually suing a 12-year-old, which would mean that POSSIBLY the suit is null and void, and another one needs to be filed.
Boycott the fsckers. Kick the bully in the balls.
As of April 21, 2000, some commercial Web sites will be required to obtain parental consent before collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children under the age of 13. The FTC called the rule "a definitive move" that "puts parents in control over the information collected from their children online."
So when did this parent give the P2P people the right to disclose the personal informaion about her child to the RIAA?
Didn't the RIAA break the law by collecting this information?
Another link about this law.
What next? Pets and plants?
4 .s tm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/309285
"But I already have the Internet. It came with my Macintosh.
People don't know what they're spending money for. They quite likely pay for an ISP account, didn't read/understand the fine print, downloaded KaZaA, didn't read/understand the fine print, and started downloading songs. Of course, once downloaded, they became an infringing server.
[
Among the others the RIAA has announce plans to sue: a six-year-old orphan boy who walks with a crutch, a fuzzy kitten, and the nice old widow who lives down the hall and always bakes cookies for you.
"My daughter was on the verge of tears when she found out about this," Torres said."
Your daughter's a thief Ms. Torres, and so are you for permitting and likely participating in this activity.
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres.
Newsflash: Just because you don't understand why its illegal doesn't mean you receive a get out of jail free card.
"There's a lot of music there, but we just listen to it and let it go," Torres said.
It burns my ass when people don't bother to educate themselves about computers and especially
about the Internet, with all its perilous, and often illegal online content.
"This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
Yah, kudos for the great parenting job with this kid. And don't worry Ms. Torres - she won't be sued, you will.
This is a 5000 dollar fine, for crying out loud.
It's a similiar situation to the (computer illiterate) old man in Texas who's getting sued and claims that his grandsons must have put the software on the machine. The RIAA is going to sue the owner of the internet contract.
In this situation, they get the privilege of suing a single mother of two. Slightly better than suing a 12-year old in terms of PR, but not by much...
I agree with the poster that you called a moron. The mom's statement about the legality of the downloads seems pretty absurd. I dislike the RIAA too, but it's mighty hard to fight against them when their victims make statements like "It's not like we were doing anything illegal!"
That's the point, isn't it?
Since much of the adult world is comprised of parents, getting in front of a jury of parents is going to be a tough sell.
Combined with the idea that all she was doing was listening to music, I think at best its a long shot.
The name of "Briana"? Simply icing on the cake. Living in public housing, honor student... I'd like to be their lawyer, and I don't practice law. I could win that case.
The RIAA will probably back out of this by the end of the day.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
>>I've worked with lots of 12 year olds. Being twelve doesn't prevent kids from breaking the law. The two are not linked.
I dunno about you, but I wasn't really good at the subtle nuances of copyright law when I was 12-years-old.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Everytime you download an mp3, the RIAA sues a 12 year old.
RIAA vs. the People
If everyone here donated to the EFF we could stop whining about how mutated copyright laws and corporate machinations of intellectual property laws are destroying creativity (and the future).
Even the best arguments need dollars.
Lessig has it right.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
This is just silly...not just the situation with the little girl, but the entire business about the RIAA suing people. I decided today that i'm only going to buy used CDs. It may not cause a huge dent, but hopefully others will do the same.
Kramer: 'Bad Chicken! Mess you up!'
Kenny Rogers Roasters Asst. Manager: 'This isn't gonna be good for business.'
Jerry: 'This isn't gonna be good for anybody.'
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
"Fox News: Utterly Without Merit"
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
-99999999999999999, inconvenient fact contrary to slashbot groupthink.
shouldn't a shoplifter who is 12 years old be treated the same as another 12 year old who essentially is doing the same thing, only online? we tend to forget that music piracy IS a crime. if you were a musician would you like your music to be STOLEN by anybody 12 or 112 years old?
-Cnik
Listen to you guys. If this poor impoverished little girl had been found with hundreds of stolen CDs under her bed, would we have much sympathy for them? Maybe for their poverty, but not because tehy stole shit.
I know these thoughts will entertain some and enrage others, but I will post them anyhow.
The fact that a 12-year old girl in 'government housing' is being sued seems to indicate that the file-sharing issue is not an 18-24 age group issue. It is apparant to me that people of ALL ages are sharing files, some of which are music.
I had an argument with a friend of mine recently. He lives in LA, and is, like EVERYONE there, it would seem, affiliated loosely with the entertainment industry. His stance was that the artists are working and ought to be paid. If not for the RIAA, their music wouldn't get distribution. To make money, they require distribution, and the RIAA is the only one in town through whom they can find it.
My perspective, being in Michigan, unaffiliated with the music business, experienced with technology and trained in the performing arts (theatre degree--marketable as galoshes in the Mojave), is vastly different. I understand that artists, like everyone, are working for pay. However, the advance of technology has been marginalizing the RIAA/record producers for some time now. I believe that technology has come to the point where artists, assuming they are enterprising and not lazy asses, can entirely circumvent the recording houses. Sure, they might not have instant distribution, but AFAI am concerned, when they take it upon themselves to market themselves and what art they have produced, any success is well-earned and not as likely to crumble or fade, as would an artificial creation of the industry (Menudo, Brittney, Tiffany, etc.). Additionally, since they chart their own course, they are free to take whatever artistic tangent they care to explore. In my opinion, the RIAA stifles artistic expression in all but the few artists whom they have contracted whilst on cocaine binges, and who would sign anything to get more blow.
I can't really elaborate any better, seeing as my boss is sure to see me typing madly on non-company business. But, in short, I believe that the RIAA, etc., are close to joining the buggy whip industry: their raison d'etre is about to expire, thanks to technological advances, and their realization of this threat of extinction is evidenced by their willingness to blindly sue a 12-year old, financially disenfranchised girl. When a corporation feels it must go after kids to get its pound of flesh, I believe that its social contract to provide whatever useful services to society has effectively expired or must be revoked.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Yeah, but when I was 12, I was pirating software like mad and really didn't see it as something I would go to the slammer for, nor did I think I would get caught when I did realize it was illegal. Mom and Dad didn't understand what the heck was going on until I was 14 or 15 (and by then I'd more or less gotten out of cracking/pirating, mainly because the technology had gotten beyond my skills), so just being informed of children's hobbies probably isn't enough.
:)
Back in my day, though, the FBI would storm into our houses and confiscate our computers... now it's the RIAA?!? I'd be surprised if they could prove it without getting the hard disk as evidence - "heck, I don't know how you got that log with my name and IP, but I certainly don't have anything like that, nor did I ever download it, so you'll have to prove I have it" - meanwhile, I'll drop my hard disk in a vat of roiling acid...
Maybe they suppositioned the ISP to watch that machine, but that doesn't prove hackers didn't implant a nasty virus that takes over Kazaa (yeah, OK, I'm stretching
Why do you think GeoCities, Yahoo, and everyone cut down their free space?
I personally got a site shut down that was run by two stupid kids that thought they could hide the location of their illegal files. Hosts act very quickly when you fire off an e-mail with very specific locations of illegal files on some hosted page.
Warez. Before P2P, teens were putting up ROMs and everything else in droves which led to much legal hotwater for the hosts and those running the sites. Now games are too large for the free hosts and P2P has rised to the calling. Now the teenagers are back distributing their warez in the Digital Black Market.
It only looks bad for the RIAA to people have a complete disregard for the law.
It's also ironic that a community that whines about prior art every time a tech patent comes out, can't see the prior art for the Digital Black Market and the actions that the RIAA is taking.
The RIAA isn't doing anything that hasn't been done before by every media company in existance. It's only getting major publicity now because it's happening to the middle class in America.
Just like Columbine. School shootings happen all the time in the inner city and nobody gives a shit. Some white kid shoots up some upper middle class school and we can't stop the tears.
Nobody cares when some kid in a third world country is jailed or fined or slapped with a threat of legal action for distributing warez under the same general laws that this 12 year old was charged under.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
It's a balding fat perv that hangs out on yahoo chat posing as a 12 year old. Man you guys are naive.
> First off... they wouldnt be sueing a 9 year old girl... they would be sueing her mother.
Yes, but they filed a supenioea against the daughter. They should at least check the backgrounds of who they are planning to prosecute BEFORE the press investigates.
The new RIAA strategy...
We should all pool some money together and create an anti-RIAA ad campaign that portrays Brittany and Christina and their ilk at heartless wenches who go after small children in the name of their own self-interests.
Whaddya think?
Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.
See, this is where you statists are showing your slavish, unthinking, devotion to authority. So the state passes a law making it illegal to clear your throat in public after 7 pm. The penalty is a $50,000 fine. The law is dutifully published on page 13,739,342 of the Register of Laws. You clear your throat on a street corner at 8:30 pm and are nabbed by a sound activated camera mounted on a lightpole. It clearly identifies the state ID tattooed on your forehead. Guilty! Oh, you didn't know? Ignorance of the law is no defense!
And no, before you ask, I'm not sure I know a better way for people to live, other than civilization. Just like I'm not sure that civilization is the answer. That's the key. I'm not sure I have the answers. The state is sure it does. And you are sure that the state Must Be Obeyed.
You can mentally mark this annoying dose of reality "-1000, troubling" if you wish.
12-year-old girls don't usually weight a whole lot. I bet she floats. And we all know what that means! BURNINATION!!!
I'm in the wrong biz. I bet the market for stakes is out of control right now. Which I invented. Indirectly. I declare that I am the owner of stakes everywhere and anyone using one automatically owes me $695.00 per burning!
-Darl
Just as long as you include ambulance-chasing trial lawyers as 'part of the moneyed class' you might have something there.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Also, the BBC has a look at other 'victims' of the court cases
Let's see now - 261 people, assuming each shared 1000 songs (which I believe was the cap at which RIAA selected their litigants) - @$150000 a song - they expect $39,150,000,000($39 Billion smackeroos!!!). Assuming each case settles at $50000, the RIAA still stands to make $13,050,000 just from this 'spook & awe' campaign
Not bad for a 'sunset industry'
So, if downloading a song from a modulated electromagnetic wave to a magnetic tape is not illegal, why is downloading a song from a network of computers to a magnetic storage medium illegal. Seems about the same to me.
You know, what with the previous article about the judge okaying competitive pop-ups and saying that pop-ups and spam are a "burden of using the internet," it could easily be argued that the same holds true in favor of file-sharers. It's just a "burden of using the internet," and the companies need to get over it.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
If only rape or abuse were bad for someone's business model, we could get these companies doing something useful for society. Do we really want to fill up our prisons with people that downloaded music? Prison is for people that pose a threat to others; File sharing is just a step above jay walking on the list of prison-worthy offenses.
The Mom runs out and get Kazaa, leaves her daughter using the computer without supervision and then acts surprised that they are downloading copyrighted material. Of course, this lawsuit won't make the pro-stealing Slashdot crowd happy but it is valid.
""It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. -- Dumb bitch quote of the day.
Thanks for your recent actions.
As a file-sharer *AND* retail consumer of CD's I will now *never* pay for a CD again.
I will download my music from Kazaa, but not share. I will leech. And there will always be an infinite supply of uploaded music from extra-national sources. My Shared Folder won't be visible on the Internet, and you'll be unable to stop me.
You've succeeded only in taking me out of the financial equation altogether.
I was a casual file-sharer.
Now I'm an exclusive one.
Thanks RIAA for helping me make the shift.
Well, I am waiting for them to sue someone who really matters, like Bush
Like, I'm sure the President of the United States has lot's of spare time to log on to Kazaa, can't afford to buy CDs, and knows how to use a computer really well...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Tell this to everybody. Hand out copies of the article, because people won't believe it. You do not sue a 12 year old girl, living her single mom without peopole becoming very angry. We can ue this to stop these stupid shotgun subpeanas.
Write your representitives. Send them copies of this article, this is somehting people will recognize as overboard. Even people who get campaign funds from the RIAA will not want to be associated with this because no matter how much money they have in there war chest, the people can still vote for someone else.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Logically, how can anyone be expected to know all the laws?!?!?!?
You have identified the logical absurdity of the system of laws, and by extension, civilization.
I feel entirely safe to say, no one is going to answer your plea satisfactorily, here or anywhere else. I feel considerably safer saying this than I would saying "the sun will rise tomorrow" - because the sun could blow up, but a logical absurdity is a logical absurdity forver.
The carnival of human existance is indeed an enigma.
I was reading about some of the people sued so far. One of them is a fater whose two sons were downloading. Much like the 12 year old both claimed ignorance of wrongdoing. Of course, ignorance of the law is no excuse. It seems to me that Sharman networks, however, is ultimatly responsible. They provide the conduit for illegal downloads but do not give ample warning to their users that the user may be sued for A LOT of money. I know their EULA says not to use it illegally, but who reads that, and does it point out which songs may get their users in trouble? I encourage all those sued to counter sue Sharman for misleading them.
Guess I don't have to worry about being in one of their song searches. the stuff I share on Kazaa is all Indy bands who want to have stuff shared (From personally talking with the band members) - If I do happen to get sued I will fight, because the songs are not copyrighted.
Are you sure? Most every creative work in the US (and most of the world, nowadays) is automatically copyrighted at creation, unless the author is the government or if they specifically place the work into the public domain (probably has to be in writing somewhere for you to prove anything).
I'm not saying you're in danger of getting sued, but...well, you are. Oral contracts are hard to prove (he said, she said), so if you can get something in any form of writing (email even) you'd have a stronger case to justify your distribution of their likely-copyrighted materials, in the event they decide they don't want you distributing it anymore.
the RIAA can't sue a 12 year old girl, anymore than she can have a net connection in her own name. They are suing an anonymous online name that has been pirating their precious 'Brittany' crap for a while wholesale :) Her poor parental unit should have paid a wee bit more attention to what precious was doing on the net I think. Hell a 12 year old can't even agree to the EULA on any of the p2p services.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
All we need is a photo and we'll have an angry mob in no time. Congressional hearings, here we come!
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
Actually, I would expect NEWSPAPERS to write articles, not Fox. There are plenty of newspapers not involved with the RIAA.
For someone living in the projects, mostly likely in one of NYC's ghettos, what is the definition of "illegal?"? Would it be "unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works" or would it be drug dealing, stealing, fighting, prostitution, and stuff like that? You know, the stuff that the other kids/young adults/old addicts do outside her apartment building every day?
Their (the Torres') perception of the situation is a pretty good example of what most of the population believes about file sharing. It's about as much of a crime as jaywalking. Yes, any street cop can give a ticket for jaywalking, but only if he's a complete loser. Same principle applies here.
========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
The article quotes the girl's mother as saying "There's a lot of music there, but we just listen to it and let it go"
The defense arguments will be interesting when they undoubtably say the clients didn't have the technical knowledge to understand that "download and listen" really means "download and provide." It's possible that users deleting the file transfer log line in Kaaza (erm, not that I know what that is or have ever seen it before) may have assumed the file was gone too. But lo, the hundreds of songs they "just listened to" were saved and now available for mass download from their machine by the whole world.
Sheesh this is going to be fun!
I wonder if this could end up hurting iTunes. Little Jimmy asks his Dad for an iTunes subscription for christmas, and Dad says no. He read in the paper that downloading music off the internet was illegal. This could really put a damper on legitimate downloading services.
In case we've all forgotten who belongs to this wretched organisation, go take a look at their list or read on:
1500 Records 20G Entertainment 241 Records 2Ksounds 32 Records 333 Music 4AD Records 4th & Broadway 5 Minute Walk 5.1 Entertainment 510 Records 550 Music 57 Records A& E Latin Music A&M Records A440 Records Abkco Acony Records AD Records Aftermath/Shady Aleho Alice Alliance Alligator Records Almo Sounds Amaru Records Ambar Records American Empire American Recording Amiata Records Andy Prieboy Angel Angels Antilles Antone's Antra Records Apple Archive Ardent Aries Music Entertainment, Inc. Arista Latin Arista Nashville Arista Records Ark 21 Arsenal Artanis Arte Nova Artemis Artist Direct/Kneeling Elephant Astoria Entertainment Astralwerks Records Asylum Records Atco Atlantic Atlantic Classics Atlantic Nashville ATO Records Atrium Records AV8 Records Avatar Records Avenue Records AVI Aware AWOL Records Axiom B.E.C. Back Porch Records Bad Boy Entertainment Bad Dog Records Ballers Entertainment Baphomet Housecore Barak Entertainment Barb Wire Productions Barco Records Bass Productions Beat Club Beauty Records Beginner's Bible Beiler Bros Records Belart Bellmark Belly Soundtrack Benson Record Berman Brothers Best Side Beyond Music Bibleman Big Baller Big Beat Records Big Cat/Work Big Deal Big Dog Records Big Ear Music Big Head Todd Big Idea Productions Big Records Big Screen Music Big Tree Big Wadd Big World Bigtyme Records Billy Corgan Biv Ten Records Black Market Records Black Out Black Pumpkin Records Black Top Records Blackground (Barry & Sons, Inc.) Blackground Records Blackheart Blackstone Bliss Productions Blix Street Blood and Fire Bloodline Records Blue Gorilla Blue Jackel Entertainment Blue Note Blue Plate Blue Thumb Bluebird Blues Bureau BMG Classics BMG Entertainment BMG U.S. Latin BNA Records Bob Marley Music Bocelli-Sogno Bohemia Bon Jovi Box Tunes Branford Marsalis Breakaway B-Rite Broadway MCA Brody Records Broken Bow Records Broken Records Brutal Records Bullseye Bungalow Records Burnside C2 Cadena Records Cadence Christian Caliente Candle In The Wind Cannan Capitol Nashville Capitol Records Capricorn Cargo Records Cash Money Records Catalyst Caviant Cell Block Records Celtic Corner Celtic Heartbeat Chameleon Records Charisma Cheeba Sounds Cherry Entertainment Chignon Records Children Chord Chordant Christian Music Group Chronicles/PSM Chrysalis Music Group Chuck Life Cintas Acuario Circular Moves City of Hope Cky Classic Tracs Clatown Records Clean Slate Climate C-Loc Records Clockwork CMC International CMG Cold Chillin' Records Colli Park Music Columbia Records Command Conifer Contemporary Coolhunter Records Coolsville Productions Copacabana Records Costarola Cotillion Covenant Artists Crazy Cat Crescent Moon Crime Partners Critique Records Crowne Music Group Crystal Lewis Crystal Rose CTW/Sesame Street Curb Curb/Rising Tide Cyan Records Cypress D & D Records Da Border Music, Inc. Dagger Records Dali Records Damian Music Damian US Latin Dancing Cat Dare 2BU, Inc. DAS Day Spring Daywind Music Group DCC Death Row Debris Records Debut Decca Deep Purple Def Jam Def Soul Delicious Vinyl Delos Denon Desert Storm DGG DHM Digital Theater System, Inc. Disa Discipline Disques Vogue DJ Honda Recordings DKC DM Music DM Records, Inc. DMY DMZ Doggystyle Records Domo Records Dopehouse Records Down in the Delta JV Dr. Dream DreamWorks DreamWorks Nashville Drive Thru Records Duck Down Music DV8 Records E Pluribus Unum Eagle Rock Eaglevision Earthbeat Earthdance East Side Digital East West Records Easydisc ECM Eddie Soundtrack Edel America Records Edel Entertainment Edito Classica Edmonds Record Group Elektra Asylum Elektra Entertainment Group Elektra Musician group Elementree Records Ellipsis Ar
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
"When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna -- who her mom says is an honors student -- was helping her brother with his homework."
Obvious l33t b145 d00d!!11!1
Let's see most of the dtractors claim that it soes not matter that the subject thought it was legal because she was using a service. So does that mean the MPAA cam come after me for recording movies off of my premuim cable service? umm no!!! can the RIAA come after me for recording a song off the Radio?? umm NO!!!! so what make s it legal to sue soeone who shares a file? the radio companies don't pay for the music they play. They are asked to broadcast it to boost a bands popularity...
-For it is the very essence of imperialism to turn information systems into wild, bloodthirsty animals-
Back during the Oil Embargo to conserve fuel?
Not for reasons of public safety?
Copyright reserves the rights to distribution for the copyright holder.
If you're distributing a copywritten work, you're breaking copyright law (barring any fair-use outs, which are going to be incredibly difficult to prove, if you're sharing an album to 10,000,000 kazaa users).
Downloader's are not the issue here, it's the act of distributing the protected works that's the issue.
We are surrounded by intellectual product. All our technologies and products (ALL OF THEM) are merely constructs of pre-existing technologies.
Wheels, incandescent lights, circuits, building materials, plastics, adhesives, machines, our knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology. Everything we know, understand, and utilize as a culture is all based upon the intellectual developments of preceding generations.
To suggest otherwise is to start history at a convenient point.
The great composers adapted ancient folk songs into their work. Jazz musicians then played wonderful creative games with the works of great composers. And then the Rolling Stones came along and claimed ownership over those jazz standards. Anyone who believes in the right-of-ownership in pop melodies has a very small understanding of music composition.
Can you imagine how stifled creativity and progress would have been if the "wheel" was patented.
The lawyers and the big corporations are attempting to create ownership over our cultural heritage, and ultimately they are trying to maintain in unsustainable business model in the face of new technological developments. It is neither our national responsibility nor our legal right to maintain business models that have been surpassed by technological evolution.
And remember: 99.999999% of musicians in the world are doing it for free because they love music. (Myself included).
Peace.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
From the EFF Website:
In other words, if you ADMIT GUILT, while you may be sparing yourself the wrath of the Rabidly Insane Assholes' Association, there's nothing to stop individual record companies, or individual bands (i.e. Metallica) from suing you.
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
This sounds like an Outland strip. Are they sure her name isn't Ronald Anne?
The RIAA could publicly plan to sue churches and daycares for singing songs without proper royalty payments. The Finnish equivalent, Teosto, already proposed that, and faced a PR nightmare.
I'm surprised Winona Ryder ain't on the list.
Is it a copyright violation to download a file named "My Childs Flute Concert", discover it is in fact a copyrighted song, and then delete it because of that? Or downloading on of several phoney songs that the music industry seeded in to the networks bacause you thought is was the copyrighted song you wanted, but it turned out to be garbage?
In the first case there is no intent to violate the copyright, but you may have done so (fair use?). In the second case the intent was there, but a violation did not occur because the content was not copyrighted (unless the garbage audio was copyrighted also).
They also make a good point about paying a service to access the material. Their service should be paying the licensing fees.
If they in fact play then delete their songs, this is much like one of the streaming services, or even PVR's.
Methinks I should start sharing songs, then when they catch me, claim my 2-year old snuck into my office whilst I wasn't looking... obviously, if they're holding a grandparent responsible for what their grandchildren did, they're going to hold the mother responsible, not the 12-year old.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
And I speak from personal experience here. Buying all music you want for whatever price "they" want you to pay is far cheaper than having a 12-year-old doing your file-sharing. If I have bought music with all money I have already spent with my 12-year-old downloader to date I would probably have one of the largest CD collections around. If you take into account all money yet to be invested until he is out of college (at least ), I could probably have my very own a small recording company.
Not private enterprise. When a large capitalist organization can go around harassing and even ruining people's lives with carte blanche, there's something seriously wrong. Corporations are not people, they're property. Why do they have the same legal rights as people? Because the Supreme Court has given corporations these rights bit by bit in over 200 decisions over the centuries. We humans, OTOH, have to AMEND THE CONSTITUTION to get rights.
Time for us to take back what is OURS.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
We are surrounded by intellectual product. All our technologies and products (ALL OF THEM) are merely constructs of pre-existing technologies.
Wheels, incandescent lights, circuits, building materials, plastics, adhesives, machines, our knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology. Everything we know, understand, and utilize as a culture is all based upon the intellectual developments of preceding generations.
To suggest otherwise is to start history at a convenient point.
The great composers adapted ancient folk songs into their work. Jazz musicians then played wonderful creative games with the works of great composers. And then the Rolling Stones came along and claimed ownership over those jazz standards. Anyone who believes in the right-of-ownership in pop melodies has a very small understanding of music composition.
Can you imagine how stifled creativity and progress would have been if the "wheel" was patented.
The lawyers and the big corporations are attempting to create ownership over our cultural heritage, and ultimately they are trying to maintain in unsustainable business model in the face of new technological developments. It is neither our national responsibility nor our legal right to maintain business models that have been surpassed by technological evolution.
And remember: 99.999999% of musicians in the world are doing it for free because they love music. (Myself included).
Peace.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
That's how most view the great internet, you can tape it watch it, sounds very similar. Have to remember how many people in the US really understand computers, just because they have one doent make it more than a electric paperweight. Music and mp3 were just something they could understand and actually use. The mother was alos actually supporting shareware, we should be happy about that!
I understand that you're primarily talking about deterrence, but come now, Locke wrote about property before 'intellectual property' even entered our vocabulary. Physical property is not governed by the same criteria as intellectual property (see this discussion of Copyright Law for a detailed explanation). You are in fact pointing out, albiet unknowingly, the big problem with intellectual property law: namely, that it treats IP like physical property.
why are they not protecting my CD's?
i just looked on the internet and there they were! what the heak? i paid for them and here they are for anyone to download. i feel used.
----------- destroy evil immediately!
In all of the raving and ranting that most of us frustrated /.ers are doing against the heavy handed tactics of the RIAA, I see that it really doesn't add up to anything. Really. Tomorrow morning the RIAA will send out another thousand lawsuits against another thousand teenagers and granparents, and /. will again rant and rave against it... but what will happen?
Sure, a lot of people will be pissed, and a lot of people will boycott the labels, but how long will that last? After all the smoke clears from the lawsuits the public perception will have been changed from one of believing that it's OK to copy music from the Internet to one of believing that the ONLY way to enjoy music is to pay for it. There will be a lot of hard feelings, but give it six months - a year - and most of those boycotting will go back to buying CDs, or otherwise paying for music.
WHY? Because there is nothing to stop it from happening. The RIAA has millions of dollars to spend on this social engineering campaign, and there is nothing but a small bump in the road (EFF) to get in its way. I submit that the ONLY way to ultimately stop the RIAA from persecuting everyone is to change the law.
Laugh you may, but as another poster pointed out, approximately 57 million people use P2P services. It took 50 million people to elect the president. I'm sure it will take far fewer votes to elect a congressman or senator that won't sell out to the labels or movie industries. I even think that if your current congressman or senator were to receive, say, 5 to 10 thousand letters from their constituents it would not go ignored.
Our (US) government is supposed to be set up to make laws based on the voice of the people NOT the corporations! It is imperative of the people to make its voice known, or suffer the consequences! The people must speak, so please, please, just write a little letter to your congressman or senator. It doesn't have to be long, just a few words to express your position. Make sure you sign it, put it into an envelope, stamp it, and put it in your mailbox.
God bless America!
Hello planet earth. Stand together. Buy ZERO music for one whole year (re-listen to all your old music for a change). Nobody anywhere buys a single CD new or used, a single cassette or music DVD, a single concert ticket. Watch things change in a fat great hurry. Spread the word, stop taking it lying down like a crowd of silly sheep. Bye bye RIAA...
"When reporters visited teh apartment last night"
Looks like the article was written by a 12 year old. I swear I've seen this kid hassling me for warez on IRC.
cos who are the reall "artists" these guys represent? ...
the riaa isnt going after the ppl who download good artists, or ones who arent famous. they go after the "aguilera", "spears", "nelly" kinda "artists"
where is the riaa protecting the other artists?
and how is it that universal slashed the costs of a cd now? u have to be joking if a cd by these so-called "artists" costs $22. wtf is that all bout huh?
so, who in their right minds is gonna believe the riaa when they talk bout "artists"?
i tell ya, this alll started with the concept of IP. its getting worse. i should probably go sue someone cos i "feel" tht they may be infringing on my IP. maybe i can sue someone for thinking because i was thinking before him/er. maybe i can sue someone for pissin after me, cos well, i did so b4 him/er. wtf?
and anyway, i dont consider the likes of the above "artists" to be "artists".
maybe its time to sue the riaa and the music industry and these "artists" for comin up with trash and makin us pay $22 for it? its falsification of prices and a very low quality of goods they offer!
Are doing so out of fear, if they want those tunes. What a shame that fear is now driving purchases, instead of the joy of new music, movies, etc.
In fact, I got my first ADSL in my own name when I was 17 (the age of majority here is 19).
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
It does not mean what you think it means.
Ahem. You may need to re-read that speech. I quote (emphasis mine):
Gore supported the Supreme Court decision only in order to bring an end to the country's uncertainty, misery and embarrassment. He didn't agree with it though. How ironic that the electors should be deprived of a man noble enough to make such a sacrifice, only to be left with a President who was apparently willing to bring the country to its knees rather than relinquish his ill-gotten gains.
Isn't NBC part of the vivendi empire? I know GE is involved somewhere...
An earlier poster said that if the RIAA takes her to court then the RIAA have a PR nightmare of picking on a 12 year old girl. if the RIAA doesn't take her to court then all the other people who are sued say "Why won't you drop charges against me?"
if the RIAA take her to court and she wins, then the RIAA can say "Oh, well, in that case we didn't have a chance of winning because they paid their service fee and didn't save the songs. all the rest of you lummoxes are screwed though." and proceed as normal, right?
Cocaine IS illegal too. Of course, no one at the top has ever used it...
So is drinking under the legal age. Didn't stop Bushettes from being caught.
Murder is illegal too. Didn't stop Skekel from being caught.
If you go to http://www.kazaaplus.com/, you'll see that they're charging 29.95 for "Kazaa Plus". Evidently these people thought they were legit by paying the fee...
BangBus is reviewing shows, now?
No, I won't mod you a troll; I won't even think you one. I think you're reasoning simplistically.
I think such a benighted law says more about those who formulated and interpreted it than it does about the 12 year old girl and the millions like her. I think a law that says you can't copy something you don't own, even for your own use, let alone providing the copy to others, is insane, given that the original is not harmed in any way. It is an attempt, doomed to failure by technology, to guarantee a right to the creator of the original, that is unnatural.
Let me give you an example. It is one million BC. Joe Quartz invents the wheel and builds a cart. Jim Flint sees that it is cool, grasps the principle easily, and builds a copy. Do you think Joe is even going to be upset? Ownership of abstract things like concepts and ones and zeros is not a natural concept.
I'll even give you a better example. Joe creates a catchy tune which he whistles. Jim likes it, and goes about whistling it himself, and for the enjoyment of his friends. The RIAA would have you believe that Jim owes Joe a bearhide for the privilege. I have a hunch the people of one million BC were a lot brighter than the RIAA. I very much doubt Joe would seek to extract payment from Jim for whistling a tune.
For anytone who RTA: Did you notice the typo? "teh"
/. banter. So sorry if someone else already nitpicked.
As opposed to normal, I read the article instead of the
---
Making a point to see Karma: Bad
Let's all set up a cash fund, to provide big servers and fast internet connections to orphans and widows in the poorest cities all over the country.
:)
We can educate them on the use of computers, and help them bridge "the digital divide", and they can, in turn, host our mp3's for us.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Note that CNN.com (RIAA member Time Warner) ran the story about the 261 lawsuits in the top spot _all_ day long yesterday, despite a fairly busy news day with Dubyuh's speech and the Palestine situation.
Today, no mention of the targeted 12 year old girl on either CNN.com or ABCnews.com (RIAA member Disney).
CBSnews.com (now expanding their holdings to include Universal) is running the 12 year old girl story in the number two position today.
Freedom of the press!! Yay!!!
You do the crime, you do the time!
How can we as a community take out the RIAA?
Isn't it punishment enough that her parents gave her a porn star name? Does she really have to be sued too?
You know, we need to start a legal fund for her. This would be the perfect oppertunity to put the RIAA under legally.
How about the law that requires the ISP to give details of the user of an IP without the approval of a judge? (or any other approving authority)
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
Specially these, before misquoting them:
"I thought it was OK to download music because my mom paid a service fee for it. Out of all people, why did they pick me?"
The family signed up for the Kazaa music-swapping service three months ago, and paid a $29.99 service charge.
Usually, they listen to songs without recording them. "There's a lot of music there, but we just listen to it and let it go," Torres said.
And yes, you're a troll, not because you have a "slightly different opinion" but because you misquote people to support your arguments.
Disclaimer: If I disagree with you I'm probably trolling...
Here is my take on the whole situation. File "sharing" is stealing. It isn't bucking authority, or sticking it to the RIAA, that is just a cop-out, a way to justify it to yourself. If this music is so "shitty" these days that you will not buy it, why it is OK to some to steal it? The RIAA is being very draconian in their tactics, I am not defending them at all. But, on the other hand, how would you feel if someone came into your house every day and stole something from you, not very much huh. That is a big problem in our society, no one has any empathy or compassion for their fellow human being, everything is me me me. I think the record companies are moving in the right direction in cutting prices on CDs. I will buy a cd for 13, but not for 20. (Target usually has them cheap anyway.) This story does scream FAKE to me too, but, that is just my opinion. /karma
I hate sigs.
The BBC is reporting that another of these same 261 latest suits by the RIAA is against a 71 year old grandfather:
"Durwood Pickle, 71, of Texas, said his teenage grandchildren used his computer during visits to his home.
'I didn't do it, and I don't feel like I'm responsible,' he said."
Well, there's at least one artist whose done filesharing. In the April 26, 2001 issue of Rolling Stone Joe Perry (guitarist for Aerosmith) says something along the lines of:s p?cf=18) but they only give you an excerpt, not the full story.
I really hope they don't shut Napster down. I've been using it to introduct my kids to rare old stuff that you can't find anywhere else.
I looked up the story online (http://www.rollingstone.com/features/cs867main.a
There, I said it... I'm really getting sick of thier shit
Here's the text of the petition; you can sign it if you like at mediareform.net.
I love this statement:
Asked if the association knew Brianna was 12 when it decided to sue her, Weiss answered, "We don't have any personal information on any of the individuals."
That is, no personal information other than; who you are, where you live, what your IP is, what files you shared or downloaded, what you name is, etc.. etc.. etc.. Nothing really personal.
My 8 year old read your post and wanted me to ask you if he could have your mustang gt convertable.
He just loves mustangs, rx8's, jetskis, dilly bar coupons.
Got any of those?
How about re-education camps? Is he gonna have to go get re-educated if he don't want anyone encroaching up his skateboard?
No?
Same probably goes for the intellectual property holding advertisers that fund this site you commie moron!!!
How's bout' you talkin to someone about the next time the reality train arrives in your nice little village where the lollipop trees sing to the butterscotch daffodils.
I mean come on now, this is a sign. The first spewing crack in the immense dam that is the RIAA. Just the fact that they're suing their own customers means they're hurting. Bad. In the words of NOFX on the same topic, "dinosaurs must die". Then. Finally. We may find a replacement for the current recording industry. One that doen't just promote the music that is just, most easily consumed, but one that's fair to all musicians.
:o) and DirectConnect are perfect for people to publish their own works. The principal they're based on is perfect: The media that is most popular of the public at any given time will be the most proliferated on the P2P networks.
Personally I believe the public is sick of the current material coming out of the recording industry, and increasingly from the MPAA. I know I would love to see the day that independant artists and film-makers can release their material to the same size audience as a big-dollar production. That's what the internet is all about. Any average joe can publish their own web pages. Todays BLOGS are going to be the sources of tomorrows history books.
Imagine: Once these media conglomerates are disolved, tools like Kazaa-(lite
Now I'm probably just WAY off my rocker. But that's just a gaze into one possible hazy future.
is 11 years old and downloads music for school, are they going to sue her next? i bet the riaa is having all sorts of fun preying on dangerous 12 year olds... because we all know how much of a threat they are to the record companies sales. come on people, how can you sue someone who doesnt even know what they're doing is wrong?! when i was 12, i worried about getting caught staying up past my bedtime, not getting sued by some stupid company!
see sig. see sig run. run sig run.
Maybe we finally have a poster child for all anti-RIAA ideals. This is really rediculous. I understand having to quell piracy and such, but the delivery of music is changing. This is more a story of "we have no idea how to function in this medium so until we do, you have to use the old medium" than anything else. Well, people just aren't going to wait for the RIAA to "figure out" how they want to do things. Right or wrong, the cat is out of the bag and doesn't want to go back in. At this point, you have to figure out a way to construct a habitat for it. The RIAA is archaic and they basically are pissed that they are being marginalized. Luckily, their broad-stroke battle-axe has come down to bear on this 12 yr. old girl and with any luck, the public will belt a collective "Okay, enough!"
If she had enough shared music to attract the RIAA, then her hard drive must be bigger than mine. This is unacceptable... oh newegg....
I seem to recall Disney sending threat letters to Day Care centers a few years ago. Basically the letters said that the centers couldn't put on a VHS tape of the Little Mermaid to entertain the kids for a couple hours unless the centers paid a royalty to Disney.
Hmmm, doesn't seem to likely to me. To use your own analogy, I think it's more like walking into a bank, already under the control of bank robbers who happen to be standing in the teller booth, and the bank robbers tell you it's OK to grab a handful of money from the safe.
I don't think the "they told me it was OK" defense would impress a judge too much.
All that's missing is a TV commercial of people saying, "I *am* MP3 trading!"
To use your analogy for traditional infringement, P2P services would be more like walking into a bank, slipping the teller a note saying that you have a gun, and then walking back out. It's debatable whether a crime of any sort has been committed.
I'm just glad to live in Canada. Faced with rampant music swapping, the government imposed a levy on blank CD media. While annoying, it gives us grounds for a compulsory license for the music. If you download music, in Canada, with the intent to burn it to a regular audio CD, more than likely (this is still untested) no crime has been committed.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Stop equating file sharing with what is going on with SCO. File sharing IS illegal, get over it.
So, how come nobody has made the point that an MP3 file is NOT a duplicate copy of a CD track. Compression effects, artifacts, etc. It's like a spotty xerox of a book. You'll eventually go out and buy the album (unless it's unavailable).
$500+ per song for distributing distorted copies of the original? Give me a break!
Like others have said elsewhere, the problem is NOT MP3s, the problem is mass-produced counterfeit Brittney Spears albums and Disney DVDs, created by professionals.
Exxccelent!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I do not support the way RIAA is exercising its rights, but let me point out that if we throw out intellectual property rights wholesale, we make the GPL unenforceable. The ability to sue people who abuse intellectual property is the only thing that makes it possible to protect free software.
If RIAA is thrown out of court in the file-sharing cases, then the same grounds can (and will) be used to throw out cases against people who take GPL software and incorporate it in to closed-source distributions.
When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna
Un-news
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. "This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
Actually you ARE according to the RIAA. Whether you agree or disagree with that is another issue, but as of TODAY, if you are downloading AND sharing music using Kazaa or something else, the RIAA CAN and WILL sue you. They have the power and as of right now - THE RIGHT. Just because your 12 doesn't mean you can't be sued. Just because your mom pays $30 for the full version of Kazaa, doesn't mean it makes music sharing right.
Now please don't take this the wrong way - i'm just stating the obvious. I personally am against the RIAA, but you know what? I don't download or share music. In fact I hardly listen to music at all so I don't care. It seems like the people getting in trouble for this fall into 2 categories 1) The uber ignorant who dload britneys spears all day and have never paid attention to the news (probably highschool students) or 2) The uber arrogant who think their such a 1337 haxor that they are going to fight the RIAA or some nonsense by continueing to dload music rather than lobby congress
GGAAAAHHHHHHAAAARRRRRRRGGGG!!!!!
Ave Molech Setting
I'm surprised, I don't see anyone mentioning that this is obviously blatent propoganda aimed at younger kids. They went after a 12 yo on purpose to make a big story. I'm willing to bet they'll even back off once things quiet down. Thats my 2cents anyway
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
This is outrageous. Time to declare war on RIAA and the music industry all together. Boycott CDs, concerts, MTV, VH-1, and anything else that has to do with the music industry. Get online and download every song you can find. Rip all of your CDs and put them on the net. Send everything to everyone you know. If we completely overpower RIAA with the methods they despise, they will fall. What are they going to do, sue the entire world? It's time for a REVOLUTION.
Look, if we don't like the RIAA's behavior, we can simply stop buying overpriced CDs. Oh wait...people have already stopped buying their CDs... This is just another example of greed and avarice. The RIAA is responsible for killing the goose that laid the golden egg and now is trying to compensate. My personal recommendation is that people should stop fooling with the drivel the RIAA wants to shove down our throats. The world would be alot more pleasant if once a week you got together with your friends and played music yourselves- on real instruments. I'm sure the RIAA would try to get a chunk of that too...
I've been waiting for something like this to happen. Now the parents can go after no only the RIAA, but also their ISP. The internet privacy act protects children under 13 from just this sort of thing. When the RIAA sopneaed the girl's ISP, they were not allowed to give her information up.
Looks like we finally have a case that'll make this circus stop.
Learn something new.
CBS News: "Download Suit Targets 12-Year-Old"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/28/tech/ma
CNN: "Who's targeted by music swapping suits?"
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/09/09/downl
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The targets of the first lawsuits against music fans who share songs on the Internet include an elderly man in Texas who rarely uses his computer, a Yale University professor and an unemployed woman in New York who says she didn't know she was breaking the law. . .
MSNBC: Similar article via AP.
ABC: I didn't search long enough to find it, but I'll bet it's there.
This is yet another example that MOST people are clueless about this whole sordid affair. In the grand scheme of things, Slashdot readers and their ilk are in the minority and not a very vocal minority at that. Most people are also scared sheep. Hopefully when the sheep get scared they stop feeding the beast that threatens them.
How long can the RIAA cabal survive when the economic air supply is evapporates? Not long. Could they survive Christmas? Want to find out? QUIT FEEDING THE BASTARDS! QUIT BUYING THEIR SHIT!
Tell everybody we're going to bring down a jackboot of our own on the esophagus of these fuckers and not let up until until they are DEAD! No time outs. No crying uncle. DEAD and DONE!
Now get off your ass!
You have that backwards. Vivendi will soon be part of the NBC empire. Vivendi is selling out to NBC.
...but I was under the impression that MP3's were legal for 24hrs, much ike ROMS. Isn't that still the case?
I mean, that could make for some sort of defense eventually.
Yeah, they're just a member of ARIA instead. Same thing penis-faced bastards, different letter order. I don't think ARIA's sued anybody itself, but FOX has sued Scour and a couple other programs on it's own from time to time. Sorry for the crushing intrusion of reality, but FOX owns it's own legion of crappy pop cutouts, they're not going to try and bring anybody down. Since Direct TV being what it is didn't turn down FOX's hard-on to merge with them, I think I can continue burning effigies of Rupert in my bathroom without feeling guilty.
You totally forgot about the Daily Show...
Jon Stewart will blow the lid off this one with his fantastic reporting and research!
Learn something new.
I am sick of these 12 year old girls taking down large corporations and bankrupting them. The corporate lawyers and special interest groups are no defence against 12 year old girls. I for one welcome this move, its about time they did something about 12 year girls bankrupting the music industry.
Gore received 50,996,116 popular votes.
That's counted votes. Apparently California doesn't count their absentee ballots unless the normal vote is close enough for them to make a difference. ISTR there were over a million absentee ballots not counted for President in CA alone. That's more than enough unkown "popular votes" to tip the scale.
Because of this, any claim to have won the popular vote in 2000 is bogus.
There are laws that exist by the nature of human existence, natural law, and then there are laws codeified my man. When they tend to match we have a just society, when they tend not to match we tend to have an unjust society. Well, I for one, want to live in a just society, which is why I hate copyrights and why I love property rights. Perhaps man made laws are the prejudice of society, but not natural law. So the question is do we want justice, or mob rule.
Copyrights are not property rights, they derive from no physical natural limit in supply, demand, or distribution like other property rights. They are far more about controlling people to maintain a monopoly, than to deal with limited resources. The only thing that even approaches being limited is peoples time, which ironically copyrights make worthless in compaire to information whose value comes from the hype it produces more than the skill used to produce it.
We really half to get over the notion that just because an institution calls somthing a property right, means that it really is. I thought we did already from the 1850's plantation era, but I guess history repeats itself.
time for me to bring out the pitchforks and flaming torches again.
man, I should've gotten that extended warranty on them.....they are really being used often....a bit too often if you ask me.
Come on....she is a 12yr old....and living in the projects...how low can the RIAA go? Apparently, lower. Watch, in a few weeks they will start suing starving kids in Third World countries as we've all seen on those commercials begging for donations ("The Christian Childrens' Fund," etc.).
I'm just waiting for a powerful organization to sue the RIAA under the Federal racketeering and organized crime law, since this is blatantly extortion and organized (and it's hard to believe that the all artists who are allegedly "victimized" are fairly compensated to begin with, let alone as evil). Sue them and tell them that they should settle and take their life savings. This is more heinous than those con-artists who pray on ol' folk.
You are asking the wrong question. The issue isn't goint to be whether a minor can assume a debt. That is a contract law question and the answer is usually no unless it is for necessities like food and housing. The legal question is going to be either whether a minor can be held liable for a tort or whether the parent can be held liable for not preventing the minor from committing a tort. It will be hard to hold a 12 year old directly liable for this so the family's lawyer (if they can afford one) should be able to get the case dismissed pretty easily unless RIAA amends the suit to allege the mother was negligent in supervising the child. The RIAA is plenty stupid but I don't think they are *that* stupid. My guess is RIAA's lawyers file a motion to dismiss this loser within a week.
The RIAA may be Evil, but they are not stupid. They will not sue her. They will settle out of court in a hurry. Get the girl and her mother to sign the "I promise to be good" form and an "undisclosed cash payment" which in this case will be $1. Then they will continue to sift through their nets for someone that they can make a good PR case against. Someone who is easier to portray as a bad guy. Ideally someone who is not only sharing mp3s, but kiddie porn or somethin they can link with terrorism.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
God forbid you visit this link.
The following are sueing a 12 year old girl:
1500 Records 20G Entertainment 241 Records 2Ksounds 32 Records 333 Music 4AD Records 4th & Broadway 5 Minute Walk 5.1 Entertainment 510 Records 550 Music 57 Records A& E Latin Music A&M Records A440 Records Abkco Acony Records AD Records Aftermath/Shady Aleho Alice Alliance Alligator Records Almo Sounds Amaru Records Ambar Records American Empire American Recording Amiata Records Andy Prieboy Angel Angels Antilles Antone's Antra Records Apple Archive Ardent Aries Music Entertainment, Inc. Arista Latin Arista Nashville Arista Records Ark 21 Arsenal Artanis Arte Nova Artemis Artist Direct/Kneeling Elephant Astoria Entertainment Astralwerks Records Asylum Records Atco Atlantic Atlantic Classics Atlantic Nashville ATO Records Atrium Records AV8 Records Avatar Records Avenue Records AVI Aware AWOL Records Axiom B.E.C. Back Porch Records Bad Boy Entertainment Bad Dog Records Ballers Entertainment Baphomet Housecore Barak Entertainment Barb Wire Productions Barco Records Bass Productions Beat Club Beauty Records Beginner's Bible Beiler Bros Records Belart Bellmark Belly Soundtrack Benson Record Berman Brothers Best Side Beyond Music Bibleman Big Baller Big Beat Records Big Cat/Work Big Deal Big Dog Records Big Ear Music Big Head Todd Big Idea Productions Big Records Big Screen Music Big Tree Big Wadd Big World Bigtyme Records Billy Corgan Biv Ten Records Black Market Records Black Out Black Pumpkin Records Black Top Records Blackground (Barry & Sons, Inc.) Blackground Records Blackheart Blackstone Bliss Productions Blix Street Blood and Fire Bloodline Records Blue Gorilla Blue Jackel Entertainment Blue Note Blue Plate Blue Thumb Bluebird Blues Bureau BMG Classics BMG Entertainment BMG U.S. Latin BNA Records Bob Marley Music Bocelli-Sogno Bohemia Bon Jovi Box Tunes Branford Marsalis Breakaway B-Rite Broadway MCA Brody Records Broken Bow Records Broken Records Brutal Records Bullseye Bungalow Records Burnside C2 Cadena Records Cadence Christian Caliente Candle In The Wind Cannan Capitol Nashville Capitol Records Capricorn Cargo Records Cash Money Records Catalyst Caviant Cell Block Records Celtic Corner Celtic Heartbeat Chameleon Records Charisma Cheeba Sounds Cherry Entertainment Chignon Records Children Chord Chordant Christian Music Group Chronicles/PSM Chrysalis Music Group Chuck Life Cintas Acuario Circular Moves City of Hope Cky Classic Tracs Clatown Records Clean Slate Climate C-Loc Records Clockwork CMC International CMG Cold Chillin' Records Colli Park Music Columbia Records Command Conifer Contemporary Coolhunter Records Coolsville Productions Copacabana Records Costarola Cotillion Covenant Artists Crazy Cat Crescent Moon Crime Partners Critique Records Crowne Music Group Crystal Lewis Crystal Rose CTW/Sesame Street Curb Curb/Rising Tide Cyan Records Cypress D & D Records Da Border Music, Inc. Dagger Records Dali Records Damian Music Damian US Latin Dancing Cat Dare 2BU, Inc. DAS Day Spring Daywind Music Group DCC Death Row Debris Records Debut Decca Deep Purple Def Jam Def Soul Delicious Vinyl Delos Denon Desert Storm DGG DHM Digital Theater System, Inc. Disa Discipline Disques Vogue DJ Honda Recordings DKC DM Music DM Records, Inc. DMY DMZ Doggystyle Records Domo Records Dopehouse Records Down in the Delta JV Dr. Dream DreamWorks DreamWorks Nashville Drive Thru Records Duck Down Music DV8 Records E Pluribus Unum Eagle Rock Eaglevision Earthbeat Earthdance East Side Digital East West Records Easydisc ECM Eddie Soundtrack Edel America Records Edel Entertainment Edito Classica Edmonds Record Group Elektra Asylum Elektra Entertainment Group Elektra Musician group Elementree Records Ellipsis Arts Elton John Elvis Tribute Project EMD Music Emergent Music Marketing EMI Classics EMI Gospel Music EMI Latin EMI Records Eminent Empire Records Enjoy Records Epic Epic Nashville Epidrome Equinox Music ERATO ESC Records
"Oh, except for her name," Weiss then went on to say. "And her address. And phone number. And her Kazaa details, and who her ISP is, and a bunch of the stuff she downloaded. Nothing except for that."
Great analogy!
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
I agree with your friend, in that artists deserve to get paid. But even if users did buy the music they currently get for free on file-trading networks, they're not gonna get paid. I've heard that AAA acts who have a lot of leverage can negotiate their contracts to collect $0.50 - $1.00 in royalties per CD sold, but that this is very, very rare, and that royalties usually amount to pennies or nickels for each $10 - $18 CD sold. Maybe those numbers are way off, so if you come up with more accurate ones, please post them -- I'm sure everybody would do well to know what those statistics look like.
So yeah, the artists are working and ought to be paid. But they should be taking that issue up with the labels they sign with, when it comes time to negotiate contracts, and not the end users. Consumers have been paying a premium for their music for a long time, and if music sales and file-sharing trends are any indication, they don't believe the music is worth the price anymore. And honestly, do you think prosecuting a 12-year-old girl is going to help recoup lost profits? Let's assume that a 12-year-old girl did have $150,000 to cough up, to settle with the RIAA -- do you think that money is going to wind up in any of the pockets whose copyrights have been infringed upon? No, they're going to the same place all the cash goes anyway -- the RIAA, and the music industry middlemen.
Yes, the RIAA has a pretty good distribution infrastructure in place. But that's conventional wisdom speaking -- file-sharing networks have proven there's a better way of getting the product to the end-users. The main problem here is that there's no way for the RIAA to enforce copyright law in cyberspace, except for implementing technology-based restrictions (DRM). Copyright is a concept, an idea, and one that people usually won't adhere to if there are less cumbersome alternatives available. And until there's a foolproof way of preventing users from sharing their music (legal or technological), the RIAA and the companies it represents will not be able to take advantage of this distribution system.
Artists, on the other hand, can. They just need to accept the fact that their music is going to be passed around, and that they're not going to see royalties for each copy of their work. Given how crappily most contracts compensate artists, I can't see this as being such a huge problem -- you could sell millions of CDs with the RIAA and still end up with pittance. But with file-sharing, your potential audience grows by an order of magnitude. And if even a fraction of that audience compensates you directly for your work, you'll end up making scads more than you otherwise would. You would have more control over price, which means you could price it more attractively, and you could stipulate whether to sell your music by the track or full album. But you would sacrifice some of your ability to be compensated for your work, as there will always be people who want music for free, and won't buy it at any price.
The reason for CDs costing so much now is that the major labels subsidize their failures with the extra cash they make from their big winners. For every band that "makes it", there are dozens that don't, for whom the labels have coughed up cash to promote and produce CDs for, but don't ever break even. But that's their problem, not ours -- I'm only paying for the music in front of me. The labels either need to start being more discriminating in who they sign, or else they need to start pricing their wares far more attractively. The latter I doubt will happen -- Universal's move to $13 CDs is a step in the right direction, but it still factors in the costs from subsidizing failures.
In all competitive industries, companies strive to become more efficient. When they do, production costs go down, which means that they can afford to price their products more competitively to consumers. And because the price becomes more affordable to more people, their potential market increases -- basic supply and dem
Boo hoo hoo, cry me a friggin' river.
If she shoplifted a CD from the local store, would you be so ready to defend her actions? Not hardly. And this is no different, contrary to what most of you will tell me. Again, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. And whether you agree with the law or not, it is currently the law. Don't whine when you get prosecuted under it.
Mom should have been paying attention to what little honey was doing on the computer. I have no sympathy.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Not that I think the RIAA is right -- or legal -- in this campaign, but...
According to this:
1.The family lives in the projects (i.e. poor).
2. The family has a computer with a large (i.e. modern) hard drive (RIAA is suing those with 1000 songs shared).
3. The family has a broadband connection. (You don't really think she managed this tying up the 56K pipe 24/7).
Given #2 and #3, I have trouble reconciling this with #1.
The family signed up for the Kazaa music-swapping service three months ago, and paid a $29.99 service charge.
As for paying for KaZaA, that is probably their best defense that they are really dumb and weren't intentionally breaking the law.
---
SELECT * FROM Users WHERE Clue > 0
0 Records returned
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
In the real world, if Sony makes TV's that are too expensive, I can go buy an RCA, or an el-cheapo Walmart one. Each unit may very well be functionally identical. In fact, it's quite possible that Walmart's subcontractor liked Sony's TV so much that they duplicated the design. Now you have a real alternative!
The problem with IP laws is basically that it comes down to owning knowledge. You can't make an alternative without breaking laws, because you "own" the idea itself (not just verbatim copying either.. The recent problems between the bands Dune and A7 over the song "Heaven" (which is nearly identical but performed seperately) demonstrate this).
The more ideas removed from the public domain, the harder it is to make an alternative. Imagine if Microsoft decided to sue OpenOffice because they "own" the Microsoft .doc format? Where's my alternative?
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
An umbrella policy covers the insured for incidents like a child doing something that causes the parent to be sued. If you have such a policy then your insurance will cover the court costs and any damages that might be awarded to the RIAA should you lose. If the insurance companies start losing money on this they may try to have the law changed.
They might also try to exclude such coverage but insurance is very heavily regulated and they may not be able to legally make such exclusions on their umbrella policies in some states.
"Many everyday Joes and Janes do not have any concept what current copyright law really is"
How long have warez sites existed? Have they EVER been legal?
NO. It doesn't matter if you download it off a site, buy it off the street, or get on P2P. Warez are ILLEGAL. What's the difference between an illegal copy of software and an illegal copy of a song? None.
"they continue to pi$$ off their current, former, and potential customers."
I'm not seeing it. All I see is Slashdot bitching constantly that things that have always been illegal with those perpetrating the crime being punished, are still *shock* illegal.
Warez site owners are constantly getting shut down, fined and or jailed. Just because you put your warez on P2P and happen to "specialize" in songs doesn't make it any less illegal. Just as it always has been.
The only leg the mom has to stand on is the $30 fee. But that doesn't allievate her from the crime of being a supplier in the digital black market. That simply potentially makes Kazaa also liable. How liable they are depends entirely on how they sell their subscription.
Kazaa isn't responsable for the illiteracy of those who pay for their service.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
" This is a civil case, not criminal. No jury. This will be left to the decision of the judge."
Apparently, you are unaware that civil trials have juries the same as criminal trials, the difference is in how evidence is presented and how juries are instructed.
Avoiding all the crap laws: where is the 'sourceforge' of music and other media that is released under GPL?
And what about re-engineered paintings of old master pieces: do they fall under the recent acts?
- No, I didn't RTFA.
The more you know, the less you need. [Admin added: from me.]
Both attempt to command the masses through fear with scare tactics. I'll bet the next thing they'll do is go after random file sharers.
Stop that meme right here.
Share what you are entitled to share and nobody can touch you.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Now, I don't support these RIAA law suits, but I highly doubt a 12 year old girl didn't know downloading music was illegal.
.
How could you not see anything in the news, at school, online, etc that told you this was illegal. This information is freak'n everywhere
At 12 your going to high school in a year. You're not that clueless. The "I didn't know because I'm a 12 year old girl" defense doesn't cut it for me.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
This is the same argument that Microsoft is using against Linux: If you pay money for your software, you won't be sued by SCO.
Read my post here
So, when did Darl McBride become head of the RIAA?
--
www.nitemarecafe.com
OIs there a website devoted to BOYCOTTING the RIAA?
I would like to support this.
It's at 0 right now--but it makes a valid point.
Teaching the children to break the law, eh?
Blar.
This is why we need the death penalty in Canada.
She could be out and sharing again in time to go to University. We need to get sickos like her off the street,
Won't somebody please think of the children!
My list of multiplayer
See ya! Did you buy your ticket yet?
Nothing personal, but I get sick of the "If this-and-this happens, I'm leaving" crowd. They never really leave. See: Alec Baldwin. Go. You are wasting space, a job, and driving up housing costs. Go. Either help us change it, or leave.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/309 2854.stm
"Watching the campers' mute contortions, Mrs. King shakes her head. 'It seems so different," she allows, "when you do the Macarena in silence.' "
This is a BAD thing?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
what if we compared file-sharing to the radio... because it's perfectly legal for anybody to turn on the radio and listen to music, right? file-sharing services are like a radio station. but wait a minute, radio stations make money - they have commercial breaks and they get money for those, and as a result of profitting from playing the music that they air they have to pay royalty fees to the record companies or whatever, right?
but what about non-profit radio stations? i used to hang out at my college's non-profit radio station (it was a while ago so please correct me if i'm wrong) - non-profits can play whatever music they like without royalty fees. perfectly legal. we were told we could bring in our own personal CDs as well as use the station's CD library to play songs on air.
well, file-sharing services are most certainly non-profit - there are no commercials or ads or anything on them (well, most of them, right?). so couldn't you liken the file-sharing services to a non-profit radio station?
what i'm getting at here is that nobody is profitting from filesharing. yes, the riaa and the artists aren't profitting, but neither are the filesharers. you could even argue that the artists are profitting, because people are finding out about their music and buying their merchandise and concert tickets. i would think that a crime against copyright law would involve profiting from a copyright that you don't own. when you're not profitting - i don't see that being as bad.
what really upsets me is that the selection of music available on file-sharing services i think is really more representative of what people want to hear. you cannot turn on the radio and get that kind of mix - what is pushed on the radio stations is what clear channel / the riaa / etc want you to hear. it's artifical. file-sharing services have a more natural selection of music and you'll hear music you never would have been able to, otherwise, and it really does help those artists that these companies have maybe decided not to push. i mean, OMG artists will get popular based on how GOOD they are, not just how much money the record companies want to spend on publicizing them.
to pick our crops. You wanna do it?
Although it *does* beg the question: if a 12 year can't assume debt, then how exactly did they get her name in the first place?
I've not seen anyone confirm or deny the following scenario, but I was thinking about this question this morning.
I suspect the mom, who was likely the owner of the ISP account (billed to the mom's credit card) is the one who actually had her name on the suit since the RIAA got her name through subpoena'ing the ISP. But in a brilliant PR move, the mom is telling the press that the RIAA is suing her daughter (since the mom had nothing to do personally with the copying.)
This is the only scenario that makes logical sense to me, but I'd note that it is 100% speculation.
--LP
I forgot to mention that the age of majority does vary between the provinces. The Age of Majority Act of the province of New Brunswick does state that it's 19, though.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
Sometime next year I can't wait to see this:
"RIAA sues RIAA for defamation of character"
I bet the RIAA would somehow manage to make money from that.
I am just interested to know will RIAA go after me if i only share and download programs and dont have any songs or movies. Also if i downloas sonds but not share it does it make a difrense?
reading BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT! People were already pissed, and they are looking with glee upon the case of the poor 12 year old.
The RIAA probably shot themselves in the head instead of the foot this time.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
What really strangles my mongoose here is that the RIAA said they were going after the worst offenders.
I've seen Direct Connect servers where you have to be sharing 100GB just to *get in*... so lets call a "worst offender" somebody who shares more than that. First off, chances are the girl hasn't downloaded that much... I doubt Britney, Christina and the rest of the gang have even released that much music.
I see only two possibilities here:
1. The RIAA is lying, and they're going after anyone haphazardly.
2. The parents have actually been downloading shitloads for whatever reasons (possibly selling CDs) and blaiming their daughter.
Obviously, the former is much more likely.
Now my mongoose is safe.
(Ontario precisely)
If the girl broke into a record store and stole thousands of CD's, it would be a criminal case.
If it were a criminal case, then the RIAA would be guilty of publishing the name of a young offender. That's a crime too. I think the maximum sentence is two years in prison.
There's this idea here that if a kid's name is published, it only serves to punish the kids who want to reform.
I imagine that the U.S. or New York State has similar laws. But this isn't the FBI or State police infiltrating a shoplifting ring, this is the RIAA executing a civil action.
If this were handled by the state police or the FBI, I imagine they would probably let the kid off with a warning, and the papers would publish about how some young offender was caught stealing, then post a nice story about how parents should watch their kids.
Why is it o.k. to do this in the civil courts?
That wouldn't be Fair and Balanced!
Of course, you realize you are about to be sued by Fox for copyright infringement...
And if you're a 12 years old, that would be delicious irony...
I am almost not kidding. Even though I don't want her family to be on the line for $150,000 per song or whatever the assinine fine is, I think it would be just the thing to get pressure on Congress to reverse the excesses of copyright law.
Oh, and if you read the article, you'll find she wasn't collecting or redistributing the songs, but more using Kazaa as an on-demand radio! Maybe there's a chance for a nice P2P fair use precedent, or at least a good argument for a broadcast exemption. Wishful thinking, I suppose.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
There have been a lot of comments in the discussion to the effect that the parents are responsible for the actions of their child. I don't think that this is the case - if it were, then parents would go to jail when their children broke laws. Parents certainly have a moral responsibility, and a responsibility to society at large, to teach their children good ethics. But that responsibility is not legally binding. Imagine if it were - parents would simply lock up their problem children, rather than risking their own imprisonment.
While things may be different in civil cases than criminal cases, I still think that if children are protected from the full force of the law because of their naivete and inexperience, parents should only be held accountable according to a reasonable measure of their control over their children. Children need to be taught to make right decisions - and part of that process is making mistakes. If we remove the opportunity to make mistakes without suffering the full consequences while still young, then they will make even worse mistakes when older.
Personally, I just don't listen to music. But it certainly seems to me that the RIAA isn't making any friends.
Powered by Web3.5 RC 2
Who's covering the legal fees of this (and any other) underage defendents? Is there any sort of fund yet?
Shame shame...
Next they'll be child murderers.
the best idea would be to have the little girl go to the srtist's houses ie britty spears and such. wearing some average clothes. give them like 10 dollars from her allowance. maybe that will shame them into not supporting the RIAA
A friend of mine just got a ticket for possession of alcohol (he's under 21). The fine was $200.
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he got the ticket, the fine for possession of marijuana is $25.
Come and join the fun in Ann Arbor, where it's all weed, all the time! Just don't get caught on University property, where the fine is $2000 and jail time. Oh, and only smoke joints--they'll take your piece away if they catch you lighting it up, be it a pipe, a bong, or a Reeferator RFC 3000.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
There are many, many projects out there dedicated to getting working computers and Internet access into the hands of the working poor. Her situation isn't *that* unlikely!
No, I just think shows how DUMB this girl and her family is. That $29.95 is a ONE-time fee for an ad-free version of Kazaa, not a monthly fee. Did they actually believe that paying $29.95 for a copy of a program meant that they can download all the copyrighted music they want?
Yeah, I have no idea where they could have gotten such a stupid idea. Now, if you can excuse me, I am going to go home and watch a show recorded with something called aVCR which I got beemed to me over theairwaves for free. God, how could she have ever gotten the idea that you can buy a device and enjoy art for free. Morons indeed.
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
The beeb is reporting that another victim of the RIAA sue-a-matic is a 71 year old man, "The grandkids must have done it!"
3 09 2854.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/
But the Star Spangled Banner would have been out of copyright since 1913. You'd have been allowed to hum it seven years earlier, but you'd have to swear you were humming 'To Anachreon in Heaven'
2. The family has a computer with a large (i.e. modern) hard drive (RIAA is suing those with 1000 songs shared).
At 4 meg a song (giving average pop song is under 4 minutes and the average mp3 compression is about 1 meg a minute) thats only a 4gb hard drive.
And your basic broadband isn't all that expensive
But (anecdotal evidence time) I know a guy who has at least a 1000 songs downloaded (his mixCD set is up to around #48 or something and I know he doesn't burn all the songs he has downloaded), so yeah, it is possible on a dialup.
And finally, you're assuming that the RIAA didn't lie to us and they didn't just pick the first 261 people who downloaded Britneys_New_Leaked_Album.mp3
Can we please learn the difference between "your" and "you're" and "they're" and "their" and "there" around here? Damn, we all sound like bumbling idiots.
*cough*
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
There are two issues here. The Supreme Court decision was only about the various Florida recounts, and that was what Gore said he disagrees with but accepts.
Then there's the Electoral College, which ensured that the few hundred disputed votes in Florida were so important, even though everyone accepts that Gore had about a half million more votes than Bush nationwide. This is obviously unfair, but Gore isn't the best person to criticize it. Before the election, some of his supporters were speculating happily about the opposite outcome (Bush winning the popular vote and Gore the presidency). Unfortunately, there's little chance of it being changed, as the constitution was designed specificially to be unfair in this regard. (It's not a bug, it's a feature!) The very people who benefit most from the College are those who would have to remove it.
If a crime was comitted by a large group of people then instead of punishing everyone, a bureaucratic nightmare, the Romans would execute one in ten chosen at random. Hence the word 'decimate'. That seems to be what the RIAA are doing. They're going to wreck the lives of a few randomly chosen kids as a lesson to the others. Seems a little barbaric to me. But it seemed to work for the Romans.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The average American downloads 6.3 songs per month, but this girl downloaded 8.7 songs per month for the last 2 years, making her:
12 - 2 + (8.7 / 6.3) * ( 12 / 1 ) * 2 = 43
They have reassured the public they will never prosecute a minor.
Just wait till they sue an African-American and ol' Rhyming Man himself gets involved!
Downloader's are not the issue here, it's the act of distributing the protected works that's the issue.
If you participate in breaking a law, you may be punished. The downloaders ALSO violated copyright. The act of "distribution" took 2 parties to complete- both the sender and recipient are liable.
The reason that the RIAA will mainly target "distributors" is they're likely to have many more counts of infringement against them. They're also more likely to have knowingly infringed, and will tend to be more sophisticated and less sympathetic characters on a whole.
The mother has a point, just because she's too stupid to understand basic copyright law, it doesn't mean her child should be punished.
Martin Brooks / Slayer99 #linux / UIN 2178117
Owned!
I got broadband for my house on a simple phone call.
Did you know I never agreed to any TOS? Nothing!
I never signed anything that it was installed, even.
Okay, so now AOL CD's are out there, MSN CD's are out there.
And you're going to tell me you need to be an adult to get access? Only in theory. You seem to be arguing that only adults smoke because its against the law for minors too buy cigarettes.
No, it's called copyright infringement, a technical violation that is not at all obvious to a very large segment of the US population. Lots of people don't see any difference at all between listening to the radio, internet radio with Windows Media Player, and what many see as internet radio with Kazaa. Who was hoping for smart readers, but can't even get the terminology right? This isn't only emotional fluff, this is pointing out how silly it is to expect 12 year olds to have any idea of the difference between those three ways of listening when the differences are (to the average person) very small and petty.
Well I'm the doctor and I say you're dead, so shut up and take it like a man!
Which came first?
1) Draconian (C) enforement legislation?
2) Wholesale (C) disrepect?
That's right #2. Had not millions of people started completely disrespecting (C) simpley because they could, now that computers made it 1000 times easier to, NONE of the evil things you mentioned in your post would have happened. THe (C) enforcement mechanisms were minimal in the past becuase the level of (C) disrespect was minimal in the past, mainly due to the slow propigation of hand re-recording.
The proper, moral and legal recourse to the possibility that (C) material was priced "too high" (The ONE argument given to justify all this (C) disrespect) would have been to stop buying it. NOT ignoring it.
At that point, the first illegal and immoral act was that of the file trader. I really can't feel sorry for them. In fact I'm pretty pissed off at people for it for several reasons.
1) I produce music and software and have had both ripped off insanely myself.
2) Because of the (C) disrespectors, I now have to live with draconian and often misdirected (C) enforcement mechanisms like CDs that won't play in my computer or programs that require on-line enabling mechanisms.
The situation is pretty fsked up at this point, but if you are looking for a single responsible party, look no further than the guy(or gal) who is uploading (C) material to the web for millions of others to DL for free.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Doesn't sound like her mom is either. My point was that one has nothing to do with the other. Twelve year olds don't misunderstand the subtle nuances of shoplifting, vandalism or murder but you have them involved in those.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Internet is the new entertainment medium for all, not just the middle class and the geeks.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The latest radiohead album can't be played in Linux AT ALL. As my computer IS my CD player, my sheer love of Radiohead has compelled me to nab their latest songs off Gnutella. Why would the RIAA deliberately drive non-windows and non-Mac users into the arms of the file-sharing community? That's just stupid.
So if the RIAA was collecting information about what songs this young offender had on her machine, was the RIAA in violation of COPPA?
(Probably not, since I don't think the RIAA falls under the definition of "operator" under COPPA in this case, but it's still interesting to think about...)
Err, rather, I mean this is the 1337th post in this article. We haven't had that many since what, the Sept 11th stories? Even if there has been some since then they're rare. I think that speaks about the amount of controversy the RIAA has stirred with their latest lawsuits.
:)
Controversy is probably exactly what they want. It will scare people out of sharing music. If you have a 12 year old daughter that shares music I bet you're going to talk to her about it tonight
- Microsoft: The evil empire that controls all PC software. They've survived Linux, OS2, and anti-trust litigation from the US government itself. Hell, Linux is FREE and still can't compete with Microsoft's $99, security-hole-riddled garbage.
- Intel: The evil empire that controls all PC hardware. They've survived Cyrix, AMD, VIA, Transmeta, and every other CPU maker. Why? Because if you have "Intel Inside" your web browsing will be much faster. Don't buy anything unless it has "Intel Inside."
- DeBeers: Diamonds? For crying out loud! They're not rare, they're not "precious" in any way. They literally have warehouses full of diamonds! They sell clear chunks of carbon and every schmuck in America buys one for his fiance. Why? Because, if you love some one, then they deserve a diamond. A diamond is forever.
- Cigarettes: THEY KILL YOU! I think the cat is out of the bag... yet, somehow, cigarette sales continue to increase.
It's simple. He who has the most money has the best marketing. And he who has the best marketing wins, because people are stupid. And it doesn't hurt to buy a few politicians, either. Money is power, period. You can polish a turd.So, go ahead and boycott the RIAA and listen to indy music on your AMD system that runs Linux. You are the exception, not the rule. You will not bring any industry to its knees. Sorry.
...This just in...
The RIAA announced today that it would settle out of court with little Brianna for the sum total of all her barbie dolls and accessories. Brianna is barred in the future of buying any music other than bubblegum pop (Backstreet Boys, N'SYNC, Brtiney, etc..) and at full MSRP.
'A spokesperson said: Children need to learn at a young age to capitulate to the corporation. This prevents future independent thought or action.'
Why oh why didn't I take the purple pill?
The RIAA has been pursuing its machinations for a long time, starting with getting the #$%#^!!ing DMCA passed into law in the first place. Through most of this, there's been hardly a peep in the "mainstream" press. Now all of a sudden it's all over the place--in fact it was the most prominent story on the front page of one of Seattle's morning papers. I can't help but think this is the way the Pigopolists wanted it to be.
Most people have NO concept of how and where files are stored. They just know there is this "software" that's let's them access music they want to listen to. For them its the same as turning the radio dial or flipping the tv channel.
Like you said I'm sure there are people out there who download (probably don't understand that concpet either) the same songs over and over just so they can listen to them.
Then there are those who knowingly download music and are aware of technicalities but choose to ignore them. They have decided that a copy of a copy doesn't hurt anyone. They have decided that copyright laws are foolish and choose to ignore them.
The first group can possibly be educated and you can maybe stop some of them. The second group which the majority of our youth belongs to is a lost cause. For those who know the law but choose to ignore it because its outdated and stupid its become a lost cause.
Now that the majority of people have decided that copyright law no longer matters it LITERALLY no longer matters. You can't enforce laws that society doesn't choose to follow or believe in. The RIAA will go down swinging, but its a losing battle and the free exchange of information(legal or not) is here to stay.
Farwell RIAA I hardly knew ye.
Then if they are sooo poor, why are they spending their money on these things?
I've seen a number of people use a comparison like this one from further down the line:
[S]houldn't a shoplifter who is 12 years old be treated the same as another 12 year old who essentially is doing the same thing, only online? we tend to forget that music piracy IS a crime. if you were a musician would you like your music to be STOLEN by anybody 12 or 112 years old?
The comparison is not precise. A better comparison would be between file trading, and taking a picture of a piece of copyrighted art. Taking the picture is still a technical violation of copyright, but most people would not think of it as one.
Why is this a better comparison? Because nothing physical has been taken (unlike in shoplifting), and the copy is not a perfect reproduction.
So, I walk up to a painting for sale, and take a picture of it with a digital camera. If I offer this picture on my web site, I am subject to the same laws as a file trader is...
We are the Music Makers, and We are the Dreamers of Dreams...
Isn't that always the way
the RIAA sues a DOG, which was using the nick TopDog123 on the KAZZA file sharing program.
the Dog's owner, had this to say:
"Yeah, my dog likes listening to britney, so I tought her how to download her songs from Kazza"
since the Dog was the only user of the account in question, the RIAA decided to go ahead, and sued the dog for 12 million dollars.
Two weeks later, Britney published a new album titled "Songs for the dogs".
(yes, it's fictional, but it's fitting, isn't it?)
Perhaps RIAA is going for government bailout? The airlines got it after 9/11. There industry is being destroyed by a technology started by the defense department. So why not give RIAA say, 80Billion dollars to keep them afloat. Concessions would be mandatory filtering of ALL PTp traffic, upload caps, etc.
VW what's a VW?
/. commie morons that post on this site.
/. commie morons that post on this site.
IS that a car because I have a brother that sells VW ultra lights. You see he don't have to worry about trade mark infringement because that sense of property has been deemed inappropriate by the
Oh, he stole their advertising jingle and some copy straight off their magazine ads because copyrighted property has been deemed inappropriate by the
So, now people are lured into thinking they are getting name brand quality by his shennanigans and hell, they should know better right?
Man, my discourse might be appreciated as sarcasm by some but your learned sort realizes the primitive nature of my intellect.
Can I be cool like you someday?
Bad analogy. I could definately see people knowing that distributing software is illegal but not be sure about music. Why? Because music gets played on the radio. There is no equivalent for software that I know of. The people in this story paid a fee to kazaa to listen to music, and almost certainly had no idea that what they were doing was any worse than taping songs off of the radio (a practice that is legal, as far as I know). Hell, if all they were doing was playing songs in kazaa's "theater" and searching for new stuff, its possible they had no idea they were sharing the music, as downloaded songs get shared automatically, not after the user specifically oks it.
He is not acusing them of pandering to librel left, but instead as pandering to a political idea, in this case that the RIAA is being heavy handed and mean. IF you want to assign a political party that is being attacked it would be the democrats (albeit very indirectly) with their strong music and movie industry ties.
This is well within fox news's usual spin pattern
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Well, RIAA, congrats. You've just succeeded in educating the masses as to what is at stake. You are ruining peoples life over songs I can hear for free over the radio.
Idiots.
-- $G
Heh, now you're thinking like the Really Ignorant Assholes of America (TM).
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
Did anyone notice that she paid a $29.95 service charge? Sounds like she got screwed twice. Once by some snake-oil KaZaA Gold salesman, and again by the RIAA.
The very people who benefit most from the College are those who would have to remove it.
What, the majority? Yeah, down with the bastards!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"Fuck t3h RIAA!!!1111!!!"
"It isn't illegal."
"It isn't illegal if every one one the planet does it. Several wrongs make a right!"
"It isn't illegal, and I will use what ever abusrd logic and reasoning to justify my actions."
"How dare they go after someone who violated the law!"
"OMG!! Think of the children!"
"She is poor and the RIAA shouldn't sue them. They can barely get by, they can afford to pay for a P2P app, a computer, broadband, etc. You know, essential goods necessary to live and get by."
"It is wrong to bring legal action aginst those who break the law."
"Even though it really isn't the kid they are going after, I will support the media's bias, FUD, lies, and hype about this. As soon as it involves me, I go back to yelling at how bisaed they are and their use of FUD, lies and hype."
"They didn't understand what they were doing, but it still falls into the category of copyright infringement."
Did you know that you can be put in jail for up to 6 months for speeding?
I'm praying to jesus christ almighty that you're stopped for going 1 over, and they throw you in prison.
After all, its still a crime.
No, I'm not kidding. I'm down on my hands and knees now "Dear jesus, make this moron get stopped by a sheriff with a chip on his shoulder and let him mouth off so that he's 'resisting', and gets sent up the river for 3-5. Please jesus, please!'"
At least you did something right, throw the little shitskin niglet in jail..
Less niggers in Section 8 housing using stolen computers and taxpayers $$ on ISP fees to break the law.
Niglets and niggers in general have no business on the internet. All they do is spread filthy nigger ape pictures, hit on White girls and trade nigger rap "music" about killing Whitey and killing cops...
Thanks RIAA, you're my pal now..
One thing just occurred to me -- the RIAA got the name of the p2p user by capturing the IP address of the network node and then subpoenaing the ISP to get the name of the customer using that IP address. Wouldn't you expect that a parent would sign a contract with an ISP (especially since 12-year-olds can't sign contracts), not a 12-year-old? So wouldn't the lawsuit be against the parent, not the 12-year-old? I wonder if the real situation is that the parent is getting sued, and the parent is using the "my kid did it" defense. Am I missing something?
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
It's comments like this that destroy my faith in the human race:
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres. "This is a 12-year-old girl, for crying out loud."
What in the world does being 12 years old and female have to do with the legality of an action? These statements are equivelant:
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal, we have curly hair!"
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal, I have a pet lizard!"
Ignorance of the law is not a defence. Yeah, the RIAA is scum. Yeah, copyright law blows. But, jeez people, what the hell is happening to taking responsibility for your actions.
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
Oh, ok, now I get it. My bad. Thanks for explaining it to me better.
Yup. It's called Downhill Battle. They have some interesting information and links to relevant resources, including a site that will check to see whether a certain album has been released by the RIAA so you can avoid buying it. (Seems like it's down right now, though). Cool stuff.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
...when ASCAP came after a Girl Scout troop for singing Happy Birthday in a public venue - and attempted to collect royalties. - back in the early 1990s.
This sig no verb.
Because by the time she's old enough to have "some high paying technical job" those will only be available in India, Bangladesh, Somalia and Cambodja.
What we need instead of labels and an RIAA is an alternative method of funding and distributing music, completely free of any restrictions of the old system.
/. journal.
We could even make it fair for everyone, by the government giving all artists a small amount of money to start out in exchange for producing a certain number of works. Government patronage brought us many of the classics that have endured centuries. Maybe we can have a musical Renaissance with this.
Read my full idea in my
Don't immediately dismiss this as socialism either. Musicians still have to compete for downloads by making better music than everyone else; this system will just give everyone an equal footing to begin with. One problem I find in capitalism is that old money families have lots of power, while new generations are "punished" because a family in a previous generation was wealthier than theirs. This is fair captialism. Rewards are based only on the quality of the work, and not on the quality of previous work or previous money.
A solution to the problem with music today
You all are missing the point, the RIAA is doing all this lawsuit mumbo jumbo to push their new musical experiment.l
http://noneinc.com/RIAAEM/RIAAEM.htm
How exactly does one sign up for Kazaa ?
Do they mean they downloaded it from some dodgy site that charged for the download ?, or is kazaa actually expecting people to treat it as sharewre and register it, thus giving them a license to run it, but not actually use it for anything ?
Get off it. Downloading/sharing tunes is not copyright theft, and it's not illegal either. It may be an infringement, but that's up to the courts to decide.
Make an example out of her. Hell, might as well hang her mom, too.
For the record, this is sarcasm.
Just how reliable is the NY Post for real news?
This sig no verb.
They said they'd sue anyone, and I doubt that the family can afford attorney's fees against the RIAA, so it really doesn't even matter that Juries don't like it when big companies sue cute little girls, because the thing will never see the inside of hte courtroom.
If they find someone with money or power in their lists, they wont even file a suit.
Remember we dont have access to 'the list', only the people they actualy file against.
They arent that stupid, not to check names out first..
But its a nice thought.. that would end this insanity..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So they mislead you into buying a defective, non-standard product and it is up to you to make them do it right? No, I don't think so. You bought the CD, now download the whole dammed thing out of wherever and let them prove your MP3s were not made by you from your legally purchased CD.
O.K., so this is a bit off-topic, but then again so's this whole thread. Anyway, can anyone recommend good ripper software that works with vinyl? I've got a hugh vinyl collection that I'd like to burn to CDs but the software I've seen all assume that your trying to burn MP3s from CDs.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Just get the public mad at them. If the people wnat change then change will happen. It will happen one of two ways:
1) Boycott. If people get angry and stop buying major label music, they will have no money and go out of bussiness.
2) Legal change. If people get angry and make noise at their congress people, the law will get changed. Congress listens to special interest groups often, but not in the face of an overwhelming demand from their constitutants.
Now I agree, this isn't goign to be the single thing that kills them, but it is another step. The more they look like a bunch of thugs and assholes, the more public resentment and awareness will grow. If they keep at it, it will eventually reach a level sufficient to ensure their downfall.
It also damages their propaganda. They try and make it look like they are being hurt badly by piracy, P2P is used for child porn, etc, etc. then who do they go after? A poor 12-year old girl. Hmmmm, seems to shoot that right to hell.
Oh and if the drop the lawsuit? All the other respondants can use that against them.
they're playing dumb. the odds of someone being dumb enough to pay for 'kazaa gold' or whatever it is... if youre reading this listen carefully. if a clown won a 'lawsuit' against you for $$$, would you pay him? of course not! for fucks sake, the RIAA are a bunch of 60-year old guys running around trying to figure out what this whole 'internet' thing is.
---- oh no - it's the RIAA and their $100000000 fine. I'm gonna take that so seriously...
No. _unwilling_ to respond to market forces.
They had the model--built, debugged, and deployed by someone else.
All they had to do is pull a Microsoft and steal the idea.
gewg
Oh, and that "implied verbal contract" isn't even worth the paper it's written on.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
That's it the only way to solve this is bloodshed!
Death be to the RIAA!
As my mother (and I'm sure your's too) used to say, "if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?"
Does anyone know if the RIAA violated any COPA laws by obtaining and releasing information about a 12 year old? Since we are in an interesting legal free-for-all with DRM, copyright, software patents and various other issues, could there be some way to pin child endangerment charges on the RIAA in this case, based on other poorly written laws? Anyone with a law degree or real understanding of the law care to respond, since I don't really know much about it?
man rtfm
It's a quote of "Jack Handy" from "Saturday Night Live".
example:
"In weightlifting, I don't think sudden, uncontrolled urination should disqualify you." - Jack Handy
-metric
like anyone in their right mind would take these jokers seriously. final judgement: "you have to pay $10000 per song" me: yea...ok.
---- oh no - it's the RIAA and their $100000000 fine. I'm gonna take that so seriously...
Your example shows that the dollar-a-year copyright extension he proposes is the best idea we have left after Sonny Bono & Disney got through with the law.
gewg
"It's not like we were doing anything illegal" and "This is a 12 year old girl, for crying out loud" are two different statements. She's not saying her daughter should be allowed to do anything since she's 12. She's saying: A) She honestly does not know what her child did was illegal. Why should she? She paid $29 for what she thought was the ability to trade files online. Despite RIAA propaganda - their PR spots were not as ominpresent as they claim. They were mostly found online and on MTV. Many, many adults don't watch TV or surf sites like slashdot or Wired News. It's entirely conceivable that this woman thought that paying $29 was all she needed to do to download music.' B) The RIAA is suing a 12 year old girl. That statement is powerful enough to stand on its own.
I am generally against the position the RIAA is going about their "punishments", but this thought just hit me while reading /..
(By the way, if anyone knows, please tell me how the RIAA has the authority to sue someone over someone elses work. Does the artist become a member of the RIAA?)
Anyway... How is distributing a copy of Windows XP any different then distributing Marilyn Manson's latest hit? (Well thats what it's called in my ears.) People say that the RIAA should give up and that sharing music is alright, but what if it was the other way around and swapping of big name software was as rampant (as MP3's). Everyone knows that you can't do that and that is illegal to copy software, but its ok to swap music. Just a thought.
Note that I'm not supporting either side, just had this thought from their side. Thats all.
by the recording companies, one which offers the same product with the same convenience and a _legal status_.
That they didn't, simply shows that their buisness model is outdated and as such they deserve to go out of buisness
--it's not like their clients (the musicians) make any money from their own recordings (entertainment industry bookkeeping practices).
gewg
So you'll testify that you never had anything they claim you did? That'd be a pretty dangerous game, since you'd be going up against perjury if they could prove you're lying (which they could certainly do with ISP logs and whatnot; they can track murders down from 4-month-old bodies at the bottom of lakes, for crying out loud). So now instead of a massive fine you're looking at a much bigger fine since you didn't settle, and likely federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison because now you've committed perjury: a criminal act.
Smart.
Everyone Keeps posting about the $150K / Work Fee. I'm still trying to find out where that comes from, can someone put up a link? Thanks!
I wonder if the 12 year old girls parents could sue the RIAA for making songs with explicit lyrics available to the same little girl?
C'mon you can sue the Port Authority for terrorist flying planes into their twin towers...
you can sue for anything these days don't you know...
The article (it isn't slashdotted at the moment) on the Fox site doesn't contain the spelling error you're having so much fun criticizing. It seems that you've leapt to a conclusion when you should have read the original article to verify it first.
There are plenty of reasons to bash Fox news, this just isn't one of them.
Now seat belts,
In my daily driver, I legally don't wear seat belts! The car was built before seat belt regulations were passed and such regs are not retro-active.
OK, so in my wife's car and any other that has seat belts, I do wear them!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
That's it. I finally can say that I agree with the RIAA and their actions.
All along, I've felt that downloading an MP3 for a song that you'd otherwise have to purchase because you don't already own it was stealing. End of discussion. As long as the RIAA operates within the law, they should be allowed to try and end the theft of their products.
In the back of my mind, I've known that people don't respect copyrights. They don't understand them. They don't care. I'd be willing to say that an overwhelming majority of people today believe they have a right to have a copy of anything IP related -- whether it be a song, a book, or whatever.
To hear a mother say "she's a 12 year old girl!" and claim that she didn't realize they were doing anything wrong because they paid $30 to download all the music they want is just utterly disgusting. I'm not the brightest, but even AT 12 YEARS OLD I KNEW THE DAMN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG and had enough of a brain to realize when something sounded too good to be true.
So I'm officially siding with the RIAA and firmly believe that everyone should start following my seven-step plan:
Because frankly, I'm tired of hearing these excuses...
Here is a link to a list of all the RIAA members. Remember _never_ to buy a CD from any of these labels _EVER_ again.
RIAA members
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
I love ann arbour. BTW, is the arboretum university property?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
How do they know the 12 year old girl was the one on the computer at the time the downloading occured? I'm assuming they only have one Kazaa account for the whole family, so maybe the mom was actually doing it, and throwing it on the daughter to get out of settling it (which i doubt will work)
Tell the RIAA to stop cranking out shit for music and THEN maby people will start buying them.
The RIAA needs to understand that CDs are on the down and out, just like tapes were ten years ago. Evolve or die. Its that simple.
Wow. I mean, WOW. How anyone can say the above without a straight face is STUPIFYING. Gore and his team are the ones who tried to change how the ballots were counted AFTER THE FACT. Get that through your HEADS. If you don't like how its done, change if before hand. But you don't change the rules after the process is finished just becuase you don't like the result. Did your mommy give you what you wanted because you screamed the the rules weren't fair, AFTER you had agreed to clean up your room in exchange for getting to go outside and play? She must have, becuase its the only thing that could possible lead you to believe that Gore graciously accepted the outcome. They and the Florida State Supreme court [in addition to trying to throw out mililtary ballots (SUPER scum move there by the way, by the *gracious* Gore camp)] tried to change the way the votes are counted after the election was over. The Supreme Court said you can NOT do that. They didn't decide the election, they only made the rules in place at the time of the election the rules that would determine the outcome. Maybe your screaming voice worked with mom, but it won't work with the grownups. And we're damn tired of your noise. Grow up.
She should give me oral sex.
I've been over the net today (including /.) and I've seen many places where the general consensus is that people are basically outraged that the RIAA would go after a 12-year old. Society can accept some things but for the most part, children are off limits for this sort of thing. The media may play this up which would be bad news for the RIAA PR department
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
wtf you talking about? the majority doesn't benefit in any way from the electoral college.
This is just disgusting. The RIAA needs to stop.
hi
Ok, The RIAA openenly admits not having any other information on the users but name or what they get from the isp, they said they have no personal info on who is the downloader. I can see that, I dont agree with the suing in the frist place, not this way. However I can see them sending her the lawsuit not knowing she was 12, however upon finding this out..they should leave her alone. I feel if they wish to be taken serious in thier lawsuits, then they should define the image of thier PIRATE better. Such as, can this little girl define P2P ? Can she tell you what a supernode is ? Does she even know what a dat file is ???? or what mp3 stands for ? I doubt it. Lets use some sense here people. I think that we as a group of cyber citizens and Media Munchers, need to atleast step up and agree that this is wrong. It is ILLEGAL TO COPY COPYRIGHTED MEDIA WITH NO OWNERSHIP. however...does a 12 yr old understand these laws ? laws bend for minors...shouldnt they here too ?? the RIAA needs to better define thier target before just shooting thier gun. someones liable to get hurt.
if all else fails...install linux
Oh boooo hooo! - Your tears are going to short out my mp3 player.
Exactly what I was thinking. I think now I'm siding with you as well. I will say it again: Is copying and distributing big name software (e.x. Adobe/Microsoft/Emagic) right? No. Ask anyone and they will say: "Oh you cant copy that. It's illegal!"
If you want to get technical, can you call software an art? I sure know music is considered an art. So essentially they are the same thing. Why can you share and distribute one but not the other. I believe this is the answer to whether or not people should be allowed to share media.
Now whether they already bought it, or not, limited to (1) backup, and all of that other rabble-snabble is kind of ridiculous.
...and some demons are keeping it nice and warm until they get there.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Not that myth.
Laws are a template that should reflect only the most general beliefs of the population in the country in question while being in the most minimal number possible. This does not mean, however, that law and morals will always coincide. Indeed, it is probably better if laws remain minimal and morals fill in the voids and cracks. When our country was established it had a minimal set of laws, no income taxes, and very little debt, which lasted well until the Civil War. Taxes, the number of entities able to collect them, and the number of laws in this country have all increased dramatically over the last 150 years but especially since the end of World War II. So many laws are now on the books that they are starting to seriously contradict themselves, leaving most people at a loss when trying to follow one or the other. Corporations now seek to turn copyrights into property, the RIAA seeks to eliminate internet technologies that threaten their (antiquated) system of product distribution, etc. Our government was founded on the principle that people should have the right to decide for themselves who they do business with and how to live their lives. Who can honestly say that they would not be tempted to perform the same ludicrous actions if they were in the RIAA's position? They are using every tool they can to alter the numerous laws in our government to their favor and keep their business running. If we want to really stpo the RIAA, people in smaller states need to get together and control who they elect to their representative houses and the federal Senate. Someone needs to run on a politically suicidal campaign and at least bring this up in the Senate where they have 6 years to either bring about change or focus enough attention to the issue that others get involved. Most lawmakers are indeed out of touch with the American people, but they get re-(s)elected to their positions because of current campaign finance laws and wealthy contributors. We need to reduce the number of existing laws and ensure that they do not internally contradict themselves if we wish to halt the RIAA's progress against our civil liberties and desire to listen to music on an electronic format.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Downloading or sharing? I thought that RIAA is going after people who copy their bought CDs and share them publicly.
Also I thought there is nothing wrong if I found the file on the web, downloaded it and kept on my disk - there is no any legal disclaimer attached to the file, so how should I know that this file is not for downloading? Maybe it was a free sample or even a piece of a free music, I don't know.
The internet is designed in a way that if I don't break someones password (or hack in another way) then I don't break any law when i download a content from the web. Of course if the content doesn't have any legal warning.
IMHO, I should not do any legal research for EVERY file I download. Instead, the content provider should make sure that their content is legal for downloading and have (if required) any legal warnings. If the content provider failed to do so - RIAA should go after him/her. Not after me.
Hmm, on the other side, if I have found occasionally the music file WITHOUT any legal warning, downloaded it and re-published on my site, then how have I violated any law if did not know any legal nature of the file?
Conclusion: RIAA must go ONLY after original person who ripped off the CD and shared it's content without any legal warning. The rest of the world must defend themselves in the court and if failed change the constitution which would be failed to protect them.
Less is more !
RIAA Sues 12-Year Old Girl
from the what's-a-PR-consultant dept.
Reprise the theme song and roll the credits!
The old truism is that if you look a generation or two back at any big family fortune, you'll find some laws broken...
Vast wealth virtually requires playing fast and loose with the rules of society Case in point--I give you Mr. Gates and his anti-trust difficulties. Or, if you prefer, you could consider the Kennedys and Joe's bootlegging activities.
The mere fact that you get to keep the money (again, consider Mr. Gates or Mr. Kennedy...) doesn't mean that your means of getting it were entirely honorable.
especially given that her address in section 8 housing means that the RIAA lawyers have so much they can take from her as it is.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
I'm not buying a single CD in October. My own personal protest of this ridiculous excercise of power.
I'd love to see everyone on Slashdot follow me on this.
Technically, "copyright theft" would require stealing someone's unpublished manuscript or music, and then registering the copyright under your own name.
I tried it once. I'm now the proud owner of the Dutch translation of "The Langoliers."
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
It's not that minors can't asssume debt, it's that they can't enter into legally binding contracts.
I'm going to say that this is for the most part true, especially contracts that have a debt component. (Debt contracts are uniquely governed from other contracts)
But there are exceptions...the main one I can think of is the driver's license (which is really just a contract.) While most, if not all states, require parental authorization to get a driver's license, that's a new thing related to motor vehicle safety and allowing the parent to have a say concerning whether they want their child to have a license. It used to be that a 16 year old (or sometimes a 14 and a 15 year old) could show up at the DMV and get a license without their parent...even today, the parental authorization is just an authorization (not a consigning), it doesn't actually bind the parent into their child's driver's license contract.
Also, many states have their ages of consent at 15-16...consensual sexual relations can be thought of as a type of contract.
There are other exceptions, I just can't thin of them at the moment.
I believe so. I prefer to toke first, then go there and play frisbee.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
I donated $50 to boycott-riaa.com
I renewed at www.eff.org
I wrote my congressmen and senators
I emailed friends and asked them to do the same.
What did you do today?
How come I can record a song off of the radio, but I can be sued by the RIAA for downloading a .mp3 of that same song?
To me, it seems the end result is the same - I have a recording of a song that I'll get sick of in a months time.
Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.
This statement came from a very different time in history. You could reasonably say this when the entire laws of a state filled just one book, the laws were clear and concise, and rarely changed (I read that as people would cross into a new state, if they were gonna be there for any length of time, they could buy the book of state laws to learn about the new state. But this was 150 years ago, when people really started moving West aggressively.)
Abraham Lincoln taught himself law...in a very short period of time (2 years I believe.)
This doesn't necessarily refute your argument for Mrs. Torres (basic civil/criminal actions) but it does refute others. The bible is 770,000 words, but the IRS income tax code is nearly 7 million...the expectation that the average american know and understand all of the US income tax code is absurd and, thankfully, non-existant. Courts and the IRS tend to be lenient with the complexities of the tax code, as long as it's shown that they weren't purposefully defrauding/evading the system.
Why are independent label cd sales down too? We haven't raised our prices since 97 and our prices were always low compared to most labels.
Reportedly, the suit has been settled with the girl's mother agreeing to pay $2,000.
"Brianna added: 'I am sorry for what I have done. I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love.'"
And with the bad publicity, the mom then has more leverage to negotiate away the fines with the RIAA.
Happy Birthday Copyrighted
While a lot of people have been focusing on the RIAA's most recent doings, I am still writing an alternative to the Happy Birthday song, so I can legally and freely sing a ditty to wish someone Happy Birthday. The story of Happy Birthday shows the extreme end of how ridiculous and corrupt copyrighting music can be. I first became aware of the Happy Birthday copyrights, when a friend pointed out to me that restaurants no longer sang Happy Birthday. Looking into the history of Happy Birthday got me thinking about how we view recorded music. For this little girl Kazaa functioned as radio, something that everyone in the US has taken for granted. This, I believe, is fundamental to understanding why people download music.
Simply put, downloading music is illegal. However, instead of focusing on how they can sue everyone on earth, the RIAA should be looking into why people download instead of buy music.
People around the world have been exposed to free music since the turn of the century. The largest provider of free music has been the radio. Granted the radio pays for the music lists that it aires, which is paid for through advertising revenue. However, the end user does not pay to listen this music, except through listening to ads. People feel the desire to buy copies of this music, so that they can listen to it free of ads and at a higher quality level.
The advent of tape, introduced people to the idea of protecting their investment in music or creating custom mixes through the making of copies. Here is where the whole recording situation became sticky. No longer could the recording industries easily control people's access to high quality music. This problem did not turn out to be a significant issue, especially with the advent of CDs which offered people even higher quality listening.
Nowadays CDs are considered to be overpriced and digital radio stations offer CD quality music. MP3s offer better than FM quality music in a small compact format. Additionally there is more music available now than at any previous point in history. Music trends, largely dictated by radio and MTV, rise and fall faster than people can appreciate them.
This leads me to believe that we should focus on convincing people that their ROI is justified when they buy music. For instance, if you buy a CD, you gain access to a site that will allow you to download a variety of MP3, WMA, etc versions of the music on the CD in varying compressions and sizes, so that you can take your music with you anywhere you go. Make people feel that they are getting something better, by offering HD-CDs. Offer more singles and custom made CDs (pay based upon the song not the album). Offer more low quality MP3 versions of music (FM quality) for free, so people who want to buy an album know if they want to buy all of the tracks. If consumers were offered those options, maybe they wouldn't question the $10-$20 price tag on a CD.
People enjoy music, however if they cannot afford it or do not see the value in buying a CD, they will find a way to access that music. The RIAA cannot sue everyone who uses CDs, but they can change it so that people do not feel that free is better.
. . . . can help put the story in the /. Hall of Fame
C'mon it's for posterity
A lot of these posts raise the question of ethics. I doubt that there is any single person that would be able to define ethics. This is one of those studies in Philosophy, along with Aesthetics, Metaphysics, etc, that raise the classic questions that cannot be answered. Even though many have tried to prove their arguments, questions such as "Is there a god?", "What is thought?" etc.. are still hotly debated. If you think about it though, generally the ethics of a society is decided by the society. In a democracy, this means that the majority decides the rules.
For me, I think that we shouldn't be basing our argument on "ethics" of pirating or copyright enfringement. I definitely think that the majority rules. Apparently there are a couple billion users of Kazaa every day. This seems to be a majority of people out there, who believe either that what they are doing is right, or they know it's "wrong" and still do it. In either case, it's the _majority_ that is deciding to download these songs and thus I think that these copyright laws are not democratic.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
They rapidly announced today that they've agreed to a $2000 settlement, and went so far as to make a nice little public apology and promise to never do it again.
AP Excite News Story
It's just a shame that the family couldn't get help from a high powered lawyer who wanted to make a name for himself in this case. The publicity alone would have been phenomenal. Oh well. The RIAA has won yet another round on their campaign to step all over people.
Londovir
Londovir
I sure will sleep better at night knowing the RIAA is so diligent. Imagine the damage this child could cause. Listening to music with all her 12 year old friends and talking about their favorites will surely cause the capitalist system to crash. Since she obviously does not have any money for them to collect, they will probably take every drop of blood she has.
If you follow this counsel, make sure you erase the ID3 tags at the very least. The RIAA is now establishing provenance by file hash.
This puzzled me a bit. I thought if the CD was ripped digitally, and then encoded with a given mp3 encoder, it should be bit for bit identical with other rips of the same cd with the same encoder and encoder settings? Doesn't seem like this technique would scale to modern, "standardised" ripping packages like WMP9 and iTunes.
Case in point, WMP9 sometimes pulls up album art for Mp3s that have arrived from "outside" its ripping space. Not sure if it's doing it via hash or metadata though.
YLFI
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Fuck the RIAA. Fuck all the huge corporations who want a profit at the cost of anyone who gets in their way. Fuck you for trampling our rights, for poisoning our environment, for corrupting our courts, for buying our media, and for claiming to have the rights of an individual. Your response to online filesharing has convinced me to never buy another CD again. If it hurts the artists eventually, so be it. If it has the net effect of ridding the world of your insane monopoly on MUSIC, then it will be worth it. We will find a better way.
That's it. Nothing gets bought retail unless it's RIAA safe.
I agree that that the above post would be funny if we weren't dealing with a real person... but Brianna is real. I have a request to the /. community: Please watch what you say. Brianna is a real person, with real feelings who for all we know is reading this article right now after she typed her own name in google. Lets try to keep it funny without knocking her position or status.
But I don't, of course, ALWAYS:
Jaywalk.
Creep one mile per hour over the speed limit.
Ignore a stop sign when you could see that it was clear for half a mile either way.
Run my tires 1mm under the tread limit.
Had consensual sex with a 17 year old
etc...
I think the real point is that gross abuse of the concept of 'fair use' is what is rightfully getting people in trouble.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
... in the San Francisco Bay Area which involved installing USD $50,000+ home theatre and multiroom audio systems (i.e. recreation machines), I feel safe in saying you are talking out of your ass. Add to that my work experience as a fueler at a general aviation airport where guys owning multimillion dollar aircraft would fly a couple hours a day a few days a week simply for the fun of it and I'm positive you don't know what you're talking about.
Just come on out to my ranch at Ruby Ridge, Montana. Please wear one of those "Target"(r) T-Shirts. I would like to show you the business side of the 2nd amendment.
They have settled according to MTV link: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1478036/20030909/ index.jhtml?headlines=true
Do you need a website upgrade?
My question is "is there a middle ground?"
Rather, what is the solution that could satisfy both the content creators and the content consumers?
I often hear the argument that you can legally record music off the radio, so therefore downloading MP3's should be legal too. Additionally, it is argued that exposure to music is beneficial to the artist themselves, however, if you download a high quality track, what is the motivator to ever purchase that music legally?
My proposal is to make low-bitrate audio files legally tradeable. I know that I would rather have a 128+ quality file for my library, and if the limit were 96kbs, I could listen and freely trade that lower quality file.
It is a win/win situation. I am able to share/distribute/expose music I like in a format similar in quality to radio recordings, and have an upgrade path for the music that I actually enjoy and want to own.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
No jury would convict her, true. But what the RIAA (and DTV for that mater) is relying on is that 'Joe America' can't AFFORD to defend themselves...but they MIGHT can scrap together ~$2,000.00. The numbers they are asking for are not coincidence.
Phredd - "I have found people tend to take you far less seriously once you start waving your genitals at them..."
Read a bunch of stuff about people who never paid for any music claiming to stop paying for their music.
Read a bunch of stuff from people using everything they can to justify their stealing.
Read a bunch of stuff about how people are ok with violating copyrights unless it affects them.
And mostly read a bunch of BS coming from people like you.
:)
You could argue either way about software being an art, but that is a good point. When you take all the shared libraries out of the picture, I honestly look at the core of my own software writing as a work of art.
However, I don't believe that there's any confusion amongst the people engaging in trading MP3s and the people exchanging software.
In my experience, the average person doesn't view trading software as an issue either. And those who have quite a collection of MP3s typically also have a library of pirated software. There's no difference to these individuals - and I'd wager that the reason is due to an utter lack of respect for and knowledge or understanding of intellectual property.
In the end, it's because people mistakenly associate "ease of copy/distribution" with "the right to do so."
It appears to already have been settled.
I can see it now ... she'll be on Oprah, the Tonight Show, sign movie rights and have a book written about her life and the emotional trauma she suffered. Now who wants to be a millionaire?
Hmm, she didn't hold out for long. But $2,000 is a lot less than those college students prosecuted a few months back for running "napster-like services" from their dorm rooms paid.
Read this AP story for more details.
Here in Canada we pay a surcharge on CDs as well as on the amount of storage in any portable audio device. Ipods, CDRs, mp3 players etc. are all taxed substantially and the proceeds are given to some type of record industry organization.
To me if we are already paying this tax on the music we should be free to download and trade as much as we want. Otherwise we are currently paying a tariff and getting nothing in return.
Ohh the quality of Britneys PR machine... make you cring!
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
No. We all know what's happened. It's the convenient and ubiquitous availability of free, illegally copied music. In this regard the common person has become a criminal, and it is not only ironic, but typically shallow of the common person to feel that his wrongfulness is diminished by the simple fact that so many other people are doing the wrongful deed too.
Those same people now rant about the "insensitivity of the recording industry." Insensitivity, you declare? My god. Take a look at the stuff on your hard drive and show some damned humility. That $1.5 billion per year doesn't just end up in some rich executive's pocket. It employs literally thousands of people...err...it DID employ thousands of people. And those jobs are going fast simply because stealing got so convenient.
So if anybody thinks the RIAA is insensitive, consider that they are trying to protect the disappearing livelihoods of thousands of people, and that the self-serving desire to be groovin' to free tunes is no better conceived or directed than mere masturbation.
It's truly funny to see the most puerile rant in this discussion closing with an admonition to "Grow up".
But that's just typical of the sort of hypocrisy we've come to expect from your sort.
I'm not going to argue the legality of downloading music, I think most of us agree that by the letter of the law it's wrong.
*However* the punishment has to fit the crime, and the reasonable thing for the RIAA to do would have been to send a big nasty cease-and-desist warning letter, *then* release the landsharks if they do not comply. That would be reasonable no matter the age of the 'perp'.
But no, it's about money and scapegoating, not IP.
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
She settled for $2000
Karma: Can there be a void?
.. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=int ernetNews&storyID=3416541
I wish someone would hack/crack the computers of lawyers family because I BET that some of their own family has mp3 files on their computers. Let me see the RIAA spokeshole saying "The files on my daughters computers are all legal!" pleaaaaaaaase
How exactly do they find out who is sharing files or not. The only way I can think of is if they are sharing the files and waiting for people to download them, which in Entrapment and iligial itself, not to mention search and seasure. So they were given permission to do an Illigial act to catch and Illigial act? Who lets these judges be appointed? WTF!!!???
10-12 years in jail ought to teach this young thief that if you want music you should listen to the radio and what that *companies* want you to hear ... not pick and choose songs you want from the Internet.
You should have paid for since haring and listening to music is ILLEGAL - but you didn't so you must pay now. Forced labour fetching coffee and cocaine for record execs (a.k.a. "community service") might be a way to get early parole but you need to do time girly.
C'mon people, we can put the RIAA's stupidity in lights. HoF!
About twenty years ago, on the "Joe's Garage" album liner notes, Frank Zappa opined that since most Americans were too stupid to actually be criminals, they would have to be tricked into performing criminal acts. Yowsah! Yowsah! Yowsah!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
"Gore" and "noble" should definately NOT be mentioned in the annodes of history; he did work under Clinton which I think you would agree was less than noble. Only a stepping stone, son, only a stepping stone. Besides, NO politician is "noble".
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
If there're are any moderators left out there, MOD PARENT UP!
Thanks for writing.
It's about time someone noted the real issue - how this potentially can and is changing our society and legal system. It's never been about the goddam music. It's about a conflict between those with the morals of ancient highwaymen and (high seas) pirates vs. those who would like a free and creative society. Right on.
Aside from the obvious sensationalism, FOX is probably planning on paying for Brianna's case (*cough* settlement *cough*) in exchange for her selling them the story rights for a made-for-TV movie starring Mary Kate and/or Ashley.
Or the account is in her Daughters name since she's the one who uses it. The person who is billed doesn't have to be the same person who's using the account.
It pretty much does have to be in the parent's name. A minor cannot have a contract with an ISP. I suppose though that if the ISP was AOL the 12-year old might have a separate subpoena'able screen name and/or real name that can be linked directly to the traffic involved. (There are Kazaa/etc nicknames too but those don't identify the person at the keyboard too well since no logon authentication is involved.)
This is why law students spend so much time cramming. Can anyone else hope to equal this, well yes, but only if you have a lot of time and a good library.
See my journal, I write things there
So what you are saying is that the wrong people is been prosecuted when they catch copyright infringers. They should go after the people that manufacture and sell duplication equipment (which can be used by as many legit purposes as illegal ones).
P2P is a double edged sword, it can be used legally or illegally. The responsibility to know how to use technology is on the user, of course that if technology companies do not make clear how to use a new tool and legislators don't allow for basic freedoms that are alligned with common sense, then people will find more difficult to make informed decisions about how to legally use technology.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Nice. Just what I'd expect. Call the poster and his post "puerile" while offering no substantive rebuttal to my claims. Thanks for making my point.
So, it's been 4 years since the RIAA last saw any of my money. I wonder how many others have sworn off them.
This might make a good poll idea...
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
a couple of important points 1: you can't sue a 12 year old girl, she is not respondable for her actions. they will sue her mother. 2: i heard somewhere (maybe it was this story or a similar one)that the mother didn't know it was illegal. well as any one who has ever tried to get out of a speeding ticket by claiming you was unaware of the speed limit will know, NOT KNOWING THE LAW IS NO EXCUSE FOR BREAKING IT. 3: its not just the artist that are hurt by you stealing(YES STEALING) music its also the people that surport the artist, everyone from roadies to instrument markers depend on the income made by records sales to make a living.
oh one more thing, someone said that most artist are in it for the love of the music. thats true. my father was one of those people he started touring when he was 14 and continued into his death when he was 50. he made most of his money doing studio work for motown. he didn't get paid alot of money to tour. if he didn't get those royalitees from records he played on, he wouldn't be able to afford to feed me and my mother.
Monkey Hate Cheese
It would seem that technology has removed that choice from them.
It is inevitable. The way the world is moving, if you put information out there into the clear, it *WILL* be copied freely, one way or another.
If you don't like it, tough. Adapt. If I was an artist I suppose I would focus on making my cash on merchandising and live performances and sell CDs close to cost as promotional items.
Intellectual property WILL become irrelevant eventually. It will be painful, but the world is going to have to deal with it.
+++ATH0
I've already complained, and all they would do is suggest that I return my CD for a refund. Fortunately, I have access to a Windows workstation (to play the CD). Also fortunately, all modern soundcards can record whatever they are playing. Presto-chango, CD copy-protection is rendered all but meaningless.
Nothing personal, but I don't tend to bother seeking rational argument with someone when they are shouting in all caps and employing sarcastic rhetorical questions beginning with "did your mommy...?". When you're faced with that level of open hostility you just know there is no point in arguing.