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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."
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,
"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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
This isn't funny, it's entirely too representative. And it's people who pay for the service or think they have to (the majority of internet users) that the RIAA are trying to scare here. They see these lawsuits in the paper, they think they're valid and they sign up for iTunes or something. Or buy the album.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
"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!
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.
I don't think any new laws were passed to enable the RIAA to file copyright infringement suits, and I don't think the majority of citizens download pirated software/music. Could you site a source, please?
Maybe not a "majority", but certainly enough to elect a president.
According to CNN:
Bush received 50,456,169 popular votes.
Gore received 50,996,116 popular votes.
According to yesterday's article in the Washing ton Post (reprinted by Yahoo):
About 57 million Americans use file-sharing services...
I think the winner is pretty clear.
Why not? You buy a stereo once, and get all the free music you want.
You think the average person is aware of business models behind the products and services they receieve on a daily basis?
The mother's quote at the end of the article is priceless. Of COURSE what they were doing is illegal. It's called copyright infringement. Is it theft? Hell no. But it's still illegal. I suspect the RIAA will quietly drop this case and move on to someone else who won't make them look so bad.
Everyone on this site knows it's copyright infringement. But the lines are blurred to the 'average joe'. IF you can listen and watch for free just by buying a radio/tv, why would the internet be any different? You get a FREE web browser with a computer, an have access to a lot of free information (like newspapers that you can just pick up and read at a bookstore/library), why would downloading music be viewed any differently?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
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
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.
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.
"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
Downloading music for free is stealing. The artists who created the music will have no incentive to keep creating music if they know everyone is just going to steal from them.
There is some truth to this. However, big players like clearchannel have traditionally accepted payola from the RIAA to boost a particular's artist play time. In fact, we are at a time when most songs don't get airtime UNLESS riaa pays for them. You could almost say that File sharing services are a modern form of radio (and thus, free advertising). However, this is a control issue. The RIAA can't determine (in advance) which artist get "top downloads", therefore, they sue...
there was a point there somewhere
I was talking about the DMCA. According to the Federal Home Recording act of 1992, all activity done under P2P sharing services would be deemed legal. The FHRA was enacted to lift the burden of mass copying that had occured over the past 20 years as tapes became more popular because gradually, virtually everyone in the US became a criminal by recording a song off the air, recording a concert, copying a tape from a friend, etc. Congress knew calling all of your constituents a bunch of dirty thieves doesn't help you get re-elected. Well, according to the DMCA we're all a bunch of dirty thieves again. Ho hum.
IMHO, the DMCA is a bit like prohibition. Once it was enacted and the entire alcohol industry moved underground and nothing else changed. Congress later realized fighting it was stupid and a waste of time and repealed it.
File sharing has moved from the once semi-legit but mainstream napster to the semi-underground anonymity of gnutella and kazaa. Continuing the witch hunt will only drive people onto FreeNet, where they'll be virtually impossible to catch. The more they dig, the deeper underground it'll go. They can never win.
I'm not condoning any of this, just a prediction of how things will go over the next few years.
I hope you manage to find a way. Teaching your kid that just because something is illegal doesn't mean it is morally wrong is a very important lesson. If people hadn't realized that we'd still have slavery, women wouldn't be allowed to vote, etc.
If you're still having trouble explaining it to the kid, maybe use this as an example: "Jimmy, you know how it's bad to push someone, most of the time? Well, if you see that somebody is about to be run over it is a good idea to push them out of the way. Laws are like that too. Most of the time they're good, but sometimes they're bad. Until you know the difference, it's probably better to think of them all as being good, but when you grow up you'll realize that sometimes they're bad."
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.
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote this Letter from a Birmingham Jail which talks about when breaking some laws is OK.
The question for file-sharers is: at what point does sharing become a valid act of civil disobedience. For the most part, it is clear that we are not there. While I strongly believe that sharing songs, stories, ideas, and information is a natural human right (essentially the right to free speech and the right to use one's own property as one sees fit), I am not sure that sharing 1000s of copies of the latest top 40 hits really makes this point.
Personally I don't like your characterization of file sharing as "stealing". Indeed, the penalties for shoplifting a CD are lesser than those for sharing the information contained on the CD! But while the former directly deprives the store of an actual scarce good (the physical CD), the latter does not (i.e. the record company still "owns" the music and can make all the copies they like).
But as long as there are legal alternatives such as buying non-RIAA-member-produced music, you have the right approach: support alternatives. It is only in an unlikely, but perfectly possible (using "trusted computing" combined with heavy-handed DRM) future that file sharing could become an act of civil disobedience. The requirement would be that it was literally impossible for an individual or non-affiliated entity (e.g. independent record labels) to produce and distribute music, movies, stories, etc etc. However, if that does happen it is still a long way off-- and smart people will support alternatives now, so that such a future will never come about.
I do not have a signature
Try again.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
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
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.
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 : )
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.
People don't download MP3s because they lack money (at least not in all cases). They do it because they like music. They share because they have an excess of available bandwidth (which costs money), storage (which costs money), and actually subscribe to the idea that sharing is good.
The RRIA is alienating music fans because of a misperception that they are losing money due to digital media. They are like SCO, unable to competantly respond to market forces and using legal means to attempt to gain income. These despicable bastards are making me consider a boycott on recordings from their members. I buy (or bought, until the RRIA went evil) a lot of CDs, and don't share MP3s (I don't put Kazaa or other Virus-to-Peer applications on my home computers).
Its time artists took control of their creations before groups like the RRIA eliminate their fans. By the way, I don't include talentless has-been sell-outs like Metallica when I say "artists" ;)
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'