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RIAA Settles With 12-Year-Old Downloader
Murdock037 writes "It looks like the RIAA has rushed to settle with 12-year-old Brianna LaHara, after serving her with a lawsuit on Monday. It looks like her single mother will be paying a $2,000 fine to the RIAA for her daughter's song-swapping, which they had thought was legal. Said Brianna: 'I am sorry for what I have done. I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love.' What a relief this must be for the Rolling Stones."
Ah, yes. The multi-billion dollar company vs. the 12 year old girl who lives in a city housing project. Truly a battle of titans.
Everything I say is a lie...
Disgusting. Totally and completely disgusting.
It would be one thing if the RIAA were to settle, such that $2,000 were donated to a charity. Even that would be a pretty low blow. But actually adding the cash from this girl and her mother to their corporate coffers?
Repeat after me, everyone: I will never buy another CD from the RIAA again. (Since I normally buy about 50 a year, this should even the score on this despicable incident by 2008.)
David Stein, Esq.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
It was very kind of our beloved RIAA to reach such an amicable settlement with this 12-year-old girl's mother. Now 50 Cent will surely be able to afford that ivory backscratcher he has had his eye on.
If Brianna set up a PayPal account to take donations I'd gladly throw her and her mom a few bucks to help cover the cost of RIAA's shakedown.
She might even make a few bucks over the top to buy blank CDRs with.
Trolling is a art,
While I'm against downloading and sharing of music I think that this will really screw the music companies in the long run. One of the first rules of business is not to make your cusotmers your enemy. There is a percentage that only steals and never buys, but a lot of people who download end buying the CD. This may piss them off enough that they may look to other forms of entertainment or look at used CD's.
I donated to www.boycottriaa.com
I renewed my membership to eff.org
I committed to not buying music
And I wrote my representatives
What did you do today?
Do not believe the lies. The RIAA did not settle. The RIAA has achieved complete victory against the file swaping aggressors. Brianna LaHara martyred herself upon our ranks of lawyers. Our dogs will eat her stomach while our women beat her face with their shoes.
Sincerely,
Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf
Minister of Information, RIAA
They're trying to scare us.
That's probably not their goal - well, not their primary goal. Consider this:
I'm increasingly annoyed about the amount of attention that this whole issue is garnering. Notice how little (OK, none) of the public debate is substantive: whether people should be allowed to download music for listening purposes; whether the interests of media providers outweigh the privacy interests of citizens; whether it's fair to allow the RIAA to charge people $15,000 - or even imprison them, or destroy their computers - in defense of fifty-year-old music tracks. It's just assumed that the RIAA has the right to lash out in order to protect its license to Johnny B. Goode.
Even incidents like this are to the RIAA's benefit, because it keeps the issue in the public consciousness. The longer it stays there, the stronger the public presumption that they're fundamentally in their rights, that it's OK for the RIAA to take drastic measures. Hell, just look at the typical responses: "What she did was illegal, but..."
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
This $2000 slap on the wrist, while barely an inconvenience for the family,
yes, $2000 for a single mom with two children living in the projects. more like this is all they had in the checking account.
I'd love to get the list of songs and publish
which artist 'profited' by suing a 12 year
kid.
I bet that would play big with the public.
I'm just waiting for the RIAA to sue some deaf dude. You know it's only a matter of time.
That's why RIAA will continue to "win" these. They carry the big stick.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Apparently you don't understand the following words...
The family lives in a city housing project
Housing projects are typically not the domain of people who can afford $2000 fines. In many cases that amount of money could pay the bills for a few months, or maybe a month, either way it is an awful lot of money. To say that it is a slap on the wrist and that it is barely an inconvinience for them is to really be sitting up in some sort of ivory tower wholly unaware that there are people in this country where $2,000 is a big deal.
I'm sure there will be plenty of threads here along the lines of: "$29.99 for all you can download... come on.... an "honor roll" student thought that a legit deal?"
Honestly, I don't think they really gave it too much thought. I mean, I doubt most non-geek types who do use peer-to-peer file sharing systems give the whole subject more than a passing thought. Though as others have mentioned, I'd be interested to know exactly what kind of volume of music the RIAA claims this 12-year-old girl shared to garner herself one of 200-some-odd lawsuits, supposedly aimed at "top" file-sharers.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
> Even incidents like this are to the RIAA's benefit, because it keeps the issue in the public consciousness. The longer it stays there, the stronger the public presumption that they're fundamentally in their rights, that it's OK for the RIAA to take drastic measures.
Several people have suggested setting up a donation fund for her. If we could get her name and do that, and convince non-Slashdotting music downloaders to do the same, even very modest sums of money would quickly add up to a very large sum, attracting the media's attention: "Geeks Help Poor 12yo Pay RIAA Fine".
Keep it in the news that the RIAA squeezed $2,000 dollars out of a poor pre-teen who thought she had paid for the service to begin with. If they're going to play PR games, there's no reason people who despise them can't do the same thing.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Rest assured, you weren't hurting artists. You were hurting some rich RIAA execuative who likely has billions of dollars to his or her name.
Imagine if the richest man in the world ordered a poor man to pay him a month's salary because the rich man felt his wealth was in jeopardy. Now, imagine this rich man had an army of slaves doing his bidding, who all work to make him money. Doesn't that sound silly? Well, that's what the RIAA.
The RIAA effectively takes music from artists and gives them slave wages for their music. When the RIAA takes music from artists, the artists no longer own it.
Since the RIAA owns the music, there's no way you can hurt the artist by downloading music. Only the RIAA hurts artists. Hopefully, people will keep downloading songs so the RIAA will go away!
Join Tor today!
They have these rights because they donated tons of money to the republican and democratic parties. They bought the congressional votes.
It's interesting to see that the RIAA has such a low opinion of human nature.
I think there's a strong correlation between the way somebody acts, and the way they think others will act. For instance, I know somebody who is more or less a compulsive liar, and I know people who are honest to a fault. The liar is constantly accusing others of fibbing, whereas the more honest people only do so when there's good reason to. The same applies to a broad spectrum of human behaviour.
Anyway, I guess the point I am trying to make is that a comment like that isn't so surprising when it comes from an organisation that sneaks in "works for hire" alterations to the law, goes after children, sues college kids for billions of dollars, and generally acts in appalling ways. People who are of a low human nature expect others to be as well. There's no honour among thieves and all that.
At either the voter registration office or your local gun range. Depending on how much patience and faith in the system you have.
We're going to make information free Mr. Anderson, whether you like it, or not.
They all of the sudden started speaking in polished engligh?
Polished what?
I'm never buying another RIAA-backed CD again. Period. That simple.
I'm a musician. I gig, I play music every day, I record music and I already own a large collection of CDs. Quite honestly, I haven't heard anything in pop music come out in the last five years, besides a very precious few artists, that I've thought was worth the $18 anyway. So it's no big loss to me.
If a new musician comes along whose music I feel I must have, I'll either purchase a CD with a friend and share ownership or I'll employ any of a number of methods available to me to get the music on my hard drive. But since most new music has been utter crap, and it's so rare that I ever hear anything that makes me feel I absolutely must have it at my fingertips, I don't expect this is going to be a big problem for me.
But I do have a big problem with giving another single dime to an industry that fines 12-year-olds in housing projects $2,000 for gay-for-display Britney Spears and nursery rhymes. It's comical, but it's also bullshit, and having been involved with the music industry before I can honestly say it's right in line with their standard operating procedure.
The normal recording contract is roughly 40-60 pages long. By contrast, a typical book publishing contract is 4-12 pages. Typical recording contracts tie up artists for advances, deny artists royalties on new technology media, and itemize costs well into the future of the artists career. The record industry operates like the mafia. So as far as I'm concerned, they can go straight to hell.
Yeah, I'll bet they settled in a day. Because the Brianna story was like the world walking in on the Devil raping a kid, so the RIAA tried to turn it into a finger wagging story.
They suck. I wish them all, to the last of them, the absolutely very worst things in life. Fuck 'em.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
I just downloaded the Fox in Socks mp3...
If they come after me they are in for one hell of a tweetle beetle puddle paddle battle.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Hey, cut them some slack. They spend every work day consorting with record industry types. What do you expect?
Don't feel sorry for this 12 year old. I'm sure people will be sending money to this family on the margins soon, probably much more than $2000. Don't get me wrong, I think they should, and I'll be sending a check for a few bucks when I know an address to send it to. DO feel sorry the six or seventh child they do this to, because they won't have the celebrity of being first that will lead to being bailed out.
I moonlight at a club that plays a lot of live music. Musicians can make a fine living playing live music (or for those who can only make good music in a studio, autograph signings or TV appearances Lip Syncing their hits (ala Britney Spears)). What is the great good done for society having its citizens to spend a huge percentage of their income on music and movies, making a few artists, and more importantly Mega-Media houses, obscenely wealthy? How much better could that money be spent on average? Life without art would be impoverished, but giving recorded music away for free would not end music, nor leave our lives impoverished, nor would all artists starve.
How about sponsoring music you like? How about shareware music? Same for movies. If Spielberg had a list of projects he might produce, given the financial incentive, I would donate to see the project I like produced, then distributed to patrons first who have sponsored it, then offered cheap to non-patrons. Maybe even getting some money back, if the project does really well outside the original patronage. How about $1 HDTV movies over the internet, with a suggested $1-$5 donation per viewer, if they feel they liked what they see? Only quality (OK popular) movies make money past production cost.
I'm all for compensating people fairly for their intellectual property, but I would hardly call most music "intellectual." Granted that's a judgement call, but think of all the scientists and engineers who produce the technology that keeps the 6 billion people on this planet alive, and yet stringing 4 minutes of words together, is what possibly earns somebody millions. Granted not many win that 4 minute lottery, but it does happen, and far more often than the engineer or medical researcher who works his whole life on life saving project gets well compensated. You spoiled-whinny-self-important artists Grow Up, and see what's really important in life. Quit robbing from the poor to give to the rich.
BTW,. Where do I send the check?
Letter To Iran
Ah... how I wish consumers acted as rationally as this.
Do you know what consumers see? They see "Britney Spears CD, $12" and they buy it. They see nothing of the underlying struggle of fair-use rights vs. corporate gluttony, of technology vs. copyright. They will eagerly support a monopoly without care if it keeps feeding them their boy-band fix. Their collective attention span is pitifully short and easily distracted. Just try getting the masses to boycott. The public, in short, is all talk.
Your mother doesn't want to know what copyright is all about; she just wants that new Yanni CD. Your little brother doesn't care that he's feeding a monopoly by buying that 50 Cent CD, and your sister doesn't give a damn that buying the new Justin Timberlake disc is feeding the RIAA's legal-enforcement hit squad. They don't care. They just want their music.
We understand the issues in this struggle, but we are a small minority. You must come to grips with this regrettable fact.
That is why Star Wars is still not on DVD, despite our petition. And that is why the RIAAs don't see the world as we do, and act as we think would be in their best interests. Indeed, if they stopped selling CDs tomorrow and shifted to an online-downloading-per-subscription scheme - even one that's eminently fair and consumer-friendly - you know what the biggest public statement would be? "I don't want to use that Internet thing for music! Where are my CDs?"
(Amazingly, even economists are now coming to grips with the fact that they've overestimated consumer rationalism. The models that they built on such assumptions don't seem to reflect reality... and the hot new trend in economics research is consumer irrationalism. This is not a troll comment - it's an observation by my stepfather, who is a macroeconomist at a local university. This, by the way is good news: I'm hoping that it's the start of a revolution in economic thinking - that consumers can't protect themselves from market consolidation and monopoly abuse... which is why America now has. like, two competitors in every profitable market.)
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Even worse, popular media never brings up the idea that copyright protection extending 70 years past the creator's death just might be a little more than needed to fulfill the original purpose of copyright -- encouraging creators to share their work.
I'd love to see Tom Brokaw discussing the idea that copyright in this country was permitted only because it was feared that the public domain might never benefit from somebody's efforts.
That's the story you never see in popular media. People assume that because something is illegal, it should not be legal. I'd love to see a large consumer group form with the goal of copyright reform -- that would be an organization to which I'd gladly donate money which is currently not being spent on overpriced CDs, and I'd encourage others to do the same.
I'd like to see a website provide a mechanism for meeting and discussing issues with an easy method of donation. Hell, it'd even be a great way for Slashdot to convince more people to join -- perhaps they should donate 50% of membership fees to one or more OSS or consumer-advocacy group which you could select from a list. It'd be a great way to encourage membership ("Pay for Slashdot, support a worthy cause!"), and it would provide exposure to groups which could do great things with a little more funding.
Mmmkay, time for bed.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Fan sponsored music does work.
One of my all time favourite bands Einstuerzende Neubauten recently (well in the last year) launched a project asking for funding for a new album (its production costs and so forth.).
The project Neubauten offered fans the option of sponsoring them. In turn you got access to video feeds of production and other performances. An exclusive CD, sponsor discounts in upcoming tours (yay!) and access to old and rare material as well as a double CD live album free to download.
They got over twice as much sponsorship as they expected. And as a result are doing phase two (another album and a DVD upon sponsorship).
It can work. New means of artistic creation does work. One doesnt need to be tied to the old systems.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie...."
Nimheil
"I don't think she's stupid. In fact I think most people are unaware that this is an illegal activity, especially if they are paying for a service."
One of the arguments I've made all along is that the RIAA has completely failed to educate people on this topic. You're supposed to know what copyright is and how it works to know you can't do that. Is a 12 year old supposed to know that? Is the average Joe even supposed to know? Maybe. But consider this:
- Radio is free. Buy a set, or build your own, and you get music.
- Radio makes money from ad revenue. So radio's not exactly begging you to go buy CDs.
- A logical conclusion can be drawn that the purpose of buying a CD is the convenience of playing a song whenever you want. Nobody ever though of buying a CD as a license to hear the song!
- When you rent a movie, it's spelled out for you in that FBI warning what you can and cannot do with a movie. You can't show it publically, for example. (I remember noticing that in grade school on a rainy day when they decided to show us Star Wars.) CD's have no such warning.
- Computers come with CD-Roms, which are perfect for putting CDs into.
- Blank Audio CD's are sold as audio CDs.
One has to ask, how's the general populace supposed to know what's happening here? How're they supposed to know it's 'wrong'? Why did the RIAA wait until it had blown out of proportion to start all this shit?
If they want my sympathy, they can forget it. At this point, even if they come out with a great MP3 service, I really don't think I can drag myself to get my credit card out. Taking $2,000 from a 12 year old girl who couldn't possibly have known better? And the protestors think Nike is bad?
I am dazzled by the lack of knowledge by "Jerry" (1) The child did not know she was stealing. A website fooled her into thinking she was downloading these songs legally. This is akin to someone setting up a fake checkout in a store. Who would be prosecuted in that case? I would imagine in any court in the land would prosecute the person who put up the fake checkout. She had no intent to break the law, and the website in question had intent to mislead her. (2) In Jerry's opinion appearently there should be an income limit for owning computers. Tell me, how musch should one make before they are "allowed" a computer? How much did this computer cost? Thrift shops regularly sell 300mhz machines for around $100.00 in my area. Is it O.K. for a poor person to spend $100.00 on something that her child will need to gain job skills in the future? Or should poor kids just play with sticks and Boxes? (3)This I find in particularly poor taste: The assumtion that public housing families are all on crack. Sorry buddy, not every poor person is on crack, just like not every rich person is a thief. (4) Finally, how do you know the mother doesn't have a job? The vast majority of assistance recipients do work. (5) Corporate welfare costs American taxpayers 8-10 times more than poor person welfare. Whos robbing us taxpayers? Poor people who NEED the money, or Rich people who use it to eek out another few million? Maybe Jerry should spend some time in the real world instead of in his insulated lifestyle. The American public should be outraged by what the RIAA has done to this family, and I for one willk not buy one more CD until they give this family back their money and issue an apology. I agree that musicians have a right to protect their creative properties, and that companies have the right to make money from products they produce. But the fact is that the record industry is a Dinosaur wallowing in a mud pit. They need to make a product that the public wants to buy instead of using litigation to attempt to make income.