RIAA Sued For Amnesty Offer

wo1verin3 writes "CNET News is reporting that the RIAA is being sued because of 'Clean Slate' filesharing amnesty program that was announced on Monday. 'Clean Slate' allows people to (supposedly) avoid legal action by stepping forward and forfeiting any illegally traded songs. The suit, filed in the Marin Superior Court of California, charges that the RIAA's program is deceptive and fraudulent business practice." The suit claims that the amnesty is "designed to induce members of the general public... to incriminate themselves... while (receiving)... no legally binding release of claims", a statement the EFF also agrees with.

Comments

Re: Try Again

[shweazel]

> They never claim you're clear from prosecution.
> Merely free of procescution from the RIAA.

From the article:

"The RIAA's legal document does not even prevent RIAA members from suing."

Links to Legal Downloads at Kuro5hin

[MichaelCrawford]

Now on the front page at Kuro5hin, my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.

You don't need to worry about getting sued by the Recording Industry Assocation of America or arrested by the FBI if you download legal music. Many independent and unsigned musicians offer downloads of their music in hopes of attracting more fans. Here's some music from my friends The Divine Maggees, Oliver Brown and Rick Walker's Loop.pooL.

If everyone started downloading legal music instead of violating copyright with the file sharing programs, we would make short work of the RIAA, because people would start buying CDs directly from the artists and seeing their shows instead of enriching the major labels by buying CDs from the bands the labels have chosen for us to listen to. The RIAA would also have no cause to complain - these music downloads do not infringe copyright because the artists give you permission to download them.

Please copy and distribute it according to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.

Thank you for your attention.

Re:Links to Legal Downloads at Kuro5hin

[Oscar_Wilde]

The article mentions the, IMO, very interesting iRate Radio project.

To quote the kuro5hin article:

iRATE radio is a collaborative filtering client/server mp3 player/downloader. The iRATE server has a large database of music. You rate the tracks and it uses your ratings and other peoples to guess what you'll like. The tracks are downloaded from Web sites which allow free downloads of their music.

As of July 2003, the iRATE server has 46,000 tracks registered.

There are some screenshots for you all to look at.

Violation of law in Canada

[yamla]

I am well aware that the RIAA is a U.S. corporation (or organisation, not sure which). However, had they issued their immunity offer in Canada, they would be breaking the law. Section 143, Advertising reward and immunity. Basically, nobody (including police officiers, though the law states 'Every one', not 'every officer') can offer a 'no questions[...] asked' advertisement whereby if you return something that has been stolen (and the RIAA would have to argue that the MP3s have been stolen, by definition), no 'interference with or inquiry about the person' (i.e. charges) will be made.

I am rather surprised that this is allowed in the U.S., assuming the RIAA really isn't committing a criminal act there.

Re:Violation of law in Canada

[GoofyBoy]

The Canadian version of RIAA is pretty easy compaired to the US.

None of the suits involve Canadians and the Canadian Recording Industry Association, CRIA, says it has no plans to launch similar legal action here.

Another quote to ease the minds of Canadians;
Canadian legal experts say similar suits would be harder to win here mainly because Canada's copyright law permits people to make copies of music for personal use. A levy is included in the price of CDs which is supposed to cover royalties for copying.

Plus your new $20 looks pretty damned ugly!

Re:Try again

[Kunta Kinte]

Ommision of information isn't a crime.

You've never heard of "lying by omision" or a "lie of omission"?

In many, many, circumstances omitting important information is a crime.

At any rate, the plaintiff does have a valid argument, if they go in the direction that the RIAA's intent was to mislead. The strength or validity of this argument is up to the courts to decide.

Re:Try again

[bigberk]

They never claim you're clear from prosecution. Merely free of procescution from the RIAA. Law enforcment does this type of thing all the time.

You're right, and this is why in general you should never reveal any information that incriminates yourself without advice from a lawyer. If anyone ever presses you into admitting guilt, something is awry.

Reminds me of a recent experience one of my friends had. Police had found some pot in his dorm room, and a cop asked my friend, "off the record, why is a good guy like you involved in drugs? just between you and me buddy". My friend revealed too much information (i.e. admission of ownership) at this point, and he got in trouble for it. (Note: he's in Canada so he didn't get in any real trouble).

Admit nothing. With P2P I really don't even think sharing music files I own is illegal in the first place. The RIAA is pressing hard to impress on people a sense of guilt for wrongdoing; people are not necessarily guilty of breaking the law by using P2P apps.

Re:"Amnesty" is essentially IMPOSSIBLE to enforce

[LostCluster]

You're getting your legal terms confused. It's easy to make an out-of-court settlement for a pending civil claim, even if the claim hasn't even made it to the point of a lawsuit. There are certain things you can't waive before they happen (such as a claim for wrongful death for a deliberate killing) but that's an exception to the general rule

What's impossible is for the RIAA to grant immunity from a criminal prosecution, only the government can do that. Just like a rape victim that tries to pull out of testifying at the trial, the government can still go forward with a prosecution even if the victim of the crime doesn't want to press the charges.

Cleanslate Links (not slashdotted yet)

[YouAreNotTheBest]

Program Details Affidavit Details

Re:Not to mention

[fucksl4shd0t]

Who are the member companies of RIAA and how do I stop supporting them?

The page was down, but this is Google's cache of the RIAA members page. I was surprised there were so many. I was further surprised that Sanctuary was one of them. Now I wish I hadn't have bought the new Anthrax CD. Gonna have to stop buying Anthrax, now. :(

Boycott RIAA is a website that talks about boycotting them. I haven't read through the website myself, I've just been doing my own independent thing.

RIAA Radar is a searchable database to see if an artist is on an RIAA label. They also have a javascript bookmarklet that will tell you when an artist is RIAA while you're on Amazon.