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RIAA Threatens More Music-Lovers
Xenographic writes "According to this article at SFGate, the RIAA has warned 204 more people that they are pursuing legal action against them. After the uproar over the last batch of lawsuits, however, they're not (yet) suing the people in question, but intend to allow them to settle out of court, first."
I love music, and I've not been threatened. Maybe they're going after people who violate copyright law. *shocker*
"they're not (yet) suing the people in question, but intend to allow them to settle out of court, first."
is that legal? can you say extortion?
extortion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-storshn)
n.
1. The act or an instance of extorting.
2. Illegal use of one's official position or powers to obtain property, funds, or patronage.
Downhillbattle.org, a music activism site, has set up a defense fund to help those who have been sued pay their legal bills. Slashdotters are always saying that more people should fight the suits, help out those who are.
Cut off their revenue stream by listening to bands that they don't own! You know, bands that would love for you to download their music.
There must be some other way to handle this situation. I know that I was one of those crying "foul play" when the RIAA started (or was rumoured to have started) sabotaging various peer-to-peer services with faked files. But looking back I must admit that that was a rather cool tactic to use. They entered the game and adapted to the existing rules and exploited them. The coolness stopped there, however.
Lawsuits are, in circumstances like these and my opinion, the unfair way out. Using a measure that is not available to both sides. More or less exploiting the legal service because you cannot (or don't want to) compete in any other way. And don't let me get started on copy-protection. Hardly anything has pissed me off as much as when I bought a CD that I couldn't rip and put on my mp3 player. Incidentally that was the last CD I bough. I remember seeing a discussion featuring Chuck D. and Lars Ulrich at the height of the Metallica/Napster controversy. Ulrich's favourite word was "control". And that is the way it is, huh? It's all about control where it should be about respect.
Fans don't agree with the way things are going anymore. Instead of adapting to their wishes you decide to sue them. That is what living in a free country with a free market is all about. The need to adapt is gone when you have the courts on your side.
Hank! White!
wouldn't it be cheaper for them to threaten/subpoena/sue the whole US population as an entity (since everybody with a computer and a little experience does P2P)? who's the US people's representant again, isn't it the govern..... oops, nevermind.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Why doesn't someone just go to court? When I was in college, I had literally nothing they could take from me except for a waterbed and a shitty 486. No way in hell I would have settled. I would have looked for some kind of free representation, or failing that, just represent myself. Even if I lost it would cost them money, and say I had 100 songs they were suing over at $150k each, that's $15 million. How in the world is a broke college student going to pay a $15 million dollar fine? Surely everyone would see it as ludricrous that downloading 100 songs would incur a $15 million dollar fine.
Fucking RIAA. Looks like they've figured out that bullying people under the threat of litigation is a lucrative way of doing business. Reminds me of SCO and those companies that exist solely to buy patents and then try to sue the pants off of people. Isn't there some sort of law against using the threat of expensive litigation to get people to just give you some sort of money? I know settling out of court is legal and all, but it just seems like this is blackmail.
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After the uproar over the last batch of lawsuits, however, they're not (yet) suing the people in question, but intend to allow them to settle out of court, first.
The intention was always to make people settle out of court. Even the RIAA knows people won't stand for hundreds of lives ruined finacially, so they just want to scare some into settling, and more into abandoning p2p.
Oh, and here's a comic on the subject.
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
ok204? That number sounds familiar...how many people signed those amnesty forms a while back?
Quit being cheap little whores. When you engage in sexual relations without benefit of clergy, you're doing so illegal and subject to the laws of your jurisdiction, and you deserve to be killed for it!
By the way, if downloading music is illegal, how many people have been arrested for it? You appear to be confusing the civil proceedings brought by the RIAA with actual criminal cases, which can only be prosecuted by the government. Fact is, in the US anybody can sue anybody for anything -- I could even sue you for being an asshole. The fact that a person has been sued does not in and of itself prove any wrongdoing.
Seriously... they aren't gonna stop music pirates or people who share music.
It is so obvious that music sharing has absolutely no impact on CD sales. If you want proof, look at Outkast who recently released their double CD. Sales SKYROCKETED. That CD was in circulation weeks before it was released.
Look how long the industry's been trying to stop warez and how they claim it hurts the industry. Almost everyone I know has a pirated copy of Windows. Doesn't seem to hurt MS.
Yeah yeah, the hardcore anti-pirates on slashdot will probably keep posting "Good, these criminals deserve it," but in all, even if they do deserve it, it's not going to sway public opinion or fix the problem.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
You have to give people some notice of a lawsuit, even if it's right when you serve them with it. There's nothing wrong with settling out of court, either, so this is almost certainly legal in that regard, unless they find some way to accuse them of barratry (disclaimer: IANAL).
... ]
There are some interesting bits in this regard in the article (yeah, I know, no one reads those, so here are the best bits:)
--
"Our objective here is not to win lawsuits; it is to foster a business environment where legal online music services and bricks-and-mortar retail stores can flourish."
[
The RIAA's letter warns that "ignorance of the law is not a defense. What that means is that it does not matter whether you knew it was illegal. Whether or not you intended to infringe does not matter. If you violate the record companies' copyrights, you will be held liable for damage as a result."
The letter also warns the recipient that deleting infringed songs would be considered destruction of evidence "now that you are aware that a lawsuit may be filed against you."
--
That last bit is particularly interesting. What if they've misidentified people (yet again...) and there AREN'T any files to destroy in the first place? Would they take the non-existance of the infringing files to mean that the person had destroyed them?
Why can't people like you get it through your heads that the only way to change the law is through civil disobediance? If we let them take music away because it's the law then we don't deserve the music, do we?
Candy-Coated Knowledge
In this case, the RIAA is saying "give us a small amount of money (like $2000) or we'll sue you for a lot (like $200 000), and even if you win the case, you'll still need to pay your lawyer $2000 anyways." If any innocents get sued, they'll get shafted no matter what they do. I don't mind the RIAA suing people who infringe copyright law, but I'm worried about the "innocent untill proven guilty" thing not occuring in this case.
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okA) Laws aren't made in heaven.
B) If everyone thought like you do, we would still have seperate-but-equal, India would still be under British control, and abortion would be illegal everywhere.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
When you download copyrighted music, you're doing so illegally and subject to the laws of your jurisdiction.
Have you ever sung "Happy Birthday" in a public place like a restaurant or school? Then you've conducted a public performance of a copyrighted work, probably without permission of the copyright holder, Time Warner. If you turn yourself in now, and give them the names and addresses of everyone else who was singing, they'll probably let you off lightly, if it's your first offense.
Keep in mind that most laws were written hundreds of years ago. Back then, there was no feasible way to catch law-breakers, so the punishment was extreme in order to deter others from doing the same thing.
Now it is becoming possible to track individuals via purchasing habits. Who thinks that terrorists and causers of violent chaos use valid credit cards and real ID?
For suing children, feeble little grandpas, etc.
They'll screen these people they've threatened (giving "generous" out of court settlements to the bad PR cases,) and then sue whoever they think they can get away with - or, their target demographic.
I'm no hypocrite, so I support unrestricted file sharing. However, even with my eyepatch on, I can see that the RIAA members are fighting for their economic survival. P2P may not have had a significant impact on CD sales *YET*, but it absolutely *WILL*. On top of that it will fragment the market and seriously weaken their distribution monopoly, etc. etc.
These are all good things for our culture but bad for the livelihoods of the people in the biz.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Say rather than the RIAA is within their rights, not justified.
Claiming they are justified because there's a law that allows them to do so it merely an appeal to authority and specious.
I wont mince words; although, like others, I welcome an acceptable middle ground, I reject the notion that the RIAA has an absolute right to resort to any tactic to prevent themselves being put out of business.
>It is only illegal to upload copyrighted songs.
If only it were so black and white. If you were correct, it would not be possible for something like sourceforge to exist. It is only illegal to upload copyrighted works if the owner of those rights has not given permission.
Just because someone owns a copyright, does not automatically make it illegal to copy or distribute that work, but it does put the control of that decision in the hands of the holder of the copyright.
My music is copyright, but I'd consider it perfectly ok for it to be distributed however and by whomever would be interested. When the RIAA folks swing their fist, they hit my nose: I do not want to be forced to take some action just to make it OK to distribute my works. If the media folks get their way, it will be that much harder for the person whose work isn't worth much to anyone besides himself. God forbid if I had to pay a fee or register with the State or something, just to make it okay for people to maybe listen to my music. The RIAA would like it that way -- to redefine copyright in a way that everything not expressly permitted is forbidden and severely punishable.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Actually mob rule is the basis of law in america. It just happens to be based on the christian mob. Since we all live in a country that is run by christians it's not considered mob rule, it's just the way it should be. There is a reason things like sodomy, adultery, abortion, and many other non-christian behaviors were (and some still are) illegal for so long. For some reason forcing women to wear cloth from head to toe in a muslim society is backward and wrong but sticking a man in jail for sodomy in texas is the good christian thing to do. The one constant in society is mans intolerance for people not like him. Get enough like minded people together and it stops being wrong and starts being 'just the way it is'.
You want an answer to the piracy problem: Meet half way. It's obvious people want more choices than the century old album, and it's just as obvious that the record companies want to keep their iron fist wrapped around peoples musical outlets as well as their wallets. Neither side is totaly right or wrong. In fact, I'd say both sides are just as stubborn and closed minded. There is some common ground.
Looking at this weeks Best Buy ad you can find the Matrix Reloaded movie on DVD for $14.99, or you can buy the soundtrack for $11.99. Anyone but me see a problem with this? The music, which probably costs less than 10% the cost of the movie to actually make, costs just $3 less in the stores. Also, most of the songs on the soundtrack were already released on the respective band's album.
those that download it are COMMITING A CRIME ENFORCABLE BY THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Really? What law is this?
I was certain that copyright law only covers publication rights, not the recieving of copyrioghted material published by an unauthorized source. Perhaps you could educate me.
I'll agree that those who are making other peoples work available (in any form) without permision are breaking the law, but I doubt that the law also covers the downloaders. Perhaps they could be charged with aiding and abbetting the comitting of a crime, but if that is the case, then why has no-one been charged with this?
Why has no-one been charged with a crime at all? Is it that violations of copyright are not actually criminal acts but rather are civil matters to be disputed between the copyright holder and the unauthorized publisher?
Has the outcome of any of the RIAA lawsuits actually been determined in court? Or have they all been settled out of court? Is it possible that the amount of damages the RIAA is claiming is so large that it would be difficult to substantiate in court? Or that there is no reasonasble method for determining the actual damages? Or possibly that any reasonable method for determining the actual damages (such as the number of actual downloads times the potential revenue from the potential sale of a copy of that particular song) would show that the actual damages are not enough to justify going to court in all but the most extreme cases?
When you download copyrighted music, you're doing so illegally and subject to the laws of your jurisdiction.
Again, I'll agree that uploading music that you do not have distribution or publishing rights for is and should be illegal. But this emphisis on downloading seems a little disengenuous. Could it be that the RIAA wishes to scare people away from the idea of downloading altogether? What about all of the music that is freely available for download or redistribution? Do not the artists who are using music downloads and P2P networks for advertising thier (non-RIAA) music on CDs and thier performances deserve the right to use this means? Is the RIAA perhaps worried that the free distribution of music could impact negatively on thier ability to controll the marketing and distribution of music to the extent that musicians who have not contracted to RIAA studios and labels might be able to win away a portion of the market?
Is it possible that with P2P technology, the web, and with other network technologies (internet radio) that the RIAA and thier associated companies (ClearChannel) might be obsolete and no longer needed by the artsts who wish to make a living from thier art? That sounds like a win for everyone except the RIAA.
Advice to filesharers: Do not distribute the crap purveyed by the RIAA. Use P2P to promote music by atrists that you know, artists that do nott share the product of thier creativity with the RIAA member companies, andartists who are knowingly distributing thier music in this manner in order to promote thier own, privately funded CD sales and performances. There is no longer any need for the media conglomerates, and unless the flow of money into thier coffers is lessened, they will buy congress to ensure that they and thier parent companies (Time-Warner, Disney, CBS, ClearChannel, the other RIAA members and the members of the MPAA, and the Network Broadcast Association) are given the right and the power to own and regulate the internet and networked communications in general. Use the technology to change the culture of music (and other media) consumption.
Wean yourselves and other listeners off of the corporate teat and you'll find that there is sweeter milk to be found elsewhere.
Do not allow the RIAA to spread the idea that all P2P downloads are illegal.
Read, L
You want to protest copywrite laws through civil disobedience? Great, then here's what you do. Share gigabytes of songs, get sued, refuse to pay and go to jail. Do not bitch about how unfair it is, you knew what you where doing and you knew the consequences. Just go quietly to jail and your supporters on the outside can start making "free TyrranzzX tee-shirts".
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
As a copyright holder myself, I must say your proposal steps on MY toes.
See, I want to reserve the right to distribute my music.
I do not want to have to make a choice between distribution and copyright.
Your scheme would put an unreasonable burden on the artist. Some system would have to be put in place so that a copyright holder must take some action in order to specifically allow his work to be distributed or consumed.
That just plain won't work, and such a plan is a dreadful violation of my rights as an artist. Today I enjoy both the right to copyright my work while at the same time allowing that work to be freely distributed, without it costing me anything. Your proposal would certainly have costs associated with it, if it were even manageable at all.
I hope you don't get your way. It would be the end of legality for distribution schemes like the one the Linux kernel uses.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The process of getting permission to arrange a work by someone who might not be living, but is still not PD irks me. It is the reason why good arrangements are hard to come by. Piracy of music by musicians has always been a gray area and cannot be eliminated.
If in future the DMCA makes the legal re-arrangement of music even more difficult than it already is then it spells the death nell to great music. Traditionally it was once a great honour for one musician to pay homage to anothers work! This must continue. The reality of today is that the business aspect of todays POP and SCHLOCK is killing great musicianship.
If the RIAA and ASCAP, BMI etc, etc have their way it will not be too long before they are out in small clubs and concerts looking for people to sue. Here is an example; I take a great tune by the Duke and do a classical guitar arrangement then perform and sent it over the net as an MP3 or OGG or whatever. If this is one of his obscure non mainstream tunes, what is wrong with me popularising this tune?
Obtaining permission to do an arrangement of tunes is so time consuming that it is not even worth trying anymore! It has become a royal pain in the ass. Why? The recent changes to copyright and the fear of God that has been put into orgs like ASCAP etc!
Great music is dying and this is the reason, let us pray.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Joe Haldemann has tried to predict what would happen in such a situation, in The Forever Peace. Basically, he depicts a world where developed countries have gotten ahold of technology (nanoforges) that can produce any object given some very raw materials - put in sand, some metal scraps or ore, some oil or oily plants, along with some digitalized blueprint, and get a computer out. He describes how this technology would completely turn the occidental world into a neo-communist society with some capitalist principles still applied (everyone gets a weekly set of tickets that are used at state-controlled nanoforges).
In such a society, brands don't exist anymore, but there's still a form of intellectual "property": for example one character uses up some leisure-tickets to buy what would be an expensive jewel ring to us. The design belongs to some association of jewellers.
But also of importance is that the nanoforges are very, very closely controlled by the State so that the technology doesn't get leaked to the third-world. In your example, you wouldn't be able to copy your friend's laptop, you'd have to get an official authorization in exchange for a hefty number of "nanoforge tickets". This resembles the type of laws the RIAA/MPAA want to impose on copyrighted works, with them granting the authorizations in exchange for money.
Please excuse the long rambling, it's late here.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
The issue is not necessarily one of piracy, nor lawsuits, but one of a blatent monopoly acting in their own interests and screwing their audence /. to become a great place to go if you were looking for tips on good indie bands. But I NEVER hear talk like that around here.
/. say, there really IS not way for a band to make money outside the record companies, and so bands either go there or die.
4. I'm completely incorect about the nature of the RIAA, and they also own all of the music produced by people who have never signed a contract with any record label. /. don't seem to be the kind that will make them change their mind. Even if Valid, it seems better to fight the RIAA by boycott than by just downloading their songs.
.
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. To me a music lover is someone that buys a nice set of speakers, and listens to music. In contrast to this is those such as yourself who like to support the RIAA by giving the Spice Girls and N-Sync there day in the spotlight and dollar per disk, and could care less that the other $19 is used for suing 12 year olds and other worthless causes that do nothing to further music This makes me think about something I've been wondering about since I first heard the filesharing argument on slashdot (that has only been four years, and It's not really a topic that interests me, so I'm sure I've missed a lot BUT...) When I first heard this argument, seeing as this was then and still is an Open Source Friendly sort of crowd, I expected an Open Source type solution to this problem. The obvious answer to this (to me) would be to simply stop listening to bands that were contracted with RIAA afiliated record labels (presumably all of them). And ONLY listen to groups that release their music freely. (GNU-type Music, as it were). And I expected
Now, I'm NOT a music lover by any serious stretch. I'l listen to the radio in the car, if there is no one to talk to. I have, in my life bought exactly two concert tickets and two albums. Neither of which could I locate right now. So I don't claim to understand either the record industry OR what makes good music.
But, from the outside, it seems that the RIAA isn't really a monopoly. There are thousands of bands out there who do not have record deals, and who jump at any chance to be heard they can. I know that a lot of these bands have music available for download. I alo know (even me) that at least 90% of these bands really suck.
The way I see it, then there are a few possible reasons why people who hate the RIAA still listen to music they at least claim to own.
1. All the good bands are signed to record labels.
2. There are good bands out there but it so much work to find them that it isn't worth doing.
3. Despite what people on
Yes, I know that I left out "Intelectual property is inherently wrong. but that's not the way the people who make the laws around here (here being the U.S. in my case) see it. And the arguments that are floating around on
If number 4 is the case, then the RIAA and it's members really are a big bunch of bad guys and we need to get rid of them. the best way would be for indie bands to get together and sue them for stealing their music.
But, if 1. or 2. are correct, then the record labels are actualy earning their money. not by being musical geniuses, but by doing the work that no one else seems to be doing. Which is to sort out the good bands from the crap. And look, if your mp3 directory is filled up with label bands, wherether you like it or not. that is what you are saying.
If number three is the case, then the record lables are performing the service of being the only financialy effective patrons of the arts out there.
I'm sure that good answers to these points have already been brought up. Like I said, I haven't been following closely. But it would seem to me that, even if they are stupid for doing it, the artists making this music have signed on with the
Boy are you wrong.
First, file serving is not copying. File serving (at least in this context) is a violation of the copyright holder's exclusive right to _distribute_ copies of his work.
Downloading is copying (i.e. making a copy of data from a master stored on the remote server), and and is a violation of the copyright holder's exclusive right to _make copies_.
This is all terribly clear in 17 USC 106, and I suggest that you take a look at it. If you persist in arguing that downloading isn't infringement, please show something to support this claim. But you might want to read the Napster decision by the 9th Circuit, which points out that Napster was liable as a contributory and vicarious infringer for the infringements of its users, which the court says were distribution by uploading users and copying by downloading users.
Just because it is a little harder to go after downloaders, and just because they haven't gone after downloaders yet, that doesn't mean that it's legal.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Transparency - never understood what that means until we were discussing it at work r.e. credit card processing.
OK... Imagine that the internet is a library, but you don't need a library card. What's wrong with that?
Ever hung out with record industry execs? Any idea what these folks are like as people? What do they imagine the internet as?
So actually, the internet as someone who thinks it is a library is not completely correct, it's a little more complicated than that. But on the other hand, the way the music industry folks see the internet is not completely correct either.
What does harm? An individual person that downloads (the personal computer) a file, or the internet as a whole? Neither? Litigiousness? Well, we can't get rid of the internet, because the internet is not the problem. We can't get rid of personal computers, but can we get rid of litigiousness? It's hard enough to spell the darn word.
Litigiousness is the problem. Plain and simple.
I was listening to this album that I like today. Cat Stevens - Foreigner. When I was really young I bought that album at a used record store for 50 cents. It was one of the first albums I ever bought. So of course, I had to buy the CD when I saw it at the record store about two years ago. It's not always available.
Anyway, the CD is almost completely white, with a silver edge around the outside, and the words "Cat Stevens" in missing white so the CD silver shines through, and the name of the album in smaller black letters. A simple, cool look. At the bottom there is this trumpet in a rectangle with the letters A&M beneath it. And just today I thought -- that's kind of silly - such a simple look, but you can't keep the darn label off the artwork. Imagine a Picasso or Jackson Pollack with an art gallery logo stamped on it. It's crazy.On the automobile side, there are engines like the 351 Cleveland - named after the factory it was made at.
It's a "dark" thing - the label the artist is on is AS important as the name of the album, perhaps even more so. The label is the next important thing besides the name of the act. That's why we have this problem. We don't have the "factory logo" stamped on the designer clothes. Just where the clothes were made or where the fabric was imported from. What mill was that cotton made at? Who knows? Who cares?
Popular music is about the labels, to some extent. And our culture is litigious. What we need to do is free music, and we free our culture. When I, as an artist, write a song, I have to worry if maybe I subconciously heard that song somewhere and instead of writing that song, I have to try to make sure that everything I compose is original according to some algorithm. It's extremely crippling - I've tried it. You just have to forget about it. Folk songs, for instance, other cultural treasures, are "open source". Public domain. Row row row the boat. Swing Low. But these things they are suing the people for, it's a different story altogether. That's the problem. It's a closed industry, and the industry is excessively litigious. The ultimate solution to the remaining problems is freedom of speech and a willingness to cooperate.
It's unfortunate that these things are going on. Too many people have died, too many people have suffered, sacrificed, and some very evil people have gotten rich.
When I first heard this argument, seeing as this was then and still is an Open Source Friendly sort of crowd, I expected an Open Source type solution to this problem. The obvious answer to this (to me) would be to simply stop listening to bands that were contracted with RIAA afiliated record labels (presumably all of them). And ONLY listen to groups that release their music freely. (GNU-type Music, as it were). And I expected /. to become a great place to go if you were looking for tips on good indie bands. But I NEVER hear talk like that around here.
There are difficulties in this.
All that said, consider that I am a musician who is attempting to work within a new paradigm for music promotion, but I'm not professionally-oriented. I'd be happy to offer help to any musician who is professionally-oriented.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Nobody owns "Happy Birthday." It's public domain.
o r more info
Why would you assume that? Just 'cause you've heard it sung your whole life?
Did you think that song "just happened"? (SportsNight Reference)
It IS copyright protected - it is NOT in the public domain and now never will be (since Disney has ensured that copyrights will now never expire so they don't lose control over Mickey Mouse). "Happy Birthday" is owned by the estate of Mildred and Patty Hill.
This is also discussed this on the DVD commentary of Futurama - they make up a birthday song to sing at Nibbler's birthday so they don't have to pay to use "Happy Birthday"
If you sing "Happy Birthday", royalties are due (for commercial uses of the song) This is rarely enforced, but that doesn't make it not true.
see http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.htm
f
This is SO educational! -- Kintaro Oe
The issue is not necessarily one of piracy, nor lawsuits, but one of a blatent monopoly acting in their own interests and screwing their audence
In what way is suing someone for infringement "screwing their audience?" If they are using music they purchased, there is no risk whatsoever. If they are not using they purchased, how are they RIAA's audience?
Oh, you mean the audience of persons who like the music but won't or can't pay for it? Tell you what, I agree with you. Tell you another thing, who cares? You want to defend freeloaders and free-riders, fine. But here's the deal, this is their right -- it is also very much the right thing to do.
For years, we have been excoriating RIAA for seeking dumb-as-dirt laws to try to circumvent technology with specialized regulation that would hurt every person for every purpose. Those of us who opposed the legislation fiercely on the ground that it is anticompetitive and will compromise innovation prevailed, but one of the things we noted to do so was this: we observed that the bill isn't necessary because there are ALREADY laws to protect RIAA against music freeloaders, the Copyright Act.
So here is your choice, let them sue the wrongdoing infringeers and let them be, or suck up the fact that your computers in the future are going to have mandatory DRM of a kind that will make you unable to use your own music. One of these is inevitable -- and fighting the RIAA suits against real infringers (other than on grounds of noninfringement or true fair use) is not only irrational, its tactically quite dumb.