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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*
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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204? That number sounds familiar...how many people signed those amnesty forms a while back?
A) 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.
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.
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?"
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!
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