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RIAA Threatens 15-Year-Old
MunchMunch writes "It looks like the RIAA is still going after teenagers--this time, 15-year old Megan Dickinson was caught sharing 1,100 files. At the maximum statutory damages for copyright infringement, this makes Megan's liability at least $825,000, at most a mere $165,000,000. Naturally, the RIAA benevolently offered a $3,500 settlement to avoid these moderate, legally sanctioned damages. As we can hardly forget, the RIAA has already used this technique to settle with a 12 year old. Megan's unsurprising take: 'Yeah, it seems ridiculous.'"
Every time I read stories like this, I feel an extreme sense of paranoia that the RIAA is going to come busting down my door and demand money for my songs. Then I realize...I turned off file sharing, which makes the penalties MUCH, MUCH less. The penalties for DISTRIBUTING music run about 750$ per file. The penalties for downloading music run about 99c/file (You just have to reimburse them for the cost of buying), under Title 17, Chapter 5, S504, b. If bad comes to worst, I'll sort through my selection of 400 some-odd files, count out how many are indie or not coverred by the RIAA, which will be around 300, and then pay them their $1,000 and be on my way, having beaten the music industry. Then I realize once again, they're not coming for me because I don't use FastTrack. [Note, IANAL]
What's the saying? Never cost anyone more than it would cost to have you killed :)
No, you can't sue a minor, but then again the minor doesn't own the computer, does she? They're suing her parents, the actual owners of the computer, and as far as the law is concerned, the infringers.
read 504(a)(1) and (2) ... the plaintiff is entitles to ask either for actual damages OR statutory damages. In your case you can bet they'll go for statutory. If you've got 300 infringements then you're paying between 750 and 30,000 per.
any time before final judgment the plaintiff can ask for statutory damages.
if you were to make that argument in court the riaa lawyer would chuckle and say something to the effect of "thanks for playing, game over." and then you'd get the hose of justice where i'm sure you don't want it.
Theft is a Criminal act. Copyright infringement is a Civil act.
True, but copyright infringement is also a crime (17 USC 506).
Her violation is not worth $165 million. Anyone who suggests that it is is a fucking idiot.
It took half of Congress to enact a law that provided for such damages. You just called at least half of Congress "fucking idiots." Not that I necessarily disagree *cough*Bono Act*cough*DMCA*cough*.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Good point about the garbage files now ubiquitous on the P2P networks.The production companies and record labels are behind this . The problem is that the software programmers are hard to get a hold of . All you really need to do is allow people to sample the video/audio and vote on it. Kind of like moderation here.
My question is was this a Kazaa P2P app ? If it was then whats all this talk from Kazaa about protecting peoples IP numbers. Doesn't sound like its working.
Maybe its time for earthstation5 filesharing program
Or how about freenet ? No. It's still too slow and only has one developer. maybe someday.
The P2P filesharing programs seem to be behind the curve in protecting identies.
Then you would be wrong.
Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Svc., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).
In sum, authors do not have a right to the fruits of their labor; they have a right to whatever Congress, on behalf of the public, is able to give them and is in fact given to them.
Labor isn't enough to justify a copyright grant. There has to be more, and in fact we could always opt not to grant protection at all. Certainly we have a history of that -- it was a long time before art, music, performances, etc. could be copyrighted.
-- 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.
Or there's Ross Plank who was accused of being a big trader of latin music. Except, he doesn't speak spanish, and doesn't particularily like latin music anyway.
The problem with all of this is, the RIAA is bringing civil lawsuits against these people, which means you can either hire a lawyer, which will cost you more than the settlement, or you can just pay the settlement. And guess what! You're not even "innocent until proven guilty" in a civil trial. All the RIAA needs to prove is "more likely than not".
We have other names for this kind of behaviour like extortion. Do you think most people can afford skip work to appear in court for four or more months, and pay a lawyer to defend them? It's easy to get people to settle when the cost of fighting it would break them. It's truely a sad system, when accepting a guilty verdict is cheaper than fighting for your innocence.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
I, like a minority of /. readers, totally agree that downloading music is illegal. However, a reasonably intelligent computer-using friend of mine told me she wasn't going to start using the iTunes Music Store, because it was probably cheaper to keep using Limewire which only costs her $20/year. I quickly explained to her that the $20 only covered the use of the software and that it didn't make it legal to download music. She was VERY surprised to learn that and I was VERY surprised that she didn't realize it.
However, most people don't "get it" like we do and still need to have it occasionally explained to them more fully. Not that she is absolved of any responsibility, as I'm sure the fine print makes this all very clear, but there can be mitigating circumstances.
Just my $0.02.
What you are missing is in the US, anyone has the right to sue anyone else. Yes, the RIAA can sue these people and they will have to go to court and defend themsleves. If they are innocent, they will have their day in court and the case will be thrown out. They can also sue the RIAA if they want. They can then sue them for harassing them. OR stealing their initials. Or anything else they want. And the RIAA will have to go and defend themselves in court. This happens daily with many corporations. That is the way the system works. The RIAA isn't abusing any system by suing people, they are using the system in the way it was designed. If you have a grievance you take it to court so it can be decided.
What exactly are the alternatives you propose if the current system is so bad? Should we just allow anyone to take the IP of anyone they want? Or just individuals can take the IP of corps and do what they want? Should copyright violation be a criminal charge to avoid the "errors" of civil court?
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
With the current business model in the US, music sharing/trading does potentially hurt artist revenues. It sucks, and needs to change.
Most active musicians make most of their money by playing live shows. Wrong. In the US Musicians can make a decent living from live show ticket sales, percentage of liquor sales, and merchandise sales, but the real money is in royalty payments from performances, recordings, and of course, music sales. A good album release keeps paying the artist without him doing any work so long as the album is bought or music is used commercially (among other things).
Royalty payments is big money in the music industry, and this is why musicians can get so obsessed with impressing A&R reps to hopefully get signed on to a major label. These labels provide capital and assist with marketing and distribution to wide national and global audiences, something that is difficult for an artist to do on his own. Now there is no rule saying that artists can't make money through performances or other creative means. Unfortunately, and no offense intended, musicians generally aren't savvy businessmen and as much as the "system" is so crappy (odds are less than 1% of getting a record deal even after catching an A&R rep's attention) they tend to see no other way.
The solution to all this has nothing to do with the Internet, mp3s, or any file sharing technology. Even iTunes isn't too much of a revolution -- it's just another channel for music distribution that happens to play nice with both audiences and record labels. A real change would involve providing complete and available alternatives for (talented) musicians to sustain themselves while still exploring and sharing their musical universes.
Nuff said...this is already about to spill into another discussion altogether.
So guilt or innocence has nothing to do with the outcome for most, they'll pay the fine because it's cheaper and the RIAA will rack up another notch in it's legal belt.
Because what you mentioned is not entrapment. Entrapment is the inducment of an innocent person to commit a crime that would otherwise not have committed the crime if not for the inducement. Suzy Downloader is still downloading stuff off kazaa regardless if the RIAA put it there or not. Entrapment isn't putting up bogus mp3s on Kazaa and suing people that download them. Entrapment would be putting links to download kazaa on the riaa website, endorsing kazaa publicly, and then suing people for using kazaa to download songs. By the way, I think, and I could be wrong, entrapment is a defense to criminal charges, not to civil suits, so I don't think it would apply here (there may be a tort equivalent of entrapment. I simply don't know). But IANAL, YMMV, YADDA YADDA YADDA
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
I think you've hit the exact problem with these laws right on their collective heads. There's no way for the defendant to be considered innocent until they hire a lawyer. So therefore the burden of proof, which was thought to be something the prosecution had to deal with, is now on the defendant. They have to fight and pay a LOT of money in order to prove to the judge what they knew all along. This isn't right and it certainly isn't civil. Copyright law, as it stands today, is purely in the interest of corporate political donors.
If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
Go to the RIAA Radar page. Look at their top 100 non-RIAA albums. I'm sure you've heard of some of these artists... Warren Zevon ('The Wind' has been #1 on their chart since it was released!), Brian Setzer, Natalie Merchant, Jimmy Buffet, Boz Scaggs, Simply Red, and more.
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