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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.'"
Between this type of scare tactic and the saturation of the P2P networks with garbage files, I think they days of the current generation apps and networks could be numbered. The average file-sharing home user scares fairly easily. I'm not saying these networks will dissapear, but they will cease to be the giant beasts that they are today. I think IRC and new networks like Waste will continue to reign/rise up in the place of the Napster paradigm.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
What's stopping them from asking for $5000, or $10,000, or $50,000?
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Has anyone considered a class action countersuit on behalf of p2p users for harrassment and extortion by the RIAA. This sort of thing was being done by SmartCard readers recently harrassed by DirecTV.
"Where is my mind?"
I think that $3,500 is fair. If they went to court and won that amount, I would consider it fair. But extorting money from a 15 year old girl is just as bad as downloading 1,100 songs, if not much worse.
What is the legal situation for suing for actions of a minor? The article says the family are being sued, not the 15 year old. At what age does a person become liable to be sued directly? If the child is not at home when the "offense" occurs, what then? (E.g. if they music-file-shared on a school computer, is the school liable?)
Another legal question: Say I am about to be sued for everything I own. I liquidate all my assets, go to a casino, and bet the whole lot on a spin of the roulette wheel. If I loose, I'm no worse off (I was going to be bankrupt anyhow), if I win, the winnings pay off the judgement and I still have my money. Effectively I am gambling someone else's money, but I get the winnings. What legal sanctions are there to prevent this?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Oh, and just on a side note... If peer-to-peer networks started encrypting their searches, whether or not it is strong encryption, wouldn't the RIAA have to stop. I believe breaking encryption, or bypassing the encryption could be considered quite illegal via the DMCA. Start using the DMCA against the people who lobbied it into place. The RIAA wouldn't be able to search the network for music. If they did, I believe that that would be bypassing a copy prevention scheme. Especially if it used something like the MD5sum of the executable for the encryption key.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
I think it's more like going to an outside concert and sitting outside the fence without buying a ticket, you still get to listen to them but the experience won't be the same as actually having a good view of the band..etc.
Sharing seems more like setting up a place so people can join you fairly easily as long as they use their own means to get there.
-That may not have made as much sense as I thought it would, I'm going to bed.
Yup -- when George W. made his "with us or against us" threat, I'm afraid that put me against him.
If terrorists ever getting around to blowing up buildings that aren't military- or multinational-related, I might be against them too... but it's pretty clear that neither side has my best interests at heart.
No I dont
Gee - imagine if you will a place where 15 year old girls are NOT as net savy as you or your friends. Imagine that, just for a sec, it is the same place where 15 year old girls think that Brittney Spears is great, and that parents (except Mom sometimes) suck, that thongs are underwear, and pregnancy happens to 'Bad Girls' still. Are you there yet? Imagine, just for a second being 15, when federal laws dont exist, and every program on your computer is fun, and helps you do what you want to do, and imagine for a moment why we dont procecute 15 year olds as adults.
Prettty blissful eh? - Now imagine why these SOB's would lock you down as an adult when no Crimianl Court would ever touch you.
This is her, and even in her parent's world - "What could my daughter be doing on the net that is illeagal? She is no hacker!"
And they are right - why watch your child do something most people feel is right up there with jay-walking? oh, and this assumes that the paremts are more net savvy than the child - NOT.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
"And no, it's not some black and white issue of "she shared music, therefore she must be guilty because the law says so". For one thing, she's a minor."
Not sure where you're going here... do you think minors are, or should be, exempt from copyright law?
"For another, there is the concept of evidence, due process, etc, which seems to be entirely missing from the RIAA's current tactics. Oh wait, that would assume they're a law enforcement agency, which they most certainly aren't, even if they act like one."
The RIAA is following the due process. One does not need to be law enforcement to follow a process set down by law.
Also, after that embarrassing "Usher" incident wherein a university professor was sent a nastygram for having an MP3 in his directory that appeared to be a copyrighted song, you can be sure that the companies the RIAA uses to track offenders are double and triple checking their evidence. It is in their best interest to.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Conversely, if the intent of the legal system is to prevent and redress harm done, those laws have no right to exist until that harm is proven. Laws don't exist in a vacuum, they serve a purpose and must be justified beyond expressing the wish of lobbyists.
I don't know much about the American Leagal System, But if you go by Australan Law, it looks like All the RIAA is trying to do is "Prove" that filesharing is wrong by settling out of court with all of the little guys, then when it's time to move in on the big file sharers, they will have enough precedents to make the cases as short as possible to save more money in the long run.
violence is the court of last resort for the powerless
That's why emperors and kings of the past, people who had nearly unlimited power, used violence at their whim? Violence solves everything. Full, unrestricted violence. Violence is power. It's the two powerless pussies that sit around and "discuss" a "resolution".
The reason why the vast majority of people side with the filesharers instead of the mega-corporations like the RIAA is not because of some David-vs-Goliath underdog syndrome, it's because the RIAA and labels are making money from doing nothing.
Back in the analog days, actual physical copies of works had real value (each copy had real costs associated with it and took time to make), but in the digital world the copy has no value; anybody can make 100s of thousands of copies of a song per day using the most basic features of their computers. Aside from other factors such paying for convenience, supply and demand dictates that copies of works have zero value since the supply is effectively unlimited. Sure, creating the actual song itself required work, but they are trying to sell us the copy not the song itself.
People are simply rejecting the idea that they should pay for nothing, which is why we should change the copyright laws to recognize the basic principle of "no work, no money". People could download songs all they want completely legally as long as they don't make money off of it. If a company wants to use a song in their commercial then they pay the artist/authors for it because otherwise the company is making money from increased sales without doing the work of writing the song (this is the same principle the GPL is founded on). This preserves the author's incentive for creating a song in addition to concerts, selling the rights, fame, and other forms of compensation.
In other words, Digital Copyright should prevent others from making money off your work instead of preventing people from enjoying your work without paying for it.
Just because the RIAA says something doesn't mean it's right. There just isn't anyone with as much clout arguing for relaxation of restrictions, or reduction of prices. However libraries and rental shops have for a long time rented audio/video media.
Libraries buy books and other items for lending, why couldn't a respectable outfit try to do this digitally? Are libraries illegal now?
Certainly there are differences between books and digital media, but there still remains a lot of unexploited potential between Fair Use and the Tradition of Libraries. There are even things called interlibrary loans. And there is value in promoting research and telling people about relevant authors which librarians also do. I'm curious about whether there would be any problem with software client that would let a repository track files, and provide the services that libraries generally do. This service would cover print media, audio and video. It might be free, for profit, nonprofit, tax-supported, members only, a coop, or something else. Hopefully it would be international.
The library would certainly have to pay for its own copies, and it would have to handle only items for which electronic distribution is allowed. But it is also conceivable that through fair use people could register their own music with the library and sign something which says they will not play a given song when it is being played by someone else. Some cryptography may be appropriate, but this is not really so important (except for some signature to identify each file uniquely).
It may sound like there are lots of loopholes for copying but this is true in many other realms. The public does not bear the burden of inventing ways to enable corporations to infringe on their rights. I am not interested in promoting illegal copying but the kinds of money the RIAA talks about are not part of reality as we know it. I believe that if we want to own our own past and future, we must take steps to do so ourselves. This means discussing the subject with professional librarians, publishers, broadcasters, authors and artists. Then bring on the developers and lastly the business people. It doesn't have to make a billion dollars but it should be a useful service for people of all ages.
...I'm working on anonymous filesharing.
Pure blanket hatred of the RIAA and things like this, and a general desire for free psuedonymous speech, too, without the threats that go with it.
Anyone who's interested in actually helping out, and has experience with mixnets, distributed hash tables (especially Kademlia derivatives), trust metrics and routing algorithms, or is just a very good unit tester, drop by IIP #anonymous and ask around.
[Posted via a p2p anonymous proxy chain!]
So how do you get 'damages' off a 12 year old/MINOR, without blackmailing the parent. These are sting/shakedown operations, because they not not dropping it when they discover its a 'minor' This belongs in a childrens courtroom. What if a 'ward of the state' was collared?
I think the right solution is to ban/prohibit minors under the age of 21 from buying CD's, until the law is sorted out. While here, we also need to stop them hiring videos, because of entrapment concerns.
Lastly, someone needs to appraise the value of a crappy lossy MP3 done in a kids bedroom relative to a free FM radio broadcast, relative to the real mycoy on factory pressed blanks. Inferior formats are worth less.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
If somebody actually had the balls to take the RIAA to trial, I really wonder if the RIAA would have a shot at a favorable verdict. They're on the right side of the law, but the law is so unreasonable that I'd bet most jurors would refuse to vote in their favor. I don't know what portion of the jury is needed to render a verdict in a civil trial, but it has to be at least a majority and my bet is that the RIAA couldn't get half of any reasonable jury to find anybody, 15 years old or not, liable for $845,000 in damages (much less $165 million) for this type of offense. Nobody can compel a jury to vote based solely on the law - they're free to find however they want for whatever reason they want AFAIK.
Even without the sharing she I soubt she baught all that many of the CDs.
Clearly some punishment is fair in this case.
3500 dollors may be steep (or not), but the legel alternative would have the price at 1100 dollors,
No one knows whether or not she bought the CDs. 100 CDs is not a huge amount (assuming 11 songs per CD, which is low), though it may be for a 15-year-old. On the other hand, there is no legal alternative. iTunes Music Service is not the same as Kazaa, you're not sharing music there, you can't listen to an album to decide whether or not you want to buy the CD.
I think it's bullshit that if I want to avoid having the RIAA offer me a 'settlement' of several thousand dollars I have to shut off P2P software and have to monitor all outside access to my computer very closely, just because they're afraid that someone else will download some of the several thousand songs on my hard drive. I bet the RIAA wouldn't even bother trying to figure out how many of the songs they actually own, but would just send a bill for the 8000+ songs that are there. Come to think of it, even RIAA artists don't often attribute their copyright to the RIAA or give the RIAA the right to enforce their copyrights.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I don't think that any of us would want OUR work used and shared without our permission, but look at what happens to those who get caught with a black box. You get a fine and you (or your parents) don't get cable under their name for the rest of their lives.
But you aren't paying some rediculous fee for "each program" you watched, or could have watched.
Nope, they slap you with a small fine (not sue you for a huge one and settle if they will look like ogres if they continue). Doesn't the cable industry lose as much money from people stealing cable?
The Problem is the the **AA has found a profitable business model (read SCO) by being the scum suckers we sometimes accuse all lawyers of being (I'm sorry, protector of the record label's right to use creative accounting to screw artists, yet make bank themselves) and until a Congressman's daughter or niece get sued, no one will change the way it works.
Want a creative cracker job that will do some good? Start making the **AA think that governemnt officials and their family are sharing music files. Then let the fun begin. Its like the tobacco industry - as long as government officials are uneffected, or worse profit from the problem, nothing will ever stop it.
In his testimony, [to Congress, RIAA chairman/CEO Mitch] Bainwol urged peer-to-peer network operators to voluntarily implement the following reforms:
...
"The law is clear. Yet the understanding of the law is hazy. Why? In large part it's because the file sharing networks like Kazaa deliberately induce people to break the law," testified Bainwol.
If this is true, the RIAA has a point. Such behavior on the part of the P2P services is hard to justify.
On the other hand, it means the kids using the service according to official RIAA testimony often lack intent to violate laws in general or to redistribute copyrighted material in particular ! The sort of random shakedown of well-intentioned end users (SCO anyone?) that we are now seeing is outrageous and enromously destructive, far worse than a total collapse of the recorded music industry would be.
If I can be assaulted by a squad of corporate attorneys when I think I am minding my own business, I will simply be inclined to avoid using any products whatsover that include any technology invented after about 1910.
If this kind of malicious attorney-goon-squad behavior is legal, it shouldn't be. Now here's a place for a federal law.
mt
Does anyone wonder why publicised cases when RIAA prosecutes underage kids for copyright violations involve extremely young females?
I mean, most sharers (as well as Internet users capable of installing and configuring P2P software) are males. I'd expect the most hit group to be 16-21 years old males.
Or just media are focusing on those few very young girls within 260 people (as stated in the article) sued by the RIAA.
When in doubt, go to the library. - Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Most of your post I agree with in its entirety. However, I do not agree with the comparison of downloaded music to that of warez. Someone says they downloaded a full version "to evaluate it" is full of crap, unless there *IS* no demo version available. If you were wanting to switch from MS Office to another alternative, you would want to try out WordPerfect Suite, Star Office, OpenOffice, etc. But, which ones of those have free demos? I know OpenOffice is free, but to see if the others meet your needs, would you have to purchase a full version to do the testing? (This is just an example, BTW.) Personally, I do download some music. I find smaller, independent artists that I hear on alternative or college radio shows, stuff that is definitely not mainstream, and I get it. If ever I see the band's CD, I would purchase it. Because I have heard what is on that CD and I support that music. However, with music, I *DO* use it for evaluation purposes, since a majority of the CDs out today release pure garbage. When I do purchase the CD, the digital copies are usually gone off my system, since my stereo has 10 times the sound quality of my computer, and I know I am getting guaranteed (usually) sound quality off of my CD as opposed to an MP3. I think the whole point of my argument here is, yes, I think the RIAA is wrong. Their arguments are ridiculous against this number of consumers. Do I think they have a point, though? Definitely. These are copyrighted works. But I pose a question: If an artist under one of the big labels, let us just say Smashing Pumpkins for example, decides to allow their copyrighted materials to be downloaded on Kazaa or other P2P, where is the RIAA argument? Who owns the copyright: the artist, or the label? Exactly who is the RIAA supporting in this case? My only other concern is this: movies, audio, books, etc. all state the copyright code. When we buy movies we get that long copyright code indicating that that article is protected under international copyright law, and yet it is only in the US that these laws are being enforced. The warning states that the FBI will get involved otherwise for violations of the international act. Has anyone heard any stories of the RIAA attempting to go outside of the US jurisdiction, representing the artists they say they represent, and start attempting to obtain damages elsewhere in the world? Just curious.
Given that God is infinite, and the Universe is also infinite, would you like some toast?
I've read a few article on the register discussing how Senators from many states are keeping a close eye on this situation (Sorry.. didn't bookmark the links). Hopefully they will realize sooner than later the tactics are counter productive. Innocent people are being attacked by the **AA. This insanity needs to be stopped.
If the **AA isn't careful, they might find themselves with the same business model SCO is using currently.
It's way to easy for someone to spoof an IP address. Make it look like someone else is using P2P software. You're two links are perfect examples of how the innocent are being falsely accused.
I'm still waiting for a Senators child to be accused of file sharing. The **AA will make a mistake and their scheme will crumble.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com