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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 $3,500 settlement to avoid these moderate, legally sanctioned damages. As we can hardly forget, the RIAA has already used this technique to settle with a 12 year old. Megan's unsurprising take: 'Yeah, it seems ridiculous.'"
Between this type of scare tactic and the saturation of the P2P networks with garbage files, I think they days of the current generation apps and networks could be numbered. The average file-sharing home user scares fairly easily. I'm not saying these networks will dissapear, but they will cease to be the giant beasts that they are today. I think IRC and new networks like Waste will continue to reign/rise up in the place of the Napster paradigm.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
Every time I read stories like this, I feel an extreme sense of paranoia that the RIAA is going to come busting down my door and demand money for my songs. Then I realize...I turned off file sharing, which makes the penalties MUCH, MUCH less. The penalties for DISTRIBUTING music run about 750$ 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]
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?"
You would think that an organization of, well, music companies would have something better to do than attack individual users for a crime that doesnt really matter. Honestly, shouldn't they be working on techniques to lower the cost of CDs so people, you know, start buying them again? Damn, but the RIAA really pisses me off, which I am sure is a sediment of many here in /. .
Save Sam and Max!
I know I would represent myself under the 'my computer was compromised by Windowz insecurities and I didn't know this was going on' defense?!?!?!
Good God! What's the address, before they take her down?
All kidding aside, ehh. She is sharing illegal files. She got caught. I'm not really seeing the "Shock and Awe" about this news article.
Sig it.
The key to being safe from the RIAA: Don't listen to music owned by the RIAA.
For the past few months (okay, a few years) I was somewhat sympathetic about RIAA's action. Even though I don't like it, it's the only way they know to go about it. Even when they sued a twelve years old, I was hoping it would be one of their "shock" cases... but this just went too far. If they were doing some drastic remodeling of their business model when they sue people, I would still be sympathetic. But now, they just sue, sue and sue and no actice action on how to repair it at the base, their own out-dated business model.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Can you actually sue a minor in the USA? Hell, I'm 20 and I can't drink beer there, but a 15 year old kid can get sued? What the fuck is that?
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
First they sue a 12 year old girl, and now a 15 year old girl. Is their new plan of attack to sue the only portion of their demographic that are still buying CDs?
99.6% off sounds like a deal to me.
Thanks to the dude who moderated this as insightful, I am now locking all of the doors in my house, and am putting on my bullet-proof vest.
Only in America. Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Factory owners terrorizing workers who were unionizing in the early 20th century, or Al Capone. And I seem to remember that the Unions won, and that Capone went to jail.
However, you also have to remember that back then the common people actually had spines. They knew they were probably going to get raped; They didn't bend over and they sure as hell didn't relax and enjoy it.
It's like Marty says in BTTF 1: "If you don't stand up now, he'll walk all over you for the rest of your life!"
And copyright infringement is not theft.
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.
and I'll say it again...I sometimes wonder if they are scratching their heads thinking, "What's the matter? We keep suing out customers, and the fuckers still won't buy our products! What's wrong with them?"
Joe
If at first you don't succeed, lower your standard until you have.
I don't get people around here.
The girl was illegally sharing copyrighted materials. She was one of many who have been contacted.
Slashdot, in a typical tactic of propoganda latches onto one example and drives it home. A 12 year old! A 15 year old!
Meanwhile, no matter how you shake it, they're still doing the legal thing--protecting their copyrighted works! Even Jamie of Slashdot knows what that is about--threatening the daily Slashdot summary site because they are "illegal."
Look, I don't like the RIAA, and I'm doing my best not to support them.
And I think that in terms of customer relations, the RIAA is making a big mistake, which will turn around and bite them in the ass.
And I agree that the RIAA has long overcharged for CDs.
But I also don't download files (or share them) in violation of copyright.
And I'd sue if my copyright were violated. As for instance, if code I'd licensed under the GPL were used in a closed source product in contravention of the GPL.
This is ludicrous, but save your moral indignation for Direct TV's suits against people who purchase legal hardware, or for Belkin and its spam-vertising, or for John Ashcroft's willingness to trample the 4th Amendment.
What the RIAA is doing is stupid and heavy-handed. What the 15 year old did was stupid and illegal. But moral indignation against the RIAA is misplaced.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Not my point, I agree with you.
The only reason this gets press is because it's some BIG SCARY BUSINESS INTEREST sueing a _poor little kid_. These articles get posted because someone wants to enflame the rage of all the illegal file swappers against the RIAA. The RIAA is just following through with there legal right.
There are an awful lot of people who seem to think that if they don't like the law, they'll just ignore it. Then when the law comes back to bite them they get angry that its unfair. Well, maybe they should've lobbied to get the law changed before breaking it!
I'm no fan of the RIAA, they are so stuck in the stone age they don't see a good opportunity staring them in the face. But they are going to do, what they are going to do. And if you don't like it, follow the law or change it.
By offering to settle for less than it will cost to even defend against such a suit, they've pretty much guaranteed that nobody will actually let it go to court. And the people that actually have enough money to fight this just on the principle of the thing have much more to lose if they lose -- so they're likely to settle as well.
Presumably, their purpose is not to make money, or even to punish those they sue ... instead, the idea is to scare the 99.99% of the people out there that they don't sue.
She's not _stealing_ from anyone. She's infringing their copyright.
That is not theft. No matter what the RIAA wants you to believe. Theft is a Criminal act. Copyright infringement is a Civil act. That's why they're suing her and not throwing her in prison.
Her violation is not worth $165 million. Anyone who suggests that it is is a fucking idiot.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
What I'd really like to know is this:
Can she settle the case with the stipulation that the settlement does not consitute an admission of guilt?
If the SEC can settle with Putnam and Morgan Stanley without forcing them to admit wrongdoing after they committed fraud on a huge scale and victimized thousands of innocent people, it seems to me that the RIAA could see its way to giving a 15 year old girl the same courtesy.
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.
Well, you see, I'm not sure about that. In order to get their information about who was sharing they used a modified client on a P2P network. This could quite possibly be considered as trespassing. Also, modifying the client, would be a copyright violation (assuming they didn't write it from scratch)... In either case, I believe they should get a call from the lawyers at Sherman Networks...
According to the Kazaa Media Desktop End User License Agreement you agree not to...
2.1 Transmit or communicate any data that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
If you look at all of a persons songs an then mail them letters, that's an invasion...
2.2 Harm minors in any way;
Sueing ain't benificial....
2.3 Impersonate any person or entity or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
2.9 Interfere with or disrupt the Software;
2.11 Monitor traffic or make search requests in order to accumulate information about individual users;
Do I really need to say anything about this one?...
2.14 Collect or store personal data about other users.
3.2 Except as expressly permitted in this Licence, you agree not to reverse engineer, de-compile, disassemble, alter, duplicate, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense, make copies, create derivative works from, distribute or provide others with the Software in whole or part, transmit or communicate the application over a network.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
Yes, and as to many teenagers, the concept of actions having real consequences seems a little ridiculous too.
Say whatever you will about the RIAA's tactics, this type of reaction from a teenager is hardly the result of an over-aggressive music industry.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I remember most Slashdot posts back when the RIAA was trying to get Napster shut down. They were to the effect, "Napster is just a tool, it can be used to share legitimite things too! Go after the actual offenders, not the tool!" Now the RIAA is going after the actual offenders. Guess the general opinion has changed since those Napster days. I called bullshit back then too, we all knew Napster was all about illegal file-sharing back then. Don't believe me? Go back and look through the Slahdot stories covering those issues, you'll see what I mean.
I'd really like to punch the RIAA right in its bitch mouth.
Then, while it writhes on the sidewalk, I'd turn to the MPAA, and say, "You're next, Nancy."
Then I'd swagger off to Moe's for a Duff.
This mantra is starting to disturb me. In my opinion any law that allows corporations to sue perfectly normal teenagers for hundreds of thousands of dollars is wrong and needs to be changed.
I think it's good to protect ownership of creative content but protecting the right of a company to make a profit by distributing music made by someone else has little to do with any issue of creativity or authorship.
The argument that people are hurting "the artists" by trading music on the internet is extremely weak. Most active musicians make most of their money by playing live shows.
Record companies made their money by distributing music to consumers more cheaply than any alternative means. The cost of buying a CD is factors of magnitude less than the cost of hiring your favorite band. In an age where the distribution of recorded music was difficult this made sense. It no longer makes sense. Most of the cost of recorded music goes to promotion and distribution, but the internet has made promotion and distribution cheap and easy.
It's time for a new business model. Perhaps less music will be recorded if there isn't a profit to be made anymore, but maybe more people will be involved in the creative process.
O new art woe are we.
Your entire argument was weak.
This mantra is starting to disturb me. In my opinion any law that allows corporations to sue perfectly normal teenagers for hundreds of thousands of dollars is wrong and needs to be changed.
Even if those "perfectly normal" teenagers were illegaly distributing copyrighted works knowing full well it is illegal? I still do not understand the leniency around here with regards to just grabbing music without paying for it. I have yet to read a single valid argument for it.
I think it's good to protect ownership of creative content but protecting the right of a company to make a profit by distributing music made by someone else has little to do with any issue of creativity or authorship.
It has to do with ownership. Those companies own the recordings to distribute. That's how they make their money. You seem to be implying it's a-okay to just take copies and not pay for it, for no reason. Would you say the same for warez? How about movies?
The argument that people are hurting "the artists" by trading music on the internet is extremely weak. Most active musicians make most of their money by playing live shows.
Actually, that point is extremely weak. For one, most active musicians do not make that much more money touring live than they do from album sales. Second, you are still hurting the artist--that is still money you are not giving them. Third, if an album doesn't sell well and makes no profit for the label, what do you think happens to that artist? Now you get it.
Record companies made their money by distributing music to consumers more cheaply than any alternative means. The cost of buying a CD is factors of magnitude less than the cost of hiring your favorite band.
This argument has been shot down countless times. The cost of a CD includes the marketing, distribution, recording costs, and tons of other expenses. It's not like the label is supposed to just take the expenses for getting those sales in the first place. They make it up in the sales, as does the band.
In an age where the distribution of recorded music was difficult this made sense. It no longer makes sense. Most of the cost of recorded music goes to promotion and distribution, but the internet has made promotion and distribution cheap and easy.
Then why is it not working? The only instance I've seen is iTunes, and even that is dwindling out. The answer is--free piracy. Advocated by places like Slashdot for some inexplicable reason. Honestly, nobody has ever actually given a morally or legally sound reason. It's always half-baked "culture movement" lectures or other similar excuses.
It's time for a new business model.
People love to say that. "It's time for a new business model. That means I get to take their copyrighted works!"
Perhaps less music will be recorded if there isn't a profit to be made anymore, but maybe more people will be involved in the creative process.
How could more people be involved if less people are recording?
the legal fact of the matter is that they may pursue copyright infringers. It is not her content to distribute
The problem is, folks like the parent like to whine "they mod me down without responding", but really, EVERY thread on the **AA has 500 responses to his/her initial statements. Most posts like the parent get modded down because they insist on whining. "You're all a bunch of thieves!" "See, this is Slashdot hypocrasy!!!" "What if someone stole YOUR code/violated the GPL!".
See, what you and the parent seem to miss, is that most Slashdotters respond to stories like this in the usual fashion, because most of us disagree with the laws as they stand.
We don't have a problem with laws being enforced per se, it's more of a statement of "the laws really, really suck". 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. 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.
Yup, some kid is accused of having copyrighted material on her hard drive. Coming to the RIAA's defense by saying "she's guilty, she's a thief, what they're doing is right!" isn't insightful, it isn't informative, and it sure as hell isn't interesting.
Although in all fairness, I think everything on this issue has already been covered a million times here, so I'm not too sure just what is interesting or informative anymore.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Those companies own the recordings to distribute. That's how they make their money. You seem to be implying it's a-okay to just take copies and not pay for it, for no reason. Would you say the same for warez? How about movies?
Sure. No one ever said that the laws had to be favorable towards their making money. There used to be a thriving industry in patent medicines in this country -- then we created the FDA and it ran all of those snake oil hucksters out of business. This was not a bad thing, despite destroying their ability to make money.
As for why we might want to do this, it's for the same reason. If we thought that the public would be better off being able to copy works (assume that we might merely alter, rather than outright abolish, copyright, e.g. by reducing term lengths) than we would be otherwise, even taking into account the effect that this might have on the creation of works, than frankly we'd be stupid to _not_ do it.
After all, why would you not want to be as best off as possible?
We only grant copyrights in the first place due to a belief that we're better off doing so than we would be if we didn't; certainly through most of history we didn't have copyrights and no one complained.
Given people's attitudes, the increased ease of publishing and creation (e.g. not every movie needs to have a zillion dollar budget -- those may be unsustainable with regards to the laws they need to be worth creating not being justified), etc. the time might be ripe for cutting back on copyright protection in order to make everyone better off than we are right now.
-- 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.
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.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
It's incredible how many people try to justify their use of p2p for sharing copyrighted music. Here's the bottom line. It really does not matter one bit whether it's more like sneaking into a movie theatre than theft, or any other daft analogy you can come up with. It also doesn't matter that the artists/shops/RIAA/whoever is corrupt and evil. Didn't your grandma ever tell you "Two wrongs do not make a right". The absolute bottom line is it results in you gaining something you have no legal or moral right to.
If you dispute that, please explain how this is different from the people who download full version warez under the premise "I need it to fully evaluate it" - despite the existence of a fully or almost fully functional trial version - and having these "evaluations" last.. well.. permanently.
The "Information wants to be free" argument invariably falls down when a person who'll quite glibly throw out that catchphrase suddenly falls quiet when asked to "free" their full address and credit card number.
Finally, I am NOT trying to justify the actions of the RIAA here. I think their behaviour is completely draconian and yet another really bad PR move on their part, but I also think it's somewhat over reacting to paint them as the big mean evil bully picking on the poor little girl for no reason whatsoever. Fact remains, she HAS committed a crime. The only question is whether the punishment is fitting. Personally I would say no, it isn't. It's complete overkill, but that's the ONLY problem I have with the situation here.
Incidentally, for the triggerhappy mods out there - If you really feel you must mod this as troll or flamebait, then go ahead, but please at least think carefully about it first. Troll != Devil's Advocate
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
As I see it, and I have a feeling that the founders of this country might agree, excessive copyright terms steal works from the public domain.
Copyright is supposedly a limited monopoly on distribution of a given work granted by the public in return for the owner's courtesy of sharing their work. This was meant to encourage creators to share their work widely, as it would enrich the public domain when the clock ran out on the limited monopoly.
However, copyright terms have been getting longer and longer. Since the moment distribution of recorded music became commercially possible, new works have stopped entering the public domain.
Add this to the fact that the RIAA does do an incredible job of promoting their own music, but doesn't do such a good job of making it clear that their music is used with permission. Usually the use of music in a movie is mentioned late in the credits, when most of the audience has wandered out. Listening to the radio spew out song after song at no cost to me other than the time spent dealing with (listening to or avoiding) commercials, I hear no legal notices explaining that the songs were used with permission from the relevant parties. Stations have to pause periodically for identification. Perhaps it would clarify to the general public that the music is used with permission if they would pause from time to time in a similar manner to explain whose permission allowed them to play such music and to remind the public that the music is a tightly controlled resource.
When you see a trademark used in print, there's a little symbol used to explain to people that the symbol in question is, indeed, trademarked. The fact that copyrighted works require no similar annotation allows the RIAA to dangle their music in front of our noses before slapping us the minute we start to believe that they're actually giving it to us for free.
All of this has lead to a public which doesn't understand why the radio can redistribute music, but we the people cannot. The situation also leads me to believe that the public is attempting to get a refund for the time-limited monopoly it has granted.
To put it in real-world terms, if I agree to let you borrow my car for a few hours in exchange for you washing it for me, that is a reasonable deal. You have exclusive possession of my car, but I benefit in the end.
However, if you were to try to extend the term beyond hours to days or even weeks without offering me significantly more benefit, I'd definitely reconsider the arrangement.
The RIAA hasn't brought the car back yet, and Congress keeps telling them that they can extend the joyride longer and longer. Decades beyond the death of the creator is too long, and the public is saying that the RIAA needs to wash the damned car and bring it back to the public with whom it belongs.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
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.
This fifteen year old is accused of illegally distributing music and faces a fine of up to 165,000,000 dollars.
Glad to see we have our priorities straight...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Side note - though I agree with your post. Neither example you cited are legal.
Time-shifting/format-shifting for personal use is legal and protected, but not distribution - which both of your examples include. You can record from TV on a VCR or TiVo just fine, and watch it at your leisure. However, you can't give that recording away, even to a friend (they could come to your place to watch it with you, and it's a grey area as to whether it's a 'public showing' or not, but you'd probably be able to argue it wasn't).
Nonetheless, since your friend could legally record the show himself, and since tapes have no source watermark, there's no way to prove, once he has it, that he didn't record it himself...
This is the same reason why possession of MP3s is perfectly legal. However, the distribution of them isn't. In every case, the RIAA is going after uploaders - because that's the only type of infringement they can prove.
-T
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