RIAA Extends Legal Action

shystershep writes "An article at InfoWorld tells how the RIAA 'is filing 41 new lawsuits and sending 90 lawsuit-notification letters this week, adding to the 341 lawsuits filed and 308 notification letters sent since September. The RIAA has settled with 220 file-sharers as a result of lawsuits, lawsuit-notification letters and subpoenas. In addition, 1,054 users have submitted affidavits as part of the RIAA's amnesty program.' The RIAA also claims that its tactics are actually working -- to increase awareness and reduce online piracy."

Comments

Of course...

[GearheadX]

... this is what their records and statistics may claim. And as we all know the RIAA is a bastion of honesty, forthrightness and righteousness.

How many again?

[Bagels]

Considering the number of filesharing users out there, 1,054 takers on the amnesty program is fairly pitiful, actually. What would be more interesting would be the number of people who have quietly dropped off of the networks due to the RIAA's threats... but new arrivals will probably mask any people leaving this way in terms of the overall filesharing "population."

They are working

[Cyberllama]

The number of people on the big file-sharing networks is half of what it was before the law suits. But as kazaa declines, edonkey and bittorrent grow. If they're stated goal is to destroy kazaa, then mission accomplished. But if they want to stop file sharing, they'll have to destroy the internet.

Re:They are working

[dollar70]

There are plenty of other special interest groups working on that too. Software/method patents, copyrights, DRM/Paladium/Longhorn, and the looming H.R.3261 will all work together to ensure that the internet becomes nothing more than the consumer equivelent of an interactive-television commercial.

First, they let the geeks do all the hard work in making it technically possible, then they attract attention to all the bells, whistles and general hype, they solidify the sale with the educational angle, then legislate it into a tasteless substance that no one in their right mind would ever swallow.

But the public will have bought the infrastructure, hook, line, and sinker. It's like watching Jethro Clampet get excited over them fancy city folk fads.

I could do more with a 56K dialup connection on a P120 with 16megs of RAM than I'll be able to do with a Pentium 7, 24Ghz with 16Tb of RAM and a connection speed at twice the speed of light.

Most of the people will be content just to "oooooo" and "aaaaah" the blinky lights.

Go ahead RIAA

[homer_ca]

You might scare people into stopping downloading, but that doesn't mean we'll go back to buying your overpriced CDs. $11.99 is a start. Better yet, try $7.99 just like the old LPs.

Re:Go ahead RIAA

[Fryed]

Better yet, sell things the customers want! They're getting closer to that, at least. iTunes, Napster 2.0, BuyMusic.com (or whatever that other one is), let people buy music on a per-track basis, which is exactly what I want. Sometimes I want a whole album, if it's buy a group I know well enough to be assured I'll like the CD. But I refuse to buy a cd from an artist I don't know that well, because too often I've forked over cash for a cd I thought would be good, but actually only the track that got radio play was any good. As things stand now, I don't buy cds from artists I've only heard one song from before, but with iTunes and friends, I wouldn't mind risking a dollar on a song I hadn't heard before.

As soon as a service appears that will let me, for a good price (99 cents is good, but less is always better), download an mp3 with no restrictions on the number of times I can burn it to cd, copy it to my mp3 player, or copy it to other computers, then I will immediately start buying a lot of music.

Would that be so hard?

Congrats to the RIAA

[Skyshadow]

Their tactics are working all right.. I haven't downloaded one bit of music put out by a major label in the last several months.

Of course, it wasn't really the lawsuits that dissuaded me so much as the utter crap the labels have been putting out. But still, effective tactics are effective tactics. Why, I'll bet they could stop music piracy completely in 2004 if the tunes continue to be as gut-wrenchingly terrible as, say, Britney's last album (or any of those that preceded it, come to think of it. She sure is hot, though).

On a related note, there's an interesting article in the SF Chronicle about how small local bars are getting hit with lawsuits because the bands they hire play covers of copyrighted songs. Wonder how far we are from surgical lobotomies for people who get copyrighted tunes stuck in their heads...

The interesting bit...

[madgeorge]

... comes in another year when piracy is down but so are profits. Funny thing happens when you develop an antagonistic relationship with your customers instead of following the age-old law of supply and demand.

-madgeorge

Re:The interesting bit...

[mOdQuArK!]

Anyone who thinks piracy is a victimless crime doesn't understand economics.

I think most people understand simple economics pretty well. Most people figure that people should get paid for providing goods or services. If the vendors charge too much, people won't buy the product/service. When the buyer receives goods, they own the goods - they can do whatever they want with them. Nice and simple - unlike laws trying to turn the distribution of information into "property".

People should get paid for providing goods or services. I don't see any reason why someone/a company should be paid over and over indefinitely for a single act of creation by anyone who touches the created work. If society (or an organization) wants to encourage creative thought, then it can subsidize such activity by the amount that it thinks such activity is worth.

Great!

[MacDork]

So does this mean they aren't going to be charging me an extra quarter per blank cd now?

Re:It's not nice, but it appears effective

[quistas]

Rather than your point, which is that the RIAA's legal actions may be driving people to buying digitial music, couldn't you also argue that the decrease in p2p activity is due to people finally having access to a number of viable, legitimate, cheap online music outlets?

I'm sure the number of people who stopped pirating music because they could sample it and buy it for cheap on iTunes is pretty significant.

You missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that the lawsuit's are stupid on the part of the RIAA, but why is suing a 12 year old file swapper any worse than suing a 32 year old geek who lives in his parents basement?

Because the purpose of the lawsuits are a public relations war, and every time they fuck up (sue a 12 year old, sue a Mac-owning granny) they shoot themselves in the foot.

Also because they are trying to change the term "piracy" to mean "sharing copyrighted material without paying the piper" away from its original meaning of publishing copyrighted material without a license. Funny, folks don't seem to cotton to equating a 12-year old downloading tracks with a criminal bootleg operation.

I said it before and I'll say it again...

[wrinkledshirt]

The industry fucked up by not taking Napster and using it as a conduit for regular sales.

I know too many people who love good music to risk buying crap at the store that they haven't gotten a proper chance to preview, but let's leave behind the idea that many people treated the MP3s they downloaded as the equivalent of ads when it came to determining what CDs they wanted to buy.

Think on this instead. You're already on Napster, downloading music. You've just found out that you can also buy concert tickets there. Or, there's a neat service that, for 5 bucks, will dump a huge selection of thematically-related songs onto your computer in a conveniently located spot for burning to a CD. Or, there's a spot for getting T-shirts, posters, sweaters, stickers of your favourite band. Or, there's a spot for buying 50c's autobiography or that Rolling Stones concert on DVD. Or, there's a spot that lets you buy the CDs themselves, since sometimes people want the jackets and lyrics and higher-quality music.

Never mind the ad revenue that could be generated by having such a flourishing community that you're at the center of and controlling.

Feel free to add to this list. On top of it all, you put yourself in a situation where you're working with technology, not against it, and you've got GOODWILL going with your customers.

Imagine that.

Re:clear

[turnstyle]

"Actually, I think the message is now "just share with people you can trust, not the whole world".

Between my coworkers and I, we have enough music to last us the rest of the decade."

You may want to reclassify them as "friends" rather than "coworkers" -- you might find that your employer is not inclined to remain your friend if ever confronted with this issue...

Re:clear

[Simonetta]

Actually, I think the message is now "just share with people you can trust, not the whole world".


This is so true. I now have an extra 80 gig hard drive nearly filled with MP3 music that I freely share with my co-workers.

I'll often go to the library and just grab 30 CDs off the shelf, bring them home, and rip them into MP3 (while getting the song titles from CDDB). All lot of titles I haven't heard even once and about 2/3rds I just erase {the '1000 Accordians Play The Beatles' wasn't as good as I thought it would be). But, there's lots of incredible World Music that I would have never known existed without using this method.

In a few years the RIAA will get its wish and people will stop trading MP3 files over the net. They will instead trade 100 gigabyte hard drives each filled with 2000 albums in 192kbps MP3 format with full titles and scanned cover art. With blank 4.7gig DVD disks hovering around $1 each and DVD burners nearing $100 (and sure to be increasing in quality), people will just trade whole genre collections on hard disk and copy the albums they like onto cheap DVDs.

But that's not the real issue. Eventually people will get bored with non-interactive 20th century music frozen into song units and start exploring ways to customize pre-recorded music.

The music industry will be the last to realize that people will actually pay money (some money at least) for music that they can remix at home and change the instrumentation, vocals, levels, and so other parameters. Something like you can do now with General MIDI files and classical music instrument synthesizers.

Sharing with friends/coworkers

[crucini]

Which raises a question. If you were nailed by the RIAA, and forced to choose between a multi-million dollar settlement and betraying your friends/coworkers, which would you choose? Before getting too heroic, remember that life after bankruptcy might not be fun. Do you know how your friends/coworkers would answer the question?

Even if you're a tight-knit secretive ring that knew each other from childhood, all it takes is one ring member participating in p2p.

Re:Lawsuits

[El]

who's the sucker going to be?Obviously: a lawyer... somebody who can do their own legal work for free. I wonder if the RIAA checks first before serving papers?

How to share files and avoid the RIAA, MPAA, etc.

[pherris]

Long story short: Get off the Internet and on your own wireless network (kinda like the old days of BBSs). It's a decent solution considering the low cost of 802.11b cards (both PCMCIA and PCI) and routers. The great difficulty for the "powers that be" to track you down makes this a much better choice than over the 'net. Unless the RIAA/MPAA starts sending out trucks with RF detectors you should be safe. Here's the quick step-by-step:

1. Build yourself a XPC or something that size.
2. Toss in the needed parts including a 200G HD and a PCI 802.11b card.
3. Post notices around the dorm/building/whatever with the SSID and quick instuctions.
4. Enjoy.

While the selection of files in the beginning will be low I'm sure it would take little time for it to become quite varied.

The other solution is to buy a cheap 802.11b router, hook up to the LAN and bury it behind some sheetrock. The campus IT dept could spend years looking for it (if done correctly).

Of course this information is for educational purposes only yada yada yada ...