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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."
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.
My new catch phrase is: "I NEED A NEW CATCH PHRASE, BABY!"
So, has anyone that they have sued actually decided not to settle and are mounting a vigorous defence? Has anything actually made it to court yet, or is it still exclusively a scare tactic?
Why should I pay for music? Musicians don't deserve money. They should get a regular job like everyone else. Why should I support their habit? If they want to make music for me to listen then they should. If they want to spend $10,000 on equipment for a home studio, that's their problem. MP3 downloading is the best thing that ever happened to the internet. I don't spend a single penny on music. I sit and copy music all day. I dance, It makes me feel good, it makes me sad, happy and most important.... it's free. No compensation for the person that made it. Who gives a shit if the guy learned to play piano for 10 years or his parents sacrificed to get him a guitar. It's not my problem! I work at a Mall and I get paid for racking clothes. I get a paycheck every week! I would have to be stupid to work for no money! Who give a shit if his dream was to be a composer..... mp3 downloading is his problem, not mine. Besides, for the first time in my life, I feel like I have the power to screw someone over!!!!! One thing that I do feel will eventually happen is that no one is going to look at music as a carrer. people are realizing that you will never be able to make any money from music. I accept the fact that independent and small record companies are going broke and shutting down. I download all the shit I want and no one gets a damn penny from my pocket!!!!!!!!!!!
P.S. I'm a musican and I lost my hard work to illegal mp3 downloads. I sold only 400 CDs and my music was downloaded thousands of times and is all over mp3 sites. I give up....I'm $10,000 in debt and everyone is enjoying my creations.......this was my thanks. It's not the Major labels that are being killed, it's people like me. Cockroaches are the last to die.
Ask yourself this question.
What is you went to work for several months and when it was payday, your boss said "Thanks for your contribution! I don't think you deserve any money! Bye!" How would you feel and what would you do? Would you support his position or would you support your right to be paid for your work?
How many people will have to have their Internet use watched in order to generate a meaningful sample?
If the sampling is truly anonymous, how can it prevent cheating?
Will 'offensive' works be excluded? If they are, what is the impact on Free-Speech?
Will such bureaucratic governmental (or quasi-governmental) control over the arts really be an improvement?
I've written some about "compulsory licensing" here.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Are they still only going after people on the Kazza network? It would make sense for them to do this, because most people use Kazza, because there too lazy to learn to use anything else. Imagine if everyone who used Kazza started leeching 24/7 from news groups. Then the RIAA would have something to worry about...
Why should any of those people (or things) be immune from legal action simply for the reasons listed.
Are you saying it's okay to pirate music if you register your account in the name of a man who's been in a coma since 1972?
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?
Jason
ProfQuotes
It's interesting to see the statistics on how many people have settled, but I'd be more interested in what has happened to those who haven't settled.
Hardball tactics only work if people think you'll be able to follow through; if they don't follow through on the holdouts, then this tactic collapses.
Anyone have information?
RD
Lets give the RIAA what they want.
Don't download commercial music that you are not allowed to possess.
Instead, try iRATE and get free, legal mp3s.
You don't have to pirate music, and you can still kick the RIAA where it hurts (mindshare).
My question is, is the RIAA specifically avoiding sueing slashdotters? I find it amazing that we have yet to hear of a case actually going to court, and by the tone of everyone on /. (myself included), it would seem that droves of these cases would be going to actual court, and would in turn attract lots of media attention.
Something is fishy here...
Considering that these "thieves" are a sizable fraction of their potential customer base, I'd be worried about lost business.
To extend your example:
If fifteen percent of the people entering your store shoplift something, do you just spend your time throwing them out, or do you consider that there might be something wrong with the way your business operates?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I find it disturbing that the RIAA is claiming it is acting on behalf of record labels that it doesn't even represent.
NPR radio has a story about several record labels (notably Fat Wreck Chords, one of my personal favs) that had to fight for years to get their names removed from the list of labels the RIAA claims to represent, since they do not want to be represented by them.
So 220 settlements, at an average of 5,000(just a guestimate) a settlement. Thats a cool 1,100,000.
What did the lawyers cost them?
Are they making money on this endeavor?
Veramocor
Is the music industry really any different than the movie industry. Who leaked the Korn album onto the internet? Wasn't me, nor any of the other millions of fans who were eagerly waiting to buy it. It was a insider who got a promo disk. How many people have gone to the used CD store and bought a full length disk of promo material with the "not for sale" label on the jacket.
The Korn album leak didnt stop me from spending my $9.99. You got an entire CD and a decent length DVD. Thats a good buy. Of course you may think Korn is corporate rock too.
Check the local papers and go out and support your local bands. I used to create web pages for soem of the talent local to me. There are some very creative people out there. Free from pressure and Industry Managers and the RIAA.
History tells us that musicians were never really wealthy until this last century. Music doesn't have to be produced, edited, and even more likely a regurgitated hit from 30 years ago. Music can be made by you and your friends. Make the music you want to hear and I am sure other people will enjoy your music too. If people bought the American Idol music, then I am sure someone will like your music.
and Like that troll said earlier on this board Phuck the RIAA.
We are the people and we don't want crap music.
As for filesharing, is the RIAA looking at file types other than MP3,wma, and the like. I read they scan the files for certain digital watermarks, but if they are scanning for certain properties why not just change to a filetype they aren't scanning. Or better yet, encrypt the music file and only share your key with trusted individuals. IF the RIAA reverse engineers your cipher key, then you can sue them with the DMCA.
Looks like it is time to replace your Personality Module. You are a bit to clingy, guess I better replace your fuser to
Stranger things have happened. The United States Supreme Court recently overturned the last of the sodomy laws in the United States, a decision that at one time would have been inconcievable to the majority of Americans, but the gay community worked together patiently to make homosexuality completely legal.
Now, I want you to consider that there are over sixty million Americans practicing peer-to-peer file sharing. That's more people than voted for George Bush, and also more than the number of homosexuals in America. So it's not unreasonable that copyright could be repealed, or at least reformed.
I discuss the background of copyright law in the US and what you can do to make file sharing legal in Change the Law, a section of my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads. The steps I suggest you take to make file sharing legal are to speak out, vote, write your elected representatives, donate money to political campaigns, support campaign finance reform, join the electronic frontier foundation, and to practice civil disobedience.
It is my objective that all sixty million American p2p users will read my article by the time of the 2004 election. I've got a long ways to go to reach that goal.
The article has a Creative Commons license. I encourage you to copy and distribute it. I'm also seeking help in translating it to other languages; a Romanian translation will be posted soon.
Thank you for your attention.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I personaly care less about the cost of a CD, and more about our fair use rights.
What about sharing via torrent files?
You gather various, pieces from many user which are then uniformly, recontructed after you have reached 100%.
Try watching an incomplete torrent divx or any other file for proof of the file(s) being "pieced" together. until the torrent is complete the files sit in an unorganized file inside whatever future extension they turn out to be.
To me this begs the question...
How can anyone sue you for sharing on bittorrent if it's only a piece of a file, random at that, and not a full file?
The only way they could approach this is to catch the user with the complete file on their hd after downloading it.
How would they do this?
Can you say invasion of privacy?
Who knows?
A good thing to do no matter what you use is to have peer guardian running at all time. You can even incorporate the blocklists in sygate's firewall software if you choose not to use peer guardian.
Above all monitor and block all traffic when using P2P apps or you might have to pay the piper...guilty or not...it really doesn't seem to matter anymore.
P.S. Fuck U RIAA
P.P.S. Thank you internet
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Stealing a song is morally equivalent to stealing a chocolate bar. That's why I say stealing a song is theft.
...and has been practiced for years by record stores, that is, stores that actually still sell vinyl records (primarily DJ shops). You open the package. You take the record (or cd's in a used cd store) out of the package and place it in a turntable or cd player behind the counter. You hand the customer headphones. Customer listens. If customer likes it he buys it, if not he hands you a different CD to listen to.
File-sharing isn't as popular as it is because people want to *own* the music. It's popular because people just want to hear what it sounds like before they buy it. If I wanted to actually *own* those songs it sure would't be in mp3 format (80% data loss), and without any liner notes, catalogs, or stickers.
I mean, when you buy an $8 t-shirt at wal-mart, you get to try it on first, right? When you want to buy a $10 book, you get to browse it at the bookstore before you buy it. Why should an $18.99 CD be any different?
Try-before-you-buy has always been my reason for using filesharing for music, if I hear a CD I like I buy it, that is if I can even find it at the store (thanks again RIAA).
But the RIAA will never pursue this method of both reducing piracy and meeting the consumers' needs, because they have zero interest in one of those two things. Guess which one. I maintain my opinion that the RIAA is terrified of file-sharing not because of any loss of profits to them (they're doing just fine, thanks) or to their artists (who they've been ripping off since the '20's), but because it means the average music consumer will no longer be satisfied with the STINKING, VOMITOUS, VILE, REPUGNANT, DISGUSTING, MALODOROUS, REPULSIVE SHIT being passed off as "popular" music by the RIAA. People have no option if they want to hear good music but to turn to the black market, for in this case the black market happens to be the only free, or even fair, market around.
All that could change if the music stores let you listen before you bought. For some reason, though, I'm not holding my breath.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Hooray! Their tactics are working in decreasing piracy. Now when an album doesn't sell, it's because it stinks, not because everyone's downloading it.
Honestly, even though they claim their tactics are working now, in a month, they'll be saying how lost profits due to piracy are sky high and increasing.
This is what happens when Don Quixote starts tilting at windmills, but actually has the firepower to take them out. No more windmills, no more monsters. Solution: Make new monsters.
So, this time next year, look for the RIAA blaming people humming songs for lost revenue.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
If the store in question had been artificially keeping prices inflated for the past 20 years, yeah, I'd probably feel pretty emboldened to go ahead and liberate the occasional item.
I don't think anyone actually cares that they can change the keyboard sounds on Outkast's "Hey Ya." In addition, musicians most likely wouldn't approve of this because it makes it much too easy to "sample" (read: rip off) their work.
Fat chance.
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.
You're right about that one, it's already happening. I know several people who swap HDs or DVDs full of mp3s by snail mail.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
So when should the RIAA start targetting libraries? They're obviously aiding dirty, dirty piraty scoundrels such as yourself.
Thanks for the idea though. Section VIII of the Canadian copyright act makes it perfectly legal for me to go to the library, borrow a bunch of CDs, copy them for my personal use, and then return them. Distributing those copies would be copyright infringment because then it wouldn't be for personal use.
They're doing nothing more than making examples of people.
Personally, I'm not in the least bit concerened. Hell, I'll admit it: I share over 10 gigs of farily popular music on most of the P2P networks. I'd love to see them try me in a court of law.. unfortunately for them, I'm "tech savvy" and they'll have a hell of a time proving I share music.
These stories do nothing but piss me off and make me share/download more music (and movies now, too). I know a few people still in High School and I actually encourage them to share/download music. They'll tell me about how they're gonna buy so-and-so's CD, I say, "No, don't. I'll download it for you."
Yeah, this will probably get modded troll, or even flamebait, but it's really not. I'm just a person who's fed up with general apathy from people who let corporations get away with this shit. We're talking about downloading and sharing music, not murder, rape, or any other "crime". We know CD sales are unaffected because of artists who continue to break platinum status.
It's okay for them to spend years overcharging people for CDs and for mass marketing canned acts like Britney Spears/Justin Timberlake, but it's not okay for them to take some heat?! Sorry, that's not how it works.
If you can't take it, then by all means, don't fucking dish it out.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I wonder if Ernest Brenot would go on national TV to ricidule the RIAA and to demand a public apology for libel and defamation of character? Probably wouldn't stop the RIAA at all, but it might help to raise public awareness of the stupidity of what they're doing.