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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!"
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).
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.
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.
You shouldn't expect 12 year olds to have the same understanding of things as 32 year olds. If you're going to start doing that, you might as well just abolish the whole idea of children needing any guidance. Abolish driving ages, drinking ages, enlistment ages. No more juvenile courts or corrections centers. Don't hold parents responsible for anything or expect them to provide for the children at all once they're physically capable of working for themselves, etc.
NOT a good idea.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
...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
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.