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RIAA Countersued Under Racketeering Laws
Negadin writes "According to CNET News, a New Jersey woman, one of the hundreds of people accused of copyright infringement by the Recording Industry Association of America, has countersued the big record labels, charging them with extortion and violations of the federal antiracketeering act." The woman's attornies are arguing that "...by suing file-swappers for copyright infringement, and then offering to settle instead of pursuing a case where liability could reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the RIAA is violating the same laws that are more typically applied to gangsters and organized crime."
Good for her! Its about time someone took on the illegal monopoly that is the RIAA. Take 'em down! I'll join!
... and in the DRM, bind them.
...but fine.
That is if you have a clever attorney.
Now they'll start suing everyone for hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of offering to settle. And they've got the perfect excuse--the US government made them do it.
The Mafia doesn't offer you your day in court if you would rather not pay your protection money.
The RIAA is suing those whom they think are guilty of file sharing. If you are not guilty, you have the absolute right to demand your day in court.
I'm not trying to absolve the RIAA for their heinous practices, but there is nothing illegal about what they are doing.
I have been pwned because my
She'll never win, she won't have the cashflow. Even if she were, by some miricle to 'win', she'd probably be bankrupt. Its about as useless as me suing IBM or Microsoft 'just for fun'
So if convicted, the RIAA can either:
a) Do nothing, and seem ineffective at stopping P2P (which they already are, but it's a different thing to give up the PR battle) or
b) Drive every court case home. The evidence is quite clear, the possible damages huge. The courts might award them considerably higher fines than any settlement.
Somehow I think this will push them to b), and I sure wouldn't want to be on the recieving end of the next $97 billion lawsuit... $97 million, billion, trillion, kazillion is kinda irrelevant at that point anyway.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Section 1964 of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act not only provides for civil remedies in cases like this, but also automatically triples the damages and covers court costs and lawyers' fees. Personally, I'd like to see a massive class-action lawsuit against these dirtbags. If it can be won, surely the damages would be enough to curb their malicious behavior.
The RIAA companies probably make a small profit when someone settles with them for a few grand. Lawyers take their cut, but a settlement contract isn't all that expensive or time consuming for the RIAA.
But unless they win HUGE punitive damages (and the loser actually has the money to pay and doesn't declare bankruptcy) they probably lose money when it comes down to a lawsuit. And that takes a long time and involves a lot of up-front legal expenses, for questionable return.
If enough people start counter-suing the RIAA, or at least going to court instead of settling, then the lawsuits will soon become a huge financial burden on the RIAA, even when they win.
In fact, even in today's legal climate I doubt it will survive the priliminary hearing. If the RIAA had any legitimate cause they the right to bring action. They also had the right to settle, as did anyone they brought action against.
If you lend someone ten bucks, they say they can't pay, you sue them, and you both agree to settle the matter for a fiver there is no extortion.
In fact the courts do everything they can to encourage such a resolution and avoid a trial.
If she felt the RIAA did not have grounds she had the opportunity to have her day in court.
Settling and then demanding your day in court, plus damages, well, that's a wee bit of a stretch, even against the RIAA.
The people who have been hustled by the RIAA "cops" would stand a much better chance with this sort of action.
KFG
Why ? because the RIAA has the legal system paid off
It sux but in a country where the "big" business has more to say than the people living there odds are way against such action.
Don't get me wrong I would love to see this suite go forward and have her on the winning side, but on the other side of the spectrum I am a pessimist and all i can see is the dark clouds of RIAA
And what's worse they are coming to my country - Canadians - don't let them win
Where they'll get the RIAA is with their setlement terms. Paying them off does not protect you from being sued. Plus you have to admit guilt. That runs counter to the definition of setlement.
Would she be happier if they withdraw the settlement offers, and sue her and each and every other defendent into bankruptcy?
Doubltless under what you propose some people may get financially mowed down, but you are leaving out a few factors wich could be very good for the masses:
1) Children age 12, Grandmothers, and People without actual computers being sued in court. Wonderfully bad publicity RIAA
2) Sympathetic Jury Nullification. More wonderfully bad publicity for RIAA
3) A Hung Jury or a simple Not Guilty Verdict. Not only bad for RIAA but it sets a track record. This is one of the things they absolutely DO NOT want.
4) A wealthy defendent who hires an Attorney who can go the distance. This would also be very bad for the RIAA.
So yes, if convicted the RIAA may just take cases to court en masse, but they could also become a classic David vs. Goliath story as well.
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
because it's corporations paying for the laws, not individuals.
You would not be nearly so smug if they sued you, even by accident. Not only can anything happen in a court room, but you'll spend hundreds to throusands of your own dollars to prove your innocence -- of which you won't get a penny back if you do win.
Next time think of the real situation before you post.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
One has to ask two questions. First, if they are willing to settle for such a small amount, why are the fines so high to begin with. Wouldn't it be more efficient to set fines at a appropriate level in the first place? It is very arguable that such high fines were created to allow extortion.
Second, why do they want to settle so badly? It seems like they would want some percentage of the cases to go to court to establish that these people actually violated copyright. As it stands, it would be very reasonable to assert that they are randomly choosing people, and then extorting money from them.
So, with the current tactics, extortion and fear seems to be their game. It is like those old shows where a gang would go into a business and demand protection money. There are legal ways to extort this kind of money, the MPAA and BSA does it. The RIAA does not seem to care about the law.
I really don't understand why the RIAA does not get an independent arbitrator to look at each case, assign a dollar value to the damages, and then send a letter to the alleged violators. Further legal proceedings might occur if the money is not paid, but at least then we would have some confidence that the RIAA is not just harassing innocent people.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
On point 1, we've seen many corporations (SCO, Microsoft et al) shoot themselves in the foot many times and still blindly suge ahead.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Occasionally drinking brings about lucidity... more ofthen then not, a drunken rant...
While I've been following these events for a while, I've had a thought...
I recall the days of yore when I would record a radio program on a crapy tape recorder. I highly doubt the recording industry suffered any loses due to that.
So assuming I download digital quality music off the internet- and lets also assume a round number of 100 songs- and assume an average cd has 10 songs and is priced at $15, that adds up to $150 dollars worth of songs I've downloaded.
If the RIAA were to come after me for that, what gives them the right to violate my 8th Amendment rights?
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's pretty likely that the p2p users the RIAA chose to sue were actually violating the law. You can't possibly think that suing less than a fraction of a percent of p2p abusing copyright violators somehow makes more people look guilty than actually are?
After writing that, I realized that I can probably agree completely with the plaintiffs in this RICO suit, but I will get called all kinds of names for calling your sorry post an overreaction.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
That's a great point. In fact, the quick settlement of the early suits not only emboldened the RIAA, but in the eyes of the general population it probably seemed like a signal that the RIAA was right all along and those nasty song swappers settled quick because they knew they were wrong. Legally a settlement is neutral, but in the eyes of the public, it says guilty for someone. With someone fighting back, suddenly it starts to turn the other way, with lone individuals taking a stand against a big record industry - people love that!
Uh... not that I'm any fan of the RIAA, but this is hardly "exactly the same thing". The RIAA is pursuing those who they believe have wronged them (and have the legal precedents and legislative support backing them--the most important pieces of this game). Is the RIAA strong-arming people. Probably. But this isn't a clear cut extortion case; the law is very specific as to the definition of 'extortion'.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
If they all counter-sued and dried up RIAA's resources, it would be like the legal equivalent of a Slashdotting!
EvilCON - Made Famous by
seems to be getting more frequent. i get a few hours of that a week now... and i dont even browse slashdot religiously
why doesnt slashdot post and article on it, are they being ddos'd? someone tripping over cables? drunken editors? if 911 lines went down i bet they would sure as hell explain it eventually!
Hopefully this won't get modded down as a troll, but we'll see.
I am sick of people who think the RIAA is doing something illegal by suing individuals who download music from the internet. This isn't very complicated but I will enumerate my thinking:
1. The corporations that make up the RIAA pay money produce a product (music).
2. These corporations sell their product for money. You have a choice as to whether you want to buy it or not.
3. Some people do not want to buy the product, however they still want to use it, so they download it from the Internet.
4. The product that these corporations created is being used without their permission; obviously they want to stop this. They have a few options I suppose:
a. Wait for law enforcement officials (Dept. of Justice?) to crack down on this.
b. Sue the individuals who are using their product without permission.
They chose option b. They are operating fully within the laws of the United States (or at least they should, and it is not impossible in principle for them to do so--I am referring to the way they obtained IP addresses). Additionally, the laws of the US allow them to sue for large amounts of money. And now for some reason people get angry when they sue for less money?
I am not saying that from a PR standpoint this was the best way to deal with the problem, and there are many better ways that the RIAA could have taken advantage of online music instead of resisting it. But they are still taking justified and legal action.
There's always the poker face. They expect everyone to roll over and pay. You can argue *practically* anything in court these days. Temporary Insanity? The Menendez Brothers hung the jury first time around. Time to make the law work for the *good* *normal* people as opposed to the psychos. Yoho
President Bush could earn some quick-and-easy votes if he would pardon everyone being sued by the RIAA. I'm not a huge fan of the man, but I'd vote for him if he did this for music-likers.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Artists have known for years that they were racketeers.
Proving that in court? That's somewhat more difficult.
How dare they compare the Scum of the RIAA to such upstanding citizens. Such as: Al Capone, Tony Montana, and Don Corleone
Why not? The "content" industry has had major mob ties since it arose from the jukebox protection rackets.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't think the courts see their high cost as a bad thing. If courts were cheap, we'd see every school-yard dispute landing in front of a judge.
>> Since when do judges in the U.S. define the
>> meaning of words in a language?
Judges anywhere can tell lawyers to stop using one term to describe another. If I call a person who was shoplifting a murderer, that can influence the audience, media, and jury, any anyone else involved in a case. I imagine most people see a huge difference between shoplifting and killing, but I'm not alone in seeing a huge difference between piracy and file sharing.
Ok, fine. So they'll win. Let's do some fun math, and look at the practical results of such a suit...
You get sued, and refuse to settle. The RIAA takes their $100/hour lawyers (probably quite low) to court, and make an example out of you. You were sharing, oh... say, 500 songs. Now, the maximum statutory penalty for willful copyright infringement would be 250,000 USD TIMES 500 songs. 125 MILLION dollars. Lets say that the really nice RIAA lawyers, in making an example out of you, decide to recommend to the judge that you only be fined... 10,000 USD per infringement. <sarcasm>After all, that's much better than 250,000 USD.</sarcasm> Willful infringement would likely be really hard to prove, but infringement is easy if you were really infringing and they have proof.
Moving on, at 10,000 USD/song, we now have a much more reasonable number of only 5 million USD. RIAA presents proof, IP addresses, whatever. BAM goes the gavel, and a judgement against you is entered for 5M USD. Ignoring court costs.
You have a really good job, where you make 50,000/year. Their chances of ever seeing anything out of you? Nominal. The chance that they've just fscked your life (if you had much of a filesystem left in the first place after they raid you)? Pretty good.
And thus we again have a semi-sane, though probably twisted, example of why copyright is messed up.
Disclaimer, as usual: IANAL. This is not intended to constitute legal advice, if it could be taken in such manner under any interpretation. If you're in the process of being 0wn3d by the Racketeering In America Association, please contact a REAL lawyer.
I think making counterfit CD's or CHARGING for some one elses work IS piracy, but I really am not sure file sharing for free is...
I won't disagree with you but Congress already has. The DMCA, of all laws, changed the definition of "commercial gain" to include "the receipt, or expectation of receipt" of copyrighted material. In other words, Congress specifically made mere trading illegal. People running P2P clients are making infringing material available because they expect to download other infringing material.
burris
That's definitely what we want. We don't want rational justice if it doesn't serve our purposes.
In my limited understanding of the case, I would side with the woman. However, I believe this can be solved with the facts.
This sounds similar to the approach taken by Mitsubishi regarding the Lemelson machine vision patents. I believe Mitsubishi argued that the Lemelson foundation had deliberately embarked on a practice of bringing weak patent claims nationwide because it knew that most defendants could not afford protracted litigation, and then would "settle" by requiring each defendant to purchase a license that cost less than the cost of defense. So virtually every defendant was forced to settle even though they believed the patents had no merit (and, ultimately, those patents were invalidated). My recollection is that the RICO claim did not work, but I am sure that counsel in the RIAA case has review the arguments pretty carefully.
Doubtless this lady did violate the law. I also don't doubt that the racketeering angle won't stick. Come to think of it, the RIAA is going to legally win this one one way or another. The thing is, the RIAA has been fighting a PR war as well as a legal one. Most people could see a downloader having to pay for the tracks and maybe even a (reasonable) fine on top as additional discouragement. That level of punishment fits the crime. There is compensation and nominal punitive damages. I don't see anyone blinking at the price of several Britney CDs and few hundred dollars thrown on top for good measure.
The RIAA's problem is they will lose that level of sympathy if they drop too many million dollar shithammers on Joe Sixpack. It just doesn't sound good on the six o'clock news. If they take it too far, reining in the entertainment cartels could become political gold instead of political suicide. It's all about public perception. Right now, Joe Sixpack doesn't even know what the RIAA is. It's just the record company people going after someone who's been been naughty on that intarweb. A few of his buddies get ruined and hauled off the jail and it becomes "someone oughta do something about those RIAA guys".
Their current model of several thousand dollar settlements or get ruined in court will work just fine until too many people get uppity like this woman. A few token downloaders being publically shamed and hit with a $5000 ticket won't trigger the PR disaster. But it only works if those Budweiser swilling consumers don't actually go to court like they're supposed to.
I do not see the case against the RIAA going very far. Extortion is typically a criminal offense and I know not of any civil rights where one can sue. I simply cannot sue someone that I witness throwing trash on the highway, the government has not given me that right. There are several laws though that do provide a private right of action, like the TCPA, where one can become a personal attorney general.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
"but I really am not sure file sharing for free is..."
Blatant copyright violation?
Who doesn't like free music?
Under the same concept, couldn't SCO be considered to be violating these gang laws? Their demands of people licensing Linux to them before the lawsuit is complete ammounts to extortion.
So what is it when someone listens to a song on the radio? Does having a copy of the song so you can listen to it when you want make it theft? What if you record it off the radio?
I'm not saying I think file sharing is not theft, I'm just playing "what if".
I was thinking about "piracy" the other day. If I break into your house and take your TV, it is obviously theft because I have obtained the TV without paying for it and you have suffer the loss of your TV. If, however I make a copy of your copyrighted song, I have still gotten something without paying, but you are not out anything except the money you theoretically would have received for my copy.
When I was a kid, I used to make "unauthorized copies" of lots of programs for my Commodore 64 (I don't do that anymore... I mostly use Free Software or buy the few things I can't get as Open Source). Anyway, the software industry was not really deprived of the money they would have gotten from me purchasing all those games because I never could have afforded them anyway.
To put it another way, if you work minimum wage at Burger King and you download $200,000 worth of music, have you really deprived the music industry of $200,000? No. That's why I find the numbers they spread around about the cost of "piracy" to be misleading.
I have a ton of Japanese language songs but I don't speak a damn bit of Japanese. Want to make a better point? ;)
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Disclaimer: 1)I am not trolling, I think this is fully valid. Think before you judge please. 2) I AM fully aware that laws are abused by large companies, small companies, other individuals. 3) I hate the RIAA/MPAA, their gouging, their tactics, and their apparent lack of common decency as much as anyone 4) I Am Not A Lawyer
I don't know that this kind of a lawsuit is all that great a thing. For one thing, as stated in the subject, this law is largely a holdover from anti-gangster legislation. It's intent is not what it is being used for in this case. This is one of those cases when the letter of the law is being twisted and misinterpreted from the spirit of the law. Personally I find it equally morally apprehensive that the law is being twisted against a large company as I would that a large company would abuse the legal system to get their way. People do not cheer, nor get rated +5 for such simplistic statements as "Go her!" when DMCA is abused do they? Thats sort of getting away from my real point here. The RIAA is using these lawsuits to scare people, not to make money and not to collect million dollar fines. They settle for a few thousand dollars because they can't just let people go. It would be totally ineffective then wouldn't it? They could sue for millions and probably win. Destroying peoples lives. They probably aren't, largely for publicity purposes, but probably also they understand that's not what THOSE laws are for EITHER. So what would you have them do? Should they go ahead and go for the millions the law apparently could entitle them to? Because that is one of only two options I can think of. The other being not starting suits to begin with. (I don't think that would be the outcome however)
Face facts people.. This is not a moral or social right.. This is not a championing lawyer fighting for truth justice and so on.. This person would probably kill to work for the RIAA right now.. This person stands to make quite a bit of cash and in all truth probably approached the woman plaintiff.. This is just another example of why our legal system is screwed up and just because it has potential to cause MINOR inconvenience to an organization we really don't like is no real reason to think it's a good thing.. Since the RIAA probably wont stop the suits until they WANT to the only probable outcome is stiffer penalties for those who get sued later, a few measly bucks for each person in the class action, and ONE MORE FILTHY STINKING RICH LAWER. Not something to cheer about I think.
The redirects back to the front page are what happens when the MySQL database backend goes down. I'm surprised you've never noticed it before; it seems to happen regularly.
I always find it funny because whenever a MySQL vs. PostgreSQL argument starts, a MySQL person always says "Slashdot uses MySQL, so it must be reliable." Ummm, no. If they really wanted to say slashdot proves MySQL was more reliable, they should lie and say it uses PostgreSQL.
The RIAA has been threatening prosecution under a law (the DMCA), that gives them a 30,00 dollar penalty at base, or 5 times that (150,000 per incident) if they can prove willfullness. They are being taken to court under RICO, a law aimed at organized crime, yet that law only allows 3x damages, and requires proving criminal intent, which seems to be a lot higher standard than willfulness. It's a good thing for the RIAA that the "cruel and unusual" clause doesn't automaticly apply to civil suits, or that very fact would shoot down the DMCA.
Why do they have a special law that lets them come down harder on file sharers than victims of the mob can fight back against mobsters? Do we really need a law that is tougher on copyright violators than the law is allowed to get on Drug Kingpins, Murder for Hire rings, or general Racketeers?
Who is John Cabal?
The law itself is not valid. The US has a principle of supercedence of law. The higher a levels of law override the lower ones. So A city can't make something legal that is illegal on a federal level, for example. Works the other way too, the right to freedom of speech can't be nulled in a given state, it's at a higher level. Specifically, it's at the HIGHEST level. The constitution overrides all other levels of law. Hence why the supreme court is so concerned with the constutionality of a given law or legal action. Their job is to intrepret teh supreme law of the land, that being the constituion.
Well, one of the ammendments states: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The key here being the cruel and unusal punishments. The intent and interpretation of this law is that the punishment must fit the crime. You cannot execut someone for anything less than a murder (and a premeditated one at that) because it wouldn't fit the crime.
Well, as you noted, the statutory punishment for copyright infringment is TOTALLY out of line with the crime. If 20 people download a song worth $1 the makimum you can posibly claim it cost you is $20. Theoretically, if those 20 people intended to spend the money on your song, but elected not to because they got it for free, you would have not gotten $20 in sales. Of course, this is all theoretical. Some of those that downloaded may decide to but the song anyhow, and some may not have been willing to pay regardless of if they could not get it for free.
Regardless, it is quite clear that the statutority damages are totally out of line with the crime. Thus the law is invalid, it is a cruel and unusal punishment and in violation of the constituion.
I see this BS copyright "damages" the same as if they decided to charge people $10,000 for each mile per hour over the speed limit they went for tickets. The crime is just as (if not more) harmeless and thus should be in the same class of punsihment (small fine, not billions of dollars).
We need our three strikes laws, so that harsh crimes like... stealing videotapes... send a message to.... aw fuck it.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You clearly have no concept how much money it takes to bring a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. It's like having your wallet Slashdotted for years!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"It's theft."
..."
Not it's not.
"It's acquiring and enjoying the value inherent in the song that you listen to
Oh, I see, it's theft because I'm stealing the value inherent in the song. Give me a break. Well, isn't it really murder because I'm surely killing RIAA profits. Are you sure you're not a lawyer (or spin doctor)?
It's not about the stealing the value of the song, it's about the copy. I don't so much listen to "the song" as much as I listen to a copy of it. Sometimes an imperfect, unauthorised copy. That's the issue and it's called copyright infringment, not theft.
"there needs to be some means of protection in place, and very clear recognition (from a legal standpoint) that it is wrong, and that there are remedies (including consequences)."
The "means of protection" (particularly for the wealthy) is already in place. It's called the legal system. The "very clear recognition (from a legal standpoint) that it is wrong" is called copyright law and all laws have consequences for breaking them.
I guess what you're really lobbying for is more draconian laws, more of them, and harsher penalties. No thanks bub. The problem here is that most people percieve many existing laws, such as copyright law, to be already too biased towards the wealthy and not exactly fair for the majority. People want to share.
I wouldn't have thought you'd get much support here but I guess if you sound like you know what you're talking about, and you're careful about how you say it, you're bound to get modded up sometimes.
No, it IS NOT THEFT. It is what it is and it is NOT THEFT. It is copy right infringement. It is not the same thing as stealing and cannot be given the same penalty.
There is a reason it has its own phrase to describe it. The legal system does not invent phrases to be more descriptive of a particular crime. It tries to be as straight forward as possible.
Oh, please!! This woman should get a jail sentence! She admittedly has broken the law, and should pay whatever the judge says she should and STFU. What, you don't like that? Well, tough shit. Your worthless asses are at fault, for every time you've not voted, not protested in the streets, not written your congresscritters, not gone into the streets and burned down the *IAA's HQ building, or lynched their asses, if that's what it takes. When you act like sheep, why the hell are you surprised when you get treated like cattle? You won't win in court, the deck has already, by *design*, been stacked against you.
Freedom is *NOT* "free", it requires blood from time to time to keep those freedoms, despite all the sunshine that's been blown up all our asses about how "civilised" people let the courts handle and determine what freedoms we are "entitled" to..we are "entitled" to precisely as much freedom and justice as we, *personally*, are prepared to kill and die for..no more, no less. I'd be willing to bet that if the *IAA execs and their lawyers started showing up floating face-down in the river, this shit would come to an abrupt halt.
Britney Spears may be a millionaire, but thats not from music alone.
And whatever she has, I'm sure the recording company has much much much more $$$$$.
I already posted in this thread with some ideas relevant here.
I do not want to "give away my copyrights." I want to profit when someone uses my work for profit. If the Eagles record a performance of my song, then they pay me as the songwriter. Why would I want to stop them from using my work? I will probably sell more copies of my own performance because people are interested in hearing the "original".
- If someone uses a sample of my performance, then I get money for my performance. Due to our weird laws, if they did not negotiate with me before using it, then they may owe me more than they made from using the sample. Usually it would be in my interest to encourage them to use my music since then I make some money. Forcing the album to be pulled, or charging so much that they will stop selling it does not generate income for me.
Music equipment is expensive. (My new Schecter guitar was $700, but I also want an all-rosewood PRS guitar that costs ~$2400.) The ability to make music that people want to hear is rare. Both deserve to be compensated when music is played for profit. But music file-sharing is free advertising, and does not directly generate profits. Claiming "lost" sales for an action where no money is involved seems ridiculous. The hardest part of the music industry is getting people to know your music exists. More advertising = more money. Period. Discouraging people from hearing your music is self-destructive.
---
there goes my chance to mod any posts in this thread
I just received my 4th set of mod points since Friday, and have completely forgotten which threads I have modded. I wish Slashdot had a mark letting me know I modded a thread so I wouldn't post later. And no, I have not been able to use all the points before I get another set.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
That's not entirely correct. You have something you didn't pay for. The logic here, as is the logic behind all capitalistic intentions, is "I made it, you pay for it or you don't get to enjoy it."
The problem here is the gray area caused by the non-physical nature of digital file sharing. If I could find a way to make a perfect replica of a Sony television without ever removing the original from the store, I'd still be sued because they designed the technology. Well, an artist composed the lyrics and music to the songs so many of us have on our hard drives.
The RIAA discussing this issue as theft, piracy, et al. is causing problems in that it's got even us confused. We can't justify ourselves except to point at the dictionary and say "We didn't do that!"
We are, however, illigitimately enjoying the non-free works of artists (and Britney Spears). So what, rock superstars don't get their third Porsche while we drive beaters that are in the shop more than out. Boo-hoo, right?
It was put better in the movie "Rock Star" than I could put it, so I'll try to approximate;
[You] aren't selling music, you're selling an image. Young girls want to have sex with you and young boys want to be you.
In reality, a lot of the drive that makes popular music is the rock star image and life style. Overdoses are still news. DUI, drunk and disorderly conduct, loud parties, fast cars and hot women (or vice-versa) are all part of the image we buy into and part of the phenom that allows the newest BigBand tune to play on the radio for weeks on end. Scamming agents are also a well-known part of the music industry. Going back to the first days of marketted music we can find examples of agents who screw artists out of as much money as (in)humanly possible. The RIAA is just the modern, mega-conglomerate version of the slick, greasy back-room dwelling agent.
So by not giving money to these celiebrities and citing freedom you're attempting to change the face of not only the basis of our economy (capitalism), but the basis of the music industry as we know it.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
I frequently read that spammers are guilty of theft; they steal my bandwidth, my cpu cycles, my hd. But, when it comes to music sharing, I hear the record label isn't out anything 'cause I wasn't going to buy it anyway, so it's not theft. Well, heck, you weren't using that bandwidth etc at the time, so... Oh, whatever, it's late, I'm going to bed.
p.s. I hate all spam AND file sharing of, shall we say, questionable ethics BUT that's just because I'm a grumpy old man
You don't seem to understand the problems involved with your use of jury nullification. What you don't understand is that all government is broken into administrative and political branches.
You are mistaking your role as a juror for an aspect of the political branch when really it's an aspect of the administrative (all judicial rulings below the supreme court are considered administrative).
Now the reason for laws is to define which behaviors society wants it's citizens to follow. (I assume you live in a "democracy") it's basically the guidelines that everyone is expected to follow so we can all get along, these are set at diffrent times but they are not changed often because the government is concerned over the avarice of people. (ex. Everyone wants a new tv so tuesday they decide stealing tv's should be legal).
They don't have you in the jury box in order to decide policy, they have you in the jury box to decide whether the accused is guilty of a crime (law says a, accused did a = guilty a,b!=guilty). Emotions get in the way of factual judgements, whether they impact your understanding of what the law says or bias your opinion of what the accused did.
So why are you there? Well first there are twelve of you, this is to hopefully weed out an individual's emotional issues regarding an issue. Second it is so the government can't cover up crimes. Twelve people will have seen what the government is doing and be able to speak out against it.
In conclusion don't take advantage of your role as an administrator to accomplish political goals. History has shown that a society can rush to judgement (60 war/anti-war, 30's America almost went communist,45 America wanted Japan destroyed, ). Democracy's slow march has prevented as many disasters as it has caused. I am a firm believer that almost all information should be available for free. Know your rights, know how to be politically active, and if you have the majority behind you and the government doesn't listen, well there's always the second ammendment.
I'm sure their method of finding the violators isn't as simple as finding getting the ip of the violator. I'm sure they port scan as well, and more than likely do a little searching to see just how much 'copyright' material that user has on his or her machine to make it worth their while.
Anybody have information on this?
Also, do these so called 'ip' blockers work?
"They don't have you in the jury box in order to decide policy, they have you in the jury box to decide whether the accused is guilty of a crime (law says a, accused did a = guilty a,b!=guilty)." And here was me thinking that "I was just following orders" wasn't a valid defence. /sarcasm
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Wrong, the sole reason that we need a jury is jury nullification. The ability for common people to say that the representative were wrong, and were not acting in the best interest of the people when they enacted a piece of legisaltion
After all, a judge is much better at deciding maters of fact and law than any juror is.
Copyright infringement is not a FORM of theft.
Calling it theft "therefore" is not even vaguely valid.
Since your premise is faulty your house of cards falls down. Repeating your statement in capital letters does not make your point any more valid than talking slowly does.
Copyright infringement is closer to an "infringement of a prohibition" [against copying and distribution] than it is to theft, stealing, larceny, pilfering or light-fingered-ness.
It's closer to the breaking of an exclusivity contract [and one in which you have no right to negotiate].
Using politically motivated, inflamatory language ["theft"; "piracy"] does not make it any worse an act in reality.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
If that were true it still doesn't invalidate jury nullification. Laws are created for a purpose. But language is imperfect, and legislators don't alway have the foresight to understand all possible situations that may meet the wording of the law. (Just look at some of the DMCA cases.) There are cases where the defendent may have technically violated the wording of the law but not the original intent. People should not be punished because of imperfection in language and lack of foresight.
But even beyond that, juries are there to decide the guilt of a person, not whether they violated a law. Whether a person violated the law is not something that a layperson is very good at. Experts are much better at that. Whether the person deserves to be pushished is what citizen decide.
3) Her lawyers are well-informed and know they can't win but will take her money anyway.
. . . for any of the accused file-sharers, and I doubt it'll happen, either. The RIAA takes a huge gamble when they take that step. If they lose, it sets a precedent, and then all bets are off.
I still want to know how they will combat the "wide-open wireless access point in an apartment complex" defense.
I've be sort of following this. People aren't thinking. Of course the RIAA is suing pirates, and there is nothing wrong with that.
There seems to be a lot of scapegoating. First it was Napster isn't bad, its the people pirating on napster that are the problem. Now its the boogieman RIAA for defending its members (record companies) from obvious copyright infringement and going after individual pirates on P2P networks instead of the networks.
If the GPL was being violated wouldn't you want the violators to get whats coming to them from the copywrite holders? Hows that different from someone who writes a song and wants to make money at it, but they're not making as much as they could because people are pirating it? (yeah I know people will pirate stuff they wouldn't pay for, but I've seen people stop buying because its available for free)
They give the enforcement to the RIAA so the artist don't look bad. Metalica didn't want to give away there music and everyone started screamming.
If you create something shouldn't it be your right on how its used for a time (copyright). If you want to give it away free go nuts, if you want to sell it to a company that charges for it, thats you right too.
Should the RIAA just turn a blind eye to these people republishing "pirating" works they've paid for?
Whats right is right.
Well, hooray for that judge. When the Navy finds a record-company's ship adrift or scuttled, with its crew murdered and the holds emptied of CDs, the RIAA can call *that* "piracy", but I don't see how anyone could do that through a wire. (Okay, maybe with robots....)
"They don't have you in the jury box in order to decide policy, they have you in the jury box to decide whether the accused is guilty of a crime"
Which is precisely why people should declare the defendant not guilty if they don't believe they've committed a crime. This is particularly true when a law is unconstitutional, which is true of probably at least 95% of Federal laws these days.
The reason politicos hate jury nullification is precisely because it makes idiotic laws like prohibition unenforcable. They're scared stiff of having their power destroyed by the people.
Yep, you can get more time for beating a dog than a child. Sad state of affairs when a society treats its children like animals and its animals like children.
Regardless what you think about the RIAA, the fact that the defendants are trying to use the RICO Act to countersue just shows what a danger RICO may be as an instrument of harrassment. As described in this essay it has never met a full constitutional challenge. It appears to be broad enough that many activist organizations could be seen falling under its guidelines. The threat of RICO prosecution could have a chilling effect on both freedom of speech and of association.
"...by suing file-swappers for copyright infringement, and then offering to settle instead of pursuing a case where liability could reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the RIAA is violating the same laws that are more typically applied to gangsters and organized crime."
The file swappers are guilty. The day you can't settle a case against someone who is guilty of a crime without being accused of a crime is the day I lose faith in the US as a country that upholds individual rights, and must conclude that majority opinion outweighs individual rights.
Vote for Pedro