Setback For RIAA In Sweeping Lawsuits

pvt_medic writes "In a set back for the RIAA, last Friday a judge ruled that they have to file lawsuits individually. The judge's decision was that for each John Doe that the RIAA wanted identified they would have to file an individual lawsuit."

Comments

Re:No Reverse class action?

[Mr. Slippery]

So class action suits don't work in reverse. A class can sue an entity, but not the other way around.

The "class" in a class action lawsuit is a well-defined and indentified group. IANAL, but if I understand correctly you have to belong to the group in question (e.g., "people who bought stock in XYZ Corp. between June and December 1997") and you have to specifically file to join in the lawsuit.

Re:No Reverse class action?

[jhylkema]

/* DISCLAIMER

This is not legal advice. You are not a client. I'm not even an attorney. If you need/want legal advice, contact an attorney admitted to practice in your jurisdiction. What I am saying here is probably 100% wrong and if you do anything based on it, you are a blitering idiot who deserves whatever bad shit is very likely to befall you.

DISCLAIMER */

Quoth the poster:

So class action suits don't work in reverse. A class can sue an entity, but not the other way around.

Not necessarily. Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP 23) governs class actions.

In a nutshell, the prerequisites are:

(1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable,

(2) there are questions of law or fact common to the class,

(3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class, and

(4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.

Re:Abolish the copyright laws for digital media

[shark72]

"To qoute you, "Dangerous generalization". The issue isn't that most slashdotters have problems with greedy artists."

Agreed 100%. I wrote "many." I've seen the "down with greedy artists, but give me all the free music I can download" sentiment quite a bit around here. I don't think it's the majority opinion, though.

"The fact that a given "new" artist, can sell 4-5 million copies of their album and they own money to the record company should be a clear signal that they are greedy."

Wow, if that's true, it really sucks. Can you think of a CD that's gone quintuple-platinum yet hasn't recouped its production costs? It's a rare CD that costs even a million bucks to produce.

"The fact that they have been sued and found guilty twice of price fixing wrt CDs, signals that they are greedy."

There's a lot of misunderstanding of the price fixing settlement. It's more about Wal-Mart's greed than anybody else's. Remember, the record companies made exactly the same amount per sale when they were giving the co-op money to the TWE stores to run the MAPs. The price fixing only affected you if you bought a CD at Tower Records or one of the other TWE stores during the period that the record companies were giving the stores co-op money, and this was done to prevent the Wal-Marts and the Best Buys of the world from putting specialty retailers out of business by selling CDs at or below cost. The record companies did this to keep the smaller retailers in business, and the settlement means that Wal-Mart is free to continue using predatory prices at the expense of smaller stores.

"Or when its price gouging. Tell me seriously why again is a CD more costly then a cassette, even on disks with no additional features. Lets be honest, the Record industry has been duping customers for years."

I'm not sure if you're asking a serious question. CDs are priced where they're at due to something called the "supply/demand" curve. The auto, specialty foods, clothing, furniture, computer peripheral, software and innumerable industries also use the same strategy. It simply means charging the highest price that the market will bear, to maximize profits. It's one of those "econ 101" concepts and I can't stress enough that tons of businesses, big and small, also do it.

As an aside, music prices have been relatively flat over the past 40 years; in fact, they're going down. The average price of a new CD is down to $13.50 in the US. Back when I first started buying LPs in the early 1980's, a good price was $9.99. That'd be $18.00 in today's economy.

This leads to a couple more things that I see on Slashdot a lot:

• Folks taking a feature that's prevalent in hundreds of industries, such as following the supply/demand curve, and singling out the record industry as some sort of monster. I'm not particularly a fan of the record companies, either, but I do know that by and large, the record industry is a crappy one to be in. It's hugely speculative (meaning that they must rely on that one hit to cover the costs of the majority of CD releases, which aren't profitable). Record companies go out of business all the time, and you rarely see an analyst give one a "buy" rating. Net margins in the industry are typically below 30%, which is -- again, this is another important part -- lower than most of the other industries I've mentioned above.
• Whether you call it greed or I call it the supply/demand curve, or whatever -- many people use this as a moral rationale for piracy. Two wrongs do not make a right.

"I have no problem feeding artists...Its the hundreds of middle men around them that I have a problem with. Note I don't mean the folks that actually contribute to the actual music."

If this means that you only buy music from musicians who also record, engineer, produce, distribute, advertise and market their own music, then more power to you! But this is another instance where many

Re:Abolish the copyright laws for digital media

[shark72]

"I don't know where you buy cd's, but the average, admitted, open, regular price of CD's in the United States is 17.99 - 18.99."

The $13.50 average I mentioned (it's actually $13.42; I rounded up) is from NPD Musicwatch, an analyist firm that covers the music industry, tracking sales and the like. It's down from last year's average price.

Note that's the average price for new releases. YMMV. CDs certainly may be $17.99 or $18.99 in your area or at the retailers near you, and I highly value your anecdotal report, but in my neighborhood (Silicon Valley) the local retail scene supports NPD's claim. New releases at the local Best Buy are typically $11.99 or less.

I don't know if NPD Musicwatch tracks e-tailers. If they do, that would swing the number lower, as Amazon moves a lot of plastic.

I hope this helps.

Re:Now we just need....

[mad_dog3283]

No, that wouldn't work. In all of the letters sent by the RIAA's lawyers to those being sued, they said something along the lines of, "I affirm under penalty of perjury that I am authorized to act on behalf of $label." You are correct in that the RIAA does not own any copyrights, but they have been authorized to act on behalf of those who do.