Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Files 477 New Filesharing Lawsuits
Fallen Kell writes "According to the CNN story, the RIAA has filed another round of lawsuits against filesharers. This round has many college students who are allegedly sharing music on their university networks. Again, the defendants are listed only by their university IP addresses. No lawsuit has gone to trial yet out of the 2,454 litigations started by the RIAA since it began its crackdown."
Or is there a bitterness around here toward the RIAA for the fact they're shutting down the free ride?
Slashdotters have yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music. It just doesn't make sense to be upset that they're going after downloaders. If you buy CDs ($11.99 a pop at my store), use iTunes (new version out as Slashdot reported today), or even listen to the radio, you don't know or care about the RIAA going after people downloading music illegally. The only reason one would be upset is if they're a downloader themselves, and if you are, you must admit what you are doing has no legal or moral basis (or you'd be a hypocrite). Even if you're "sampling," it's still not legal, and the other 99% of the users there aren't "sampling" tunes from you. It's not "free advertising" either--you don't have the right to think someone's copyright magically transfers to the p2p network to "advertise" to the the other million users on there.
Millions of users, all "advertising" "samples" to each other. All the propaganda makes my head spin. Meanwhile, GPL copyright violations are really, really bad...right? And SCO is evil. Oh, and "M$" too. The Slashdot hivemind speaks.