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."

Comments

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[Quinn_Inuit]

They've yet to accuse somebody who "didn't do it".

Not quite accurate: RIAA Withdraws Piracy Lawsuit Against Mac User

Protect your privacy

[fiber0pti]

http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/

Re:None to trial?

[shark72]

"Are we supposed to take it that all of those have been settled (supposedly by paying the RIAA)?"

Most have. A few have been dismissed (the most famous is the grandmother who has a Mac). At least one has countersued. But for the most part they've been paying up.

A good way to avoid being sued by the RIAA is to not dump 1,000 copyrighted songs into your Kazaa share directory. A good rule of thumb is "if you are not sure if you have the right to redistribute something, don't."

Re:A 437-0 record with 437 wins by knockout...

[Jaywalk]

nobody's been able to force the RIAA to trial and say that the lawsuit is outright bogus

While technically accurate, the observation paints an incomplete picture. There have been a number of cases where the RIAA has backed off, like the woman who didn't even own a computer. So we know the RIAA has been accusing innocent people. The question is, when will the accused "filesharers" who haven't been sharing files (stolen accounts or passwords, identity theft, et cetera) push back with a class-action suit against the RIAA for the false accusations?

Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know where we can get a look at the list of IPs? I can't seem to find anything new on the EFF list of subpoened IPs

Re:When will the backlash come?

[koganuts]

Yeah here's the info:

RIAA sued under gang laws

Last modified: February 18, 2004, 1:39 PM PST
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

It's probably not the first time that record company executives have been likened to Al Capone, but this time a judge might have to agree or disagree.

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.

Through her attorneys, Michele Scimeca contends 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.

"This scare tactic has caused a vast amount of settlements from individuals who feared fighting such a large institution and feel victim to these actions and felt forced to provide funds to settle these actions instead of fighting," Scimeca's attorney, Bart Lombardo, wrote in documents filed with a New Jersey federal court. "These types of scare tactics are not permissible and amount to extortion."

Scimeca is one of a growing number of people fighting the record industry's copyright infringement campaign against file-swappers, although few have used such creative legal strategies.

According to the RIAA, which filed its latest round of lawsuits against 531 as-yet-anonymous individuals on Tuesday, it has settled with 381 people, including some who had not yet actually had suits filed against them yet. A total of nearly 1,500 people have been sued so far.

The industry group says that "a handful" of people have countersued, using a variety of claims.

"If someone prefers not to settle, they of course have the opportunity to raise their objections in court," an RIAA representative said. "We stand by our claims."

Few if any of the cases appear to have progressed far, however. The first RIAA lawsuits against individuals were filed more than five months ago, although the majority of people targeted have been part of the "John Doe" campaigns against anonymous individuals this year.

Several individuals and companies have started by fighting the RIAA attempts to identify music swappers though their Internet service providers (ISPs).

The most prominent, known by the alleged file-swapper's screen name "Nycfashiongirl," resulted in at least a temporary victory for the computer user. A Washington, D.C., court ruled in December that the RIAA's initial legal process for subpoenaing ISP subscriber identities before filing lawsuits was illegal. Because "Nycfashiongirl" had been targeted under this process, the RIAA dropped its request for her identity.

However, that may have provided only a temporary reprieve. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that is closely following the RIAA's campaign, the Internet address used by "Nycfashiongirl" was included in the batch of lawsuits filed on Tuesday against anonymous individuals, raising the likelihood that she will be drawn back into the courts.

Separate attempts to fight subpoenas are ongoing in North Carolina and St. Louis, where the American Civil Liberties Union and ISP Charter Communications are respectively challenging the RIAA's information requests.

In San Francisco, computer user Raymond Maalouf has taken the first steps toward fighting the RIAA's suits. His daughters were the ones that used Kazaa to download music, and one of them even wound up in last month's Super Bowl advertisement for Pepsi's iTunes promotion, which featured a handful of teens caught in the RIAA dragnet.

In documents filed with San Francisco courts, Maalouf's attorneys noted tha

If you want to do something about it....

[phaetonic]

This website has a plethora of information regarding the RIAA's current fights, things you can do to fight them, and some anti-RIAA propaganda. Interesting stuff..

Re:Time to scare your friends

[Jerf]

Cute, but I think your program may have a race condition in the ID assignment; I've tried several times now and I think I'm getting other people's information.

I think you're doing a "SELECT MAX(id) FROM database" when writing the link out onto the screen but you can't do that; other records are being inserted before the link is written. But that is just a guess.

I was able to hack the URL to find the one I want to send to a friend, though, so thanks from me.

Re:This is about to lose meaning.

[fishbowl]

"Do you look forward to doing prison time of ANY duration?"

Only the State can put you in prison. Last time I checked, RIAA was not an arm of the US Government.

How many people have actually had a hearing on a RIAA lawsuit?

Students: Ask your administrator!

[djcatnip]

seriously, other companies are charging institutions for the privelege of offering their draconian DRM laiden music services. iTunes on campus was announced this morning, and it's free for your school! ask your administrators to please sign up for it!

Re:None to trial?

[huchida]

I guess honestly if you play with fire then expect to get punished. I was speeding, got pulled over and got a speeding ticket. Instead of bitching about it I just paid it. I was clearly in the wrong doing almost 20mph over the limit. People sharing hundreds of songs via the Internet is clearly illegal and they should expect consequences if they lose the gamble that no one will catch them.

I'll say it again though it's been said a million times... You're not doing anything "illegal" by downloading, meaning you're not breaking a law. You're infringing on copyright. The comparison to speeding doesn't work because it's not law enforcement prosecuting you, but a corporation suing for damages. Settling the suit isn't paying a fine for a ticket-- it's giving them money to go away, so they don't sue you for a much larger and completely arbitrary amount.

Transformative Uses of an MP3

[blckbllr]

I don't know how many of you speak legalese, but what about a transformative use of an MP3? When determining whether a person has engaged in copyright infringement through the use of a copyrighted material, courts often look at whether the use was a transformative one. In this context, "transformative" can mean "different from."

For those of you with access to law libraries, look at Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp., 280 F.3d 934 (9th Cir. 2002). The opinion in Kelly has been reissued, but it has not changed with respect to the discussion on transformative uses.

Unfortunately, I do not have the skills to implement the following idea:
What if someone could take an MP3, parse the audio signal into a series of colors and/or symbols, and reproduce that music as a digital image. For example, maybe using this software would reproduce a Korn song or a New Found Glory song into a landscape, artscape, or colorscape. This would probably constitute a transformative use because the music has been converted into a digital image. The next step would be for someone to write software that would take these digital images and re-interpreting them as music. However, the decoding process should work with any images, less a court find that the decoding software is contributing to copyright infringement. I think one tenant of copyright law is that so long as there are legal, noninfringing uses of the device, then the device is generally legal (e.g., a VCR).

Anyone given any thought to making transformative uses of MP3s? This way, one could distribute an "image" of New Found Glory's "Better Off Dead" without technically committing copyright infringement.

Love to hear your thoughts.

-BB

Re:When will the backlash come?

[jp10558]

I agree with your sentiment. I don't like the RIAA nor their actions, however I do have a problem with this:

Whether or not file sharing is legal, moral, or whatnot, I won't support an industry that sues broke college students and 13 year old children. I bought my last piece of RIAA music when they filed the first round of lawsuits.

As anyone trying to be law abiding, it is wrong and unsound to suggest that any segment of the population be exempt from the laws(or exempt from punishment) no matter your personal views on the law. Certainly support fighiting to change the law. But it is dangerous to engender a disrespect for the law. Using hyperbole in an oft use cliche - would you say the same if they were murderers? What about commiting fraud? Identity theft? Where do you draw the line on crimes that are "ok" or "wrong to sue college students over"?

Re:Uploaders

[cpt kangarooski]

There is no question, and copyright doesn't require intent. It's a strict liability statute -- you infringe, it doesn't matter if your shit smells like roses. All that's required is that you broke the law, however unwittingly. At best the fines will be less, though there's still going to be fines.

They haven't gone after downloaders yet because it's a pain in the ass to sue anyone. So if you're going to do it, you want it to count -- you sue P2P services and shut down millions of people in one blow. You sue uploaders and shut down tens or hundreds of leeches with them. Sue a leech, and you only get one guy. It's wasteful overkill, and they won't bother with it right now.