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/

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: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!

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"?