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RIAA Sues Nearly 500 New Swappers
Digitus1337 writes "Wired has the story. " U.S. music industry group says it has sued 493 more people for copyright infringement as part of its campaign to stop consumers from copying music over the Internet.
The Recording Industry Association of America has now sued nearly 3,000 individuals since last September in an attempt to discourage people from copying songs through peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa and LimeWire." "
Sorry for being pedantic, but LimeWire is not a network. It's the name of a Gnutella client. Since Gnutella is an open protocol, there are numerous clients for it.
Who is the RIAA trying to represent? They say that they are representing the five major music labels. And in turn the music labels say that they are representing the artists themselves. But even the artists don't agree with the RIAA's methodologies.
"According to the study, 60 percent of those surveyed do not believe the RIAA's efforts to halt file sharing through lawsuits will benefit musicians and songwriters.
Additionally, 35 percent believe free downloading has helped their careers, 37 percent believe it has not had any effect and only 5 percent believe it has exclusively hurt their careers. Of those interviewed, 83 percent have provided free samples of their music online."
If you can't afford a lawyer then what do you do?
You represent yourself, you find a lawyer that will work pro bono, you settle, or you admit liability.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
It's not legal for people in the US to download from there.
If it is downloading, then that means that a new copy is being created in the US, and that's infringing. Even if it were construed as importation (which it is not) then it is still infringing as it is pretty damn likely a piratical copy by US standards, regardless of the situation in Russia. Take a look at 17 USC 106, 602, the MAI v. Peak case, and the Quality King case.
The bottom line is, you cannot expect foreign legal standards to apply within the US. It's like arguing that the US' First Amendment protects foreigners from foreign governments.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
However, in both these cases - the producers downloading, and the CD-owning user downloading - the person uploading is guilty of copyright infringement, since they do not have distribution rights. Thus, the uploader, provided they aren't the distribution house or the artist, is committing a crime, and it's the uploaders that the RIAA is going after.
Now, it so happens that to prevent leeching, Kazaa, Gnutella, Limewire, etc. all put your downloads into a "shared" folder for uploading... so if you download something, you're uploading it too. The RIAA uses this to publicize that they're going after "downloaders" rather than "uploaders", but the truth is that they can only find uploaders.
To be safe, leech. It's not nice to the rest of the community, but 'no honor among thieves' and whatnot.
Not that I do either.
-T
For those who have not bothered to read any of the history of this topic I'd like to mention a specific name and case: David LaMacchia. In 1994 the federal government brought criminal charges against David LaMacchia who was a student at MIT who ran a BBS from which people could download copyrighted works. They intended to set an example but were surprised when the case was dismissed without even a trial.
The significant fact was that the BBS was not a site that charged any money. There was no law against noncommercial copying of files. After all, the copyright laws were created by Congress to protect one publisher from another in order to encourage publication. There wasn't originally any intention to prevent individuals from sharing publications at no cost. In fact the creation of public libraries was specifically for the purpose of encouraging the spread of copyrighted publications (books, magazines, recordings and eventually video recordings) at no charge except for late fees.
So when technology evolved to the point that people could spread copyrighted material at no significant cost to everyone else why was this a BAD THING (TM)? Are people so short sighted that they believe all literary, musical, scientific activity would come to a halt? These people want to take what is naturally plentiful (copies) and try to make it behave as though it were scarce. And until 10 years ago there wasn't even a law against non-commercial copying.
Our Constitution included the clause about trying to promote the progress of art and science NOT a clause about creating artificial scarcity for the benefit of corporations defending business models that may or may not work as new technologies emerge. Maybe, just maybe, it will no longer be economically viable to create summer blockbuster movies that require hundreds of millions of dollars to create and promote. I would sort of miss them. BUT SO WHAT?
When you have a new law (forbidding non-commercial copying being less than 10 years old) being flouted by tens of millions of people, I think there is a real issue of our legislators being bought by very narrow special interests. Remember all you moral absolutists, it wasn't even illegal 10 years ago. This is questionable legislation being passed by lap dog legislators creating artificial scarcity for the benefit of a few wealthy, powerful corporations.
OK, you may now resume your (making a copy of a digital file = stealing expensive sports cars) nonsense.