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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." "
I don't like "John Doe" lawsuits. Today it's your IP address, what is it tomorrow? Your street address? Your DNA? Is there going to be a story on the news about shopkeepers who are suing a set of fingerprints for theft damages?
I know that this is a civil case, not a criminal case, but I think you should still know who you are suing before you can do it. If the RIAA can't figure out who say, 66.35.250.150 is, they can go pound sand as far as I'm concerned. Figure it out and come back, or don't, and drop it. And while you're at it, don't use our criminal justice system to go fishing for you.
Is the RIAA going to be allowed to practically steal from these people? They're doing the exact same as the accused (innocent until proven guilty) by suing people who can't afford to fight it, then they have to settle which usually costs thousands. This simply results in hundreds of miscarriages of justice.
Can't these people apply for legal aid or something, or doesn't the US have anything like this?
I'm interested to see what happens when the RIAA sues a downloader who happens to have already purchased the CDs of the songs he is downloading -- which, in my opinion, would give him a right to those songs since he's already purchased them.
For me personally, I've sometimes downloaded songs from CDs I because 1) it's sometimes faster than ripping it myself, 2) the CD is scratched or broken, or 3) I still have the case but the CD itself was stolen. Would downloading an MP3 of a song from a CD I rightfully purchased make me a pirate?
Why not have a panel of like-minded legal experts sit down and prepare a self-defense template for these mass suings? If the cases are all the same, a cookie-cutter defense should work too. As cases filter through, the defense template could be refined. It would enable individuals to defend themselves against the lawsuits, yet with the experience gained through a peer-to-peer legal network.
SO hear is my harebrained scheme. I want to catalog every CD I legally own. With reciepts in hand, I will download every song on them from every user I can. I will not share any files. Waiting for the RIAA to attempt to sue me, even though I never downloaded an MP3 illegally (the quality pains my ears, cd's are bad enough).
I make them look like an ass when they ATTEMPT to sue me, and they lose.
Now IANAL, but any of you lawyers out there wanna tell me if this is worth attempting. I would consult a lawyer first, but do you think I have a case for any kind of damages? I have money to front for a lawsuit if it means a good chance of decent return.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
I guess the underlying problem is what to do about the apparent file sharing that the internet has given us.
Suing people won't stop piracy.
Any amount of software to stop piracy will be circumvented/broken (see how long a piracy-catch in a Linux kernel will last before it gets cut and rebuilt).
This is one of those things that our tech is going to force us to change socially.... how/when/to what, I'm not sure.
the riaa tends to be trying to kill a swarm by swatting at individual bees. for every one they swat, a new one is bred. they'll have to sue for a long time for them to get their desired results, and by that time people will have moved on to better distribution channels. ...one of which is right here:
www.allofmp3.com completely thwarts the RIAA while still paying the artists a modest sum (probably comparable to what the RIAA pays them).
$0.01 / megabyte download (pennies per song, less than $0.50 per album), perfectly legal (all RIAA propoganda and misinformation aside), and none of the money goes to fund these lawsuits. Even better, a portion goes to the actual artists directly -- a requirement of Russian copyright law.
Legal, so cheap it is almost free, and it absolutely thwarts the RIAA's ability to even think about suing anyone.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I think you mean 95% of us who are breaking the law are wondering when RIAA will come after you. Don't want to be sued ? Simple, stop sharing copyright works. RIAA sucks, MPAA sucks, SCO sucks, but that dosent give you the right to abuse their copyrights because you dont agree with it.
"1.2 million people file lawsuit against RIAA this month. The court system is grinding to a halt, and congress begins deliberations to resolve the problem."
Open Standards Portal
This use to be a big IRS tactic. Go after the guys without the funding to take you on. If the recording industry sued someone with the money and the inclination (sp?) to take them on through a significant series of appeals, then I think that the laws would be changed.
Also, Congress needs to hold hearings on this. The General Accounting Office [GAO], the investigative brance of the Congress, helped get the IRS inline. Now, my personnal feeling about anything being done is that it would be unlikely. (I mean, come on, we call them Congress instead of Progress.) But, just maybe, someone will get a clue.
The RIAA is trying civil court because they know that they can use the 'perponderance of the evidence' to thier own advantage. If they think they are right, let see some criminal charges. Gutless wonders
In God we trust, all others require data.
Simple. Threaten to kill yourself if they follow through with the lawsuit. If even one person actually follows through with it, the outrage would be outstanding.
Don't mod this funny, I'm actually being extremely serious. And yes, it would work. The one thing corporations do not want is a young male or females blood on their hands.
Brilliant! These folks know that the RIAA doesn't want to actually take anyone to trial, just scare the bejeezus out of Mommy and Daddy so they don't let their kids use Kazaa. The risks are much too high for the RIAA if they should lose, and IMHO it's too much for them to prove, particularly in a college dorm-type setting, that the person they sued was actually the one doing the infringement. What about the wide-open Wi-Fi defense, or the zillion other instances where you just can't prove who was using a specific IP at any given time?
First off, this is hardly news. They're going to keep doing this. If the RIAA gets lucky with lobbying the price of swapping will increase and they're hoping to make it less worth it. The RIAA will continue to defend its member companies. Whether or not its good business practice is a question, but people are giving away their members stuff for free (Yeah I know copywrite is only temporary.. look up ASCAP for the artists/composers lobby)
//e games from friends (I'm not to proud of this looking back). But back then it wasn't swapping/sharing/trading it was pirating because you got to keep your copy. I don't see how this is different, except for instead of doing it privately with your friends you let anyone anywhere copy off you.
Its the terminology is what gets me. When I was in middle school I used to copy apple
There seems to be nothing open and shut about this sort of thing, especially since most people infected by the bagel virus have no idea that they are spammers, will they be prosecuted under the CANSPAM Act?
~ there are 10 types of people in this world, those that can read binary and those that can't
You've been subjected to a frivolous suit and you can't afford a lawyer, so what do you do? If you have lots of company, you all pool your chips and file a class action countersuit. There are limits to just how far baseless suits could go before the consequences become unacceptable. A litigant both unscrupulous and incautious will be eaten by his own greed.
In the meantime, I suppose you do negotiate for a smaller out-of-court settlement or plead "no contest", hoping to recover your loss later when the class suit wins. Audacity usually succeeds in the beginning -- it's only later that it becomes plain whose was the stronger position.
What you don't do is meekly take whatever deal they offer. You push back with whatever you have. Negotiate the best deal you can, and if that is not good enough then you have some breathing space to gather the power to force renegotiation for more favorable terms. And don't agree with false charges; just put off fighting to disprove them until you are prepared to win. In any conflict, never give up anything that doesn't buy you something better.
[*sigh* in case it's not obvious, IANAL and this is not legal advice.]
This whole internet song-swapping debacle reminds me of the old pirate radio stations of Britain, like Radio Caroline, Radio London and Radio City.
Whilst publicly denouncing the broadcasters as pirates, stealing money from the musician's union by playing songs and not paying the needletime; the industry were actually sending free copies of their latest releases in order to benefit from the coverage. Eventually, the marine offences bill was drafted and although some stations like Radio City opted to keep paying the ever-increasing fines, and continue broadcasting, they all eventually shut down. It did make way for modern commercial radio stations, and saw the launch of Radio One (which is the UK's 8-24yrs radio station), playing 'popular' music. I think a similar thing is going to happen in the end with file-sharing. The industry will have to acknowledge that they do, in fact benefit from having people able to easily download music, but they will want some sort of payment. Start buying shares in Napster-type services now. As ever, it'll take the music industry a while to figure out what's going on and to stop making fools of themselves, but they'll get there eventually and yesterday's truth will no longer exist. Double-plus good, I say.
No need to go to those extremes. Just band together with like-minded lawsuit recipients, and go on a hunger strike! The novelty of it would probably get you enough media coverage to make the *IAA folks rather nervous - like roaches, they really don't like it when people start shining spotlights on them. They want the media to report people folding, not people fighting back and questioning the flimsy sheaf of "rights" that the media conglomerates have built empires around.
I think it's a smart, reasonable choice, and it's a good example of how the legal system can be efficient and fair when used properly.
The folks who were downloading music knew it was illegal and unethical, and decided that since there were so many people doing it, there was no way anyone would catch them.
Guess again.
The civil court system has processed in place to deal efficiently with large numbers of offenders, while still allowing innocent people to have due process, as well as strong measures to protect against malicious prosecution.
Be grateful. While we all like a free lunch, we don't like it when it's our lunch that's getting handed out. Like it or not, the "song swappers" are dime-a-dozen crooks; the same people who shoplift or lie about what they ordered in a restaurant. We can't force them to have ethics, but we can show them that there are still a carrot and a stick.
Yeah, I agree. I used to be very anti-piracy. I knew that the labels were corrupt and everything, but it wasn't enough for me to justify breaking the law and pirating more than the occasional song. When the lawsuits started though, that was it for me. Legal or not, I'm not willing to pay money to a company when I know my money is going to be used to do things like that. It may be wrong of me to pirate, but IMHO what they're doing is more wrong than what I'm doing.
Nobody likes lawsuits (except, perhaps lawyers). But in all likelyhood, they will remain part of the response to unauthorized file-sharing.
Even the EFF acknowledges this. Not so long ago the EFF suggested that the RIAA should be suing infringers and in the EFF's more recent file-sharing solution "white paper" they continue to suggest the same. (under "What about file sharers who won't pay?" you'll see "Copyright holders (and perhaps the collecting society itself) would continue to be entitled to enforce their rights against 'free-loaders.'"
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Great way to kill your business, between directly ending a relationship with a customer, and bringing bad press to your company.
Morons.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I heard a great thing on the radio today. They had a writer that contributes to Rolling Stone and has been on VH-1 quite a bit. He was talking about how the recording industry just doesn't get it and how every download does not equal a lost sale. His analogy was how when you go to a supermarket and they have the free cheese samples. When someone takes a piece of cheese, that doesn't mean there is a lost sale of cheese.
I thought it was a great analogy. I wonder if/when the RIAA will ever get it.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
It would cost just over $3000 for 215 music album CDs, if they were priced at $14 each. But what if you want 500 albums worth of music?
If you have such a huge appetite for music, wouldn't it be more cost effective to simply download all your music for free, then settle for $3000 when you get caught? It would be cheaper to steal the music instead of buying it legally.
Does the RIAA want to send this message?
and every.damn.one. of them was used!
SWING OUT SISTER -- Kaleidoscope World
White Zombie -- Astro-Creep 2000
Alice Cooper -- the eyes of...
GRAVITY KILLS -- Gravity Kills
SNAKEFARM -- Songs From My Funeral
AMANDA GHOST -- Ghost Stories
EVERCLEAR -- Songs From An American Movie
RICKIE LEE JONES -- FLYING COWBOYS
ELECTRIC SWING -- Big Band Crazy
NO DOUBT -- Return Of Saturn
Various Artists -- HOUSE OF BLUES SWINGS
BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY -- This Beautiful Life
CHICAGO -- Night And Day (Big Band)
DUKES AND GANNON -- SIX SHOOTER
PHIL COLLINS -- NO JACKET REQUIRED
DUKE HEITGER AND HIS SWING BAND -- RHYTHM IS OUR BUSINESS
VARIOUS ARTISTS -- THE UNPLUGGED COLLECTION
DON HENLEY -- THE END OF THE INNOCENCE
ANGEL CITY -- Face To Face
XFILES SOUNDTRACK
VARIOUS ARTISTS -- SKA WARS
take that RIAA!!!!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Someone needs to take them to court. I share copywrited music (about 400 songs), and i really hope that they get around to suing me. Why you may ask? Because i have the means (well my parents do) for a lawyer, my dad, working in the music industry understands the issue, and lastly i'm not sharing their music. This is why i hope i get sued. Every single one of the bands whos music i share is local and in fact a few have given me the OK. Most of the MP3s i got from the old MP3.com and some ripped from cds that i've double checked to make sure the label isn't a subsidiary or connected to the RIAA in any way. Hell, the bass player from one band messaged me after he saw i was sharing their music and offered to put me on the guest list of their show that night. Lets see the RIAA make the misstake of fighting for something they dont have the rights too. Besides, i need something to do this summer...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
This just hit me. Suppose we put our music files up, but then we either encrypt the files or encrypt the connection or something, and use a really shitty "encryption" algorithm like ROT13 or something. This should have two effects. Number one, one could claim that he had his files up for his own personal use and he had them encrypted so that nobody else could access them. Number two, if the RIAA broke the encryption to see that you are sharing files, then *BAM* sue them under the DMCA for circumventing encryption.
Now there is a lot of stuff to be worked out with this method. And it would make a criminal out of everyone(for breaking encryption) but the kind of people who download music for free don't seem to care about that sort of thing(though I'm not saying downloading music is a criminal act).
I simply refuse to accept that music file sharing is illegal.
People are sharing recorded sounds with each other, it is not a big deal. Since the companies put the recordings out into the public in the first place, they shouldn't be upset or surprised that people are sharing them with each other.
Sharing music files is about as big a 'crime' as sharing a can opener at a company picnic. The RIAA is simply exposing the gangster underbelly of the music industry that has always been discretely hidden (except to musicians) from the public with this ugly extortion.
This idea that music is sold in individual packages by created rock stars is a weird 20th-century concept (like communism) that simply appears grotesque and distasteful in the modern age. Music is like air: it comes into you, it comes out of you. No one can own it.
By all means, stop giving these people money that they use to extort money from others. What goes around, comes around.
1. OK, here's really what we need - a system like MusicBrainz that can go thru and automagically tag everysong on your disc.
2. And then interface with the RIAA Radar to identify specifically the RIAA stuff vs. which isn't.
3. Then MOVE that stuff out of my shared folder - I don't *want* to share it. Better yet MOVE it to the TRASH...
I like electronica and sometimes underground hiphop anyway- I can live without FSOL and Jay-Z and certainly would much rather share out people more deserving of my disk space and bandwidth...
Bittorrent allows you to download in a P2P network. While downloading you are also at the same time uploading portions/fragments -- this distributed uploading works well to make the network robust. However, what if it was hacked into the code of bittorrent that you could only upload say a _specific_ 1/10th of the song? And that each user uploads a different 1/10th of the song so that any new downloader comes in can still download the song in its entirety, s/he just gets a 1/10th of it at a time from different sharers. And all the while, although you are uploading ad nauseum, you are only uploading a specific 1/10th of the song, never its entirety.
Why am I bringing this up? Well, say if you broke down the size to even smaller amounts, like 1/1000000th (Dr. Evil pinky to mouth)? Digital data is nothing more than a series of zero's and one's. If you break it down small enough, the series of zero and one's become so common that it cannot be considered a unique segment. In other words, the 1/1000000th digital piece that I'm uploading could be part of Britney Spears' new song or it could be part of Jules Verne's novel in the public domain, the onus is up to the RIAA to prove otherwise. I'm sure my logic is erroneous somewhere, someone prove me wrong.
Linux at home
You cannot claim a number as property becuase it could possibly happen to represent a song in some digital format.
Sure. But that's not what we're talking about. You're saying that you cannot have rights to a number that was specifically chosen because it represents a work. You didn't randomly pick out numbers.
If you copy a work as you describe -- even when you are clever about how you do so -- you're infringing.
Only if you independently create an identical work, without having had access to the earlier instance of the work, would you be okay.
There is no grey area because your intent is always perfectly clear -- to get away with copying something. No court is ever going to side with you.
-- 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.
....want a serious, across the board fundamental change in the US. The government is corrupt, broken, out of control. Think about what we do. Millions trudge to the polls and allegedly "elect" a mostly priveleged millionaire class of people to a professional and pensioned "career" of outright "rule" over us. they DO NOT in fact, represent us, you and me, they represent and work for some fairly wealthy and exalted inteerests qwho have nothing in common with 99% of the US population. Nothing. And MOST of them are lawyers, and/or are connected financially to international conglomerates, in a big way. This is just an OBVIOUS conflict of interest. WHAT ELSE are you going to get but more complex and weird laws when it PROFITS the very people who "pass" them all the time? Then, while congress is in session, they spend all their time passing new laws,by the thousands, never ending, with little effort made to even have a modicum of constitutional review, common sense review, or to see if perhaps some of the older laws they have passed need to just be removed, a law-code review if you will. It doesn't happen, there's NO incentive for them to do so, because they control the system, they control the mass media, they control the social engineering brainwashing facilities called "public schools", and they PROFIT from it to extreme and obscene levels.
It's NUTS. It's getting worse, there's no end to the amount of laws passed, no top end limit, we are over 3 million laws on the books now, and these people in washington are SO FAR REMOVED from what it really is like in the US outside of the completely artifically maintained washington DC/NYC/LA axis of profits area, they really have no clue what they are doing other than maximising profits for themselves and their rich buds. No clue and they DON'T WANT a clue. They are trained actors and script readers, they "campaign" by 15-30 second sound bite, directly or indirectly, and by the acceptance of out and out bribes called "campaign contributions", but these public uttered "sound bite" words have little meaning, they just parrot what their focus groups tell them that will result in the same people "voting" for them over and over again, no matter what really happens.
The system is broken, terribly. It needs to change. Change at the federal level is just way to hard, SO, we need to elect some governor some place who can be the executive branch leader that at least can get ONE state back to what we are supposed to have,set a clear example of what it really was designed as, an independent state with loose ties to the federal government in a "union", BUT NO MORE, *full, default and complete* constitutional rights, and he has got to be unafraid of serious confrontation. That's the highest level we can hope for to look for any significant change for the better, IMO.
The Libertarian Party Free State Project is one example, Mack for Governor in Utah is another (He has a decent credible chance, too). There might be more, those are the two I am aware of right now where this sort of effort is being undertaken.
A success in these matters will go a long way to re establishing the court system like it is supposed to be, especially with jury nullification, speedy trials, and always having a jury trial if the matter in question is over 20$. You get some honest working class people on juries, and STOP the mostly completely criminal DAs and judges intimidating and instructiong them illegally, you'll see nonsense like in this article struck down, because people can see it's absurd. BUT, it HAS to be done at some decent level, local it doesn't matter, federal is impossible, that leaves the state level.
Should NO information cost money? Your "I'm taking, but you're not losing" argument boils down to solely that copyright is an artificial restriction placed on information. The whole point of copyright is that we, as a society, have decided that information should be artificially restricted. I don't think many people on either side are arguing against copyright (but I don't know, maybe you specifically are). The real question is where exactly the restrictions should be placed.
Get this through your skull, it's not stealing.
The word stealing has more than one meaning. "I stole the book", "I stole his research", "I stole a kiss". Insisting people only use your definition is a political move, so please don't treat people as ignorant or stupid as to the meaning of a word because they don't agree with your meaning.
Why don't we donate our CDs to a central repository, and transfer legal ownership of that repository to whoever gets sued? Perhaps we charge $1/mo to belong to the "ownership" club. We could use the money for storage, and to buy used CDs to round out the collection.
Once we have a large enough library, people would be immunized from the suits.
From Webster Online
Main Entry: copyright
Function: noun
: the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, and sell the matter and form (as of a literary, musical, or artistic work)
Webster Online
Main Entry: infringement
Function: noun
1 : the act of infringing : VIOLATION
2 : an encroachment or trespass on a right or privilege
Unless the songs being shared were not available on any of the available download stores...
Even if the material is unavailable in the format that you want it in, one does not have the right to share it unless they truly were given (by the copyright holder) the rights for distribution.
What I would love to see though is an environment where the large distributors are not part of the picture at all and artist can choose for themselves how to get their work out to the masses. The acceptance of the Internet should allow for a more direct artist to consumer market. Coming up with a business model could be tough, but if they can cut out the overhead of a distributor, it should be possible. We as consumers will need to change our purchasing habits to allow for the new models. Obviously illegal downloading isn't necessarily helping the artist (yes, one could argue it ultimately leads to a CD sale, but for most, it probably doesn't) and I imagine most would like to be compensated (you'll have the die hards in it for the art, but most probably would like to generate income).
Until the artist and the consumers come up with another process, the RIAA is going to exist and we'll have to deal with their rules.