The RIAA Sues 482 More People

An anonymous reader writes "Today the RIAA said they have sued another group of people, 482 to be exact, for copyright infringement. The RIAA used their 'John Doe' litigation process in this round of law suits, because they do not know the names of the copyright infringers. After appeals court ruled that Verizon does not have to provide names of customers to the RIAA, the RIAA started using the 'John Doe' litigation process." (Similar stories at Wired News and CoolTechZone).

Comments

How long will this go on?

[MacGoldstein]

I wonder when they'll ever figure out that suing your consumers is not an effective business model?

Re:How long will this go on?

[mr_jim83]

SCO isn't suing its consumers. It's suing companies that use a competing product that they claim infringes on their property.

The parent shouldn't be modded insightful, just offtopic. I could see modding it funny maybe, but insightful? Not really.

Re:How long will this go on?

[loid_void]

No, I think the think the question really should be: How can the recording industry be so stupid as to be represented by an association that by it's very actions drives it's customers away. Oh yea I forgot, the industry choose them. Then they deserve to die the slow death that they have chosen.

Re:How long will this go on?

[dasmegabyte]

When people stop buying CDs from RIAA artists. Which, after close to three years of this nonsense, they haven't. In fact, according to SoundScan, OTC sales are actually up.

So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that suing potential customers IS an effective business model, if you get more money from the suit then you would from their potential sales and if other customers want your product so much they're willing to buy from you even as you screw them. And seeing as how they're settling for $3k+ from filesharers who aren't likely to be buying 160+ cds any time soon, it looks like this is going to be just another line item in the budget. $5,000,000 from price fixed cd sales here, $2,000,000 from recouped advances, and another mil or so from suing grandmothers and preteen girls. Very effective; and you don't even have to call a sleazy accountant to do the books.

Re:How long will this go on?

[IrresponsibleUseOfFr]

I support this action. Some people are not going to stop infringing copyright until it actually affects their lives in a negative fashion.

ISP's are not just going to hand the information over to the RIAA. Which I agree, they shouldn't do. So the RIAA takes the case to court, a judge decides if their is reasonable evidence to proceed with the case, forces the ISP to hand over their records. RIAA finds out who they are actually suing. I think this exactly how it should work.

Look, the suing your customer's is a facade. You aren't bitching about Best Buy throwing your ass in jail because they caught you red-handed trying to lift a TV from them just because you bought some Mountain Dew when you were scoping out the joint. This is no different.

Copyright is copyright. Yes, it is f'd up right now. Yes, it lasts way too long. Yes, a lot of the music is crap. All this is beside the point. Illegally copying the newest Britney Spear's CD isn't justified. Even under the most progressive copyright schemes, that would still be illegal. This is the act that these people are accused of doing. This is what the RIAA is trying to nail these people to the wall for. And I hope that they are extremely successful, since this could make them lose steam over trying to shove some crippled devices and broken CD's down consumer throats. They should be doing this, I find the other bastard technologies way more intrusive, especially for those that respect the law.

Re:How long will this go on?

[grumpygrodyguy]

Oh please.

Don't act so smug and self-righteous. Congress has been degrading the public's right to access information for far too long. It used to be that you could go to places like the library and rent tapes, casettes, and relatively new novels.

The 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Act and other recent IP acts extend the copyright term to something like 100 years. It's appalling, and serves no purpose other than to allow big corporations to buy and sell our cultural history just like so many other commodities. Our parents generation enjoyed the proper balance between protecting innovators and the public. It's clear that our current leaders have no respect for the value of the public domain.

We're raised on music, movies, and games only to learn that we have to pay a tithe to revisit our childhood. There's no reason we should stand for that. 5-10 years is more than sufficient time to ensure that an investor/artist is compensated. Until congress stops selling out the average american to corporations, there's no reason the average american should respect the acts of congress.

Re:How long will this go on?

[SQLz]

When people stop buying CDs from RIAA artists. Which, after close to three years of this nonsense, they haven't. In fact, according to SoundScan, OTC sales are actually up.

People will never stand up for their rights because a. people are friggin idiots and b. the sales increases are driven by P2P. The RIAA is having their cake and eating it too per say. Not only do they enjoy the benefits of P2P, they sue for damages on top of that.

Re:How long will this go on?

[macdaddy357]

Not all laws are to be respected. Civil disobedience is an acceptable way to bring about change.

And ridiculous laws like the 55 mile per hour speed limit are routinely ignored. Also, the more silly laws there are, the more people lose respect for all laws, and start ignoring important ones. Laws against things that aren't wrong need to be changed.

Re:How long will this go on?

[dasmegabyte]

Whoa. I didn't say anything about the scum who steal money from artists by indignantly giving away their only product and acting like they're doing them a favor. I was merely dealing with the tactics of the other group of scum. Believe me, there's plenty of hypocrisy to go around in the world of digital music.

Re:How long will this go on?

[cpt kangarooski]

Illegally copying the newest Britney Spear's CD isn't justified. Even under the most progressive copyright schemes, that would still be illegal.

Actual or proposed schemes? I've proposed for a while now that any noncommercial action by natural persons be considered noninfringing, even if it would otherwise have been.

So your hypo would be perfectly legal. (assuming that you meant something other than 'illegally [doing things is] illegal' which is technically what you've posted, but is kind of circular.

Re:How long will this go on?

[gcaseye6677]

Could the recent increase in sales have anything to do with the economic recovery? Sure, not everyone has more money now, but I'd say most people are not as worried about being laid off and those that were laid off in 2001 have probably found new employment by now.

I really don't think too many people are saying to themselves, "Gee, I don't want to get sued for downloading music, better do what I did 3 years ago and pay $20 at the mall for that new Britney Spears album." This business model will thrive for a little bit longer, but when (not if) an alternative comes along, people will abandon the RIAA artists and companies almost overnight. More importantly, aspiring artists will bypass the RIAA labels.

Re:How long will this go on?

[dasmegabyte]

It doesn't matter where the increase is coming from...the very fact that there is an increase in RIAA member sales indicates that purchasers in general don't give a wet slap that the RIAA is suing file sharers.

I don't care myself. I'm not going to deny myself good music just because the artist signed with a major label. Shit, I *like* Velvet Revolver. I don't care that they're popular nor that their CD had (easily defeated) copy protection. I wanted the disc, I bought the disc, I enjoyed it. I wouldn't have enjoyed it any more or any less if it were on Bumblestick Records.

Incidentally, I have never heard of a single artist who turned down a contract merely because it was with an RIAA label. It's hard to turn down worldwide exposure, active promotion, industry contacts and that nice advance just because they sued some freeloaders.

Re:How long will this go on?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not suing customers. They're suing thieves. Taking property that doesn't belong to you is stealing, plain and simple. You may choose to use sugar-coating terms like "file swapping", or "music sharing", but remember "picking pockets" is also still larceny.

Anybody who takes property that doesn't belong to them should be thrown in jail, period.

And those of you who think stealing is protected under the First Amendment, need to reread the Constitution, specifically Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, which grants Congress the authority to protect intellectual property.

Re:How long will this go on?

[Bastian]

much more likely is to have even 1% of people work hard at only buying CDs from truly non-RIAA music labels. This could hopefully create a snowball effect that increases both the popularity and economic power of music publishers outside the cartel.

Once the RIAA has real competition, they won't be able to throw their weight around quite so easily. Heck, they might even be rendered irrelevant, which I'm sure would be a wet dream for everyone but a few dickhead billionaires.

Re:How long will this go on?

[TyrranzzX]

"I just wanted the CD, I didn't want to make a political statement", inotherwords. Well whuptefucking do. I didn't hear the black people of America cry about not being able to use the train when they were fighting for their rights.

As far as freeloaders are conserned, how about you shut your trap on that one. Go out and take a survey; what's music really worth to most people? $20 a CD, or $3? $50 a month for all you can handle? The RIAA is a cartel, and people have gotten used to cartel prices.

As far as "worldwide exposure, active promotion, industry contacts and that nice advance", what dream world are you living in? They get you to sign a contact giving them right to whatever you make, you then pay for your own studio time to record your songs (which can run $500-$600 or more an hour). You send it to them, they may or may not make a CD, atwhich point if they do you get a few pennies per sale, and the rest of the money you make are at conserts, and even then you get a cut of the ticket sales. Making music is more of a job than a creative work with the RIAA.

Re:How long will this go on?

[dasmegabyte]

You, sir, are a little confused. It is music, not civil rights. People who want something for nothing are freeloaders, no matter how they justify it. I am perfectly willing to pay $16 for a good CD -- heck, I paid $19 for "Flood" back in 1991, and just paid $25 for a 2 disc indie of which I only like the first disc -- and am excited that many options (such as iTMS and unrestricted listening stations) to offer cheaper options and more assurance that the CDs I buy aren't 12 tracks of garbage.

As for the last paragraph: you are quoting the common complaints raised by independent artists, complaints which are based on very shitty experiences not shared by all artists, certainly not by the artists I know who would DIE for even a summarily shitty record contract. For one thing, anybody making less than $2 per CD is a moron who neglected to fight for a better contract. That was the standard a-way back in 1994; KRS-ONE wrote a song about it. You pay for your own studio time with the advance that they gave you on sales of the record, they release the CD when they want, it's true, but they do that to time it with promotion. Promotion doesn't mean POSTERS, by the way...it might be nothing more than sending out discs to review rags, but that's something you can't get as an independent. Self promotion is a rough racket, and if you want radio play these days you pretty much have to be an RIAA act. Nobody else has the sales to properly do promotions.

The RIAA is a cartel, I'll grant you that. I'm not against the independents and they make more and more economic sense each year, as the number of signing majors goes down. But my favorite record from my favorite Indie artist only sold 30,000 copies. I guarantee that, had they released that same record on a major with nationwide airplay and tightened production, they would have cleared at least 100,000 copies. The difference in pay percentage is pretty substantial, but it's not quite as big as the potential for becoming famous and paid, two things you have to be VERY lucky to get as an indie.

Re:How long will this go on?

[Siniset]

But who's to say these companies won't do the same thing that the current big record companies are doing now? Just because they're smaller, doesn't mean that they'll still be "good" when they become big.

I mean, I love indie rock, but you have to be a realist I think and realize that just because they're indie, or small or whatever, that they are automatically good, and won't pull similar stunts if given the chance.

Re:How long will this go on?

[ErikZ]

Reeeaaaaly.

So, use any open source software?

Do you own it?

No? Go directly to jail.

Re:How long will this go on?

[Anonymous Coward]

NO BUSH IN 2004. Save our civil liberties

I don't think that's something you have to worry about. There is no way Bush is going to win. It's probably going to the biggest defeat an incumbent president has suffered in US history.

There's the anti-war people, pro-women's rights, pro-civil-liberties. Is there anyone left voting for him besides lunitics? That can't be more than 20% of the population.

Re:How long will this go on?

[TCaptain]

Nah, the effect of this is that an RIAA backed record label will buy out the newly popular label and start flooding the airwaves with whatever stuff was selling hoping to cash in.

Of course, the sheeple will buy it and the original fans will now become sick of the music since they hear it everywhere...or worse, the bands will release a new more commercial album sanitized for the airwaves.

Re:How long will this go on?

[MyHair]

I *think* SCO sued Novell because Novell publicly claimed they didn't sell ownership of Unix to SCO, only distribution rights. That kinda puts a damper on SCO suing their customers, so they're suing Novell to clarify what was sold to SCO. I don't believe the suit mentions Suse or NetWare at all. But in any case SCO pays a large percentage of its Unix revenue to Novell, so they're still suing people they do business with over their business dealings because they don't have a leg to stand on to sue anyone over using Linux. They're hoping to buy a leg through one of these lawsuits, but it's a long shot.

The only question I have is this: Isn't Netware a competing product to SCO's Unix product? Technically, I believe it is. When you think about it, it is really kind of funny. SCO could have sued Novell for having a competing product once they purchased UnixWare.

I have a feeling Novell thought of that when they sold the rights to SCO since they had NetWare long before they bought Unix. They probably have plenty of language in the agreement to protect their flagship product.

Re:How long will this go on?

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of people ALWAYS vote for the same party. Only a small minority of people will actually "change sides". These people are the ones that the politician's campaign for. The majority of the people that you listed in your comment would not have voted for Bush in the first place.

Re:How long will this go on?

[jasonisgodzilla]

If I buy cd's as well as share files, then I'm still a consumer. I may be pirate as well, but the two are not mutually exclusive.

Re:How long will this go on?

[smoker2]

Supply and demand. Interesting.
Bearing in mind that the "music" industry has only been running for around 60 years already, during which it has shifted from recordings of original artists performances, to mass production of copy cat artistes. I'm don't see why the music industry should be protected from natural evolution by the law. So what if they lose money and go broke ?

There was a thing called the dotcom boom a little while ago, lots of computer techs and businesses went under, but nobody passed a law demanding that we all had to buy their products to keep them afloat. Here in the UK, we used to have miners, and weavers and all sorts of other craftsmen. They are mostly gone now, and people have moved into other areas.

I respect musicians who get out on the road and entertain people, which is their primary function, not to spend 3 years in a studio on a piece of crap, then expect the world to pay for it for ever. How much is a recording artist worth in real terms anyway ? Certainly not the millions they currently end up with.

P2P is feeding on the still twitching carcass of a dying industry. The only people interested are the industry itself.

Sue Happy

[Osgyth]

I don't know about anyone else, but these "sue to scare" tactics just don't worry me. They have failed to change my computing in anyway. I still download music; in fact, I may download more, just to site them. IMHO I feel they are just alienating more people with each lawsuit.

Re:Sue Happy

[loid_void]

Exactly, and just like Prohibition, no one stopped drinking, everyone just got a little more careful.

Re:1595

[BrickM]

That's amazing. 1600 sued, out of the millions pirating. Most of those sued settled out of court. It'd be interesting to know what the settlement was, because I doubt the RIAA is getting enough from these "John Doe" pirates to cover their lawyer costs. That makes this even more of a blatant scare tactic than I originally thought. Thanks for the link.

Re:Joe Doe process

[nelsonal]

First I'm not a lawyer, this is merely what I've gleaned from other articles on the subject. AFAIK, the RIAA or their agents collects the IP address of people sharing (large?) amounts of music on various (Fasttrack & Limewire?) p2p networks. They then sue "John Doe" (the legal term for anonymous coward) and supena the owner of the IP address at the time of the incident. Once the name and address are in hand the copyright holder or their agent begins a formal lawsuit (and usually tries to settle out of court for an apology, cash (3k-10k), and an agreement not to share music. The threat is the huge penalties if you are convicted of copyright violation for each song you were sharing.

Re:Overall total?

[BrickM]

So according to Wired's total (and their settlement estimate), the RIAA is looking at $10,500,000. That's pretty impressive for a bunch of copy-n-paste lawsuits. Any lawyers want to estimate the RIAA's legal costs for this campaign?

More info, please

[cove209]

I have two questions regarding this: 1- The RIAA is filing "John Doe" lawsuits (they will add the names later after the discovery process or warrants are served or whatever). At this time, they are trying to use the ip addresses to establish the identity of the people they are suing. How come the ip addresses are not posted in the news stories or on the eff page if it is public information and is in the lawsuit? 2- Exactly how is the RIAA obtaining their information? Are they seeding songs with data in the tag so they can then say in court that this song was slightly modified and now has a unique filesize or date in the tag and we alone have put this song out there and let people download it? And if so, can they legally do that? They are not a law enforcement agency, can they say that the laws regarding copyright don't apply to us since we own the copyright? OK, more than 2 questions: 3- Exactly what applications are the people using when they download this stuff? Kaaza? If it is Kaaza, are they then looking int he default shared Kaaza folder for the song they have seeded? I have found NO websites that have this info. Any thoughts?

Uploading is the key issue...

[Brandon Glass]

I wonder why more people don't realize this, the RIAA are actually balancing on the edge of a knife with this one: They want to stop copyright infringement, but they don't want to draw too much attention to the copyright infringement via P2P issue, because they realize that if too many people start paying attention to it, the masses will realize what the law actually says regarding this.

Downloading isn't the key issue, uploading is. Copyright infringement is traditionally defined by unauthorized distribution - so they really only have the right to go after those who are illegally distributing their content. This means the uploaders. Depending on your P2P client, it is possible to prevent uploading, or at least stop uploading by removing the file from the P2P system as soon as it's downloaded - of course, in some cases this will render individual P2P networks unusable if too many people do it, but some, like Emule/Edonkey, have the ability to upload while downloading... so unless they catch the culprits very quickly, removing the files from the shared directory and thus preventing further uploading will take all of a few minutes, and no charges can (theoretically) be pressed.

Re:And the RIAA's site...

[SB5]

Nope, not the case. Any smart ISP would dump the logs after a set amount of time. 1 month to 2 weeks. There is no real need to keep them longer... Unless you want to help to prosecute your customers... Which might not sit well with your customer base...

About time

[sumdumass]

As much as i hate the idea of RIAA and MPAA sueing fileswappers, at least now they have to show a little merrit in the case before they can automajicaly get the realname and personal information of the accused. I think this is a giant step forward in corecting some flaws in the DMCA that allowed anyone to get personal information about anyone else if they insinuate that they have violated thier copyrights.

To me finding that RIAA has to now get some aproval (form a court) before getting the infromation they are seeking is the true news worthy potion of this article. I think most people havn't really had problems with RIAA and the likes going after people breaking the copyright laws, thier problems was with the way they went about doing it. Some will always have issues with others trying to protect thier investments and there will be some that still don't like the lawsuite/extortion ways RIAA is doing it. As i see it now one down and more to go.

Thier extortion tactics, whiel can be viewed with good intentions leaves alot of problems open to come back and haunt people. Maybe there should be a test to what how they actually gather evidence and how that evidence is displayed.. also it would be nice if all the lawsuites could be lumped into some class action deal were people could share the cost of actually defending themselves from it.

Re:Overall total?

[sysopd]

As for the number of pirates, it is in the millions and millions, for sure.

And as for the number of good Artists, hundreds? Seriously, I am willing to bet that most people who have 50GB of mp3s have less than 1GB of music they really even remotely like. You have to sift through piles and piles of pure crap to find the gems.

So any figures I see about the amount of $$ someone has 'stolen' by downloading gigabytes of music I have to reject because they would never buy all that crap and if they had to, they would have given up long ago without finding anything they like. I for one have bought way too much music ever since I started downloading it. If its good I buy it. I have close to 1000 cds and over 100 vinyl.

Think about it, how much of your collection is something you'd buy or already own and how much is refuse you have collected and somehow can't delete? How many people have binders full of software they never use, music they don't like, and movies/tv shows they haven't watched or don't like? I know several.

...I don't understand..

[Ninwa]

I don't understand why everyone is annoyed as if the RIAA is doing something incorrect. Maybe it hasn't sunk in to anyone here, but downloading music you havn't purchased IS stealing, no matter what logic you put behind it. "Oh god they're just scared tactics". No shit sherlock, they can't sue millions of people, they have to stop people from stealing SOMEHOW.

Re:Anonymous P2P

[SB5]

The RIAA is being VERY STUPID. The only thing they are going to do is make P2P stronger. Probably stronger than the internet.

It will eventually become very decentralized, very efficient, probably encrypted, use really good hash file verification systems.

And it is going much faster than it probably would have if the RIAA didn't step in....

Re:Remember...

[bradleycarpenter]

The difference is that you do not physically make a copy of the Book. It is yours and you are free to give it away/loan it to friends. If you made a photocopy of the book and gave it away then it would be illegal.

Re:Prohibition

[jovian_]

I think a closer example would be the war on drugs -- it won't address the core issue in the least, but at least we'll get seventy years of raids and court cases.

Re:Have they ALL settled?

[dasmegabyte]

Would you be the one to spend 10, 15 thousand dollars in court and lawyer fees to say "fuck you?" to an RIAA lawsuit claiming you illegally offered to let people copy a work you did not have the copyright for? Especially if you did it? Would you be the guy who, knowing that they have records and evidence that you did IN FACT allow their computer to access and download copyrighted material you hosted, claimed to be innocent? Would you spin some story about a theiving roommate, or a computer virus, or a cell of terrorist hackers? Where's the reasonable doubt needed to assert your innocence in the face of solid evidence proving your guilt?

And would you stand up to them, knowing your guilt, knowing the court's award would be much higher than the $3000 settlement they offered you, just because you were an idealist?

Methinks you'd have to be a very rich, foolish idealist. And if you're a rich, foolish idealist, I'd rather see you devote your energies to promoting a more palatable green party in this country than waste it fighting a copyright infringement lawsuit with that group of assholes at the RIAA. We broke the law, we got caught. Pay the fine, get it over with.

Re:Yay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I see videos of her practicing in sweats. Alright, we're even.

I don't see why people like either her music or her body. It's all hype. Do a image google search on her. Sure she's above average. Her face is quite cute, but she's not even close to a "10".

I know people have different tastes in music and women, but not that different. Even her body is mostly hype.

The videos look great, because they use camera tricks and lots and lots of editing. Take a look at the photos on Google. The great looking ones are all selected out of hundreds of pictures. Hype.

Re:Remember...

[YrWrstNtmr]

1. Giving you book to a friend is different, in that you no longer have the book.
2. 'Sharing' is a cutesy word for distributing. You are no different from the music store, except that the artist gets zero compensation from you.
3. The entire Internet is not your friend.
4. Just because the RIAA is wrong doesn't mean we have to be.

RIAA

[p0rnking]

Well, let me first say that I'm glad I'm living in Canada where it for the time being, downloading music is legal.

But for you unfortunate ones south of the border, the law is the law, and just because you don't agree with it, doesn't make it legal.

I know that here on /., there's a large percentage of people who will use excuses such as "well, the RIAA is stealing from the artists" ... well, maybe there are, but ...
1) These artists signed the contracts, without a gun to their head
2) If the RIAA is "stealing" from the artists, how does stealing from the RIAA make it better? You're basically reducing the little amount of money that the artist should have gotten.

And yes, I personally think that the greatest form of advertisement is word of mouth, and what better way to do so than p2p and filesharing? But once again, for the time being, the law is the law ... and everthing doesn't run around the linux business model.

No, that wont stop them

[nurb432]

If they lost ALL their customers, they would go straight to congress with some fabricated numbers and force a way back into our pocket books... somehow. Much as they do with taxes on music CDr's..

Perhaps a national 'pirate tax', beacuse you know, EVERYONE is doing it, right? Bah.

Re:Don't call us pirates --

[Graemee]

Call me a Carefree Canadian

Re:Anonymous P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are right, RIAA right now is the biggest factor in the move towards anonymous P2P. I dont think there would be 1/10th the progress without their actions, LOL.

Re:RIAA hosting files

[Sancho]

Actually, those cases weren't thrown out. The reason is that entrapment is defined (at least in that state) as an action that would induce a normally law-abiding citizen to commit a crime. The courts found that normal, law-abiding citizens would not steal a car if it is left unlocked with the keys in the ignition, so the tactic was valid.

All that's really moot anyway, because as you postulate, entrapment is only applicable to law enforcement agencies. The RIAA, being a private organization, isn't subject to the same laws. I think that the only argument you could make is that since the RIAA is offering the files, there is an implied license to download/play them. But since it's fairly unlikely that anyone using P2P networks thinks that the songs are actually being provided by the RIAA (regardless of whether or not they actually are being provided by the RIAA) then it's a safe assumption that this defense wouldn't fly.

Re:Overall total?

[gcaseye6677]

If they were less than $10 million for the entire campaign, I would be surprised. Then there's the immesurable loss of goodwill. Furthermore, relying on lawsuits for profits, if the lawsuits ever in fact generate profits, will lull execs into a false sense of security. Rather than innovating and taking online music distribution seriously, they will just do whatever they have to in order to prop up the old system until the very end when they become obsolete. Long term, this is a loser's strategy, no matter how you look at it.

Why not just open the gates?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that the best solution for everybody would be if the RIAA companies (and whoever else makes records) created their own P2P network and gave free, anonymous access to their entire colective catalogs at reduced resolution, i.e. good enough to hear what something sounds like, but not so good as to make buying the tracks irrelevant.

Something like 24 bit, 12kHz mono. They could even put a filesize limit on the whole system of 1Mb, or whatever.

You could download, listen to and trade whatever you want, but it would sound like AM radio. If you like it, you'll have a reason to buy, and the whole 'I can't hear it anywhere else' argument disappears.

I'd be satisfied.

Why not 'theater-sharing' too?

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

OK, analogy #2 -- MegaCinemaCorp has you and your friends
arrested for sneaking into the movies without paying, aka
'theater-sharing'.

"But, but, I was just copying the movie onto my eyeballs.
I didn't /steal/ anything. I wouldn't have paid for a
ticket anyway, so it's not like you lost a sale..."

"I was, uhhh, /sampling/ it. Yeah, that's it, I just
wanted to see if it was worth it before I paid the
full ticket price."

"Yeah, and I already saw the movie yesterday, so I should
be allowed a couple of 'backup' viewings, in case maybe
I missed any good scenes when I ran to the john."

"And I snuck in for free because you're a big evil greedy
corporation that charge too much for popcorn and exploit
your minimum-wage help! Take that, Capitalist Pigs!"

[ Any other standard pro-theatersharing arguments
I've failed to satirize? ]

Re:Circularity to your argument

[IrresponsibleUseOfFr]

It's illegal because it's illegal. Unless it's legal, in which case it IS justified, right? Right?

Right and wrong have nothing to do with legal or illegal. You made the equivocation. Any reasonable concept of copyright would cover Britney and her most recent work. If you disagree then you disagree with copyright. I'm not going to argue with you, because I'm just wasting keystrokes.

See, the thing is, this isn't about copyrights so much as it is about propping up an out-moded business model and maintaining a stranglehold on the music business. Look at the media landscape. Who is in control? Something like 5 companies?

No, this is all about copyright. Yes, distribution costs have gone down because of the Internet. Media conglomerations are a result of high costs of distribution, look at how much it costs to run a TV/Radio station. Although, I will admit there were also some illegal mergers and cartel behavior. But none of this changes the fact that the RIAA doesn't want their stuff on Kazaa. Copyright gives them the right to prosecute people that do that. This is what they are doing. Nothing says you have to listen to stuff from the RIAA. Make your own music and release it. Computers are making it easier to produce quality recordings and edit them than ever. The Internet gives you limitless distribution models. The RIAA is missing out on this. You understand technology; you can take advantage of it. Just don't take their stuff and act like you own it then pass it out like government cheese. You don't. And you hurt other people that want to do perfectly legal things with their music. If prosecution is shut-off, what alternatives are there? Prevention and anti-circumvention? I like them suing people for actually infringing copyright better than the alternatives.

Be careful wishing legal problems on others. You might be the recepient of some karma of the non-/. variety

I'm not wishing legal problems on anyone. But, I support RIAA in this action. Since, I can't think of a better way to do it. How about this: come up with a way that you can stop someone from infringing your copyright? Let's say you are a porn site serving up a bunch of pictures/videos of me deep-throating (as you alluded to earlier), but in general me getting things crammed down my throat. Selling access to your site is how you make your living. Some bastard is handing out copies of your copyrighted work. You don't know who, but you know their IP. It might or might not be affecting the money that you are taking in, but it probably is in a negative way. How do you take care of this problem?

Re:Countermeasures

[cerberusss]

Well I don't know about you, but I have a job and a house that I need to take care of, and my gf needs my *ahem* devoted attention every now and then. There is barely time for friends and family and some good ole' Linux. So of course, I could spend every minute of free time to some stupid lawsuit. Because I find this plain stupid to waste my time on. IMHO, of course.

The Market Speaks, the RIAA ignores

[Shihar]

The issue is not free music, it is the method of shopping. For a while I was happily shelling out my monthly fee to e-music. They supported the type of shopping I wanted to do. I want to go, download a bunch of stuff that I could potentially hate and listen to it. Hopefully I will find a few golden eggs. Every month they got my check (credit card actually, but who is counting?). Then they decided to go to a more 'regular' installment where you have to buy x number of songs at x price, completely missing the fucking point as to why people would pick e-music over any other service.

Look, all that I want is to be able to explore new music. I want to do it simply and easily. I don't want to dick around and spend my time searching for it. Nothing under the sun is going to make me buy a horde of CDs hoping that some of them don't suck. Nothing is going to make me go out and research which bands suck and don't suck before I buy them. I honestly don't care enough to waste my time doing this. I'll happily shell out my money for the right to explore someone's database of music. I'll shell it out every single month. Hell, I do it already for movies. I couldn't be happier with NetFlix.com - care free exploration of movies at a flat rate. They get my 20 a month instead of blockbuster now because they realized that I am a different type of shopper. I used to pirate movies all of the time, until I found NetFlix.

Until these idiots listen to the market, it will be NetFlix for movies and my P2P of choice for music. The first company to satisfy my music buying style gets my cash. NetFlix won my movie dollars, now hopefully some idiot will win my music dollars. They can sue their asses off. I break the law all the time; I speed, I smoke the evil herb occasionally, I drank under 21 (when I was still under 21), and I merrily pirate music. It is just another calculated risk. Most people violate the law reguarly knowing a potential risk involved with doing it. The RIAA will never win this game. Only growing the balls to compete in the market is going to win me back.

Re:Anonymous P2P

[Kjella]

The RIAA is being VERY STUPID. The only thing they are going to do is make P2P stronger. Probably stronger than the internet.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It's kinda like infections and penicilin. If you don't treat it, the infection spreads. But if you do medicate, they develop immunities. But what good is it if you can't use it? RIAA is trying to use the legal system in the same way.

Also, I found your statement a bit surrealistic, since P2P is the Internet. Just like mail, web, im, newsgroups, irc and a host of other things. Just one of my favorite nitpicks :)

Kjella

American Criminality

[Oshkoshjohn]

I have been a Frank Zappa fan for a long time. On the album liner notes for the CD album "Joe's Garage Acts I, II and III"(1995 Zappa Family Trust) Zappa wrote:

"Eventually it was discovered that God did not want us to be all the same. This was bad news for the Government of the World as it seemed contrary to the doctrine of 'Portion Controlled Servings.'

Mankind must be made more uniformly if The Future was going to work.

Various ways were sought to bind us all together, but alas, sameness was unenforceable.

It was about this time that someone came up with the idea of Total Criminalization.

Based on the principle that if we were ALL crooks we could at least be uniform to some degree in the eyes of the law.

Shrewdly our legislators calculated that most people were too lazy to perform a real crime. So new laws were manufactured making it possible for anyone to violate them any time of the day or night, and once we had all broken some kind of law we'd all be in the same big happy club right up there with the President, the most exalted industrialists and the clerical big shots of your favorite religions.

Total Criminalization was the greatest idea of its time and was vastly popular except with those people who didn't want to be crooks or outlaws.

So, of course, they had to be tricked into it...which is one of the reasons why music was eventually made illegal."

It is wonderful that Frank continues to bother evil people from beyond the grave.