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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).
Does anyone know the number of people the RIAA has sued thus far? I'd be interested in a comparision between that number and the number of estimated pirates (the more accurate numbers, and the RIAA's numbers). I'm wondering if all of this litigation is a financially sound strategy for the RIAA.
.... but unless it's an odd case like a 93 year old grandmother we don't here much about the outcome. While I'm sure some have come to settlement, where are the other thousands of cases? Have ANY of them gone to trial?
What if you already own the CD? Isn't that just fair use?
Before anyone jumps on this and says it's stupid - I recently downloaded a whole bunch of songs to which I had the CDs. Why? Because my CD drive and my secondary hard drive (which housed all my MP3s) both recently went tits up. I blame a bad drive cable. Anyway, my gf was leaving town for a month and I was in the process of putting together a 'mix tape' on a portable mp3 player for her. Since she was leaving soon I didn't have time to run out to the store and buy and install a bunch of new equipment - but I could leave my p2p software running overnight.
Uncommon? Sure. But that alone doesn't make it illegal.
"letting everyone take their product for free is though right?"
These companies likely would lose very little money to begin with because A) they would have rented it from the library B) they would have bought it used C) they would have borrowed it from a friend.
People who have time to dick around for hours looking for music online is the type of people who have little money (other wise they would have worked a fraction of that time and bought the music instead).
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
3 years ago the economy went to shit...
3 years ago CD sales went down....
Think that's a coincidence.
Also CD sales don't count as much since we got the legal downloading music DRM bullshit now... You have to count those eggs too....
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
I can't say this isn't stuff that matters, as it matters a great deal to some of us, but it looks like stories like this will be posted every couple of months for the forseeable future.
That being the case, I'd like to see the post itself contain some distinguishing marks, like a mention of what round in the series this is, or a comment on overall trends. This is the 4th round of these suits, right? (or is it the 5th?)
I know, people should read the article, and google for basic questions, and all that. However, this subject is becoming almost like SCO. There are just so many repetitious elements that it is extra easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.
Also, we can't expect the other media to convert data to knowledge. I doubt most press releases on this are going to keep track of whether the numbers per round have increased, decreased, or fluctuated both ways, for example. As another example, would you want to rely on Wired to tell you whether these clusters of suits start comeing closer together? (That's not to criticise Wired in particular, but to say that the press tends to become complacent the umpty-umpth time they are covering what sounds like the same story.).
Who is John Cabal?
It's highly unlikely that they're suing downloaders anyway. I believe everyone thus far sued have been sharing files. The media just latches on to "downloading music" for some reason--either as scare tactics, pressure from the RIAA to spin it this way, whatever. And really, it makes sense. Unless the RIAA were hosting files and tracking the IP of people who downloaded them (a shady practice to say the least) they've got no way of knowing who's downloading something. All they can really do is scan the P2P network and see who's offering, get the IP, and sue.
Now it's still alleged if they didn't actually check every file to make sure that it's actually music instead of crap, viruses, etc. But I suspect that unless you re-shared those files that you downloaded, you won't have any need to fear getting sued over your download.
When we come across a user who is distributing copyrighted music files, we download copyrighted music files (of our member companies) the user is offering, as well as document the date and time that we downloaded those files.
Do any P2P clients keep a log of files up/downloaded? If so, record your own song and give it a clever name like 'Timberlake's Justified'. Stick it up and wait for the RIAA to come along and snag it. Then sue/countersue them.
Lewis Carroll taught me how to do it:
i use kazaa-lite, and what i do is i downoad about 32 songs only, then i turn the program off
while i'm downloading, some dude might start uploading from my temporary download folder
this is the point at which the riaa can sue you
however, i'm protected by the fact that i basically download european trance music for jogging purposes
only through kazaa am i allowed to sample artists i would never be able to explore in any other forum: cds, too expensive; radio, nonexistent play; legal paid downloads, too constrictive on my selection and the rights they grant me
and i believe that international issues, even if both nations involved have fierce copyright laws, leads me to feel comfortable and confident: i'm probably downloading from european kazaa users, and uploading to them too... the riaa does not involve itself in international transfer cases: too complicated
so since i avoid the pop shit, the odds of me getting sued enter the realm of me winning the lottery
the day i win the lottery is the day i'll begin to worry about the riaa
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
>SCO isn't suing its consumers. It's suing companies that use a competing product that they claim infringes on their property.
The moment you quit viewing people using or considering a competing system as customers is the moment your company ceases to expand.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Putting a share up on Kazaa is not fair-use. The RIAA is going after the big offenders. It doesn't make sense for them to go after the little guys. If the big-offender happens to be a tenny-bopper so be it.
There is a legal recourse for copyright holders to pursue against infringers, this is it. I agree with you that that crippling devices is bad. It interferes with fair-use, just like Macrovision interferes with fair-use. But, if we close off prosecution what other path can copyright holders pursue? We need to prop up legal recourses. This needs to be the way the RIAA handles copyright infringers. This gives us leverage to save our devices.
Copyright law does need to be changed for the public's benefit, but that is a side issue. And civil damages are insane, but that is also a side-issue.
Look, the RIAA knows that their copyrights are being infringed in honest to goodness definitely not-fair-use ways. I believe them. I have every confidence that they can convice a congressmen. How much infringement actually takes place is up for debate. But, we need to support this legal action. They will not give up because they have money riding on this. And the alternatives are prevention and anti-circumvention. I'd rather deal with copyright in the courts than those other two (which I'm convinced are utterly evil).
Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true! -Homer Simpson
Incidentally, I have never heard of a single artist who turned down a contract merely because it was with an RIAA label.
Ever heard of Rancid?
After the "Ruby Soho" craze, they had people beating down their door, throwing money at them. But, they were unwilling to give up the freedom that being on a small label gave them - they weren't willing to sign their lives away for the money, when what they wanted was to not get screwed.
~Will
sig?
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.
What's an "RIAA backed record label", isn't RIAA just a joint association of record companies etc? I don't think the "back" anything or anyone, they're just trying to protect their members' rights. When their members' product is distributed for free by hundreds of millions of people, I think they'd not be doing their job if they just looked the other way.
Distributing music on the internet isn't as innocnent as many people would like it to be, either. Any person with any knowledge of economy will tell you that the determining factor of the price of any product is supply and demand. P2P is an almost infinite supply and there is virtually no cost to the file sharers. Record companies, however, have a lot of running costs. So even if they drop their prices to next to no margin, there's no way in hell they could ever compete with P2P.
BTW. major labels aren't the greedy assholes many people would like to see them be. In fact, AFAIK the Warner/EMI merger didn't happen because they both have so much debt (IIRC EMI is something like $300,000,000 in debt). Basically the shareholders aren't making any money, and the managements get replaced every once in a while, so they don't really get the chance to get rich either. There's only a select few benefitting in the recording industry at the moment, and they are mostly people who write music (or artists who can repeatedly sell out huge venues).
But hey, who cares, so long as I don't need to pay for my music. It's a political statement, innit? Right? Yeah, right. What the fuck do I know anyway, I'm just a recording engineer who has no clients (anymore).