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

Overall total?

[BrickM]

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.

We always here about initiating the suits.....

[wo1verin3]

.... 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?

I think they mean "alleged copyright infringement"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:How long will this go on?

[KrisHolland]

"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).

Damn I need a subject

[SB5]

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....

Re:I think they mean "alleged copyright infringeme

[Sancho]

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.

Countermeasures

[digitaltraveller]

From the RIAA John Doe FAQ:
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:

"Is it very long?" Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
"It's long," said the Knight, "but it's very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it--either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else--"
"Or else what?" said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
"Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called 'Haddock's Eyes'."
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged Aged Man'."
"Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called?'" Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it's called, you know!"
"Well, what is the song, then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting on a Gate': and the tune's my own invention."

Re:How long will this go on?

[IrresponsibleUseOfFr]

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).

Re:How long will this go on?

[Anonymous Coward]

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).