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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).
I wonder when they'll ever figure out that suing your consumers is not an effective business model?
Help a college student
Lets get those pirates who are stealing Britney Spear's music!
Maybe we can SUE good taste into them...
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
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.
I feel sorry for this John Doe character, he's always getting picked on.
.... 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?
"the RIAA started using the 'John Doe' litigation process"
For those wanting to know more about 'John Doe' processes etc here is the RIAA's FAQ.
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.
Hasn't got jack about the new lawsuits. Can anyone get a list of what IPs are being sued?
And in lesser news, thank god for dynamic IP addresses...
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
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.
"We keep losing customers! I don't understand! We sue the fuckers, and they still won't buy our products!"
-Valiss
Just a quick link I found, pretty informative. http://www.mttlr.org/voleight/RederOBrienver5TYPE_ HTML.htm
http://www.fsckin.com/
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.
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.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
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 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?
Anonymous P2P will likely 'solve' these lawsuits, the technology is coming along nicely.
I think that I2P and Mute need some developers though if you are interested.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
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.Brandon Glass's personal site.
Judge:
Bailiff, remand Mr. Doe into custody. Mr. Doe, how do you plead?
Bailiff:
Judge, the defendant has failed to appear.
Judge:
Issue an arrest warrant in Mr. Doe's name.
Case dismissed.
RIAA:
Doh!
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?
im sure the Fine print on the letters Read
"ALL YOUR DRUM & BASS ARE BELONG TO US"
We prefer copyright challenged.
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.
Put this on a webpage: what a <a href="http://www.riaa.com/">bunch of pricks</a>
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
these lawsuits do nothing more than publicize the fact that you can download music illegally from the internet. It's kinda funny in an ironic way.
That said, Live, Legal P2P and Live, Legal Bittorrent Downloads.
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:
Second, I believe sharing music is protected under free speech. It is no different than if I have a book and give it to a friend to read. What if I want to make a copy of a CD to give to my wife, so she can listen to it in her car, do I have to buy a second copy of the same CD? It would seem rediculous if the music industry expected us to buy the same product over and over again, at inflated prices.
I also want to add that I am all for supporting the artists. But the music companies treat the artists with the same heavy handed, one sided manner they treat the rest of us. They force new bands to sign contracts which give the bands next to nothing. Only the top singers can force the record companies to pay a fair wage, and that is only if their original contract is set to expire.
What should be done is the music industry should charge a fair fee for CD's and pay artists a fair wage. But until they start showing they want to be fair, I say why should we concede anything to them?
So I ask everyone, what is a fair price for a CD?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
At least here in Norway, and I suspect many more euro countries, you're permitted to download all you like for personal use. It's when you start sharing you become a "problem"... So downloading Britneys latest album over bittorent is not legal, but over kazaa is. (Why would you want to though?)
Every penny they con out of people with this scam goes to Sen. Hatch and his cronies, for more sub-moronic laws.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
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.
I think many of them are probably go by KazaaliteK++
This message was brought to you by the death of 30 brain cells.
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.
First, they came for the top distributors.
I wasn't among them so, I didn't speak up.
Then, they came for the next top infringment violators.
I wasn't among them so, again, I didn't speak up.
Next, they came for random P2P users and, since I wasn't among the ones they targeted, I still didn't speak up.
Then they came for me and there was noone left to speak up.
--blatently lifted from history, but, you get the point.
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
It has nothing to do with contracts, actually. There is no contract entered into when purchasing a CD. What prevents someone from being able to distribute RIAA members' songs is copyright.
or, IHBT, IHL.
And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
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.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
This is a VERY SIMPLE CONTRACTUAL ISSUE.
If that were true, then the RIAA could only sue people who had bought the music and were distributing it. But lots of people distribute music they never bought.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
Well, let me first say that I'm glad I'm living in Canada where it for the time being, downloading music is legal.
/., 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 ...
... and everthing doesn't run around the linux business model.
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
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
I don't buy it, I download it for free so I don't agree the contract. =)
For one thing, you don't have to spend a dime on your defense if you don't want to. Furthermore, if you have ever sued someone in a civil trial you would know that unless they are very wealthy to start off with, collecting any money from them is next to impossible. The RIAA is shaking the tree and seeing how many suckers fall out (settle out of court).
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.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You sure are demanding a lot.. Before I rebut you, a question:
Is owning a license to the content actually a right to the content, or only the content on the medium you purchased? Has this been tested in court? Is there any legislative backing to your
claim?
When I bought the record, I bought a lifetime right to the music.
I'd like to see one shred of legislative evidence that this is the case.
Now....
I demand the right to download any and all of the songs that I bought as a kid in the mid 1960's. I demand that the RIAA prove that I didn't buy the recording before sueing me for downloading it. "... pretty, pretty, Peggy Sue...".
Assuming your statements about content vs medium are accurate, you have this right. In fact, they aren't suing US downloaders. They're suing the UPLOADERs, who do NOT have the right to distribute the music.
Now your right doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the copyright owners don't provide some way for you to download the music. They don't have an obligation to help you fulfill your assumed right of download. They don't have to offer up every song for download at no charge, assuming that only people with a license to the content will download it. So until they actually sue a downloader for downloading the music, this argument has no bearing on these cases.
We are innocent until proven guilty.
In criminal law, sure. Not in a civil matter. So far, all the suits filed have been civil.
I demand the right to be able to download any song that has been played on the radio long enough to have had the copyright period expire. In this case I mean the copyright period in legal effect when the recording was originally released and purchased by me.
Then write your congresspersons and bitch about extended copyrights. But again, you should really be wanting the right to distribute such content legally, since that's the crux of the current situation. No one is obligated to provide you with downloadable music, so demanding the right to do so means very little. The RIAA could come out tomorrow and say, "Everyone is free to download any music they wish," but if they don't say "Everyone is free to upload any music they wish," then it's moot, since the only legal distributers would the the members of the RIAA, and you can bet that they're not going to give their product away for free.
I demand the right to publish on third world websites the names, addresses, and social security numbers of the members of the legal team that is using vague and legally unsubstantiated copyright to extort money from me.
Why third world? And why can't you do this now? All you have to do is get the information. I bet you could do it if you tried. Have you tried, before insinuating on Slashdot that you don't have the right and/or ability?
Fuck these people! Let's cut their heads off instead of those of ordinary technicians who just happen to be working in Allah-land and got kidnapped by religious psychopaths.
Excellent idea! Why have we (the US) been cutting the heads off of those ordinary technicians who just happened to be working in Allah-land and got kidnapped by religious psychopaths?!? All of a sudden, it all makes sense. We (the US) shouldn't be cutting off the heads of those technicians at all! You should be in politics!
You misread me, I'm not saying someone SHOULD. I'm asking if someone DID. I'm wondering if all, what, 3,000 cases immediately settled, or if anyone said no, or simply ripped up the papers. I'm wondering what the outcome would be, if the RIAA would pursue it or not. And yes, they'd be a foolish idealist, but my college experience tells me there are plenty of young, foolish idealists who want to "stick it to the man". Or perhaps they don't have any money, so what's the difference between $3,000 and $100,000? Or perhaps they want to milk a very public lawsuit for all it's worth, money be damned. It's not rational adult thinking-- but there are plenty of guys (yeah, mostly guys, and often patterned after Jack Black in High Fidelity) who're looking for a fight.
I'm not commenting on the ethics of either side-- to be honest, I don't use P2P and I really don't care, so save the accusatory tone, this isn't autobiographical. I just can't believe all 3,000 gave in, and if a few didn't I wonder why we're not hearing about it.
Since suing people is too slow (not one of these cases has actually gone to court yet), the RIAA and MPAA are now having people murdered.
4 06 19/ap_on_re_us/police_shooting_piracy_3
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/200
What a country!
EFF's database of IP addresses and KaZaA usernames being sued by the RIAA
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.
The link wasn't working(space between 6 and 1), and many people won't read it since it's copy and paste ;)
RIAA Agents Murder Unarmed Man
Maybe this has been answered before, but nothing in the 3+ modded questions even alludes to it.
What the hell is the point in filing 482 John Doe lawsuits? Or 3000+ for that matter?
I mean, ignoring the usual debate over whether or not they should be filing any lawsuits, and just assuming they're in the right, why the hell are they doing it this way? Isn't there precendent to say that the RIAA can't force ISPs to reveal the name of the person behind a given IP address? How do you extract money from a 32-bit number? How do you instill fear in a 32-bit number? Am I missing something?
Clueless
OK, analogy #2 -- MegaCinemaCorp has you and your friends
/steal/ anything. I wouldn't have paid for a
/sampling/ it. Yeah, that's it, I just
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
ticket anyway, so it's not like you lost a sale..."
"I was, uhhh,
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? ]
>;k
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.
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.
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?
Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true! -Homer Simpson
The Harvard Business Review ran an article recently claiming that illegal downloads aren't hurting the music industry's bottom line. In fact is supposes that it may help, from an economic sense. I submitted as an article but alas rejection :)
Music Downloads: Pirates--or Customers?
Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee and co-author Koleman Strumpf floored the disbelieving music industry with their findings that illegal music downloads don't hurt CD sales. Oberholzer discusses what the industry should do next.
If the cases were filed against a "John Doe" then there's a halfway decent chance that the defendants don't actually live in St. Louis or even the surrounding area. I'm no expert on geolocating IP addresses, but I don't think it's that precise.
I may just be tired, but why can't those who are being sued claim that the music they were offering for upload was initially downloaded by them under the assumption that it was available (legally) for free? Why is it presumed that the accused should know that the songs offered for download on their P2P software are being offered illegally?
I would love to see someone argue that they had no idea who Britney Spears was and assumed they wanted their music to spread widely and so had allowed it to be distributed.
Absolutely. BitTorrent is primarily intended for legal stuff. Yes, you can find illegal stuff, but it's actually even worse than HTTP for that, because not only do you know who's hosting it, you know who else is downloading it. Microsoft's lawyers, for example, know this. When the Windows code leaked a while ago, someone set up a torrent with linux-2.6.2 as a joke ("Kernel source here!"). A few days later, he and people who downloaded from him were C&D'ed. I remember reading a thread about this here, but the best link I could find now is this.
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.
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.
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!