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RIAA Grinds Down Individuals in the Courtroom
Iphtashu Fitz writes "The Associated Press recently reviewed many of the copyright infringement lawsuits that the RIAA filed against individuals charged with illegally sharing songs on P2P networks. According to the article over 800 of the targeted individuals have settled for approx. $3000 in fines. One man in California had to refinance his house to pay his $11,000 settlement. Many of the defendants are unwilling to face the possibility of even higher fines by fighting the suits in court despite the fact that it could resolve important questions about copyrights and the industry's methods for tracing illegal downloads. It seems that even some of the judges presiding over these cases question the RIAA's tactics. 'I've never had a situation like this before, where there are powerful plaintiffs and powerful lawyers on one side and then a whole slew of ordinary folks on the other side,' said U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner, who blocked the movement of a number of these cases in her courtroom for months. She wanted 'to make sure that no one, frankly, is being ground up.'"
Let me re-state what I've said before: If you do not agree with what RIAA is doing, stop supporting it. Sadly, this means stop supporting artists affiliated to it. Quit cold turkey. Do not buy their CDs. Do not attend their concerts. Do not request their songs on the radio. And do not download/share their songs on the Internet.
Go on and protest their actions. The louder, the better. But stop supporting them, or your cries will fall on deaf ears.
No sig
I wonder if it is legally possible to mount a class-action defense? The defendants could then pool their resources for lawyerage, expert witnesses, etc. If a class of parties can act as a plaintiff, why can't a similar structure be used in defense?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The sad thing, I think, is that those of us who would be brave enough to stand up in court aren't participating in the types of activities likely to get them targeted.
A lot of the people who are doing this probably don't own copies of the songs to begin with, which makes it tough for them to stand up for themselves.
What really needs to happen is that someone with an extensive music collection, and the desire to fight this, needs to leave various P2P applications open 24/7 with access to their vast, legal music collection, so that someone will notice.
'I've never had a situation like this before, where there are powerful plaintiffs and powerful lawyers on one side and then a whole slew of ordinary folks on the other side,' said U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner
the honourable Nancy Gertner has presided over, by her own admission, numerous drug related trials. US government vs crack addicts seems pretty similar to me.
Get some money hungry lawyers (I know, redundant), to start representing these guys and make a show out of it.
Blech, never mind. It's the diet pepsi talking.
This is all to common a theme these days. People are unwilling to stand up against tyranny, which is exactly what this legal campaign is. It's very similar, IMO, to the racketeering of DirecTV against people who had purchased smart card programming equipment.
If people would take a stand against the RIAA/MPAA when it comes a-knocking, a lot of light would be shed on their lair of demons. As said by the original poster, this would be a great chance to publically question the (RI|MP)AA about their calculations and figured, and tactics, and have the answers on record. Even if the individual being sued had a judgement made against him/her, I do not believe it would be anywhere near what the desired settlement would be, and it would finally set a precedence for limiting what could be sought in future cases.
If no one stands up against them, they will continue to rape and pillage the consumer. Think about "A Bug's Life,"; the RIAA/MPAA grasshoppers NEED us ants, and they KNOW we are strong and outnumber them, but somehow they are able to bully us into submission.
Shouldn't it be up to the people to decide the laws, not organizations? When did it come to organizations, companies, being more powerful than the government? The government is suppose to be by, for, and of the People.
if you're going to trumpet Brian Martin's work, do it with a link and a few excerpts.
Against Intellectual Property, Chapter 3 of Information Liberation by Brian Martin
Is that the sort of "class defense" you had in mind?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
From the article: "lawsuits that the RIAA filed against individuals charged with illegally sharing songs" (emphasis mine)
And if they loose, the each member of the class could provide a coupon to the RIAA for $5 off a CD...
I am so happy to see that fine, upstanding corporate citizens such as the RIAA, are finally having their day in court. Our society will never be able to progress and move forward until the plebeian consumers finally understand their proper place in society. This example serves to prove why corporations should finally be given the right to vote in elections, according to how much money they attribute to the economy. Only when the corporations move forward, can the rest of our society follow.
OK, here's my little mini-rant on the topic of legal protection and public health care.
Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States or the amendments thereto is there a guarantee for health insurance. Or a guarantee that the government will take care of your doctor and drug bills when you get old. Nowhere. Go, read it, I'll wait.
Done? OK, but you'll notice in several places a reference to "equal protection under the law".
Don't socialize medicine. Socialize the legal profession. There's a constitutional basis for it, or at least more of a constitutional basis for it than socializing medicine. Give everyone equal protection in a court of law, something these people (and people accused of drug offenses) don't have.
Let's have lawyers like the Canadians have doctors. Let's have Johnnie Chochran representing some rich white kid who downloaded music from whatever kids are downloading with these days, and let's have it cost him absolutely nothing.
Bring it on mods.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
CD sales are down...the RIAA is in panic mode. Many people already HAVE stopped supporting them which is why they're suing people left and right.
The cat is out of the bag...the horse has left the barn....the _________(insert favorite metaphor here). The MP3 Genie is out and they can't put it back in. Sorry, but it's a losing battle.
The industry will change...this is a fact. The RIAA doesn't like this because they're basically going to stop making the huge mark-up on the CD/Record Market they had cornered. But their monopoly is crumbling, and it's crumbling more and more as the day wears on. Their trying to plug the leaks but the whole dam is falling all around them.
Is this good or bad? I honestly don't know, but it's going to be an interesting thing to witness! We've seen it many times in the past here, when a business is failing, the last-ditch effort is to issue lawsuits.
Want to support a band/artist? Go see them in concert OR send money to them directly...and I mean directly TO them...not to the management/record company. Will people send off a check to Chili-Peppers? Don't know, stranger things have happened.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Don't like the RIAA's tactics? Don't like how they rip off artists and sue their customers? Then don't buy from them. It's simply not that hard- buy used CDs if you must, get freely downloadable music from any of a dozen sources, go listen to a local unsigned band and buy their CDs. I've bought exactly one RIAA album in the last three years, and that was because I was curious about iTunes. I still get to listen to interesting new stuff all the time.
As far as file sharing, folks, as the law as written, file sharing of copyrighted works is illegal. No matter how you spin it (It's not theft, it's not wrong...), it's still illegal. If you think this is wrong, you have two options
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
The Insurance might decline certain cases for example for gross misconduct but usually you've got some support when needed, typically for less than 50 Euros per year.
In cases like this it is not uncommon for such insurances to bundle their efforts, sometimes including consumer organisations, to get a more fundamental ruling.
Of course littigation on the scale we now see in the USofA is not (yet) as common/rampant in Europe.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
...who just happens to be a real successful lawyer or have a lot of friends in the EFF or something, and it'll be interesting. They keep on throwing these lawsuits out helter skelter, and it's obvious they're not doing a lot of research about it (remember when they sued an 11 year old or something?). Eventually they'll hit somebody who'll fight back.
Here's a report that says "Nielsen Rating System At Odds With RIAA's Claim Of Lost Sales".
Here's a report that states "downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero".
There are several thousand cases now to analyze. If the RIAA is actually selecting poorer than avarage plantiffs (as some here have alledged), this will show quickly in proper statistical analysis (plot the location of the plantiff on a map, look in the government's poverty index to see what the average inocome in that location is, assign points to an appropriate scale, i.e. 1 point/1,000 $ US).
If it's there, and can be statistically proven, the next step is to tell the media the RIAA is selectively targeting poor people. A good strong piece of evidence, like RIAA plantiffs averageing 20% below median income, deserves a nice simple "National Enquirer" type headline, like "RIAA out to crush the working class", don't you think? Offer the press a chance for one like that, and some of them will bite.
While you're at it you could analyze those plantiffs on ethnic lines if they are willing to share the data. If the RIAA has selectively targeted poor people, it would be very hard for them to avoid having selectively targeted minorities at the same time, although they could possibly have deliberately thrown out a percentage of minority cases to avoid the appearance. I'd suggest if this proves fruitful, rather than contacting the media directly with the allegation that the RIAA is selectively targeting black people, you let the NAACP bring the allegation, as in such case, there WILL be a class action countersuit filed, but it will have 22,000,000 members.
Of course, it's possible there is no consistant pattern. In this case, wait until a couple of months go by where the numbers of plantiffs that are poor or minority is statistically high, and then make the claim "In recent months, the RIAA has switched tactics, to selectively target poorer people."
Who is John Cabal?
So at a time when they're suing thousands of their own customers...not a good business strategy IMHO...they're also cranking out really boring, insanely depressing music that all sounds like it was stamped out with an audio cookie cutter.
If this keeps up they'll have to give up the cocaine, private jets and porn star girlfriends! I'm having a hard time working up any sympathy for them.
So, yeah, hit them back in the wallet. Go out and sample free downloads, there are thousands of legal songs you can check out. Here are a couple links to get you started:
You can also shop at used CD stores. The only way you're going to get them to change is to stop buying their crap.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The point is not that the people being sued probably were committing acts illegal where they lived. The point is that a massive organization is steamrolling over individuals to make an impression, whereas those individuals would never have bought for example, enough music to refinance their house, etc. The RIAA is also doing things which they didn't used to do 10 or 20 years ago, when people recorded a lot of their music off the radio as one poster mentioned.
I don't buy RIAA music, haven't since I noticed the price of CDs in the stores was getting intolerable, this was 15 years ago. Somehow though I don't think removing one customer from their market is going to make a big dent.
Look, they're asking for it. This wave of litigation against individuals seems like a first for the judge because usually, customers don't tolerate that kind of shit. The RIAA believes it can get away with it and continue to feed you shit at high prices and you will continue to buy it. They are DARING you to fight back. Think about it.
So what else can you do? Well, if you are in business you could financially support non-RIAA or anti-RIAA bands, stations, software, or organziations. If you are in the prime RIAA demographic you can work hard to get all of your friends to stop buying RIAA music (especially the ones who are visible about it).
Ad agencies are beginning to realize the P2P type social networking (not just Internet-based, think word of mouth) gets much higher quality candidates (potential customers) than ordinary advertising. This can be turned around on the RIAA and suitable software / funding could magnify it. I think the iPod thing at Duke is fantastic. Now think of how to ensure that those iPods could massively reduce the amount of income the RIAA would get from that University, think and do something about it.
I don't buy RIAA music. I do like to watch live concerts on TV, and sometimes like what I hear on the radio (though I don't hear much of that either these days). These days cellphone subscriptions are starting to have a very large effect on record companies by removing disposable income from young people that would have gone to the RIAA. I am not for promoting illegal activities. I do see though a very unsettling trend of corporations taking over America (and elsewhere) and believe that litigation by the RIAA against potential customers , and the media slant on the affair (well there is a law against it so..) is a symptom of that.
The RIAA is within its legal rights at the moment to take these kinds of actions. It think it will be interesting to see their response if their customers exercise their legal rights to not purchase, to publicize, to organize, and to legally foment discord and financial destruction in the RIAA. Perhaps a good first plan of attack is to create a fund to hire artists away from the RIAA.
Remember, it is a lot like smoking. Every time you buy an RIAA product, you are saying "Thank you, please hit me again" to these nasty people. But the RIAA is always looking for new customers and new artists, every year. There is no reason why we couldn't start to put the pressure on them. Food for thought.
If someone that got sued by the RIAA came to slashdot and created a website to help with legal funds I wonder how much the /. crowd would raise for them?
Are we just talkers or can we each put a dollar where our mouths are?
I would think a donation thread and an advice thread WOULD help win a case against them.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
...this is how things often work in the legal world, now-a-days. Legal professionals want to go to court as only a last resort, for the simple and compelling reason that you don't know what could happen. The RIAA doesn't want to go to court, as it's worried that they will set a bad precedent for their legal racket. The defendant doesn't want to go to court because they could lose big time, and be forced in to bankruptcy.
The problem goes much further than this specific case--the legal system is broken and needs fixing. We've created this zero-sum game, forcing people to either settle early and choose their own destiny, or go to court and leave it up to no more than a coin flip.
Thing is, under the current system, I'd advise my clients to do the same thing. Settle and get on with their lives. Yes, we need a test case to set some precedent here, but I would not put any of my clients in that position unless they were adamant about it.
There's just too much risk and money involved with going to court, and, so, settlements are creating a practically private legal system with often confidential terms. What to do, what to do...
Stop listening to crap ...
That would be a perfectly viable way of ending the reign of RIAA-led corporate terrorism in music, if a majority of music listeners were to join in and stop listening to the crap. As things stand though, 99% of the audience consists of musical sheep, ie. people who despite their good intentions follow exactly the instructions of the music industry in deciding what music is "good" at any given time. The vast majority simply don't realize what's being done to them. Brainwashing is not too strong a term.
It's pretty inevitable. Unless you shut yourself off totally from the media, you get enveloped in the utterly pervasive music machine's output of not just music and video, but celebrity, hype and buzz. You literally cannot avoid it, it's as sticky as napalm. Face it, there is no future in asking the 99% of musically non-militant people to cut themselves off from the media, not even to enter the shopping malls where that sticky music is playing. The brainwashing is everywhere.
That public rating idea is great, and if it were to catch on then it might even improve the quality of "big business music" through perceived audience pressure. But meanwhile, music downloaders are being crucified, and leaving them to it in the hope that a long-term strategy might prevail is less than charitable. Some sort of direct legal action or preventative technical solution offers better prospects for the short term.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Are you talking about big name artists? I mean, if you downloaded a No Doubt live show, liked it and kept it, are you saying you would try to send the band some cash directly?
If so, have you ever actually verified that the group is getting the funds? I mean, for all you know, their manager or whoever is responsible for handling incoming fan mail might just be pocketing the cash themselves.
I guess what I'm asking is, is there any indication that performers are even aware that folks like you exist? Because if not, you aren't having much of an effect. It seems we would need to raise awareness to the bands directly.
Now, what if someone were to create the proverbial tip jar, but this time, with available options to tip any band or performer you choose who has listed themselves with the service. The money would go directly to the performer's bank account without suffering the middle man. By requiring the bands to sign up, you could at least try to screen them to make sure they understand the money is to go directly to them. Fat chance actually talking to them directly, but you never know.
And I imagine it would have to be in the form of a tip jar or donation or somesuch because of contractual requirements for profit sharing based on sales and such. Better than a "Screw-The-RIAA" jar, legally speaking.
I suggest everyone check out the RIAA RADAR, It has a list of most artists and their releases, and tells you if the artists company is RIAA or not. Check it out at: http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/
Enjoy!
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
The reason popular music is popular is because people happen to LIKE it.
The reason popular music is popular is because people have already heard it and are comfortable with repetition. Classical, Musicals, Big Band, Swing, Gospel, Rock, Punk, Metal, BoyBands: each generation did not morph into a new type of human being preferring a new type of music; each generation was indoctrinated by the music aimed at them during their formative years.
Today's popular music is simplistic compared to music before the rise of the guitar. Modern music is complex when it has 2 vocal melodies, 1 instrumental chord pattern, 1 instrumental melody, and a beat limited to what one person can create (hands doing one pattern and a single-note bass drum line.) Songs are limited to 3 minutes because there is not enough content to keep anybody interested longer. (I enjoy LinkinPark, but they usually turn off the music when they sing, and much of the "singing" does not have a melody.)
Today's music is not "better" than older material because it is more popular. It is popular because we hear it more often.
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Please refrain from poorly written personal attacks. I do not know Morgaine, but the post was not "self-involved" and does not exclude Morgaine from the sheep category.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.