RIAA Sues More Music Lovers

DominoTree writes "The RIAA, a trade group representing the U.S. music industry has filed a new round of lawsuits against 744 people it alleges used online file-sharing networks to illegally trade in copyrighted songs, it said on Wednesday."

Comments

A chilling effect on sales?

[erick99]

Yesterday I was taken to task about my comments related to a similar article where I stated that the RIAA was suing more of it's customers. I say this because there are plenty of people who download a song or even an album (I hate to buy an album and find that only one song is any good) in a "try before you buy" spirit. I did this recently and then took advantage of Real's $4.99 price for an album. I know that a great deal of people simply download and do not buy but it cannot be a blanket statement. Anyway, this particular round of suits are, once again, filed against John Does:

The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) said the various suits, filed in courts across the country, cover "John Doe" defendants whose true identities are unknown to the group.

From the previous group of John Doe suits more folks have been identified:

Separately, suits covering 152 people who were previously sued anonymously but later identified and offered the chance to settle, were refiled with their true identities after they ignored or declined those offers, an RIAA (news - web sites) spokesman said.

I still maintain that suing your customers, whether your are the RIAA or SCO, can have a chilling effect on sales.

Cheers,

Erick

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[poofmeisterp]

I still maintain that suing your customers, whether your are the RIAA or SCO, can have a chilling effect on sales.

...which will lower their revenue further... which will make them find a scapegoat... which will target more technologies... which will prompt the creation of new technologies... which will prmopt more lawsuits.....

You see where this is going.

Also, wouldn't suing your customers piss them off, making them switch to alternate providers, further lowering sales, prompting you to sue more people in a desperate attempt to preserve your business model, causing them to stop purchasing from you (resume loop)?

I'd love to be in the room when the "brains" behind the RIAA finally say "screw it - we lost."

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[harlows_monkeys]

I say this because there are plenty of people who download a song or even an album (I hate to buy an album and find that only one song is any good) in a "try before you buy" spirit. I did this recently and then took advantage of Real's $4.99 price for an album.

Of course. Numerous studies have shown that file sharing probably overall does more good for the RIAA than harm, and so they should embrace it, at least somewhat.

However, one point that is often overlooked here is that this is their decision to make, not ours.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[jest3r]

I wonder when the RIAA will figure out that they are suing the wrong people ...

For starters the Internet is a global medium. I really don't see how picking on a handful of John Does in the United States will limit the availability of audio on P2P networks as a whole. Even if the RIAA managed to shutdown every computer sharing audio files in the United States people would still be downloading (from the rest of the world) and not buying.

The fact is it doesn't matter where the people sharing are ... because in order to stem to decline in CD sales you have to stop the downloads themselves.

I think the more successful campaign revolved around flooding the networks with low quality audio files. This way they could market CD's as a big step up. In fact even today low quality audio files are a major drawback of using P2P for regular folk.

Furthermore I wonder why the RIAA hasn't gone after .binaries newsgroups, torrents or some of the other networks where people have been "sharing" high quality MP3's and lossless audio for years. Torrents have made sharing audio via websites even more accessible than ever before: to the point that Google searches for band name / torrent usually get results.

The RIAA seems to be 2 steps behind what is going on in the real world.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[ack154]

I'd love to be in the room when the "brains" behind the RIAA finally say "screw it - we lost."

Somehow, I don't think that will be any time soon...

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[glenrm]

I'd love to be in the room when the "brains" behind the RIAA finally say "screw it - we lost. It is more likely they will be sitting in the room, and somebody will come in and say "screw you - you lost." They should have let iTunes happen much sooner. Still time, just have to quit fighting reality, they need to make sure several legal music sites have every song that they control and allow independant music as well.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[evil carrot]

Also, wouldn't suing your customers piss them off, making them switch to alternate providers

That's one of the issues here that you won't find in other situations - there's no legal way to acquire this music without the RIAA getting a cut. The RIAA knows this and the organization plays that card with a bit of hostility.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[southpolesammy]

Three reasons:

• P2P clients are much easier to use than torrent or newsgroup clients.
  
• The breadth of coverage available at any given time on P2P networks far exceeds that via torrents or newsgroups.
  
• Many P2P clients automatically setup the user as both a user and a supplier, which allows the RIAA to determine if someone has crossed that line into sharing, not just downloading. Without that ability to monitor for sharing, the RIAA is powerless unless they co-opt the ISP's to allow RIAA drones to monitor their network traffic.
  

Remember, the RIAA is targeting distributors. The fact that some just happen to be users is coincidental.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[halowolf]

Well luckily in Australia music sales revenue has been going up not down... oh, but we don't talk about that... never mind!

It looks like however that the RIAA will need to be taken, kicking and screaming into the new age of music. An age where hopefully more quality music will be produced and less populist blond breast augmented voice modified bimbo' won't be ruling the charts. Oh and a place where they might not be particularly relevant anymore.

I've been finding it harder to do the try before you buy thing as many stores I go to don't let you try before you buy for some bizarre reason. I find it bizarre because I would of thought that music stores would want to encourage people to buy music not make it harder for customers to pick something they would like. And the stores that do usually charge some quite unreasonable prices on their CD's for the priviledge, or simply don't have a good range of music to listen to.

But of course, its all the customers fault that they are demanding more than they are getting, and when they don't get it they then take it. Thats a rather naive however, there are people that will always steal music, software etc because they see it as better than paying. I don't but hey thats just me. Those people, I have no problem with them having to defend their actions in court. However this situation we are in is infact many shades of grey and not just black and white with such simple examples as those I have described. The RIAA members steal from artists too, that is documented in places that I can't be bothered finding.

Bah I can't be bothered wondering if what I've just written makes any sense. I'm going to bed! :)

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[squiggleslash]

I still maintain that suing your customers, whether your are the RIAA or SCO, can have a chilling effect on sales.

Which is presumably why the RIAA is suing people it clearly believes are not "its" (or rather its members') customers. Remember, the RIAA is suing people for "sharing" (mass distribution to anonymous strangers without authorization) the music made by its members, so that those anonymous strangers do not need to visit record stores or the iTMS and actually buy anything. I don't see a customer relationship there, I see a competitive relationship (copyright infringers vs the members of the RIAA), and one where one of those groups, the infringers, are apparently acting illegally.

Back when Napster was having every law in the book thrown at it, many Slashdotters argued that this was morally wrong because it was only Napster's customers who were infringing on copyrights, not Napster itself. In general, the operators and creators of these networks have, quite deliberately, created a tool that makes copyright infringement easy and potentially accidental. Meanwhile the focus has changed to these people.

I'm really wondering who's morally in the wrong here. The RIAA? Music owned by the members of the RIAA (and their suppliers) is, very obviously, being illegally distributed on P2P networks. The users? In many cases, the redistribution is obviously illegal but many still seem to believe in some kind of loophole to protect them, from a belief that they only downloaded the music (not realising that it became automatically "shared" the moment they did, and in any case knowing full well they were encouraging that illegal distribution to begin with), to a belief "fair use" implies any kind of not-for-profit redistribution (it doesn't..)

Sharman networks and their ilk? I'm sure there are a few idealists amongst these groups who envisage millions of garage-based bands turning their music into MP3s and distributing it for free, but, come on, when Shawn Fanning wrote Napster as an alternative to IRC based distribution, what were the majority of MP3s that were being distributed?

Sometimes it's necessary to side with the "bad guys". The entire problem with P2P could have been resolved had anyone been willing to build responsibility into the networks, so that nobody would have thought redistributing music without authorization was something they could do without getting caught to begin with. All this infrastructure has been built instead of building something that would have created a genuine, independent, alternative to the major commercial record labels - I say instead, because as things currently are, the current infrastructure is open to legal attack, and, clearly from the lawsuits, the networks seem to be predominantly used to distribute the music of the major commercial record labels, not the alternatives.

So, what we have here isn't custom, it's competition. It's legally challenged competition. It's not really doing anything the swivel-eyed idealists said P2P would do, because it's not designed to. I don't think the RIAA is suing its (members') customers.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[BoomerSooner]

I would be willing to bet almost 100% of people who download/share music have been a customer in the past and probably will be in the future. I cannot name one person I know that doesn't own at least one cd, 8-track, record, tape, ...

Maybe you should read your own definition.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[fakeplasticusername]

I guess my argument would be that i think i shouldn't have to pay for music. I think the ideal would be realized if the artists distributed their music for free, and made their money off of performances. I would compare this to the art world. I can go to google and search for any work of visual art and find an image. Yet there is no uproar from the fine art world. If i want a more immersive experience, i go to the museum.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[drinkypoo]

It is their decision to make because we have made it their decision, and as a nation we [should] have the power to revoke that right. The fact that we haven't yet done so suggests that we are not in control of our nation - the corporations are. (This is not a surprise.) The Sonny Bono copyright act should have been seen as the clear conflict of interest that it is, but sonny met up with an evergreen and now we're going to be stuck with the damn thing probably forever.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[LocoMan]

Not condoning the RIAA here (actualy, living outside of the US don't really care much about them), but I think the problem isn't as simple as that (IMHO, at least). Word of mouth isn't really a very effective marketing campaign when used alone. Just name one band that has gotten as famous as, say, Nsync to name one that was the product of lot of marketing, by using word of mouth on the internet alone, and artist can only really expect lots of interest on performances (therefore earning money of them) if they're somewhat famous, and to be famous there needs to be marketing (videos shown on TV, music played on radio, magazine ads, etc) which is expensive, and whoever pays for that wants to earn money in return, and that is a gamble to begin with since few bands get to be famous moneymakers to begin with. As I said, don't suport the RIAA and what are they doing, but I don't think it's as easy either, since the artists do need a huge backing up to have hopes of becoming famous these days and someone needs to pay for that, and hope to get back their expenses and some earnings because of that. Wether they're charging too much or geting too much back is something different, though.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Simonetta]

I clearly, openly, and honestly maintain that since the RIAA (and Disney) stole the public domain by indefinitely extending the copyright period, any and all downloading, copying, and sharing of anything, anywhere is morally and ethically justified. By using overwhelming financial resources to destroy the legal balance between copyright and public domain, they have abrograted their legal 'right' to own anything. Their claim to legal ownership is meaningless given their felonious actions. Any act that they do against us is a crime: extorting money from us and stealing our property.
They are the ones who have destroyed the copyright laws, not us. We are only protecting the public domain for future generations. It is right and proper that we do so.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[HeghmoH]

I think that the cases here are for people sharing music, not the ones downloading, that is relatively easier to find than people downloading.

I may be mistaken, but I am under the impression that simply downloading is not illegal per se. Copyright covers distribution, and downloaders are not distributing the songs, people who share are the distributors here. Of course, with most modern P2P programs practically mandating uploading along with downloading, this distinction gets pretty blurry.

Also, I think that this is how things should work, at the very least. This way, compliance with the law is in the hands of the distributor, who is in the best position to make sure everything is in order. Imagine if everybody who downloaded from a shady but legitimate-looking music store could get hit with a copyright infringement suit!

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[fatcatman]

But then people who are dowloading music instead of buying it aren't the RIAA's customers.

How do you know they aren't buying it, too, you idiot?

I just downloaded "The Girl Next Door". I hadn't heard of the movie before but I saw it while browsing for torrents and decided, "What the hell." It rocked. So much so that the next time I'm at Costco I'm buying the DVD.

If someone hadn't illegally shared that with me, the studio would have sold one less copy.

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[Carnildo]

Are you willing to go to prison for this stance?

Re:A chilling effect on sales?

[geekee]

"I still maintain that suing your customers, whether your are the RIAA or SCO, can have a chilling effect on sales."

A person who is making hundreds of your songs available for download by anyone in the world is not your customer. He is your competitor.

Has there ever been an actual court case

[ralf1]

or is the RIAA just using mass-mugging tactics? Seems the ACLU or EFF or someone would want to make a big public test case out of some individuals lawsuit defense.

This about sums up the story.

[Anti Frozt]

"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."

Is it really news that the RIAA is still filling lawsuits against grandmothers and 12 year olds?

Re:This about sums up the story.

[Evil Adrian]

a) People that are old enough to be grandmothers are old enough to know that copyright infringement is illegal
b) If your 12-year-old is pirating music, you aren't doing a good job as a parent and the lesson will be taught one way or another
c) I'm sure most of the people named in the lawsuits are neither grandmothers nor underage, and you are just blowing things out of proportion.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[mabinogi]

All crime is artificial, and most of the implementations of the laws are flawed.
That doesn't mean they're _not_ laws.
Go ahead and practice civil disobediance if you wish, that's up to you, but don't pretend that copyright infringement is any less against the law than any other type of theft.

If obtaining something that is not rightfully yours (and no, it's NOT - a musicians music isn't yours to take any more than a sculptur's sculpture would be) is not stealing just because there isn't a tangible decrease in a inventory somewhere, then what is it?
The only English word that comes close to fitting is Steal. Which, being a word that comes from Old English originated in a time when the only method of stealing involved physically removing. The world has moved on now, and there are ways of illegally obtaining something from someone without physically removing it.

Also, it is quite acceptable to use steal in the sense where the owner is deprived of something, but you don't actually gain it yourself (stealing someone's life for example) so why not the other way round?

The "it's not stealing/piracy it's copyright infringement", is a straw man argument that misses the point that no matter what you call it it _is_ illegal whether you think it should be or not.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[maximilln]

All crime is artificial

Most crime is real. Intellectual property and copyright are intangible. Can you tell the difference between music which was purchased vs. music downloaded with only your ear? If someone tells you they have a "great idea" can you immediately swear that they didn't hear it from someone else two days earlier?

a musicians music isn't yours to take any more than a sculptur's sculpture would be

A musician's music isn't the musician's anymore. It belongs to some media conglomerate. You're attempting to arouse sympathy for a group of people who aren't even involved anymore.

not stealing just because there isn't a tangible decrease in a inventory somewhere

It's not stealing. The product was legally sold. Rights of ownership were transferred at the point of sale. Misrepresenting a rental as a sale is a poor way of defending business stupidity. If they feel they are losing profits they should reevaluate the worth of their product.

Take the agricultural industry. They produce genetically engineered crops. They only sell seed which produces sterile crops because they are intelligent and they know that otherwise the product would be EASILY COPIED. The agri industry could have lobbied for federal oversight and DNA testing of crops. They could have run down farmers for "stealing" their intellectual property. Instead they 1) subsidized, out of their own profit margin, engineered crops in order to put them in the marketplace and 2) invested in the research to produce seed which produced sterile crops.

The music industry should take a lesson. Making criminals out of customers is the wrong business model. Why not admit,"We're so stupid that we didn't realize our product was so easily copied."

The product was legally sold. The government is not their personal Guido.

Re:This about sums up the story.

[JWW]

You don't need to teach your kids not to download music. You need to teach them not to download music OR buy CDs.

Kudos.

[Sj0]

Kudos on the inflammatory title. They're not even infringers, they're "Music lovers"! :P

Re:Kudos.

[maximilln]

sharing music is considered copyright infringement in US law

Everyone supports copyrights because they believe it will benefit the artists. It doesn't. The companies own everything the artists produce as soon as a contract is signed.

Copyrights only benefit the corporate tag-alongs and, as such, need to be removed or revised.

"We need to enforce laws to protect the profit of CEOs, VPs, and executives who already have base salaries of multi-millions per year!" Who else agrees?

Keep it coming

[maximilln]

Dear Mr. Ashcroft,

Please continue turning a blind eye to reality. Please continue to pulverize youngsters for sharing music, which youngsters have done since anyone could copy a tune on a banjo or flute. Please continue to support corporations with broken business models. Please continue to encourage businessmen to neglect the physical realities of their product in favor of government backed enforcement of arbitrary laws.

Some day, all of these evil p2p sharing kiddies will come visit you in the nursing home. Enjoy your power while you've got it. It'll never substitute for intelligence.

Steven

Re:Keep it coming

[richieb]

So when the good musicians give up and find "new jobs" in something other than music, are you really going to enjoy crappy, lo-fi, amatuer music? Remember MP3.com? The one with the business model of giving away music for free? There were some great gems in there, but far and away, most of it was awful. That's what the future of music without payment sounds like.

If you want to see real great musicians working go see a symphony orchestra or visit your local jazz club. Here are people who are working at making music.

The stuff being pushed by the RIAA members is mostly amateur crap that has been "productized" by the "music industry" and marketed to death.

Since when is production of music supposed to be an "industry" anyways? I thought music was art?

There was plenty of music before the record industry and there will be plenty of music after.

When will they learn?

[cecil36]

It was in the article that fans are stating that the decline in CD sales is not due to piracy, but the quality of the music (in terms of performer's talent) being published. It's not mentioned in the article about the cost of CDs being a contributing factor. The RIAA lost a class-action suit for setting CD prices high. When you set a price for something, there is a certain demand for the product at that price level. If there is a significant price increase, the demand will drop off to where only the people who really see value for what they are going to spend will buy.

All the better reason for me not to buy another CD again. Last time I bought one was in '99.

Euphemisms

[essdodson]

"RIAA Sues More Music Lovers"
I guess that sounds a little nicer than the truth. "RIAA Sues More People Who Habitually Break the Law"

Re:Euphemisms

[Evil Adrian]

If you don't like the price of something, then don't buy it -- you don't have any right to take it for free.

Taking something offered for sale without rendering payment is UNJUST.

Re:Euphemisms

[t_allardyce]

I think many countries round the world punish people for breaking the law.. often the law includes gems like "not smoking certain plants or else you get jail", "not saying anything bad about the leader or else you get your tounge cut out" and "not having sex outside marrage or you get stoned to death".
Breaking the law is never ok..

Re:Euphemisms

[wazzzup]

I can't believe you placed laws against stealing music in the same category as slavery. The suffering you incur buy paying $9.99 for an album doesn't even begin to encroach on the suffering slaves endured.

I'm continually amazed how the average person's sphere of awareness drops off dramatically roughly where his nose ends.

Mod me down now, since I haven't defended stealing music. Where this topic is concerned, opposing thought at Slashdot is quickly quashed.

Boycott?

[Glock27]

An effective response to this type of behavior would be to boycott RIAA products.

Sadly, this would probably be trumpeted as "yet more evidence that piracy hurts CD sales".

I don't download music, and I haven't bought a CD in years.

BTW, an interesting alternative is to digitize analog from FM or digital cable, then rip to MP3. It's even legal (VCR law). ;-) You won't notice a quality difference in most situations.

Just don't share.

Misleading headline

[Evil Adrian]

The headline is misleading, and puts an obviously pro-filesharing (pro-piracy?) spin on the whole thing.

It's like if someone was getting mauled by a dog, and another person ran over and killed the dog to save the person, and the headline ran: Man Beats Puppy To Death

A bit misleading, no?

Not so innocent

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA is suing *distributors*, not mere downloading "music lovers". Distributing copyrighted content has never been legal. It's not fair use to serve up a song for download by others.

If some guy is selling ripped CDs on the side of the road that's illegal, just because you're doing it online for free doesn't make you any better.

If they were suing people for downloading a song we'd have something to be outraged about, but people serving the downloads have brought it on themselves.

Re:what is the RIAA again?

[log0n]

A good writer knows that you should never assume your audience can read your mind. When in doubt, elaborate. You may know what the RIAA is and find the info redundant, but don't assume everyone else pulls from the same bank of knowledge as you.

Re:This is why...

[stubear]

"This service is excellent because the RIAA and MPAA and FBI and whomever else cannot I repeat CANNOT get you on law breaking. As the 'swapping' happens offline, they have no way to find out about it."

Ummmm...can you say "Sting Operation" boys and girls? How the hell do you think they catch kiddie porn freaks who try to meet up with kids offline? Do you know you're not setting yourself up to illegally distribute songs offline with a cop of FBI agent?

SBC

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I like being an SBC customer, as far as I know they still refuse to cooperate with the RIAA and thier John Doe IP address lawsuits. I feel sorry for any file sharers who use RoadRunner, which is owned by TimeWarner, which is a record company.

Simple cure..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

put low quality mp3s for free download (add an advert at the start and the end to hence make money) and let people download them. If they like them then people will goout and buy them.

It's a simple cure AND they get money from selling thr advertising space. Why haven't they tried this yet? They can also track who downloads it, put upa mini survery, whatever is popular they can whore even more.

It's fucking common sense and costs alot less then repeatedly sueing people.. and makes you get a free fans.

Basic legal fact.

[Kjella]

Settling is a lot faster than trial. RIAA has no hurry either, it is the press coverage they seek. The settlements are slump change to the RIAA. Don't expect any rulings for quite some time.

Kjella

Re:Circumvent the RIAA

[tobybuk]

You should pay all the people who have an interest in the song - this includes the record company as well.

By just selecting who you want to pay, you're denying someone their rights. That's against the law!

It's the same as copying an eBook and just paying the artist. What about the people who spent money and time on preparing, promoting and releasing the eBook?

How much do you pay the artist? Do you decide on what they should get? What if the artist wants more than you are prepared to pay? What if the artist wants you to pay all the other people entitled to their money?

You're living in a dream land where you make excuse after excuse as to why your own version of stealing is OK. Its not.

The only really effective form of protest is to not buy the music. Cannot live without your music? Then you just don't feel strongly enough about it, so just stump up the money and but the friggin CD.

Just what gives you the right to do what you please with someone elses property?

You are an arse.

Re:Dupe

[Danse]

Sheeesh, this is pretty much a re-post of the same comment a few days ago. First the stories are duped, now comments are getting duped?

A few days ago? Several comments virtually identical to this one have been posted to every RIAA-related story for the last few years.

More rationalizations for being cheap

[CajunArson]

"It's not stealing, only the big evil RIAA loses money!"
I know somebody who is not rich, not an evil RIAA executive, and hell, he doesn't even make music, but he has personally been hurt by P2P file traders who think it's their 'right' to get everything they want for free.
This guy does in depth analysis of political issues and publishes research online that are used by high school and college debate teams. He provides a very valuable service since there would not be enough time to stay abreast of current political issues and also be prepared to debate so his reports act as executive summaries to condense all the garbage floating around on Google.
So what happens to his stuff? Well there are a few people out there who will pay for it, but then P2P kicks in and for every 1 debate team that buys the report there are probably 10 that don't.
"Information wants to be free!" "It's evil to want to get money for your work!" (in which case why do you complain when your job is outsourced?)
This guy is providiing a valuable service, and he does it all on his own, but I'm sure there will be 10 posts rationalizing why stealing his work is OK and he is worse than Bush for daring to charge to make the lives of other people easier.

Re:More rationalizations for being cheap

[wongaboo]

This is an interesting example, but I wonder how your guy knows that file sharing is what is hurting his business. The music industry has complained that P2P has ruined their business but their numbers are going up? I think the recent downturn in music sales might have more to do with the recent dearth of quality pop music. That is just an opinion but so is your friend's opinion that P2P is what is hurting him. And my opinion is also the result found by a harvard study.Any good debater would know that you must back up your opinion with evidence rather than assertion. Does your friend have any evidance directly conecting his drop in business to filesharing?

As a former High School and College debater I am well aware of the usefulness of the type of briefs your friend produces and I recognize that the market is very small. However, I am also well aware that the problems your friend faces existed well before P2P came on the scene. High School and college debate are relatively small communities. These people see each other every weekend and they probably go to camp together over the summer. One of the main activities at summer camps is photo copping useful information. That is the primary motivation for going to camp. We would make sure someone went to camp every summer from our HS team just to be sure we had a copy of all the latest briefs? Did we pay for them? Well the camps are not cheap, but I suppose not. On the other hand no one would go to camp if they didn't come back with two or three decent cases. So maybe it is the camps stealing from your friend rather than the individual debaters (some camps do work very hard to prevent the reproduction of copywriter works but it is very hard to do when you have kids up all night and day at the photocopier).

In short, the photocopier, the word wide web, and plain old sharing (not file sharing) are, in my experience, a greater threat to your friend's livelihood. And I know it to be a fact. Your friend chooses to blame P2P but how does he know?

Re:Fair Sentence

[EnsilZah]

Wouldn't a closer analogy be the poeple paying with a bunch of stuff they have around the house that they don't need at the price they got it at?

None of the examples you've given are the same...

[AzrealAO]

people are taking the fruits of his labour.

Blacksmiths are no longer in high demand because technology has left the blacksmiths products behind. Which is substantially different than people simply taking the fruits of the blacksmiths labour without paying for it.

In this guys example, his product is in high demand, (if 10 debate teams use the report for every 1 that actually buys it) people just refuse to pay for it.

Just as music is clearly in high demand if the volume of music trading that goes on on the various P2P networks is any indication, people are just taking the product without paying for it. That's not a change in business model, that's wholesale 'theft' of a product.

RIAA sues music THIEVES [headline correction]

[curtisk]

True enough they may be music lovers, but I doubt thats what the lawsuit states, "you are hearby being charged with loving music"

Talk about overly slanted editing! LMAO

Hey, I love $$ CASH $$, so if I get take to some whenever I want by circumventing laws and protections that are in place, thats cool right, since I just *luv* cash money?!

I think the RIAA is heavy handed, but jesus criminey that headline is piss-poor!

Re:Fair Sentence

[3terrabyte]

Shoplifting CD's from a store wouldn't get you into a $150,000 per infringement fiasco by the RIAA though. Instead, you can 'settle' by pleading guilty to the misdemeanor crime.

In other news...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Police are now arresting money lovers.

Re:When will they learn? AC9

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't buy new music.
They want the same as they have always listened to, the same chord sequences and arrangements, with slight changes. Do anything 'difficult' that stretches that, even harmonicly simple additions and time signatures beyond 4/4 that modern composers have been doing since the 20's, and it won't sell.

So, we have a catch 22.
People want new music, but they are not prepared to make the effort to listen to anything challenging, so pop music has stayed very similar since the 50's. The song lengths, chord structures and melodys remain almost identical, only the choice of timbres has changed.

The public is happy with it's old records, they fulfill the need for mindless pop, so why do they need any more to add to the pile?

Remember, it's not your fault there is no new 'good' music, you put the effort in to find and learn to appreciate music that you initially find hard or upsetting, don't you? .... Don't you?

Re:Fair Sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

Write "Hellow RIAA" program
issue them 10 million licenses at $1/license
pay off any fines from the RIAA with software licensing. This allows you to avoid costly physical media.

Re:This is why...

[the_mad_poster]

Hmm... so your theory is that by posting a public e-mail address unobfuscated, I'll lose yet another public account to spam, or idiots such as yourself, as if I haven't already gone through a dozen publics by now anyway? And, of course, you're forgetting that if I really want another gmail account, I can use one of my remaining invitations to reinvite myself.

Except, my private address, where anything of any concern goes, which you do not know, will continue to function as it always has...

You're a bit of a moron, aren't you? You must be a conservative. Nobody else could possibly be that stupid.

I think we need some clarification here...

[EmagGeek]

The RIAA is filing these lawsuits against people whom they allege traded songs copyrighted by RIAA **MEMBER LABELS**...

There are plenty of copyrighted songs floating around out there by people who are not RIAA members, or don't even care that it is happening, or in fact encourage it.

There are lots of taper-friendly bands who, while owning the copyright for their own songs, love it when fans trade recordings of live shows, etc...

I think it's time to start grouping these RIAA-member artists with the RIAA. I dislike the generalization that the RIAA somehow has legal authority over ALL copyrighted content, whether or not they represent the artist in questions, and whether or not the artist even cares.

Re:"RIAA Sues More Music Lovers"

[east coast]

I was under the impression that the RIAA was only suing people that pirate music, not people who love music enough to actually pay for it instead of stealing it.

Yeah, the people who paid thousands to build a decent collection and, as part of a price fixing law suit, got less than the cost of a CD in return. That sounds pretty fair to me. Not to say that justifies piracy but I feel the public is more sympathetic towords Joe Sixpack than a multi-million (if not billion) dollar organization that produces nothing but lawsuits and sales charts. What a racket. The RIAA should have spent more time examining fair business practices and educating record labels to the dark side of price gouging. Anytime you make something so expensive you're going to create a black market.

Perhaps piracy wouldn't be such an issue if the music industry played on a level playing field all along. Too bad, the cat's out of the bag now and neither side is going to stop. If anything the RIAA has more of a chance of being taken down for shady practices. It's millions versus one.

Re:Suing over Bit Torrent...

[kryptkpr]

I'm going to debunk this once and for all..

Disclaimer: IAABCA (I _AM_ A BitTorrent Client Author)

It is -trivially- easy for the *AA to get
a) your IP
b) what files you're downloading
c) how much you've downloaded
d) how much you've uploaded

And they can do all this without ever connecting to your computer ... IP blockers are -USELESS- in this case, the Azerus people are wasting their time creating a false sense of security for their users.

All the above information is gained from the tracker level. Many even have a nice web-based interface to this information. (See, for example, here, login may be required)

If you're in a country where P2P is illegal (I'm in Canada, all my development and downloading goes on here, and so far the consumer is winning the war here) then don't download illegal material with BT, they're watching, and there's nothing you can do.

Regarding the guy who said "just don't upload and they can't do anything".. BT works on tit-for-tat. You send a block, you get (usually) 3 back. Sometimes a client will take pity on you, and send you a free block (to test how fast it can send to you, and if you will send back or not). In other words.. no uploading == very, very slow downloading, if any at all, which negates the purpose of BT.

BitTorrent is NOT a protocl for spreading w4r3z. It is for spreading large legitimate files in a situation where the author doesn't have access to the resources to spread the files himself.

But you will always share what you download...

[Penguinisto]

"I think that the cases here are for people sharing music, not the ones downloading, that is relatively easier to find than people downloading."

Just one prblem - while you download a song, you are also sharing it.Even if you download it and immediately remove it from your shared folder/directory, you're still sharng the thing while downloading, even if only from the temp directory where the file is being stored for assembly.

Some P2P systems, such as BitTorrent, in fact rely on this very thing to exist at all.

/P

Excellent Post.

[KrisHolland]

Really a good post, but the pest part is this, I laughted out loud.

"The government is not their personal Guido."

I also agree that copyright infrindgement is an artifical crime. Copyright property is a state-sponsored temporary monopoly which creates a scarcity which does not correspond to any state in reality. An *artifical* scarcity which does not exist or would exist except as created by law.

A chilling effect on sales?-"Stick" mentality.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Any act that they do against us is a crime: extorting money from us and stealing our property."

Since you and your coherts have never actually produced any of this "property" . What else but arrogance makes you think it's yours. All you do is "consume" this property for your own enjoyment.

Quite frankly as mean as it may be to say. I do hope every artist on the planet stops producing "property" for your enjoyment. "Public Domain" exists in part because some of the "public" chooses to contribute. Instead of telling the other half that they better or "else". Oh no, wait. There's no "else". There's no "stick", but just "carrots" and rather withered looking ones at that. So tell me "music lovers", what are you going to do when no one wishes to create "property" under your terms? All you "book lovers", what are you going to do when no one wishes to create "property" under your terms?

Maybe the "imbalance" here is that one side feels they don't need the other. Anyone care to test the reality? Hey we're "starving artists" already. What do we have to loose?