Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
http://www.busyweather.com/
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.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
Oh.. wait..
Why can't these 'illegal downloaders' just repay the RIAA with their purchased CDs, like the RIAA got to do?
Of course, the repayment CDs would be chosen by the defendants, just like the RIAA got to do.
You all need to get your butts over to MEDIACHEST.COM http://www.mediachest.com/ and start trading your music, DVDs, CDs, and Books there.
(This is not a plug, I don't work for them or get paid by them)
Basically, you catalog your collection of stuff using their amazon-like lookup functions, and then other people can search your collections (they find you by Groups, by Zip Code, etc) and then you trade with them any way you want (in person, by mail, etc).
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.
Please give it a shot, if this website takes off the world be a happier place.
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
Why not pay your favorite artist personally?
Circumvent the managers at the RIAA by letting your software music jukebox manage your favorite artists. This requires a central database listing creative works and the artists who actually made them so that you can donate automatically to your favorite artists.
problem: telling some site what kind of music you have my get you sued as you declare to have illegal music.
solution: give partial hash code (checksum). Site returns say 200 potential hits. You verify for yourself if you have have a copyrighted song 'belonging' to the site. You discard the 199 misses and you use the info about the song to compensate the listed artist directly. This can be done anonymously: "I love your (unspecified) work here is a donation of 20 cents". Artist uses statistics to figure out how to compensate those who helped him with popular creations if the donations rise above thousands of dollars.
So you spend say 300 dollar per year to (automatically) compensate your favorite artists directly without confessing a crime as your jukebox figures out compensation anonymously and you can also donate manually, even though you do not have any works of arts of that artists in your possession, making the system a black box, meaning that donations do not directly indicate illegal possession.
Why pay for distribution? Let's circumvent the RIAA.
--
Dennis SCP
Kudos on the inflammatory title. They're not even infringers, they're "Music lovers"! :P
It's been a long time.
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
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
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.
"RIAA Sues More Music Lovers"
I guess that sounds a little nicer than the truth. "RIAA Sues More People Who Habitually Break the Law"
scott
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.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
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?
evil adrian
As a Canadian, I will do these people justice by using my protected rights to share gigabyte after gigabyte of pirated music.
We need more Canadians to have music 'available' for download. We could really cause a ripple effect in which so many of us can legally provide music to p2p apps, that there would be no way to stop the rest of the world.
I'm going home tonight, making a bunch of torrents for my 100 disc collection of mp3, and making all few thousand singles available on gnutella network.
I propose a rally of all Canadians or any other nation that can legally share music. If you can share music, spend the bandwidth and do it. Lets create so much of a problem that the RIAA is defenseless.
Let's show the RIAA that we are in control.
-
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.
In the UK we have a similar but different thing, every couple of weeks the police arrest about 100 people around the country under our wonderful new terrorism laws (thank you Blunkett) then about 6 months later 99 of them get released without any charges. oddly around the same time about 4 people are released from concentration camp x-ray and are flown back to the UK where they get questioned for about 24 hours and then released.. without charges.. maybe they're actually filesharing or something?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
If they only sue approx 700 people a month and the net population is growing at a faster rate then can they physically keep up with the explosion of P2P and file sharing?
That depends on how many people are deterred by the lawsuits. I'm not sure about the rate of growth or use of the P2P services, but I'd guess that if filing one lawsuit deters 100,000 people, then they probably can keep up with the rate of growth. If it's 1,000 then maybe. If (as is probably the case) it's fewer than 10, then they would seem to be fighting a losing battle.
I'd also guess that the "discouragement rate" was the highest with the first round of lawsuits, and is diminishing steadily each time.
This is what can result when mediacompanies (dreamworks in this case) goes after torrent trackers and warez-traders abroad:
Piratebay response to dreamworks
People that are old enough to be grandmothers are old enough to know that copyright infringement is illegal
That same grandmother wouldn't bat an eyelash if you gave her a CD with old big band music for Christmas. Non-smokers would have no problem if smoking became a felony. People who don't drink have no problem with prohibition.
Your subject group is skewed.
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
There is no theft. This is an artificial crime called "copyright infringement". While the spirit of copyright is a starry-eyed ideal which everyone supports the implementation is flawed and anyone who actually lives under its sway knows that it rarely, if ever, benefits the original author in the way that you think it does.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
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.
I like muppets.
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
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"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.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I'm going to use the 5 step approach that Schneier utilises in Beyond Fear to analyse security decisions. Hope you enjoy this analysis. I don't have the book to hand so I'm not sure i've got the steps spot on but it's close enough.
What assets are you trying to protect? The profitability of copyrighted music.
What are the threats to your assets? The biggest threat to profitability is the very large levels of copyright infringement. This is such a massive risk that considering any other threat to profitability is a waste of time at this stage.
What is the proposed countermeasure? Suing random copyright infringers.
How does the countermeasure mitigate the risks? The idea is that by suing random copyright infringers you instill fear in people who are more risk adverse. They don't want to be slapped with a large fine so they'd rather pay for the record. There are a number of questions that need to be asked. Firstly, how many people does this approach really scare off? Secondly, How much revenue is it likely to recover? Let's say for every person sued 10 people decide not to infringe and go out and buy the record and each record brought a record for $3. Then the revenue brought in would be $2232. The cost of the legal action would be more than the revenue recieved. Even if 100 people were dissuaded for every infringer sued this would only increase to $223,320. You'd likely make a profit over the cost of the legal action but it'd be small and you've not really done much damage to the millions of remaining pirates. In light of this analysis, I don't think this counter-measure mitigates the risk.
What side-effects does the proposed counter-measure produce? People generally don't like to buy from a company that likes to sue its user base so public relations may be damaged. A side-effect of particular note is people boycotting your products. In those circumstances you've the lost sales as a direct result of deploying the counter-measure - a very bad situation.
Is the trade-off worth it? This step is always subjective but I think the counter measure is meritless given the damage to public image, the small amount of money recovered from most of the infringers and the small amount of people who actually stop downloading as a result of the legal action. The RIAA should consider other counter-measures.
Simon.
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.
Advanced users are users too!
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.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Headline: The RIAA sued people again. Those dicks.
Comment 1: FIRST POST!
Comment 2: Man, the music industry sucks.
Comment 3: Its illegal. period
Comment 3a: STFU, dink.
Comment 4: if albums didn't suck, people would buy them instead of downloading the songs thay like
Comment 4a: can someone send me the new Modest Mouse album?
Comment 5: I hate rich musicians, because they're rich
Comment 6: [ something about gay niggers that ususally gets modded out of existence ]
Comment 7: its all the fault of the government, because theyre clueless
Comment 8: You cannot stop technology. Technology is legion.
- - - -
You can now go read another article.
enough of the lawsuit count, guys.
s'wut i sed.