Slashdot Mirror
New RIAA File-swapping Suits Target Students
Fletcher writes "The Recording Industry Association of America filed another round of lawsuits against alleged file-swappers, including students on 13 university campuses.
The 750 suits come just a few days after Internet researchers released a study that found peer-to-peer traffic had remained constant or risen up to the early days of 2004, despite the pressure of recording industry lawsuits."
99% of the whole point of these lawsuits is to get filesharing fearmongering into the news where it can "deter" and influence politicians.
Personally, I don't feel like it's newsworthy any more, and I don't see any reason to actively help RIAA in their fear-spreading mission.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Wrong! No matter how you try to spin it, trading copyrighted material over the internet is against the law. Don't like it? Change the LAW.
.....who not only cannot afford to fight back, but can't really afford to pay their fines in the first place. Since these people are students, it's not as if they can hire Johnny Cochran or someone to defend them...this, I dare say, makes the RIAA's number of 'sucessful suits' more effective, as more of them are settled out of court.
It really is kind of like the schoolyard bully shaking down the smaller kids for their lunch money. Why does the RIAA exist these days, anyway? I haven't heard a single thing about what they've done other than file lawsuits....
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
I love how DVDs' prices are decreasing and will one day be lower than audio CDs' prices. How is it possible for such an old technology to be so expensive? (I know the answer but I'd really like their point of view...)
Major corporations attempt to imprint branding on us when we're young so that we'll be loyal to them later in life because we'll view those brand as canonical.
What the RIAA is doing here is cementing P2P as the way to get music. They think they're creating negative associations with P2P, but what they're really doing is creatin negative associations with the RIAA. It's basic psychology. We hate being told what we can't do by large oppressive corporations, and it only makes us want it more.
"There is no such thing as bad publicity." But what they don't realize is that this is publicity for P2P, not publicity for the RIAA.
Well, now that you've commented on it, you're complicit in that too... ;)
Yes, it is absolutely correct that the point of the lawsuits is to get publicity for this issue. And it is correct that Slashdot is participating in that process.
However it is also worth differentiating between "filesharing" and "unauthorized filesharing."
These suits (as opposed to the Napster, Grokster, etc.) are about unauthorized filesharing, and not the technology itself.
Indeed, those that constantly act as apologists for unauthorized filesharing are just as guilty as *IAA for endangering an emerging technology.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda