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UK Record Industry Starts Suing Filesharers
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has the story that the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has started a first set of lawsuits against UK file sharers. 23 people paid £50,000 to settle out of court. This is the first time people in the UK have been fined, and probably won't be the last. From the article: "We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."
This is just the start of the trends which have become somewhat commonn place in the states making the hop over the Atlantic. I think read on Drudge yesterday that the MPAA is considering a similar manuever in the UK. Insiders say that they plan on going after people who are sharing 10 movies or more. For now they are only planning on targeting those who offer up movies which have yet to be released but I would imagine they will be widening that net before too long.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Seriously, 50,000 pounds for some music? They're so extreme with the amounts.
"...make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."
Don't most artists make only a pittance on their album sales anyway, even after they have paid back the label for their 'generous' promotional contract?
Call me cynical, but claiming that the settlement money is going to go to artists seems disingenuous. Of course claiming 'lost' profits by the labels on file sharing is moreso.
why don't they just sue for the ammount of $ they have stolen (i.e. the average cost of a CD) instead of charging these OUTRAGEOUS fees? Any body?
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
So, way back in the day, everyone was outraged that the music industry was trying to fight piracy by litigating away P2P technology, instead of going after the people who were actually breaking the law.
Now they're going after the people who actually break the law, instead of trying to end P2P.
I think that the idea of fair use ought to be extended, but am I supposed to be outraged that this is happening? They're actually going after people who are breaking the law, instead of trying to end technologies with legitimate uses.
Isn't this exactly what we asked for?
The problem is that it IS NOT their property. The RIAA is NOT a rightsholder. Therefore, by US law, their lawsuits are frivolous. They are suing on the behalf of others, who are mistaken if they expect money from the RIAA. The RIAA should go back to worrying about who gets gold records.
make them compensate the artists
Bahahahahahahaha hahahaha hahahahaha hahaha haha whew.
Sorry about that.
I mean, really, I don't want to pay what I consider outrageous prices for crap. I'm not downloading anything either. If you want some good music, go down to your local coffee house and listen to a good live band and buy their CD if you like their music. For the price of a coffee, I can listen to a small live concert for several hours while I do homework. You mean you can try before you buy? Amazing! The CD's I get from the local artists (and other independent artists that come through my area on tour) are much cheaper than the record-label CD's and the quality of music is sooo worth it. While the ethics of downloading the label's music is disputed, one thing I think we can all agree on is that the labels would have no ammo if people would just boycott them instead of refusing to purchase their crap and downloading music. Boycotts do work. And boycotts 'steal' nothing from the artists.
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
It's like walking into a Wal-Mart, stuffing something in your coat, walking out, and justifying it by saying that they charge too much anyway.
No, it is not. It's more like not wanting to pay $5 to rent a movie that you've heard is bad, so you walk over to your friends house and borrow it. You've just screwed the movie company out of money and should be tossed in jail for "stealing" by not paying them every time you watch it.
Learn to love Alaska
Making a copy of copyrighted material without permission is what is illegal. Period. Encrypted or not. Protected or not. If it's copyrighted, and you do not have permission to copy it, and you go ahead and copy it, then you've broken the law.
Notwithstanding, there are allowances to make copies, even without explicit permission, under the jurisdictions of personal and fair use.
If the circumstances do not fit within those allowances, however, then the person who made the copy has violated copyright law.
Strictly speaking, this makes anyone who fileshares a work without permission a copyright infringer even before anyone else actually downloads it, since they have made a copy of the work (which exists on their hard disk), but that copy transcends allowable boundaries for personal/fair use, since that copy is being made available for public viewing, use, or copying, and so is in violation of copyright.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"And after an **AA person presents to the court a full audit of your network and sees your PCs as locked down but not your network...."
Read that again. The **AA is auditing my network. An industry group. Auditing. My. Network.
Not their province. I damn the laws that let INDUSTRY GROUPS conduct audits of MY PROPERTY. I gave them no such permission.
Get off of my property, varmint. Southwestern Bell doesn't get to monitor my phone conversations for defamation, and they bloody own the network. I will not stand for an industry rooting through my logs for possible cash making possiblities.
I guarantee all lawsuits would stop within a month once the soul-sucking corporations stopped getting their infinite percent cut.
It's a rant people, don't reply like this was a thesis statement, but seriously, when are we going to make them give up the "for the artists (children)" argument? I think if the court is going to rule in their favor it should also require them to publicly announce their true actions. Which are using the legal systems to prop up an outmoded business model and integrate profit margins that they otherwise would never have earned anyway.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
i haven't bought a single cd since 1999 when i started using napster
many iterations of file sharing tools later, i'm on emule, and i have a simple solution to beating the riaa, et al:
i embrace world music, i let my mind wander
currently, i'm into filipino music (i live in new york city)
the thing to do is is to expand your musical interests to things beyond the usual pop crap, and you are also therefore using the new file sharing technology to its greatest benefit: connecting with resources that otherwise would be beyond your grasp in the pre-interent universe
embrace world music, screw the pop crap, and you win two ways:
1. you won't be on the riaa's radar
2. you'll grow new brain cells as you develop an awareness of a world beyond your nation's borders
there really is a lot of good stuff out there that isn't the usual robbie williams or britney spears crap
free your mind and give the bastards who want to market you sugar water the finger in the process
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."
If anything, it is the labels / artists who should have to pay fines everytime they rattle off phrases like that. I bet they don't use that sort of language in court. No one is stealing anything from anyone. There is no property that is being exchanged, nor has anyone's actions resulted in someone somehow losing any material item. They make it sound like every d/l song is a lost sale and that a lost sale should be counted as an asset. Maybe at Enron, but that's completely bogus.
What is happening is that people are illegally infringing on the labels / artists right to distribute (ie. copy) said material. That is not stealing. If someone goes into a library and photocopies an entire copyrighted book, they are infringing on the copyright owner's right to issue copies; however, that does not compare to the person who goes into a bookstore and removes from the bookstore, without paying, the same book. THAT is stealing! Both are committing an illegal activity but they are exceptionally different in character.
Besides, copyright is a stupid law to begin with.