Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Hands out more Lawsuits
Syrae writes "The RIAA has unleashed yet another round of copyright infringement lawsuits against 754 people. Evidently they still had some customers that they had to make an example of. I guess the RIAA never saw the study that says that file sharers spent more money buying music online than those who don't share music at all."
IT'S NOT THEFT.
IT'S NOT THEFT.
IT'S NOT THEFT.
How many fuckin' times do we have to tell you?
STOP CALLING COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT THEFT!
How we know is more important than what we know.
Submitter's point was that the sharing of music leads to more sales and thus more money for the RIAA. No, his statement is by no means truth of this assertion, but this is what he was try to suggest...
itunes gives 30 seconds which I think is reasonable
30 seconds of previewage isn't at all adequate for prog or trance, but.. whatever... just had to mention that.
Yes, I know that this is slashdot and I am going to get hammered on this one...
Since the mods aren't descriptive enough, I'll explain that the reason you're about the be modded overrated is not that you've expressed an unpopular opinion, it's just that there's no "giant logic flaw" mod.
A comparison between data copying and physical theft is always going to be wrong. There are good reasons that it's not good to download the stuff, but comparing it to swiping materials is just going to make you look dumb to the majority of Slashdot.
Most of the pay for networks give you the ability to preview music right? Sure it's often a small clip of it (itunes gives 30 seconds which I think is reasonable)
That must be some awfully repetitive music you listen to if 30 seconds is enough.
From Wikipedia: "In 1859, Congressman Daniel Sickles shot and killed Phillip Barton Key, for having conducted an affair with his wife Teresa. The murder took place on Lafayette Square, just north of the White House. Sickles was acquitted, on the basis of temporay insanity, in one of the most controversial trials of the 19th century." Also, try reading about temporary insanity. I'm sure you'll find it informative. Just because it's on TV doesn't mean you shouldn't believe it.
IANAL. Yet. This is not legal advice.
You are right in that actual damages have not been shown, and that there is a good probability that these actual damages don't even exist in many of these cases.
However, copyright law is special in that the copyright holder has the option of pursuing statutory damages. As the name implies, these are damages assigned by statute (statute = law created by legislature). The relevant section of the law is pasted below, but these numbers are significant and are per work infringed.
Statutory damages are often elected because you don't have to go through the hassle of proving them; they are assumed for you by law.
- Neil Wehneman
*******
From Section 504 of http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html
(c) Statutory Damages. -
(1) Except as provided by clause (2) of this subsection, the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just. For the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.
(2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000. In a case where the infringer sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that such infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Probably not immediately, since the lawsuits are more often than not "John Doe at xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx IP" lawsuits.
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
Lying under oath could land one in jail. I bet the RIAA would pay for investigators to try to find evidence of perjury and turn over the evidence to the US attorney for criminal prosecution.
By that logic you might as well call it murder.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So basically they have to determine your guilt without you there to defend yourself.
No, the Doe suits determine whether an infringement is likely to have occurred, specifically whether it is likely enough to warrant a subpoena for the identity. Some might compare it to grand jury proceedings. Whatever the Doe suits are, they're definitely no substitute for a jury trial.
If most people don't fight these lawsuits they're profitable. Not only does that mean the RIAA has deep pockets, but they get deeper with every settlement. If people don't fight the RIAA and cost them money pretty soon it will have enough money to sue every man, woman and child on the planet. It's like one big protection racket.
And that's to spend your money on non-RIAA CDs. I suggest starting with http://www.cdbaby.com/ they claim to be 100% indy, direct from artists to them to you. I cannot verify their claims, but my experience does not lead me to doubt them. You also might want to check out http://www.cdroots.com/. They are a world music site. Note, however, they don't claim to be indy so you will want to check the labels to see if they are owned by RIAA members.
The reason to do this is not just to get yourself music you enjoy, but also because for a reseller boycott to be truly effective, you need to give producers another route to reach you. The less they make using the RIAA chain and the more others make via indy distribution, the more attractive it is to switch.
Well, not exactly. These people are being sued for their *distribution* of pirated music. So, if 1000 people downloaded tracks from the sharer, then that's 1000 $5 subscriptions that RIAA lost -- at least, that is what they claim in court. And that is how RIAA justifies such high payouts. It's not about the getting --- it's about the giving.
multifariam.net -- yet another nerd blog
but, the end result is, for the seller of either, the same: They are deprived of the money that they are entitled to, for the goods they provide, under the terms they provide them as provided for under law.
Still wrong. Nobody is "entitled" to anything. Additionally, the seller still has the item to sell to someone else, which is not the case if it were stolen.
The problem is that the seller wants to sell it for much, much more than it cost to produce. Making a copy of it instead is a way of saying, "your price is too high". People buy Linux DVDs because it's often cheaper and faster than downloading it for "free".
Let's say we advance nanotech to the point where we can copy not just bits, but physical objects. E.g. you have a bottle of 1851 Wine, I press a button and make one. Or you have a new car, I press a button and now I have one. Should we disallow this and instead make people go into debt to pay $500 a month to auto finance companies?
The reason copyright, patents, and all laws exist is ostensibly for the PUBLIC good. If it turns out that in order to make your e-books viable that we have to outlaw "illegal" reading, we need to ditch your business model, not our rights.
A few people could make a lot of money if humans were kept in big cages and forced to work to eke out a bare existence. But you'll never get to Star Trek that way. Technological advancement belongs to all.
Depends where you are in the world. F.A.C.T. The Federation Against Copyright Theft preach that it is actually theft in the UK, and they're on TV ads, DVD ads, Cinema ads... but most people take the ads off the pirated DVDs ;)
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
The study pointed to does NOT claim that people who use P2P networks will subsequently buy more music as a result of doing so. It merely claims that people who heavily use P2P also buy music heavily. Corrolation does not imply cause.
The most probable reason why someone would buy a lot of music and use a P2P system heavily is that they like music. They like music so they get more of it from more sources. That's it. It's that simple. It's so obvious, that you have to question the reasoning skills of anyone who thinks the two are linked by causation. Everyone these days is trying to find stupid reasons to think one thing causes another.
While P2P probably provides some degree of "try before you buy", it's equally true that legal mechanisms to do much the same thing are widely available, from friends introducing friends to new acts, to samples downloadable from band websites, those little headphone and barcode readers you get in most record stores, and even, to some extent, radio and television. So it's hard to see how P2P helps content producers. In practice, I suspect the number of cheap-asses like certain people I know who download music with the specific intention of burning it to CD and saving themselves money more than outwieghs the High Minded Slashdotter Who Would Only Ever Download Music To Try It and Will Buy The CD If It's Good.
Please, let's stop pretending the study the submitter linked to in any way justifies music piracy. It doesn't. It never did. Indeed, it may well be it does the opposite, showing that people across the spectrum of music appreciation are willing to use P2P as a substitute for at least some of their music purchases. Content producers have every reason to be concerned about those trading files on the Internet.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
who are only revealed (if I understand it correctly, IANAL) after the courts have determined that the copyright infringement did in fact take place.
I'm not a lawyer either, but that's not the case. The RIAA need a court order, which is the same as the police do. It is not a trial, the standard is not "guilty/not guilty" (criminal) or even "preponderance of evidence" (civil), it is "reasonable suspicion". US police used to have to do the same to get subscriber information until the Patriot act, most western countries police forces still do.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The U.S.Code defines copyright infringement as a felony. WWW.CYBERCRIME.GOV. Which is all that matters to your mates at Club Fed.
In the popular mind, legal words of art have no great place and all crimes against property, including intangible property, are seen as a form of theft. The association is ancient in the western world and cannot be eradicated by fiat.