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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."
Not any more, not after the ridiculous penalties.
BTW, How much is exactly one song worth when shared? If the music industry did not lose sales or money, then what are the damages? I thought there is a principle in law that says if you did not suffer damages, then you can not sue. For example, if I trip in front of your house on your property, but am not hurt, I can't sue because there was no harm.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Just curious
I would complain about my tax money going to pay for these cases in court but you only ever hear of debt collection agencies calling those in the suits now...
I got hit at the University of Missouri, Rolla and let me tell you, I never saw it coming. I'm pretty computer literate (CS major that codes alot of low-level stuff)... I thought that I was being careful by staying within the school's system (Samba shares) but they still got it. They were watching inside the network. I don't know how on earth they managed to do that, we have a pretty strict network policy. In the meantime, they dragged through it. I got caught May 5th, 2005, didn't find out until July... never got an action date 'til August. It was awful... although I did start getting music via AllofMP3 (still shady?)
Yes, I feel sorry for all those who got extorted by the RIAA. They are the few (soon not so few), the proud, the ones who will help change the system! The more lawsuits that come from those baffoons the more people will get pissed off and finally start giving a shit about how they are treated.
Obviously, strong arm business tactics are alive and well. They never really left you know. Every great change in technology brought about decades worth of suffering of the people while the boneheaded ones finally benefitted in the end! Fair? Nope, not in the slightest. Who said life was fair?
Puts a tear in me eye it does. *sniff*
-FlynnMP3
Sadly, the RIAA continues to defy reality and believe that suing its customers will bring them back (damn, how many times you gotta BOMB people to make 'em stop HATING you?) when people are faced with an alternative source of music (illegal or not) that is more convenient, better suited to getting them what they want, and cheaper (either free or $1.00 a song).
Unfortunately, I doubt that even the RIAA is so stupid or stupefyingly myopic that they can't see this, so I conclude that it's not about money. They want to be able to control you. They want control what you can listen to. They want to be able to stop anything new they can't pimp to enrich themselves.
They are scared to death of the internet. They hate the idea that I can could pay $12-14 for 12-14 tracks of music that I know I like, as opposed to 2 good songs and 12 pieces of filler because that would force them to put out the effort to create more good music. They hate the idea of something that can be replicated with no physical effort, because those who make money off pressing CDs will be destroyed by it if they don't adapt. They are scared of change, and intent on pulling as many people down as they can.
There's no question that the RIAA will be destroyed by the Internet. The only question is how many people with will take down with them.
Main difference being that when someone steals alcohol, the physical product is GONE and can no longer be sold. This is not true for downloaded music. Hooray for blatantly incorrect analogies.
Lets take, as a random example, from amazon, 'The Matrix' (I havn't looked it up before writing this)
The movie itself on DVD: $14.97
The Matrix: Original Motion Picture Score [SOUNDTRACK]: $16.98
So, just the music part of the audio, not even the spoken words of the actors costs $2.01 more than the Digital Video, Audio in Dolby 5.1, Bonus Features, and all, of the DVD version.
Audio CD albums should generally be sold for $5 in little cheap cardboard sleeves
At the current insane prices I have bought 1 boxed set of CD's for $20 in the last year. If they cut their prices to $5 I would probably buy at least 1 CD a week. It's pretty simple, at 1/5 the profit per disc, but selling 50 times as many discs, profits multiply by 10.
Music stores would have much higher sales volume and albums would go 'gold' and 'platinum' a lot quicker. The main problem I forsee is the waste produced by making CD's more disposable, but that could be solved by a good recycling program.
As handy as iTunes might be, there is a good quote; "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes"; a truckload of CD's heading to the music store is a more efficent than pumping bits through the internet.
Actually, although the two are somewhat different, they can be related. What's the difference between piracy and stealing?
Piracy makes unwanted duplicates, but otherwise causes no *damage* to the firm. The copies the users make with their own bandwidth costs the company nothing.
So, let's make this analogy. Let's say you find a way to secretly tunnel all the gin you want, for a discounted price, the Cost of Goods Sold. We'll call this 'pirating' gin. You pay COGS and get your gin. The company loses no money.
Now, from the company's perspective, the two are equal. They obviously would like you to buy instead of pirate, and pay retail instead of COGS, but neither is making them *lose* money.
Unless, of course, you all of a sudden, assume they are pirating instead of buying. However, the surveys suggest this is not an accurate model.
Surveys suggest that users pirate music and buy more music than other people. The analogy now would be, that you 'pirate' your gin, then buy two bottles at retail. Compare that to someone else who only buys one bottle.
Despite the fact that you are 'pirating' gin (or music), the company is still better off having you do both.
Obviously, they would rather have you buy three bottles than buy two and pirate one, but they're still doing just fine.
Company makes money. Customer is drunk. Everyone's happy. Why do we need lawyers for this?
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
are you seriously trying to suggest that copyright infringement is _not_ murder? Communist!
Seriously though, no court in the world will convict you of theft for breaching copyright. Yes, yes, we know, violating copyright is against the law, but the law doesn't call it theft. Neither should we. Really, calling a copyright violator a thief is probably slander, and therefore punishable by law.
We (who don't call it theft) don't need to justify our position. If you are going to call it theft, please reference for us even one legal code that refers to copyright infringement as theft. Or lacking that, perhaps a moral or religious teaching to justify calling copyright violators theives (We may not agree with it, but it would at least provide a reason for you to say it). If you can't find even one reference in law or commonly accepted moral/religious teaching to justify calling copyright infringement theft, then perhaps you ought to stop. Think about it.
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