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Mothers Taking the Fight to the RIAA
An anonymous reader writes "p2pnet is reporting that two more single mothers are refusing to be victimized by the RIAA. Patricia Santagelo was one of the first to stand up and fight the lawsuits, which some say resemble protection racket schemes. Now Dawnell Leadbetter of Seattle and Tanya Andersen of Oregon have decided to follow suit and stand up against the recording industry behemoth. From the article: 'Don't let your fear of these massive companies allow you to deny your belief in your own innocence. Paying these settlements is an admission of guilt. If you're not guilty of violating the law, don't pay.'"
"If you steal music, via internet or at the store, you're still stealing. The choice you make, the chance you take, the price you pay. Its simple. These mom suck."
If you run a busines selling music, and you fix prices, and you refuse returns, and you treat the artists like shit, and you refuse to adopt new technologies that come along in favor media that you can over-price, you have no right to act surprised when your customers find their own way to satisfy their demand. These RIAA suck.
"Derp de derp."
If you steal music, via internet or at the store, you're still stealing.
Repeat after me, COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT IS NOT STEALING. It is in a legally separate category. Copy right infringment is sometimes against the law, but it is never stealing.
IT IS NOT STEALING. When will you people get this through your thick skulls and stop believing the propaganda? Copyright infringement is a crime, but it is NOT theft. If it was theft, they wouldn't have to invent a whole new category to call it. To steal something, you have to gain what another person loses - you steal a car, someone loses a car and you gain a car. Copyright infringement is NOT stealing. You can tell, because due to the lobbying of these assholes the penalties for copyright infringement are WORSE than the penalties for genuine stealing.
This is the exact option that Ray Beckerman of Beldock Levine & Hoffman is taking. Mrs. Santangelo is said to be paying half rate, but given that she couldn't get a lawyer at all before Ray Beckerman came along, it's possible that the actual rate is lower than that.
The thing is, if you're just one or more individuals, like David Zamos, it's much more likely that the big corporate simply settles once they see they're losing, so as to not establish case law that will make it harder for them to be bullies in the future, and the individuals are likely to accept. Hopefully with an actual lawyer working for low rates, they can take this thing all the way and force the RIAA to do their due deligence investigating before they file a case.
The only thing the RIAA does is provide a false sense of security to a group that refuses to accept that their buisness model is outdated. Not to endorse the Russian Mafia but I know of so many people who are willing to use allofmp3.com because their prices fall more in line of what they're expecting to pay ($0.10-$0.25 per song). Now if the music industry would just accept this as a price point I would expect them to make way MORE money than they ever have because they would make up for lower prices by selling a lot more ablums/songs.
What Napster really did for people was open up their eyes and give them the desire to own a large quantity of varied music; at $15 an album only those people who have a ton of money to spend can afford the music they desire.
Excuse me? I can't tell you to RTFA, because you are quoting the article, but this is just totally out of context.
Full paragraph:
I have always been against music downloading. In fact, I have been a member of BMG's music club for quite some time and I purchase my music either from there or from Target. When I first got my computer set up almost three years ago, I had a friend set it up for me since I did not know how to do it. She had put Kaaza Lite on there and told me what it was. I never used it and had no interest in doing so. I deleted it since I had no use for it. Even though I deleted it correctly, as is recommended by Microsoft, Mr. Eilers has told me it can hide out in my system and play without me knowing about it. I have done a total check of my computer and it is no where on there.
I don't know if you're trying to make a point or not, but you completely ignored everything Tanya Andersen said in that paragraph.
If you're reading this, stop it.
Nice job of selective quoting.,,
She tried to delete it and her computer says it's deleted. It can't be her fault if it's still used to share music.
"...She had put Kaaza Lite on there and told me what it was. I never used it and had no interest in doing so. I deleted it since I had no use for it. Even though I deleted it correctly, as is recommended by Microsoft, Mr. Eilers has told me it can hide out in my system and play without me knowing about it. I have done a total check of my computer and it is no where on there."
She says that they never downloaded illegal files, not that she never uploaded them. Kazaa Lite's default options are set up to share all of the music it can find, so she could have had legal files, which were illegally downloaded from her computer by others.
Well, it is a forty year old musical. (God, I'm suddenly very old).
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
the idea is the RIAA has never actually taken someone to court(well, not forlong anyhows). paying the 3500 or so is there idea of saying, "ok, I won't take you to court" so what they do is avoid going to court to win(most of the cases are obvious wins) and pay there lawers many tens of thousands to get 5000 dollars from some debt laden family.
The RIAA doesn't want to go to court, its not profitable. this isn't exactly minting money but they are probably doing just enough cases to come close to breaking even(3500*10000= 35 million dollars, and that is if they have only finished 2/3, which is probably an underestimate). So as long as they can keep breaking even, they can be an endless presense that every now and then gets to shutdown something like suprenova(a big victory).
I would bet that is all the executives are looking for. But of course, I'm not one of them, so I don't know. You can go to civil court to fight them, but then you could be up for millions in damages(instances of copyright infringement can carry up to a 250,000 dollar fine, just watch the beginning of an old VHS tape). So you might be hard pressed to be told 7000 is a lot.
you can counter sue for invasion of privacy and for filing a suit without grounds and if you win, they may have to pay for your legal expenses. Loser pays is amazingly affective.
So, the sequence is thus:
(I'm beginning to think the "..." step is bloody revolution.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Don't need to - most lawyers (at least around here) will work for free on the assumption that they'll get their fees when they win. Only works for 'easy' cases though (that's why there are so many compensation lawyers unfortunately).
There's also the government scheme where they'll pay for it for you.. again if you have a reasonable case it needn't cost you a penny.
No reason for money problems to keep you from justice.
This may sound bad/conspiracy theory-ish.
I'm starting to wonder if the RITA* is using geolocation with the lists of IPs they bought from some possibly questionable collection/data mining agency. I don't remember the last time I heard of a middle or upper class kid getting sued, but they probably have a prepaid no limit iTunes account to go with their 60GB iPod photo. Are they sueing people who in most cases cannot affort their minimum $3500 settlement. They seem to be relying on lists of numners bought from IP harversters and taking what they get as 100% correct and never infallible. My advice to anyone who is unfortunately being sued an as far as they know they have done nothing wrong is how they got their information on you. If someone is using dialup and disconnects data will still be sent to that IP for some time, especially if they were requesting information from P2P apps, maybe kazaa supernodes.
It's possible that the requests were made several minutes before the IP was assigned to them but with the low response time you get with dialup, by the time the RITA snitches' packet sniffers got hold of it the "infringing" IP was assigned to someone else. I used Verizon DSL a few yrs ago before optimumonline was available in the area. The policy was one IP per house but you could connect as many PCs as you want. Without a router to keep a semi-static IP I'd go through lots of IPs a day since I turned my PC off when I left. For at least 20min after connecting ZoneAlarm would record pages of logs from traffic intended for the previous user of the IP, the IPs appeared to be immediately reassigned. I've on seen one takedown notice with logs, the inital detection and followup detection times were 20sec appart. With checking times only 20sec appart it's very possible that the packets they sniffed were going to another person but were time delayed.
Challenge the sources, if they're unwilling to reveal them then they're no more credible than kid A telling the teacher claiming that kid B did something bad or McCarthy's list of Communists that he never let anyone else see.
*I've stopped called the RIAA the RIAA, it's really the RITA Recording Industry Trust of America
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
I feel strange asking if you've read TFA since you seem to comment so authoritatively on it. But I know that *I've* read it, and it doesn't start with any "whining about someone's physical handicaps". So I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. Maybe you've read the wrong article by mistake?
Far more likely that you would settle for a very small fraction of their initial demand so that they can avoid spending tens of thousands on legal fees that they would never recover.
BTW US Federal courts make substantial allowances for pro se defendants.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Here is the paragraph you are looking for. A "more official" version (but less easily naviable) is available here. In short, if you cut out the intervening parts that cover all the OTHER stuff you arent allowed to do, the relevant part boils down to: ... the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to ... reproduce the copyrighted work ...
Now, all nonsense aside, when you click that "download" button you ARE reproducing the work, copying it from the remote computer(s) to your own.
The civil and criminal penalties for violating that exclusive right are laid out a few pages away from those links.
I may not be able to find the groups you listed there but then again you didn't list any "hard-to-find" music. Hard to find music is the stuff that we called "Alternative" before everyone thought they had right to call themselves alternative after the Sea-Rattle Grunge Scene blew up. Strangely enough I find the real hard-to-find artists on BT, winmx, shareaza and emule/edonkey easily though.
Oh, and it's not "Hey, I'm making sure System of a Down doesn't get paid today.", they've already been paid and aren't likely to see another dollar since the record companies are worse than pimps many times and will put a band so far in debt to them that they have to continue with little pay or go bankrupt. Marketing and production costs can make the end-of-year total for a band less than $100,000. Split that 4 ways.
The REAL money is made for bands on a tour where they receive a MUCH higher percentage of the overall take(tickets, merchandising, etc.) Proof of this lies in one of the most financially successful bands of all time, The Grateful Dead, who didn't care if people copied their music and taped their shows because they made all of it back on a single tour by charging for the tshirts, tickets, and getting a percentage from vendors. They actually had such a following that the band made several hundreds of times more per fan per tour than they would have ever gotten from the record company. And that's not a fluke since they did it for 25+ years.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Which is why you can get a $20-million settlement for spilling your hot coffee in your lap while driving
It's nice to see that we have people looking into the facts of things before flinging accusations around!
Firstly, to clear up the facts, she was not driving, she was a passenger. The car was stopped at the time. Secondly, she did not receive $20 million, she received $640,000. $160,000 for medical expenses / pain and suffering / etc. (reduced from $200,000 due to her being partially at fault), and $480,000 in punitive damages (reduced from $2.7 million). She originally asked for $20,000, the cost of her treatment, and only resorted to a lawsuit when McDonalds refused that.
Now, McDonalds sold their coffee far hotter than is generally accepted. How hot? 180-190 degrees F. This, IIRC, is about 30 degrees hotter than it is usually served at, and is hot enough to cause THIRD-DEGREE burns in as little as two seconds. If you don't know, third-degree burns result in PERMANENT disfigurement, and require A LOT of medial treatment. Her doctor said that it was one of the worst scald burns he had ever seen. Consumers were unaware that this drink could pose such a serious threat. A study was performed, and no restaurant in area was higher than 20 degrees less than McDonalds served it at.
There's more - in 10 years, McDonalds had reports of over 700 people getting injured similarly, but did nothing. To make things worse, McDonalds even ADMITTED that its coffee was too hot to be fit for consumption when sold because of the burns it could cause.
This case is constantly thrown around as being an example of frivolity since nobody actually bothers to look into the details. People who actually do the research typically view it as a very fair ruling.
My major in college was the study of the recording industry. I am an audio engineer but have had a couple of law courses focusing on the rec industry.
Here are some of my brief notes from my copyright law course. Some of this is kind of random, scattered and dissheleved.
BASIC LAWS
There are currently 3 types of property in the US:
1) Personal - should be obvious 2) Real - and/buildings 3) "Intellectual"
There are mostly 3 tyes of "Intellectual Properties"
1) Patents - systems, processess, formulas, etc 2) Copyrights - original writings or works of art from an author or artist 3) Trademarks - logo, name, design, slogan 4) Trade Secrets - anything a company uses secretly which is not patented
Trademark conflicts are between businesses and is based on geographic location and which industry it is used in. When courts try trademark cases they base their decision on the objective of "causing the least amount of confusion in rhe market place"
Novelty and inventiveness are required for a patent, but not for a copyright.
Anything that has a minimal degree of creativity meets the threshold for copyright can be copyrighted
A creative work is copyrighted the instant it is put in the form of a tangiable medium.
IDEAS ARE NOT PROTECTED BUT WORKS THAT CONTAIN IDEAS ARE COPYRIGHTABLE.
What can be copyrighted?
Literary works, musical works (including lyrics), dramatic works (music too), pantemines, cheorographic works, pictorial, graphic, scupltural work, motion picture, a/v works, animations, sound recordings, archetectual works.
RIGHTS:
As the owner of a copyright what rights do you have?
- Reproduction - Authorize derivivative works - Distribution - Public Performance - Public Display
- Digital Transmission (DMCA)
Copyright litigation:
The 3 questions asked by the court:
- Who owns the valid copyrigt - Was there unlawful copying by the defendent - Substansiality and/or similarity
REMEDIES:
The remedies for a civil copyright infringment are this
1- Injunctions (preliminary and permant) 2- Impoundment and/or destruction 3- Damages (fines/restrictions) damages can be actual (plantiff loss + defendent gains) or statuatory (as defined by law) 4- Court costs and attorney fees
Statuatory damages and court costs/attorney fees are not availble remedies to the plantiff unless the work was registered with the US Copyright Office PRIOR to the infringment by the defendent.
Statury damages can be as low as $200 per infringment for an innocent infringment but as high as $150,000 for a willful infringment.
To have infringment:
1- Plantiff must have ownership of valid copyright 2- Unlawful copying must have taken place 3- Access must be proven; direct (defendent saw/heard copy of work); indirect (access is inferred by wide dissemination) 4- Similarity; 4 types- identical; striking, substantial, insubstantial
Criminal infringment:
Willful infringment for commercial advantage or private financial gain by the sale of 10 or more copies or retail value of $2,500 or more within a 6 month period.
Penalties: $250,000 fines for a person or $500,000 for an entity and/or imprisonment 5 years for first offense, 10 years for second offense.
Constructive knowledge - once a work of art is registered with the USCO it is presumed that the defendent is aware of the copyright.
FAIR USE
What is fair use? It is a defense against alleged copyright infringment
The courts evaluate 4 elements in defining fair use:
- Nature of the work (factual vs fictional) - Nature of the use (commercial vs educational vs private vs public) - Amount and substantiality (using the hook/chorus or verse) - The effect on the commercial market place (more weight has been given to this one recently)
MISC CONCEPTS/IDEAS:
There is concept called the idea/expression dichotomy. The expression of the facts can be copyrighted but the facts themselves cannot.
There is a concept called the Merger Doctrine; there
Libertas in infinitum
Well, as for minors, the parents would be sued.
With the "take all of nothing" stance, that's all good until they start garnishing future wages for the settlement.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
What the hell are you talking about? How ignorant you are. The media in general is a waste. Where do you think your media gets its footage? You hippocrite. Europeans all but allow genocide to happen in your back yards. Your sad excuse for an "economic union" has failed because you couldn't agree enough to ratify a constitution. The Russian and French Revolutions were violent...and they didn't happen in America, they happened in Europe. I'm American and am no fan of the media, the RIAA, or any of the other corporate dirt bags that exist. But when global warming does happen and the precious gulf stream no longer gives you cold weather, I'd happily laugh because apparently you know how to handle this type of thing. Go sit in your own filth. I lived for three years in Europe after three years in Japan. I've seen my share of society from around the world. I loved Europe, but Europeans are without a doubt the most racist people on the planet. Always have been. And another thing, We feel obligated to do the decent thing is a total lie. Europeans have historically not done the decent thing. Take World War I for example. The treaty of Versailles was a miserable failure. And the reason? Because it penalized an already shot Germany and the Europeans took NO INITIATIVE WHATSOEVER! I am no fan of Bush, but at least in the USA we have balls. Europeans run around shooting their mouthes off about how Americans are so outrageious. Fortunately our founding fathers were much more visionary than yours. And consider this as well: the US government has survived longer than any in mainland Europe. Our country is young, just approaching a 400th anniversary of the British settling in America. But when we felt our rights were violated, we revolted and fought and died for what we believed. The French fought and died because they hated an oppressive aristocracy. The Russians fought and died for what they believed was right, although it was definitely misguided and definitely brutal. Communists failed because you can't impose vision on people, no matter what the circumstances. Who saved Europe's ass after World War II? America and the UK. France can do its part and host invasions for all I care. Or perhaps sell weapons to brutal dictators. Or perhaps raise pander about a stupid union that will never amount to anything but a trade bloc. European economy is rotten. America has the best economy and best military in the world. Sorry, folks, you lose. Should have repealed the Stamp Act earlier. I'd like to let you know as well from when I lived in Europe that the footballers were the most violent people I've ever seen. Our sports fans are nothing like those in Europe. And our government doesn't control the media. Learn to think objectively, not hypocritically. Your racism is showing. Africa colonization, Asian colonization, holocaust, and then genocide in the balkans. This is outrageous that you are lecturing us about "the decent thing." Go sit in your own filth.
Now, McDonalds sold their coffee far hotter than is generally accepted. How hot? 180-190 degrees F. This, IIRC, is about 30 degrees hotter than it is usually served at, and is hot enough to cause THIRD-DEGREE burns in as little as two seconds.
I remember McDonnalds coffee before this lawsuit. I bought it from time to time to clean engines. Some nice foamy engine bright to soften up the grease and their coffee to rince. Amazing stuff... it came out of the percolator boiling... as in it was still boiling when it hit the cup. However I eventually had to stop using it as after using it it would peal off the paint from the engine block. Not good.
Can't say I ever actually drank the stuff, it wasn't possible, not without burning your mouth.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Go to the website below and enter your zip code to find the contact information of your representative. Then send him/her a letter about stopping the RIAA and maybe about the desperate patent situation, too. http://www.house.gov/ And while you are at it, the EFF has provided an extremely easy way to contact your rep with this online form involving current RIAA lobbying. http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=157 Please, please fill out that simple form to help make a difference.
http://83p.unitedti.org/
The legal term for theft/stealing/robbery is larceny, defined by Miriam-Webster as "the unlawful taking of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it permanently". The Wikipedia article goes into more detail. The key part of those definitions is the word "deprive." Illegitimate file sharing does not deprive the copyright holder of any property (compensation isn't mentioned anywhere here), so larceny and its related words (theft, stealing, etc) aren't suitable.
Copyright infringement really is the pertinent term. The record label (copyright holder, whoever) owns the exclusive right to reproduce the works it creates, and to license and control those rights. The United States Code itself calls the violation of copyright "copyright infringement," not theft or larceny.
I think the main reason that copyright infringement cannot be simplified to theft is that theft implies that the owner no longer has something that is his. Downloading a song or movie illicitly does not deprive the copyright holder of anything. (It does not deprive them of profit, as downloading has nothing to do with whether or not one has or may purchase the work legitimately, nor do they have the currency you owe them in the first place to be stolen)
I do not claim that file sharing is legal, proper, or the like, but it is not theft, stealing, or larceny. It is copyright infringement, no more, no less.
On Apple Input Peripherals: They're okay, I guess, but I was really hoping for a one-key keyboard and a 109-button mouse
I think the current 70 years for personal authorship is a little long (even if you create something at 18, you're covered till you're 88, that aught to be long enough to get your share out of your works).
Those 70 years don't start until the author is dead. See http://www.copyright.gov/fls/sl15.html
Reproduction is easy, and is not a service to society.
ADEQUATELY RAISING CHILDREN TO ADULTS WHO CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY is a service to society. If you raise a kid who ends up in prison, you did society a disservice. If you gave birth to a crack baby, you did society a service. If your child ends up in foster care because the sheriff found a meth lab in your kitchen, you did socieity a disservice.
This doesn't mean the RIAA should run around suing people because they perform an antiquated economic function that now requires lawsuits to support, but the assumption that merely reproducing is inherently valuable is wrong.
paintball
--Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(found here, here, and here).
/*DISCLAIMER*/ /*This is not legal advice. You are not a client. I'm not even an attorney. If you want legal advice, contact an attorney admitted to your jurisdiction's bar. What I am saying here is probably 100% wrong and if you do anything in reliance upon it, you are a blithering idiot who deserves whatever bad shit is very likely to befall you.
*/
Now that that's out of the way . . .
OP is correct. If someone's sole source of income is disability, unemployment, or other public benefits, they are exempt from garnishment. Likewise, if a bank account contains exempt funds, it is exempt from garnishment up to the amount of the exemption. And we don't have debtor's prison the US yet^H^H^H anymore, so that's not an option. Also, there are limits on how much wages can be garnished, and if a person is working part-time at McDonalds or somesuch, they probably don't make enough. What's more, a lot of these people who are working are already being garnished for child support, so they can't be garnished again. I can tell you from personal experience having worked at a collection agency that we didn't even bother suing anyone who didn't have some kind of a good job. It's just not worth it because the amount you get in garnishment won't even cover the fees. And if someone is that poor, chances are they'll just file bankruptcy.
What the RIAA is doing is essentially a fear campagin. I hear if you get sued, you don't even talk to an attorney, you call an "RIAA settlement center." I'm glad these people are taking the fight to the RIAA in court. I'd like to see the bastards try to prove actual damages.