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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.'"
Fuck the RIAA. Maybe when they get their business model out of the stone age, I'll consent to give them money once more.
It doesn't matter whether you're guilty or not. It doesn't matter whether or not their accusations are true.
They are more powerful than you because they have more money than you, and that's all that matters in the United States in 2005.
Paying these settlements is an admission of guilt. If you're not guilty of violating the law, don't pay.
Wrong. Your only choice lies between paying a few k dollars to an extortionist company, or getting many millions to be able to afford lawyers and stand through the trial. It's not something an average person can do, so the choice boils down to either paying the extortion or suffering a personal bankcrupcy.
You're a citizen, not a company. You have no rights.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Are you kidding? When would the editors find the time to actually proofread posted articles? Slashdot has what, 20 accepted articles per day? If the editors actually took 30 seconds to proofread each one, that would waste an entire 10 minutes every day! You think they have that kind of time to spare, just to make their site easier to read for the thousands upon thousands of visitors who do the rest of the work for them and make this place what it is?
"Only follow the law when the law is just."
Ordinary Americans desperately need, now, to begin to take back their country. If they leave it much longer, they themselves will not be the only ones to suffer consequences at the hands of their government and groups like the RIAA. The Australian government has already begun passing draconian laws of its own, following the cue of Bush, and I have no doubt that more will follow.
Technology is such these days that it is no longer good enough to merely talk about removing a dictatorial regime after it has come to power. In this case, it's not merely prevention being better than cure...Prevention may be our only option.
Point is, physical laws on an electronic medium.
If I took you to court and said, "This man over here stole $4000 worth of music from my music collection. Pay me right now for damages." they might consider it, but what if I told them by stealing I mean that you took my CDs, copied them, MP3'd them, and then returned them without any kind of damage? Now is it stupid to ask for their full value?
Now what if I said that instead of my entire music collection, you owe me 50 times the price I paid for them. I'd be laughed out of the courtroom and cornholed by the baliff for making him miss McGuyver.
But its all good if you're a company, because God knows whatever a company says has been well researched, thought out, and their word should be taken over mine at all times.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Copyright infringement is not theft. It's not stealing. "Stealing music" is a phrase invented by groups like the RIAA to try an justify their actions to the general public. Only the truly gullible and terminally stupid (i.e. you) really believe them. If you want proof that copyright infringement is not stealing, then simply look at the papers the RIAA filed. "Theft" is not the offence these mothers have been accused of. QED, copyright infringement is not theft.
Your post assumes that these mothers are guilty of the 'crime' they have been accused of. They way the RIAA spin in, it's beholden on the accused to prove their innocence. This act is directly counter to the principles that many legal systems were founded upon; notably - that one is innocent until proven guilty.
It is a logical impossibility to prove a negative. All the mothers can hope to do in this case is prove that they didn't use P2P applications or have music on their machines they didn't have a legal right to. This doesn't prove they weren't sharing music at the time the RIAA alledge.
The RIAA should be made to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that:
Windows Tweaks
It's actually common for tards to install p2p programs on a friend's PC and tell them about the "big favor" they did by installing that "free" music program on that there PC. The woman probably deleted the shortcuts and left the program on there. If she didn't install it and doesn't know how to remove it or what it's doing, should she really be held liable for it? Should I be held liable for a virus that plants child porn on my hard drive?
You don't think massive corporations suing single moms is demonic behavior?
Hmmm maybe they do since the people opposing them are apparently excitable children.
Or maybe they're tired of seeing corporations making billions of dollars in profits and who have been porking the music buying public for years with price fixing dragging people who work for a living through the courts. Does that make me an excitable child?
That's probably one of the reasons Sony, BMG and some others collaberated to form RIAA, the same reason MSFT funded the BSA. So someone else could be the bad guy.
It's sort of like the Republican controlled Congress and Senate passing the bankruptcy reform bill which makes it difficult to discharge credit card debt. You'd think with the increased collections the credit card banks would give people a break right? Instead they all raised their late fees and penalties, knowing that they can get away with it because people can't discharge their credit card debt in court. Bet ya didn't see that coming, did you?
I don't know anyone else, but I'm tired of corporate money running this country. I want my country back. I want to lead a torch carrying mob down K Street and sack every lobbyist office and burn every corporate jet at the airport. And this crap that RIAA is up to is just one more reason we really need to do that.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
But demonizing them for kicking elf, stepping on spiders, and scaring babies is just taking it too far.
You're right - we should only demonize them for bullying families, enslaving the artists, stealing from their own customers (with overinflated prices) and suing people to bankruptcy.
Change the law? Are you serious? With all of the money involved on the opposing side, it would be just about as easy to work at minimum wage with the goal of saving up enough money to buy a private island and enough yes-men so you can create your own little dictatorship that dosen't recognize copyright on materials older than a reasonable life span--all so you can thumb your nose at Mickey Mouse.
The Beatles, for example, are legends, and their works will continue to generate money well after the generation that first heard them have entirely turned to worm food. Michael Jackson makes a buttload off them, and they're just a drop in the bucket. It's in this industry's interest to make copyrights infinitely long, I realize this, they realize it, we all realize it. They have the money and the support to do it, and everyone else can eat shit. That's the reality. Unless someone cares to pull a few billion out of their ass to buy up and free all this good stuff, it will be tied up forever.
Somehow, to me, it dosen't seem unethical to copy music or other materials that have outlived everyone involved in its creation and its original investers, regardless of the legality.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
"Why does the Motherhood of these women matter?"
Because mothers, especially single mothers, have the second-highest political value of all, right behind children. It's all about who you can march out in front of the television cameras.
Nobody cares about the rights of college students.
So, I say, we sidestep the whole issue, and just start enjoying media that artists release under Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/ licensing. That is, tell the RIAA, in your face! There is LOTS of good music (and other work) out there that can be had freely. Sure, it's not the bubblegum stuff you're hearing on KRAP radio, but lots of it is really worth listening to.
The more we adopt alternate methods, the more the power will slip away from the current abusers. It's not a total solution, but it's a place to start.
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
Yeah, you'll be SO effective at persuading massive numbers of objectors to contribute thousands of dollars to defense funds when they're too cheap to buy songs for 99 cents on iTunes.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
...Why does the Motherhood of these women matter?,
This is speculation but I suspect the reason there was a case to consider is probably because a child or a friend of a child installed some file sharing program on the computer. The account with the ISP was registered and paid by the mother. So when an action was filed it is the mother who was named though she probably had no idea of what might have been the cause.
It should be understood that the copyright laws that are being invoked were written in the draconian terms because they were intended for legal actions of one commercial venture against another. All the mother might know is that she was providing an internet connection that the child is required to have for school work (if you are a parent you are probably aware that this has become a new requirement).
The idea that a parent is responsible for policing a home computer or face possible legal action that could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages is a new and startling development. If these cases go to trial and the mothers involved lose then the RIAA loses BIG TIME. The laws that they rely on to intimidate and win in the other cases will be seen as unreasonable laws and politicians will be falling over each other trying to address this perception. So if the RIAA wins then they definitely lose and if they lose they may still lose. Their best hope is that these individuals can be convinced to quietly settle.
That is why in the earlier case the most important development was that the judge told the lawyer from the RIAA that their resolution center was no longer involved in the case in any manner. They brought a suit in the judge's court and she [the judge] was determined that it would be adjudicated. Attempts to quietly settle were no longer an option. I suspect she was upset that the RIAA appeared to be using her court as a tool to force a settlement while avoiding a trial. Of course that is exactly what the RIAA wants to do.