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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.'"
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?
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?
The post you're responding to never said they'd infringe on copyrights, did it? Just that they wouldn't give the RIAA any money. Nice try.
On top of that, have you actually listened to the music being produced today? It is largely crap. Go look at what people are actually downloading over the P2P networks -- a lot of it is older music, music that under a reasonable copyright system would already be public domain.
(Or wait, do you think people should still be paying for Beatles and Elvis albums that have been burned into their neurons by radio, TV, freaking elevators for the last 40 years?)
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
"under a reasonable copyright system would already be public domain"
or under a resonable business model it would have dropped in price and be readily available for purchase. But it's out of print and the few times you find it the seller is asking for a "collector" price of $100+ and you think; "I want it, I'm willing to pay for it but I can't buy it because it doesn't exist anymore other than maybe a low quality 128kbits iTunes download that really isn't owning it, so I'll download it" I wonder how much an on demand CD reprinting service would cost. It would be nice to have some of that "older music" on CD for $5-$10, the kind you can only find on old used cassette.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
The fact you heard it in a commercial means you have the right to it for free? That doesn't even make sense.
No, the fact that it is 40 years old means that the creators got whatever profit they should be entitled to. Music which has entered the common culture over a generation ago no longer should be "owned."
Furthermore, even if we accept that copyright ought to be immortal and that copyright violaton is tantamount to theft, the punishment should fit the crime. Running a red light is a potentially deadly action. So why is the punishment for that less onerous than the punishment for uploading some old Kraftwerk?
And finally, the legal system should not be used as a weapon for the wealthy corporations to bludgeon poor individuals. Regardless of what the offense may be.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Not if they have evidence that said single moms have broken the law. They could be 95-year-old great-great-grandmothers, but if they broke the law, they're a valid lawsuit target.
They allegedly have evidence. If someone has "broken the law", the correct prodedure is to contact the attorney general or relevant law enforcement agencies. If, once investigated, they believe said evidence is sufficient, the individuals in question will be processed through the criminal court system where they will be provided with an attorney if they cannot afford one, the right to trial by jury and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. These are cornerstones of a society which, supposedly, values individual freedoms for all over special interests.
What the RIAA is attempting (and with some success) is to manipulate the civil legal system into a criminal surrogate, wherein they cause (or threaten to cause) such financial strife that defendants bow to their mighty will in an attempt to avoid life-long reprocussions that often make it difficult to provide for the future of the defendant's family (credit, education, etc).
Guilt or innocence has nothing to do with it.
They cannot, yet, imprison individuals but I'm sure they would simply love that sort of power.
The RIAA, and other similar organizations, are not elected representatives of the public trust and have no business acting in the capacity of such. Their blatant attempts to portray themselves in this light combined with predatory litigatious behavior would generally be considered crimes of coercion under common law.
What the hell are you talking about? The generation that listened to the Beatles is still alive today.
No shit. They were an example--legends with music that transcends time, they WILL be heard for generations after anyone involved with them has gone! Perhaps you missed the forward pointing language, but I don't think that's my fault. Yeah, they're still alive and kicking, they deserve the fruits of their labor, but it's all too likely that the bigwigs who invested in their music have kicked the can--corporations excepted, they can live forever. Should their great-grandkids still be collecting royalties after they're gone? Should King's Quest I be tied up until 2078? Is it right that some Vanilla Ice wannabe in the year 2075 would have to liscense that famous loop from Under Pressure? I don't think so. Its insane.
There's plenty of music, video, photos, and stuff that has been produced since 1923, which is still copyrighted, and that stuff won't become public domain until 2019--if they don't decide to extend copyrights again, that is. Do you think it was a mistake that the copyright extension act was Sonny Bono's pet project? Talk about a guy with vested interests, too bad he couldn't stick around to gain from it. Many (most, nearly all) of the people who were adults when they created works in the 30's are gone now. Some of the stuff is still relevant, but it's sad that photos, newspaper articles, and even floor plans from the 30's and 40's could still belong to someone/something, I think.
I think milking copyrights in perpetuity is wrong. 40 years isn't unreasonable. 50 years isn't necessarily pushing it. 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). 95 years for corporate authorship is simply disgusting, though.
The thing is, they only need to find another Sonny Bono to push their agenda, and they've got it in the bag. That's not right or fair, and this is from someone who makes pretty good money on the side doing creative stuff, which is covered by copyright. In a world where nearly all arts are built upon the foundation of previous works, super long copyrights are a burden and a hindrance.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.