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RIAA Sues a Child
dniq writes "You may remember the previously posted story about a case against a mother, which was dropped by the RIAA right after her lawyers moved to dismiss the case.
Well, guess what? The RIAA has brought a lawsuit against the mother's daughter - now a 14 year old girl - and moved for appointment of a guardian at litem."
..only reinforces my determination not to pay for content.
Am I a thief? yes. but it sits easier with my conscience than paying an industry which shows so readily all the worst tendencies of big business
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
And, should that fail, against her goldfish for listening to the alleged pirated files . . .
...somebody think of the children!
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
I expect that RIAA will soon sue FUTURE offsprings. Worse, congress will pass laws that will allow it, and the supremes will back it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Wait a sec, the other article says "Finally, the RIAA tried asking the Judge to amend the judgment in order to allow them to sue the child through a Guardian Ad Litem. However the court denied [the] RIAA's request.".
What gives?
Thieving bastards the lot of em!
Whoops! Mommy, did I say something wrong?
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
It appears as though all the children getting sued are of the age when internet access is used and their peers are all downloading.
Theres not been many younger kids sued, and we don't hear about the older ones because they are responsable for themselves.
I haven't actually heard about a real suit yet where they were truly wrong about the downloading habits.
The suits themselves are wrong, but their targetting seems spot on.
liqbase
They are hoping she'll be the next Britney Spears, and they can increase their profit margins if the RIAA can get a new guardian.
This will show the public how absurd there greed really is if the national media reports on it (big if).
Child was wearing a "hoody" must be guilty.
... absolutely disgusting! How low can you get? More than I hate them, I pity them. /Kash
Yeah, whatever!!!
If they think for a second that the masses are just going to roll over on this one they are crazy - this is the exact type of thing that could get people burning their products in the streets.
The outrage of them suing unwed mothers without computers (not to mention the deceased) is a mouse fart compared to whats going to happen when they start suing children.
So, download MP3's -> lose your mother??
/target RIAA
/spit
/repeat ad infinitum
Remember that RIAA public service anouncement where zombie warriors would kill an entire family if you downloaded music from the internet? Is that really how far the RIAA would go in their avarice?
In other news, an unborn is sued for cognisance as his mother listened to an illegaly downloaded song.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
RIAA steals christmas, kills the easter bunny, bombs a hospital, poisons a river and makes a general ass of itself.
Since Brittany will not be able to pay, the RIAA should be granted the right to harvest Brittany's organs.
Giant Greedy Corporation Sues 14 year-old Kid! In 26pt bold font, front page.
Or, as they said in the movie... I love the smell of napalm early in the morning.
Nice work RIAA. With lawyers like these, who needs enemies? Or p.r. people, for that matter?
(Yes, this is funny. Laugh).
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I did think that the McLibel case was the biggest PR disaster a corporation had ever got involved in ..http://www.mcspotlight.org/ .I do not think any media organisation is going to let up on this one .
Well done to the RIAA , they have just managed to out do McDonald's PR disaster .
I really did not think they would be that stupid , Even if they win their reputation will be completely destroyed
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
i walked past the window and heard it.
moving to alaska.
...the RIAA has filed a lawsuit against the father's testicles for "willful neglect" by spawning copyright infringers. In what could be the most lenient interpretation of the Grokster decision, a judge has allowed the RIAA to pursue further based on claims that the father's testicles were responsible for discoruging the illegal acts commited by their offspring. The announcement came as both a shock and an outrage to the defense team and the defendent who was heard to remark, "I'd give my left nut to get this ruling overturned."
Yea, it's a troll, big whoop, wanna fight about it?
Wait, I thought that the kid sued ended up doing pro RIAA tv commercials? Did they decide they still wanted to go after her? Or was that another 12 yo sued by RIAA?
It is deeply disgusting how a mob-like organization like the RIAA seem to have gotten away with things like that on a number of occasions. To my knowledge intimidation and extorsion are crimes and should be punished accordingly. We can only hope that many of the RIAA's victims are are smart enough to countersue them and perhaps initiate a class action suit against this ruthless syndicate.
How about they just go ahead with demanding ~(Expected losses in sales)$ from parents for every newly born. would make as much sense as taking a chunk out of every CD sold.
I thought the point of the guardian ad litem in the original case was that the RIAA was suing the mother, the mother claimed she didn't do it but her daughter admitted to it, and the RIAA then amended the suit to include the daughter. Since the mother had a conflict of interest in acting as the girl's guardian, a guardian ad litem could be appointed. But the RIAA dismissed the suit against the mother, and so now there is no conflict of interest. Does that mean that there is no longer a conflict of interest, and hence, no need for a guardian ad litem?
those RIAA ungrateful bastards... there i say it.
I'm reading a ton of comments saying that it's disgusting they're targetting a kid. They tried to sue the kid's parent, but coudln't, so of course they now need to go after the child that was the one that actually downloaded the songs.
Right or wrong, the child is the correct target.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
...I'd have to start organising an uprising. When are you guys going to get your act together and lobby your political representatives for an end to intellectual property law? Lazy bastards ;o)
Sit around all day, hit the bong... who can we sue next... hahahaha
-We *are* above the law. We're incorporated.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
If there was a soul amongst the RIAA's masses, it is gone now.
Riaa ki maa ka bhosda... chote bachon ko sue karta hai bhadwa
It must really suck to live in your country :-)
I don't understand why folks think this is so surprising:
a id_on_mondo_k.html
The RIAA knew the Chan's computer did some downloading.
Momma waited until the last minute to claim it wasn't she who did the downloading.
Momma refused to take responsibility for her daughter.
Now the RIAA has to go after the daughter.
If they just drop the case, where does it end? If they don't smash this smartass momma and her kid, they might as well go out of business. Their job now is to make momma Chan rue the day she ever let her kid do this. The bit about the legal guardian has to do with momma Chan refusing to take responsibility for daughter Chan.
The world is full of folks like the momma who will try to screw over the RIAA. That's what Napster showed -- people want free music, and don't care about paying for it. So the RIAA has to get tough.
At least the RIAA didn't send in the cops and their own thugs to bust the family, and then have a pizza party in her livingroom, like they did recently at Kim's video -- this one is really out there:
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2005/06/r
My journal (http://yro.slashdot.org/~putko/journal/) has more on this topic; this one is a watershed event, as the RIAA is going after mixtapes -- the viral marketing method favored by "urban" musicians.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
...how else would I have known that the new Fiona Apple CD really isn't very good?
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
This is a wonderful strategy - demand that the court appoint a legal guardian which is usually done to pit the childs interests against those of the parent or guardian, usually as a precursor to reassign parental rights. It is brilliant that now a corporation can sue you and move to take your children away at the same time.
RIAA files suit against God for "willful neglect" in creating man. The suit goes on to describe a number of ways that man is flawed including but not limited to:
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
vying for modern-day bogeyman?
I can see it now.
"Go to bed right now, or the RIAA is going to get you!" *child screams and runs to bed*
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I'm moving to Finland!
If you don't want to support this kind of thing, don't buy any more music from RIAA labels.
Use RIAA Radar to find out if an album is published by an RIAA label. If that's the case, and you want it anyway, don't buy it new, but used (for instance at ebay, amazon marketplace or even a used records store).
Support independant labels and artists by buying their stuff!
If you'd still like to support a band that's signed with an RIAA label, go see them live (and maybe buy a t-shirt there).
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
This is one of the problems I think with society today. As much as we are against it, and as much as we preach that they're horrible, not one of us will do anything. We'll just go on our day downloading music. A bunch of us will even still buy their cd's.
I know I haven't done much, but I have refused to purchase / download any RIAA backed music for the last 4 years. It's not much, but I do know that my money isn't funding this piece of shit organization. They're ruthless in getting their money and whether you are downloading or purchasing, you are supporting them. How? You are spreading their work.
The worst part is that no judge has stopped them. What ever happened to the 'for the people' part of this country? The RIAA is for the people? What people? The ones getting sued for thousands when they don't have it or the ones getting the thousands to purchase fuel for their private jet?
I think people need to realize that the RI fucking AA is nothing without us. If we all stop buying their music they will fade away. In order for them to live, we have to continue to feed them. By downloading or purchasing music we are doing just that; feeding the beast. Let it starve and they'll be forced to figure out some other way to distribute their songs or quit while they're ahead.
Of course, this will all fall on deaf ears because as soon as the next article comes out we have to debate that. But hey, at least I tried something right?
The greatest experience we can have is the mysterious.
- Albert Einstein
That has a less emotive feel to it, doesn't it?
:)
You can argue about the merits of copyright, the merits of lawsuits against minors, the responsibilities of a parent to educate their child about obeying the law, but it sounds like the girl's done exactly what she's been accused of, and her mother is trying to get her off the hook. Fair enough. But next time we see someone rip off a GPL product and claim it as their own, no source available, I expect to see "FSF Sues Man Trying to Feed Family" or something equally 'balanced'...
Game dev and music blog
and spends the next 30 years paying off debt (that'll teach them about justice and stuff!) than if they watch Superbowl and see a piece of the human body that babies drink from.
Y'know, it's all about what's right and wrong, and about who's boss...
Well, cut the "right and wrong".
It's not what you do to them that matters. It's what they're afraid you might do.
In fact doing is a lot of bother. You want to get them into a state where all you've got to do is look at them that way. It's better because if one of those sheep stands up to you and wins, it's all over for you.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What we don't need are more petty legal battles, because that's just playing to the RIAA's strength. They have cash to burn and they're feeding it to the lawyers with both claws.
Purely hypothetical situation follows - Don't try this at home...
How would the situation change if a few geek jihadis appeared who were willing to sacrifice themselves against the corporate machine? Would the RIAA survive if every RIAA office burned down at midnight on Halloween? If they think piracy is expensive, how expensive is it going to be when people realize that their governments are not protecting them from "legal" assaults and take matters into their own hands?
I'd be too big of a chicken to do it myself. Plus I haven't been personally hurt by the RIAA. But I think it's only a matter of time before they push someone too far and they snap. And then it'll get real expensive. Hell, as long as you're in court, it might as well be for something you actually DID, eh?
Not that I'd ever advocate an act of terrorism, but there are examples in American history where groups of citizens decided they wouldn't stand for it anymore, especially when the targets of the assaults were normal everyday people, women and children, and then they just burned out the oppressive elements.
It won't happen anyhow. Nobody around here is going to risk anything REAL to stop a corporate monster any more than a flock of sheep would ever band together to take on a wolf. There's just no payoff in making a stand unless you're the one feeling the teeth in your flesh, and by then it's too late.
This is not an informative commnent, nobody that isn't a communist has heard of this mclibel thing.
The first time wasn't enough; the pigs come back for more.
What a sham! You Cant Stop The Music? They've killed it.
guardian ad litem = litigation friend - person who takes care of a court action on a child's behalf - not a personal guardian
Wow, RIAA are cool! Suing a little girl.
She shouldn't have dressed like that.
This teaches us all a valuable lesson. Make sure your kids know how to connect to your neighbour's wifi network before downloading mp3s...
I only use P2P networks to download porn
"What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea."
threadeds blog
A guardian ad litem does not have custody of the child. Britanny is incompetent to appear in court because of her age. The court has already established that her mother cannot be sued. So the RIAA is asking the court to appoint a lawyer to appear on Britanny's behalf to allow proceedings against her to continue--this is all. The key word is "ad litem"--which means "for the suit." If you had spent 1 minute googling you would have known this yourself.
-1L law student
Ok, lets say you develop a program similiar to Google's Video search which gathers up videos on the net and either A) partially downloads them or B) completely downloads them but yours works with music. In which case it finds a honeynest of copyrighted music but it would be impossible for it to reconize the fact that its copyrighted. So it downloads it all. Is this still copyright enfringement? I mean yahoo's video search has a ton of copyrighted material on it, I mean do a search for "The Gamers" which is a college made movie about DnD gamers which they normally charge a rather low price for the dvd but you can get it free from yahoo's search.
Oh ye gods. Dictionary.com, while nice, is certainly not authoratative in matters of law. (Although I'm happy to see they excerpted from Merriam-Websters's Dictioary of Law too.) Black's Legal Dictionary - the most respected general legal dictionary - is not authoratative either. Dictionaries are just general references. A judge who cited one in a court opinion would be mad to do so.
You are wrong. Copyright infringement is not theft. You have been deprived of nothing material; you have just had your [government granted monopoly rights]rights stepped on. If you can't see the distinctions, or the reasons the distinctions exist, please either shut up or go to law school. It's a fun three years.
Intended to reply to this post.
Good on the RIAA.
Shut down those pirates.
> 1. The copyright holder is only deprived of *potential* income. As neither of us knows
> if a specific person would have paid for the crap he downloaded and never listened to,
> you can't say that he was deprived of any real income. He only lost something he never had.
1. Hey dictionary head! How come NOBODY on this newsgroup EVER gets all antsy about the number of articles or posts about "Identity Theft". Nobody ever steals your identity. You still have it. It's just an abstract notion of "potential value". The information you possess has "potential value" which may or may not be realized. "Identity Theft" may or may not infinge on that value.
2. The whole of our economic system is based on the ownership, transfer and sale of "potentional income". Unless you still live in a world where sheep and goats are traded you will find "potential income" is exactly what is traded everyday. Futures, derivitives, options, variable interest rates, currency exchange markets. It is all an abstract concept in the transfer of VALUE and perceived VALUE.
Programmers are meant to be great abstract thinkers but the number of posts bitching the Copyright Infringement not being theft amazes me. Just swap identity theft for copyright infringement and then repost and see how stupid you look. It's about as daft as the gun control lobby trying to claim that there is a justification in the Constitution for military assault weapons.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
RIAA may be vile and worthless, but using something they have the right to deny you dosen't make you the good guy. In the words of Bahá'u'lláh, the prophet-founder of the Bahá'í Faith:
...
They who dwell within the Tabernacle of God, and are established upon the seats of everlasting glory, will refuse, though they be dying of hunger, to stretch their hands, and seize unlawfully the property of their neighbour, however vile and worthless he may be.
His [Gods] object is to array every man with the mantle of a saintly character, and to adorn him with the ornament of holy and goodly deeds....
(Cited in Shoghi Effendi, "The Advent of Divine Justice", p. 24)
Who?
It seems to me that the RIAA is only the enemy because they are the face of the body which has made it inconvenient to steal music. I think the majority of people who are hopping on the "I Hate The RIAA!" bandwagon are forgetting some crucial information. The RIAA is a trade organization. They represent MEMBERS of that organization. They are suing on behalf of their members, not on behalf of themselves. They're not the top of the chain, they are in the middle of the chain. The artists who join, support, and ask the RIAA to represent them are the ones at the top.
If someone gets sued by the RIAA it's not because the RIAA wants to sue them, it's because the artist they represent wants them to. Because Britney Spears, Metallica, or whoever else has, in essence, asked them to do it. Maybe the artists don't directly demand it in most cases, but they did indirectly demand it at the point they signed with a record company which was a member of the RIAA.
Money speaks louder than words. No matter how many people say they don't like the RIAA, there are still billions of dollars being given to the artists which essentially confirms the artists belief that they joined the right label. That in turn confirms the label's belief that joining the RIAA was the right decision. Everyone out there who is buying music from RIAA members is telling the RIAA that they're doing a great job. The RIAA has been around for over 50 years, and the public has happily given them money hand-over-fist. It's only now that people got a taste of convenient, on-demand, free music that people have a problem with them. 20 years ago, no one was crying foul. Everyone knew that bootleg tapes were illegal, and most people copied tapes for their friends, but if you got into the business of moving massive numbers of bootleg tapes, no one was going to blink twice when you got pinched. But now that people are using the same concept in digital space, it has somehow become the moral highground.
People can quibble all they want about the exact definition of theft. The simple fact is, we all know that when we download an mp3, it's theft. We just cross our fingers and hope that the RIAA is looking at someone else when we do it.
If you were a programmer, and you spent $25,000 of your own money and 6 months to develop an application, you try to sell it and you hear "Great program, I already have that." from 100,000 people, but you've only sold two copies at $20 each, are you going to think "At least they didn't steal it from me"? Of course not, because they DID steal it from you. 100,000 people have the fruits of your labor, and you've got $40 to show for it.
I know it doesn't seem like the same issue when you can tell yourself that the person you took the music from already has plenty of money, because we all know stealing is alright so long as your victim has more than you. Or you can tell yourself you weren't going to buy it anyway. Whatever you need to sleep.
The RIAA is using the legal system against people. A better word might be "misusing." However it is not going off into vigilante mode (actually, there is evidence that they have been hacking into people's computers, so maybe they go both ways).
The solution is to use litigation, lobbying, PR, consumer education and maybe boycotting and other measures. The worst thing that could happen is what you advocate, which is vigilante justice. Most of the people targetted by these lawsuits are basically law-abiding people. They are not going to rise up and start torching offices. If one does, as you say, snap and burn down a building, this would be a huge boon for the RIAA. They are insured anyway, they would lose very little. Suddenly there is proof that filesharers are literally "terrorists," and the fight against them will escalate, and I guarantee you Congress will start passing more draconian laws. That's how the game works. Think about what you're saying for a little bit before you go running your mouth off.
...will they go after her little dog, too?
In a world without walls, there is no need for Windows.
you successfully translate the above statement to:
You spit on RIAA.
You spit on RIAA.
You spit on RIAA.
You spit on RIAA.
You spit on RIAA.
You spit on RIAA.
You spit on RIAA.
You spit on RIAA.
in orange text...
yours,
kbs
...and in other news, two children aged 16 and 17 were sentenced for having killed their stepmother. Being a underaged doesn't make you any less guilty, and I'd event contest whether a 14 year old should properly count as being a child in front of the law.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
If you're charging $14 for a CD that cosists of a few good tracks and what amounts to fillers, you don't get to call anyone a thief.
Can anybody explain to me, again, why I should be all up in arms over the RIAA going after infringers? I was much more upset when the RIAA went after the mother; I think it's kind of unreasonable to expect anyone to control someone's Internet access to the point that no illegal exchange of material can be performed. Much better to go after the infringers themselves.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This just proves that the RIAA will do anything to make a $1...
I'm not a laywer, so what this looks like is:
RIAA wants to sue teenage girl and her Mother.
Mother says you can't sue me, I had nothing to do with it.
RIAA can't sue teenage girl, too young.
RIAA asks court to appoint a fake mother (Guardian) that they can sue?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Hey, RIAA leave the kids alone!
All in all it's just another suit on the wall
All in all you're just another suit on the wall
Can I get sued now, for infinging on some songtext copyright?
Wrong. "Theft of services" is an actual defined crime. "Criminal infringement of copyright" is not theft - see how the word "theft" doesn't appear anywhere in that phrase?
The Supreme Court ruled that copyright infringement is not theft in a 1985 case, Dowling v. United States
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Why does everything have to be free? What happened to personal responsibility? Just because it's on the internet does not mean it has to be free. Put yourself in the place of the artists. They're not making money when someone gives away their music. I guess it would be ok if the 13 year old was selling drugs. She is just a child.
The junk the content industry wishes to sell is so shitty that i don't even want to "steal" (read infringe their copyright on it), yet alone pay for it. Thanks but no thanks.
to Janes addiction...
Been caught stealing, once when I was five.... I enjoy stealin... just a simple fact.... when I want some thing and I don't want to pay of it....
I fire up..... winmx
& download to my door.....
fire up... winmx
& download to my door......
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
[sounds of rap, house, whatever it is that "kids listen to these days"]
D: Are these the sound recordings you are accusing my client of having illegally downloaded?
P: Yes, so stipulated.
D: Your honor, we agree these sound recordings were downloaded, however, no copyright can be held because that's not music and as the court knows, noise cannot be copywritten.
J: So noted. Case dismissed, with prejudice. Get that crap out of my courtroom.
-- I speak only for myself
Oh I hate this argument so much. It's theft, ok? I make a song and decide to charge money for it and someone downloads it without paying, I should hope that's considered theft.
I'm a thief, you're a thief, lots of us are thieves. Does it make us worse people? I don't think so, but yes, it is theft. Don't take music for free that took money to create and tell me it's not theft, because I'm damn sick of that. It's a product on the market, you're taking it for free, and despite any legal definition, in reality it is theft.
I'm not even going to say that it's my opinion, it's just common sense. Wikipedia's definition: "Theft (also known as stealing) is in general, the wrongful taking of someone else's property without that person's willful consent." The song is my property, and if you take it for free you're taking it without my consent. Case closed. It's theft.
The only exception is if the owner of the song (not neccessarily the original artist(s), they might have sold their work) say that their song is free. That's obvious consent. Any distinction between "property" and "intellectual property" is bullshit (ok, I'll say that's my opinion, but I feel pretty strongly about it).
But sure, if you want to call it "copyright infringement" to feel better about yourself, then by all means go right ahead. You're not the common thief who steals stuff from department stores, you're a "copyright infringer" who downloads music you wouldn't have bought anyway. And that makes you a better person.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Who else got the image of Mr. Burns trying to steal candy from some random kid?
Oh yeah, I forgot.
....even with a whole harem of beutiful ladies that must be uncomfortable. I mean.. they must have paper-cuts in all sorts of unmentionable places?!
On top of a pile of money, with many beautiful ladies.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The way I see it: I buy what I want to buy ITRW. I download and don't pay for what I wouldn't buy anyway. If one day I could no longer download it, I still wouldn't buy it. Therefore, the "industry" isn't missing out on anything I wouldn't be buying anyway.
Perhaps they will now have reason to ask their cronies in congress to author a bill allowing for mandatory chemical castration of convicted copy-right offenders.
God forbid they should have children.
Upon noting the fact that the girl also was sharing songs, I realized something I've always hated about the P2P crapware, and that is by default most of them are automatically share the songs you've downloaded, or your whole library. Most lusers (especially today) are too dumb to a)find the preferences in a program, b) understand those preferences, and c) change those preferences.
More than likely, the girl did not even know she was sharing. The creator of the ghey program should be sued.
Stick to IRC or IM and just trade amongst friends using scrambled archive files w/irrelevant names... or just stop listening to pop shite in the first place.
CD's purchased in the Last year the OLD NAPSTER was up and running: 48 (plus or minus)
CD's purchased since: ZERO
Is this a trend, or what?
Much as in the same way people have sued gun-makers and cigarette companies maybe the RIAA should go against Microsoft for providing the platform for the downloading.
"The song is my property,"
What exactly is your property? I sequence of notes?
Sonny boy, there are 13 notes in the modern western scale. There are only a finite number of combinations. Ergo, at this point in history, every song written is "stealing".
So please, excuse me if I laugh at your "common sense".
once again i am reminded why i stopped purchasing new music. listen up RIAA - kiss my ass. there are plenty of shops that sell used CDs of which you don't see a single penny. and there's Ebay.
it makes me sad to think that this industry screws everyone it comes in contact with. artists, audience, consumers...i'm surprised they haven't figured out a way to screw themselves.
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
This argument always goes the same way. Someone who is infringing copyright says it's not theft because the copyright holder still has the original material so they are doing no harm because they have deprived no-one of anything. Someone who disapproves says they are depriving the copyright holder of their rightful income. Someone who is infringing copyright starts using weasel words to argue that it's not guaranteed they would have had that income anyway.
OK, reality check. First of all, could everyone using this argument please go and read a book on elementary economics. Note particularly the balance required in a capitalist economy, and the implications of terms like "opportunity cost" to this behaviour. If you don't understand the basics of this subject -- and clearly the vast majority of people on Slashdot who rely on this argument don't -- then you are in no position to assess whether your actions are doing any real damage or not.
Now, please consider that the "no harm, no foul" argument by the infringers here amounts to saying that no-one who illegally downloads music would ever have paid for any of it anyway if they couldn't just download it and get away with it. That is clearly, obviously, and blatantly untrue. Sure, there may be a few people who actually do buy other stuff as a result of their illegal downloads, but IME they're an insignificant minority of those who rip illegally. What next, claims that Bittorrent is only used to download legit open source distributions, and no-one would dream of using it as an expensive-to-break international movie-ripping scheme?
The whole position of the copyright infringers in this argument is untenable. They are violating the basic principles of capitalist economics for selfish personal gain, which puts anyone who doesn't violate those rules at a disadvantage. (If it's legitimate for them to rip without paying, why can't everyone, even those who currently pay? Because the system wouldn't work any more if everyone did it, that's why.) This is not a case of "no harm, no foul", it's a case of using weasel words and technicalities to try and abdicate blame for knowingly breaking the law.
There is no moral high ground here, no justification, no case that personal ethics are greater than the law of the land and it's just "civil disobediance". If you truly find the current law so objectionable that you feel you must resort to civil disobediance to make your point, then you should walk up to the front door of RIAA headquarters with all your illegally ripped CDs in your hand, publicly and openly confess to your crime, and publicly and openly accept the consequences.
It's true that in many places, the law today is badly broken in this area. Much of that breakage was a result of the legal system over-reacting to the mass law-breaking caused by illegal ripping, so frankly I've little sympathy for anyone who does commit those acts and get screwed royally for it. However, it's important to prevent things like barratry and to ensure that those who didn't actually do anything wrong are adequately protected against being caught in the cross-fire here. That doesn't just mean providing solid legal defence to people wrongfully sued, it means protecting concepts like the ones called "fair use" in the US, that maintain a reasonable balance between rightsholders and the public. I believe it is vital for society that this balance is restored, and that means both reversing draconian laws introduced as knee-jerk reactions to widescale infringement and also the stamping out of that infringement. (If those people who rip music illegally really wouldn't have bought the records otherwise, and the music they download ilegally really is all rubbish that they'd never listen to again anyway, then taking steps to eradicate illegal downloading won't do any harm to anyone, will it?)
So yes, it is important for t
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Organinzing a demonstration didn't help. Like it or not, the music industry has a lot of political weight and there are no significant pro-consumer organizations.
What pisses me off here is that what was an explicit legal right to make copies for personal use has been changed to a mention that it would be good if content providers could pretty please make it possible to make said copies without breaking encryption, which is now illegal.
I'm not against IP law in general. What I would like is for there to be a competitive alternative to breaking the law. Non-DRM-encumbered music, TV series and movies available at a decent price. Me watching two minutes of advertising in addition to watching the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica can NOT be worth more than I'd be willing to pay for getting a torrent download automatically started when the episode is released. Say, one USD for each minute of ads I don't watch?
The only people who insist on calling copyright infringement theft are those who are trying to make a weak argument and want more irrational, emotional support from who they're speaking to. "Theft" has more emotional ties than does "copyright infringment". It seems to me that your real problem is not that people are using the incorrect word, but that your argument that "copyright infringment" of this music is very bad is so weak that you have to use the term "theft" to try to influence people.
If you ever accidently hit someone at night with a car, and they die, I sure bet that you don't want the newspaper calling you a "murderer".
So you have a group of people who are trying to keep people being rational about the crime (those using the term "copyright infringment") and a group of people who are trying to make an emotional argument because they can't win on rational arguments (the people using "steal" or "theft").
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
What do you expect from a system which promotes the rights of the rich and influential over the rights of the "citizen". If you don't like it then don't support it actively or otherwise and especially don't support it with your ignorance.... Peace Out.
I hate the big-label music industry, I deal with indie musicians every day at my site, http://www.homerecordingconnection.com/ and hear these same stories day in and day out there...it sucks, the industry sucks, it screws everybody it touches...but, they are still succeeding...until people band together and hit them in the pocketbook without breaking the law, nothing will change. That girl knew what she did was against the law, so I have little-to-no sympathy for her.
What people need to do is stop buying CD's from big label artists all together, hell, go back to duping tapes and CD's or recording music of the watered down pop music radio...any route besides P2P, THAT's where people are being stupid. If people break the law trying to "stick it to the industry", well, it's not going to help anyone.
IMHO
dB Masters
Here. Still timely.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I'm a law student, and let me tell you, we're not taught to lie.
I agree. But you *do* work in a field where it is very beneficial to use loaded rhetoric. This is not your fault -- as long as juries are going to respond to emotional arguments instead of being coolly factual, if you don't do it, the other side is going to do so, and there's no mechanism in the legal system to dissuade lawyers from using loaded rhetoric.
The real complaint (why people tend to transfer a lot of their anger onto lawyers) is that it's fucking hard to build a perfect system for resolving issues between people. Pull juries out of a system, and you establish a class of judges as incredibly powerful. So, given that, it's really hard to take Joe Average and make him intelligent, analytical, and thoughtful to the point where a guy whose professional is to convince Joe Average of one side of a case can't make his point. Now, what's the guy on the *other* side of the case going to do? Be purely factual and keep losing cases? No -- that's an unstable system. He's going to use rhetoric too.
The masses see that something isn't perfect and choose to focus on lawyers, because they're the most visible target. Hence, "Lawyers are Evil". It becomes a common mantra after a while.
If I had to make one suggestion that would improve the quality of our legal system immensely, it would be to change two things (both of which lawyers would oppose, so not likely to happen):
*) Plaintiff never gets punitive damages above a certain (small) amount. Any punitive wins in this class get used by a state-run organization to help avoid future problems of this sort. This eliminates the massive, multi-million dollar "lottery" wins for plaintiffs and lawyers that make abuse of the legal system so profitable.
*) Indirect and direct profits to lawyers in class action suits get capped. Yes, in very extreme cases, this *could* limit the likelihood of some independent law firms going out against some big corporate-backed lawyers with tons of funding, but, for instance, the Big Tobacco lawsuit was absurd. Class actions should not be a lottery system for lawyers.
I'm not against lawyers making a good living -- they work in a highly specialized field and have to be knowledgeable and skilled. They're important to the functioning of society. What I *don't* like is that a select few make phenomenal amounts of money through abusing the legal system. Putting social pressure on lawyers to not do this is useless, because it doesn't matter what the masses of lawyers do; only what the few that cause problems do.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
FRANK BLACK: No, no, it's not about us: in fact, he's working on a case that could be of great interest to the group. This Selfosophist was found --
PETER WATTS (alarmed): Whoa, Selfosophy? No, no ...
FRANK: What is going on, Peter? We've never backed away from anything. We've even faced evil incarnate.
PETER: Evil incarnate can't sue. All I'm saying is be careful about what you say around your writer friend.
Fans will remember that this show was poking fun at the Church of Scientology, but the point is well taken: well-monied, lawsuit-happy interest groups are very evil indeed.
Method of processing duck feet
The RIAA seems to think that a 13 year old listening to songs without paying them lots of money merits hounding her and her family with lawyers in an attempt to bankrupt them and set an example that will deter other kids. Most here on /., I think, would opt for letting the kid go, with perhaps a message to her about copyrite infringement being naughty. Let me suggest a compromise that would achieve the RIAA's objective of deterrence with much less long term imptact on the kid and her family. I suggest they gather the press around while they have some heavies beat the kid up, including cleanly breaking one limb. The press can display the pictures as a lesson of what can happen to you if you illegally download music, while the girl and her family will be fine within a few months. (As opposed to the current situation where they stand to be under intolerable pressure for years.)
How come NOBODY on this newsgroup EVER gets all antsy about the number of articles or posts about "Identity Theft".
.com journalists.
Identity theft is not a legal term. It's a pop culture term coined by
Exactly this *does* happen with copyright infringement and "piracy". I don't gripe about use of the term "piracy" as long as it isn't used in a legal or legislative context (it should *not* show up in the courtroom or Congress), because it is a pop culture term for copyright infringement. It's not a great choice; "identity theft" is not overloaded as a term, but "piracy" is. However, it's entered the common lexicon.
"Theft" is not a pop culture term for copyright infringement. It is simply the wrong word, and an emotionally loaded one. It is only used by people who have failed to make a factual argument and are trying to make an emotional one. It is akin to calling someone guilty of manslaughter a "murderer".
This is why we don't like it. If you can't successfully make an argument for something using the term "copyright infringement", you don't get to go back and try stuffing "theft" in at the appropriate places to try to appeal to emotion and irrationality.
Manslaughter is not "murder".
Copyright infringement is not "theft".
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Sue your customers...that'll get em to like you. Maybe it's the same concept as beating up your insecure girlfriend. She'll just keep coming back because you "love her" and you are "doing it for her"??? And after all, she needs you right?
Don't we all need the RIAA? I mean, they are the ones creating all this great music for us. Not the artists.
Personally, I play in a band and seeing this stuff go on the past few years, I will never consider working with these theives.
If you abuse people enough to steal them more money than they "stole" to you, you're turning yourself into a Prince John. Good, you protected yourself from the peasants. But what will you do when the robinhoods strike back?
RIAA, you're carvirng your own grave.
The GPL is designed to and steadily places an increasing amount of content in the open, available to the public. Copyleft does what copyright was intended to do, even faster than copyright did. We're still stuck with the ridiculous length of copyright, but other than that, copyleft pretty much accomplishes what the Founding Fathers were trying to do.
Music copyrights that last the life of an author plus a hundred years have absolutely *nothing* to do with giving the public more content. No record industry executive takes into account potential income beyond four years or so -- they don't know if their *company* will be around in twenty years, much less a hundred and twenty. The overextended copyrights have to do with the music and movie industries successfully buying out enough legislators over the past few years to subvert a major function of our Constitution.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
A few months ago, the RIAA chairman was testifying before a Senate committee. One Senator asked him (I'm paraphrasing):
"So, when you leave here, are you going to stop at the middle school down the street to round up the usual suspects?"I guess the RIAA's answer is: YES!
The religious right will have a field day with this.
The drug and sex pushing music companies try to take a child away from her parents! Dude greedy druggies attack the family unit! The religious right and family values people will be all over this! The republicans which the entertainment business really seems to hate sees a great target.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I like how it's more often the music 'artists' who are anti establishment, but now with the RIAA the music artists ARE THE ESTABLISHMENT.
Us: Musicians, write us a song about "sticking it to THE MAN".
Musicians: Sorry, we arn't that well endowed, and don't bend that way. We can't/won't stick it to ourselves.
What kind of geek doesn't know Latin?
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
You say "Much better to go after the infringers themselves." If you are walking down the street and you see a brand new music CD just sitting there on the ground and you pick it up and take it home; Is it stealing or did you find it? I agree with the fact that this is also a moral issue but let's put that aside for the moment. With the internet designed the way it is, you can travel from site to site looking for stuff to download. If you happen to come across a site that allows you to download music for free without any hassle, it is the same as if you found it on the street. I pay for my music. Whether people agree with that or not does not matter to me. I subscribe to Napster, Rhapsody, and Yahoo Music Engine. I pay my monthly subscription fee every month and I can listen to anything I damn well please. My kids can listen to anything they want and on occasion, I let them burn a CD with their mixes. This is how music should be sold. PERIOD. What the RIAA needs to do is go after the services like they did Napster. What is so damn different about what the RIAA did to Napster that they cannot do to these other services? What Congress should do is prevent the services that allow music to be downloaded illegally. Pass a friggin law already... We have the technical ability to block traffic to those sites, ISP's can block ports that are used for these services etc... There are many deterrents that can be used but it just does not happen. Until measures are put into place to prevent young girls and boys from downloading, these lawsuits are frivolous and should be tossed out on their ear. Let me hear you say Hell Yeah Brother Puppy!!! Testify!!!
i don't see how P2P services are much different from a second-hand CD store.
take the following hypothetical situation---
a second hand CD store receives CD's that people no longer want. they then turn around and sell each CD for some value, which could be as little as 1. the person who buys the cd, goes home and copies the music onto their computer, then donates the CD back to the second hand store....repeat
or is a person supposed to delete all copies/duplicates of a cd after they get rid of the original?
It is a blatant abuse of the statutes. (And it will continue until we find some unsigned band who distributes their music WITHOUT them over the internet and THEY SUE the RIAA, with our help, of course, for depriving them of their business model. Say a band who distributes their music and collect micro-payments over PayPal.)
Any takers? Any band out there? (Maybe an amateur klesmer band. Or maybe an 'eeffin' jug band?) Something so out of the realm of anybody's top-40s playlist that the RIAA's client list, the ones BEHIND the law suits, the ones behind and part of the payola, the corrupt practices, the disposability of artists, the lack of promotion, the scum under the soap.
Most of these people deserve unemployment. Lets give it to them.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I don't understand the RIAA. I can go to any music store, find a CD I may like and ask the clerk if I can listen to it there. If I like it I buy it, if I don't, I will not. Now I download some music at home. If I like it I can go to the store and buy it (If I'm honest). If not I delete the file. Tell me why I'm going to be sued for something that the music stores are already doing?
Adds an interesting twist to it, doesn't it?
Since Brittany will not be able to pay, the RIAA should be granted the right to harvest Brittany's organs.
:)
Are you talking about Briteny Spears organs ? So she's not a bot singer after all ?
(Must resist about this organs pun...)
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
is he really involved with the riaa on this case?
Listen to a real band:
/.)
www.myspace.com/leperkhanz
Hurray for myspace and real music that you can hear for free, rather than brittney and the tripe.
(Disclaimer: SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION VIA
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
The RIAA took my baby away,
they took her away,
Away from me-ay..
Marques Johansson
I refuse to promote the RIAA's wares by including any of them in my "share folder." Instead, there are hundreds of very good songs by very good bands who desperately WANT their music to be shared.
/. joke: "In the USSA, YUO watch Big Brother!")
I also include freeware, shareware, FOSS, etc.
I download anything I damned well please, and thanks to the No Electronic Thieft Act I can download "$2000 worth" of content in a six month period and be perfectly legal.
Note that downloading is illegal in some locales (e.g. UK, Australia).
A friend of mine found a huge box of 70s rock cassettes at a yard sale for five bucks, and it's going to take quite some time to sample them all, so I won't be doing much downloading for a while.
Note that this, too is illegal in some places. I understand that in the UK you can't even make a copy of a CD you have bought for your own use, while in the US you can make as many copies as you want so long as you don't sell them or broadcast them.
When giving something away is "stealing" you know that Orwellian doublespeak is the norm.
(obligatory
It's simply amazing how this got completely off topic and morphed into the validity of theft as applied to copyright infringement. I think many are missing the point on something here. I've been seeing this coming for some time now, and it's beginning to rear it's ugly head more and more.
If corporations are allowed to exploit stuff like this, then we're all heading down a slippery slope that none of us will be able to climb back up from! It's not so much the corporations I blame, but the lawyers that are putting them up to it. And you know the schools are churning out more and more lawyer types all the time, and for the most part, they want to start earning income right away, and large amounts of it no less. I bet it's the lawyers doing this and it's being done under the auspices of 'setting a precedent'. Hay; you lost out on a suit of the parent(s)...; now sue the child, and the responsibility falls back on the parent(s).
Gads, you must have seen this coming!
Cheers
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
They'll happily let you burn them until they realise what you're actually doing... http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030406& mode=classic
So how would everyone react if a 14-year-old decided to willfully violate the GPL, start their own business based on your code, and then admit to it all?
Metallica certainly doesn't care if RIAA goes after a kid, but Amy Grant and Jewel might. If everybody sent emails to the various artists who might take offense at their RIAA trying to have a guardian appointed for a 14 year old for downloading music (essentially the RIAA is trying to have the mother declared unfit and is trying to make this as painful for her as possible for daring to stand up to them) they might raise a stinking stink stinky enough to make RIAA reconsider.
Some artists who might actually care:
Reba
Jewel
Amy Grant
LeAnn Rimes
Tricia Yearwood
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
In related news, the RIAA is appealing the ruling and is including the judge in the long list of defendants. When questioned about the legal basis for suing a judge, a RIAA spokeperson made it clear that judges are not above these new laws.
Please refer to the ever-astute Toothpaste For Dinner's
"Why The Dot Com Era Ended."
Isn't, at its core, copyright infringement really about infringing on the contract you entered with the company who produced the content?
if so, the 14 y ear old cant be held liable. She's unable to legally enter into a contract at that age in the first place.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
We have:
theft...criminal
copyright infringement...civil
So:
Murder = criminal and jail time
Theft = criminal and jail time
Running a protection racket = criminal and jail time
Copyright infringement = civil no jail time
You can not talk about copyright infringement as "theft" because it is not a criminal offense.
vi +
I stopped buying the RIAA's stuff a while ago (mostly I just donate to independents these days). Sadly, they're still in business. The problem appears to relate to the world's large population of Britney-Spears-addicted sheeple. I have yet to figure out a solution that doesn't involve at least a little genocide.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Shh, theft is better. Say I download all the alice in chains albums, thats what, seven albums counting the live MTV thing? Averaging at 12 songs an album (a bit high for them really), thats 84 songs. At iTunes thats 84 dollars, therefore I can argue the monetary value associated with the theft is 84 dollars. If I downloaded across state lines it becomes federal and I don't know the law, but otherwise I'm pretty sure that anywhere in the United States 84 dollars is a the most minor class of misdemeanor with no jail time as an option and a fine not to exceed some number much smaller than the $25k associated with infringement. Copying has much more severe penalties than stealing.
I guess they had to make it that way because it is so hard to enforce, still seems rediculous.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
I've been reading through these posts and some of their replies, and I have come up with an interesting little scenario that will hopefully spark some more doubts/arguments as to what can be considered "theft". Note that I am merely a neutral party here, so don't take things out on me. Here we go... You're walking down the street one day, and as you stride past the local pharmacy, you see a bum sitting down next to the entrance. This is no ordinary beggar though, this one is "working" for his earnings. He has a guitar in his hands, and he's strumming a catchy song he wrote, and singing along. Infront of him is his hat which holds a few coins, and a crisp dollar bill. Standing by him, you listen to his playing and tap your foot along, while singing the song in your head. Glancing again at the hat, you shake your pockets and hear the familiar jingling of loose change, but the long walk has left you mighty parched, and you instead decide you'll just go inside the pharmacy and buy yourself a drink. You get your refreshment, walk out, and continue to wherever it is you were heading...Still singing that song the bum was playing. Later that day, you meet up with your friends. You tell them of the bum infront of the pharmacy, and sing to them the song he was playing. They enjoy it as much as you did, and spend the rest of the day singing it to themselves...They tell their friends of the song, and their friends tell their other friends, ect., and they all enjoy the song, but NO ONE ever decides to go to the pharmacy, to the bum, to give him some spare change. Now, based on the definitions of "theft" that I have read here, I ask: Does this count as theft? Keep in mind: 1. The bum is doing this as a form of work. 2. The bum wrote the song himself. I.E. It's original. 3. Everyone enjoyed the song, and continued to enjoy it at their leisure (sp?). 4. Everyone had plenty of spare change.
The only thing you can do is to vote with your hard-earned dollar$. I think I have now gone to the movies for the last time. And neither will I buy their DVDs.
These guys (MPAA, RIAA) seem to have no sense of reason. They can go ahead and do whatever they like. I will not help fund businesses that have no regard for their own cliets. My money will be spent elsewhere.
It's time for a class action lawsuit against the RIAA and major record labels. Everyone who has ever been on the Internet should be able to participate. Seeing how the RIAA is suing anyone.
Make the lawsuit a $1 billion one and you will have lawyers flocking to take the case on.
It's time to fight fire with fire.
-- What's this '-r *' file doing here? -- Oh well, a simple 'rm' should do the trick.
Intellectual Propert - A product of the intellect that has commercial value, including copyrighted property such as literary or artistic works, and ideational property, such as patents, appellations of origin, business methods, and industrial processes.
You just lumped copyrights, patents, trademarks (which you call "appellations of origins"), and trade secrets (which you call "business methods, and industrial processes") into one category. Those rights are more different than alike, and for this reason, many critics discourage use of the umbrella term "intellectual property" to conflate them.
Intellectual property is a term used by a great many people to cover well, all of intellectual property.
The term "intellectual property" is not used in the United States Code, and for a good reason: the different exclusive rights that make it up have different purposes and raise entirely different sets of public policy issues.
Let's look at the ways to possible hear content:
...
1. CD's and cassettes (if they still exist) that you purchase at the store.
2. Legally Downloaded music from a store like iTunes.
3. Television and Radio with the host of radio stations and the few television radio stations.
4. Illegally downloaded music.
it items 1-3 money gets back to the RIAA, in element 4 it does not. This means that the RIAA is being deprived of income.
You forgot live shows. Do you claim that live shows should be just as unlawful as element 4 because like element 4, they don't result in a lot of revenue going back to the label?
Now if our fictional person X (and more importantly the multitudes of persons X) is downloading music and not listening to the radio or watching MTV (or VH1 or whomever), they are collectively hurting ratings for stations and networks.
No, they are hurting the ratings for Music_Radio_And_Music_TV_In_General. Those services that are full of illicit file-sharing have their own ratings.
So to re-hash, the courts and legal system seem to be against you when it comes to this idea of the actual quality of property that IP has.
But they are against you when it comes to the conflation of different legal traditions into "intellectual property". For instance, the court in Sega v. Accolade ruled that you can't use copyrights or trademarks to simulate a patent, and this was upheld post-DMCA in Lexmark v. Static Control.
sharing music in the P2P manner is ILLEGAL.
Is it still prohibited even if such noncommercial sharing has been authorized by the author using a license such as CC by-nd-nc? Or do you claim that independent authors of musical works do not have the authority to grant such a license because they can't prove that their work is original?
Here is an appropriate analogy- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy and walks out with a flat screen TV he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" the TV to someone else. This is theft.
Just because technology makes it easy to be a thief doesn't make theft ethical or legal.
Shame on those who lack the ability to create anything useful themselves and instead decide to steal from others. Shame indeed.
Cogito Ergo Sum
No one spends resources on you specifically, so it's not theft, right? Those advertising dollars weren't spent directly on you, no big deal. That guy on the CD wasn't rappin' just to me, so I shouldn't have to pay like when I get a haircut.
When someone creates a musical work, there is an actual person that created that work for you. They may not be spending their time catering to you specifically, but they are still actual people doing work. They create a message and sell it. If you run off with a copy of the musical work without paying, then you took the message - you got the product. But the musician didn't get compensation for the effort.
As a musician, a loss of a sale to me means my time was spent for naught. I still had to pay for my materials. I still had to spend all the time to create the tracks. Just now I don't deserve to get paid for it? I am trying to live, just like everyone else. It's real easy to say Jay-Z doesn't deserve another million dollars. Is it so easy to decide that I don't deserve another $2?
Never mind the "artists are hurting" arguments.
Never midn all those economic arguments.
The fact is that the $CONTENT industries have been displaying an incredible amount of arrogance during the last 5-10 years by BUYING
legislature to pass assinine legislation that would fly in the face of logic; remember the law that would ask for every hard disk to check if it was copying copyrighted stuff??? and thus attempt to dictate to the whole society how it should use it's computers???For this alone, the $CONTENT industry needs nothing less than a good whacking, and what better way to deliver it by having, WE, THE PEOPLE deliver the blows in the form of not paying for it's content?
Let this be construed as showing the croporate world that the people's will is always supreme!
The RIAA (and the MPAA and the BSA and all those similar organizations) exist for the very purpose they are acting on in these stories.
If we want to rid ourselves of their existance, we should #1 appeal to their members that they are not acting in the 'industry's best interests' and #2 appeal to the government(s) that these organizations exist to do nothing less than to act a singular means by which large entities are made into a single larger entity by which legal muscle is used to bully and intimidate individual consumers into unfair settlements and otherwise abuse the legal system to their own ends.
These abusive organizations should be striken down completely. If individuals need to protect their interests, they should be required to protect them individually just as individuals are required to defend themselves individually.
What are they going to do if they win? Take her babysitting money? Take her lunch money?
The ladies are only beautiful on the outside
What if the said child has a "Free cd!" stand across the street from one of the RIAA's CD shops where she gives away burnt cd-r's of the stores wares. Sure, she's not _stealing_ anything by giving them away, but she is surely depriving the store of business. Would there be so much fuss if the RIAA sued the girl then? What's the difference between giving them away on kazaa and giving away cd-r's across the street from a store?
The law divides offences into crimes, i.e. actions which are thought to damage society as a whole, and torts, which only damage certain specific persons yet are not a risk to society. Only crimes are illegal - commiting a tort is unlawful.
Additionally there are laws such as contempt of court that can be applied where people publish prejudicial articles that may unfairly influence the jurors, such as claiming guilt (even when it is self evident) before the trial is over. This is because it is only when evidence is admitted that it can be considered.
If someone was to come on slashdot talking about floppy disks and cdrs interchangably they would get laughed at.
Moreover, in more enlightened countries you can't sue a minor.
I don't need to download or buy music. I can just listen to the radio ... maybe it's time to buy a satellite radio.
Has anyone considered the legal ramifications of civil liability if the RIAA can be proved to have sued over nothing?
e =31r9fc.1.1
Maybe someone can tell me better, but in my limited knowledge dont they just check filenames and number of offending files? I would think this sets up a huge opportunity for a person to set-up this trade group.
First off I checked http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=search&stat
None of the filenames are trademarked so no one needs worry about being sued for trademark infringement.
The Idea:
Ever gone duck hunting, or seen cartoons with it? One of the common ideas is to lure the ducks in by making them think things are as they appear. Perhaps with fake ducks.
Well I'm suggesting making fake ducks. Seeding a college network, or company network with spoof files. Now correct me if I'm wrong but my limited understanding of these share search engines they (RIAA) use is they look for filenames and filesize. Once they determain there are enough infinging (or so called) files they then notify a pencil pusher who starts the legal suing process.
No real investigation, as has been proved by some of the people that they have sued. (Not cost effective to them)
I'm sure that with all the coders and other people out there somthing like this could be done easily. Make a text document with the filename.mp3 of a new release and tracked theft title. Fill it with a message that states "If you checked this file you would see that it isnt real. Sue me, and expect a countersuit to cover harrassment, and my legal fees" Fill the rest with enough random hash to make up the appropriate filesize.
The first couple of times they start suing people with files like these, they are not only going to get laughed out of court. They may end up being forced by a judge to start utilizing proper evidenciary proceedings. That will just start to kill their search & sue efforts.
My idea, my two bits. Tell me what you think.
Actually two reasons; you might find out that the song you heard on the radio is the only song on the CD that is (in your opinion) not a smelly piece of shit and
2) that there is another song with the same name by a non-RIAA band who would dearly love for you to find out that their CD doesn't suck.
It's about control. They can control what you hear on the radio, they can't control what you hear on the internet.
A lot of authoritarian types and greedy businesspeople are having a hard time with average folks being empowered. They hate the entire internet.
Bah! Just steal/liberate the music from your local music purveyor and send five bucks to the arist. Then and only then will we NOT be stealing from the precious artists whose coffers the RIAA is so concerned with filling.
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
It is not hypocrisy to support one and oppose the other.
http://p2pnet.net/story/3773
"In its biggest cock-up yet, the Big Music cartel's RIAA has sued a dead woman who didn't even own a computer."
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/8133
And there are more.
Yes, it's called "The Doctrine Of Origional Sin". They are Fundamentalist, not unlike the Talaban.
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
We all know that a 'Quantum' is the SMALLEST, Tiniest descernable unit of something. So alot of soemthing insignificant is still very little. So PLEASE stop using Quantum Leap to mean something big!
Stop thinking literally. A quantum is the smallest possible change. Anything less is by definition not a change at all. Anyone who refers to a quantum leap means that any lesser change would be so insignificant as to be meaningless, which fits quantum physics perfectly.
No one would call burning oak instead of pine a quantum leap. But learning how to make your own fire from scratch is significant.
Stop being pedantic when you have no idea what you are talking about.
But at least, since you insist on being wrongly pedantic, you don't spell check.
Infuriate left and right
Interestingly enough the file sharing community is also based on that principal - ("No Leechers!" "Share or be kicked!", etc).
Nope. Bankdwidth in a peer-to-peer file-sharing program is a rivalrous good, in that your use of bandwidth deprives other use of bandwidth. Use of a work of authorship, on the other hand, is a non-rivalrous good. The rivalrous vs. non-rivalrous distinction is orthogonal to the excludable vs. non-excludable distinction, and economists have four different terms for describing goods in this way:
I have around 2000 CDs. Last time I seriously reviewed them, there were only a dozen or so which had only a few tracks I liked, and which I felt were a mistake in retrospect. I don't really understand people who consistently buy so many shoddy CDs.
Infuriate left and right
Yes, that's right. When you buy music, 10% of your spenditure goes toward taking children away from their parents!
Now, please go on destroying an evil industry through, otherwise, immoral practices.
Maybe when it's gone decent music will thrive (i.e. Brittney will be out of a job, and so will almost every rapper, especially eminem).
Oh, yes, and Willie Nelson's career will be retroactively destroyed and he'll be a poor pothead, and someone talented will end up playing Uncle Jessie!
Have I gone too far yet?
The first criminal provision in our copyright laws was a misdemeanor penalty added in 1897 for unlawful performances and representations of copyrighted dramatic and musical compositions. ... In order to constitute a criminal violation, the defendant's conduct was required to have been "willful and for profit." Section 104 of the general copyright revision of 1909 extended this penalty to all types of copyrighted works. Legislative History - Copyright Felony Act (1992), 18 U.S.C. 2319 Criminal Infringement of a Copyright
The big difference is that the RIAA is going after a child. In our society there presumption that children do not have the same understanding of the consequences of their actions as adults do. This is why, for example, a minor cannot enter into a legal contract, and why there is a separate system of laws for underage offenders.
This is what makes this particular RIAA tactic so despicable -- they are going after the most defenseless segment of the population.
What's next? Stomping puppies?
Personally, I don't like the term "Identity theft." I think it is a misnomer. I am not sure what term I would prefer in its place...perhaps "Identity infringement" or "Electronic Impersonation" or something suchlike. Shall we examine my reasons?
When I steal something from you, now I have it and you don't have it anymore. That is theft.
If I steal a password or other such identifying information, now we both have it. It is NOT THEFT. It is STILL ILLEGAL. It is THAT SIMPLE.
When I copy music, movies, or whatever, without paying for my copy...we both have it. Illegal, but NOT THEFT. When I get my hair cut (but walk out on the tab) the barber still has all his barbering tools/skills, and now also has my hair to boot. It is very much the opposite of theft, but nonetheless still quite (and rightly so) illegal.
Why the fuss? It is a matter of linguistic slanting. The word "theft" has distinct moral value-judgments built into it. When you get someone to think of something as "theft," you have also managed (usually) to get them to think of it as "bad."
Copyright infringement may or may not be bad. There may be cases in which what is presently illegal should not be illegal. That is why people who think the laws need amending get so upset when you call it "theft." They dislike your implied moral condemnation of something they feel is morally acceptable and also economically viable/useful.
To conclude, information follows DIFFERENT LAWS OF PHYSICS than physical property. Making a copy of a car requires the permanant expenditure of physical resources, whereas making a copy of information does not. "Taking" a car prevents the rightful owner from using it, whereas "taking" a song does not. Please, for God's sakes, stop saying that copying music is in any way similar to stealing a car. They (and their consequences) are worlds apart.
First of all, I really wish somebody would file a class-action suit against those RIAA nitwits and end it all once and for all. Really, this is not acceptable. The technology of the 21st century does bring up issues regarding intellectual rights, and I do believe that an appropriate balance will eventually be struck, but a bunch of people acting like thugs simply don't help matters.
Second, there seems to be a lot of confusion about how copyright infringement hurts authors and creators. It does hurt them, but not in the way that most people have posted here, and not in the way that the RIAA is contending. Here's how it works:
I'm an author (this is true). Now, let's say that Tor Books buys the manuscript that I've had on one of the editor's desks. At this point in time, I sign a contract with them. The contract states that Tor has exclusive rights to publish the book for a certain period of time, at which point the publication rights revert back to me. In return, Tor will give me an advance on royalties, and a royalty for each copy they sell.
So, the book goes into print. Now, let's say that somebody with far too much time on their hands and a piratical disposition scans the entire novel into their computer and uploads it onto their site for people to download. And let's say that 1,000 people download it (it's a nice round number). Well, those people may or may not have bought the book on their own if it wasn't available for download - they may or may not buy the book because of the download. But, the fact remains that there are now 1,000 unsanctioned copies floating around. Odds are that the lion's share of the people who downloaded won't actually buy the thing (hell, they might not even finish reading it). But, those 1,000 copies (and we're only talking about the electronic copies here), had they been distributed through legimate channels, would have generated royalties for the author, making it easier for me to buy food and keep a roof over my head, and making it easier for me to write my next book.
The size of the damage is very difficult to estimate, simply because no money is actually changing hands. Yes, people who would have bought the book won't now that they have a free copy. But, other people who might not have bought the book otherwise might just use the download as a sample, and decide that they really want the book on their shelf. Well, some damage is probably done - but it's also probably fairly minimal. Until somebody actually does some solid academic research into the numbers, nobody will be able to tell. And, to make matters even more cloudy, not that many people actually have the technological know-how to download the thing anyway - the majority of readers will just go to the bookstore. That's a similar situation to what the RIAA is looking at.
Now, let's change the scenario a bit. The book comes out, and somebody with a piratical disposition scans the book into his computer, and then posts it on the Internet. But, this time, he charges $3.00 per download. And let's say that there are 1,000 copies downloaded. So now you've got money changing hands, just like a book sale. And, not only is the publisher that I actually gave the rights to print the book being cut out of the deal (and basically being competed against using its own product), no royalties are coming my way for any of these books that are sold. THAT is where the serious damage is done, and from the news I've read, it's done by criminal organizations and groups in third world countries.
Now, who is actually the pirate here? Well, it's not the people who downloaded, truth be told, even if they paid for it. It's unfortunate that they aren't downloading/buying a legitimate copy, but that also raises the question of how they can tell if a copy is legitimate or not. Let's face it - most people don't have that great an understanding of the Berne Convention, and if a copyright notice appears somewhere, they might assume that it is legitimate, even if there are signs it
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
It's really too bad that more people don't hear about this sort of thing.
I've recently stopped buying commercial music. I had been buying it from the iTunes music store, but the actions of the RIAA have been so asinine as of late that I've turned to buying only from independent artists or taking what's free. I'm not downloading copyrighted material in violation of law; breaking the law is not the solution. I am, however, listening to a lot more Harvey Danger (to whom I'm sending money. Got to support a good thing.)
If more people would move towards this model - the "screw-the-man" model of music acquisition - without breaking the law, I think change could happen, gradually. As it is now, though, it's hard to speak from the moral high ground because there are so many out there who are, in fact, breaking the law. If just 10% of the population started getting their music only from non-RIAA sources, it could be a huge blow to the evil side of the music industry.
out of business.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
The RIAA should win... and the court should award damages in the amount $1.
Maybe that would teach the RIAA that we're sick of their pathetic lawsuits for thousands of dollars against minors.
The problem that the RIAA faces is proving damages. A good lawyer would point out that each instance costs about 2 bucks off (less, if you consider iTunes cut) of iTunes. So to it to be 'thousands', the person being sued would have to be proven to have downloaded 1000 or more songs.
Now, if the RIAA says that the user is also liable for everyone who downloaded from them, that would be Shared-Liability. So we go to a buck per song, since we are talking about actual damages. They would have to prove that people downloaded a portion of the song from the person. On distributed P2P networks, they would have to share liability across everyone that someone downloaded from.
If the RIAA said that because of the person, 5k people downloaded the song, which would of been 5k purchases of said song, then they could not go after the 5k people since for the full amount of each instance of the song, since the RIAA would sued for the full amount from the first person.
I support the RIAA's right to sue someone who illegally downloaded a song, for justifiable liabilities, which would be the current market value of 1 song, as paid to them via iTunes, per unique MP3 downloaded. Add to that legal fees and punitive damages. Lets say it is 50c per song, that would make 500 songs worth $250 + legal fees + punitive damages. Subtract the costs generated by non-reimbursable legal fees, costs from trying to find the P2Pers in the first place, costs from negative market image, etc... It takes a lot of songs to pay for one law-suit. They cannot sue for COGS to cover CD production, they could sue for CDs that were not (and never will be sold), if they could prove that a. the CDs will never be sold and b. that the person was responsible for the cds not to be sold. Personally, I think the RIAA has a piss poor business plan to resolve this issue.
In God we trust, all others require data.
will they garnish her allowance?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
I think that about sums it up. Theft, infringement, whatever you want to rationalize it as, it's still not okay to do it just because you hate the RIAA and the music (which people are apparently so desperate to have but not pay for) is too expensive for you.
But... they are sold at a loss.
--
Don't fight Firefox! Let FireFox fight YOU!
If Merriam-Webster can put "chick flick" in the dictionary, then surely one can use the term "piracy" when referring to unauthorized copying and distribution. Like the other guy said, it's been in use for 200+ years. As much as it may hurt your feelings or ego, using the term "piracy" is valid. Even Wikipedia agrees.
Or maybe you were just going for the instant +5, Insightful. That same cookie-cutter post always gets highly moderated.
Actually, innocence doesn't enter into it in either case. In a criminal proceeding one is found "guilty" or "not guilty." "Not Guilty" doesn't mean we are sure they didn't do it, it means we are not sure beyond a reasonable doubt that they did it.
And it doesn't matter if it is a civil or criminal trial, she still broke the law.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
"In the meantime, I threatened filing a motion for summary judgment on behalf of Ms Chan". That frightened off the RIAA legal hit men and the complaint against her was dropped.
Instead of threatening to file, try filing it next time.
Why do these defendents' attorneys think they have to walk on flowers, when the plaintiffs' attorneys are lauching mortar attacks?
...inflammatory and biased feel to it. It is the sort of headline you would see from "news" outlets in Cuba or China. In a world with a more free and responsible press, reputable journalists refrain from calling ANYONE guilty until they are judged so in a court of law. Until that point they are CHARDED WITH or ACCUSED or ALLEGEDLY commited a crime, even when the facts available to the public seem plainly obvious. Strictly speaking, the headline "RIAA Sues Guilty Person" is not only inflammatory in nature it is technically a lie--this girl is not guily in the eyes of the law because she has never been charged and sentenced with anything, so save such rhetoric until RIAA wins its case against her.
/. article, "RIAA Suea a Child" is not overly inflammatory nor is it factually inaccurate. I think it is perfectly suitable without being too general. What would you have the article title say? "RIAA Sues a person"? "RIAA Sues an Alleged Music Pirate"? How would this differentiate the story from the thousands of other cases RIAA has chased--I mean, it seems that most of RIAA's activities centre around outrageous litigation and getting into the pockets of politicians. Facts are facts--RIAA found evidence of copyright violation that they believe point to a 14 year old child, and the evidence is fairly convincing. The fact that an industrial cartel has decided the proper course of action is to SUE A MINOR for obscene amounts of money is the whole point of the article, otherwise it wouldn't be news--just another pirate getting taken down.
/. readers don't seem to know what it is. If RIAA wanted to teach a lesson wouldn't there be an easier way of doing it, like getting a court order to seize her computer for a period of time and remove all the MP3s before returning it? At least they could teach her copyright violation is wrong and let her voluntarily make amends? No. Even when their targets agree to participate RIAA will not listen until they have gotten their money. RIAA's actions have definitely proven that they are not doing this to defend what is right. RIAA is doing this to increase revenue first, and "make an example" second--then somewhere down the list is education and innovation. This is not a biased opinion, it is a conclusion that can be supported by RIAAs behaviour.
As far as the title of this
As for ripping off a man trying to "feed his family" by ripping off a GPL product...well, the same copyright rules apply and if RIAA can sue a child then the FSF is well within their right to sue a man with a starving family. However I don't believe the FSF has ever done that nor ever will do something of that nature. If some enterprising 14-year-old started making money of software derived from a GPL project the FSF's first concern wouldn't be to "make an example" of a child by extorting his money--it would be to make sure he divulges the source code to the derivative project. I would support such action.
Really, your argument makes no sense whatsoever and doesn't seem insightful at all. The article isn't titled "RIAA sues innocent little girl" or "RIAA threatens teenager". The simple facts make it hard to title the article otherwise. That is the point of the article--western society is generally reasonable and gives first time offenders under 18 a bit of a break. Children are not sentenced with the same terms as an adult unless the circumstances are severe. RIAA, however, has decided to wield its legal resources as a blunt instrument without regard to reason or even accuracy in some cases. What is the point of suing a teenage girl over copyright violations when she probably didn't even know what copyright was? Hell, most
you must acquit!
A friend of mine asked my opinion on a DVD he was about to purchase. At my suggestion he came to my house and watched it. He subsequently decided it wasn't worth purchase.
So in effect I have deprived artists and studios of potential income too.
Hi. I'm an attorney for the RIAA. Could I please have your real name and address? My process server has a present for you.
I don't really see why the RIAA is getting into a fuss over this.
The people who download music don't change the amount of money they SPEND on music...
What changes is the things they spend their money on.
for example: if I normally would spend $50 on music, I *could* go into a store and buy 2 CD's and take a shot at getting 2 good CD's (a very unlikely thing).
or I could download a whole bunch of songs and make sure that my money goes to the artists I like.
In fact, the RIAA basically ENSURES that this business model WORKS for them because they REGULATE the cash flow. any money spent on any CD generates them cash, so they don't give a crap which CD's you buy.
From what I can see, this has nothing to do with money. it has everything to do with the head of the RIAA being a sick and twisted former human with a fetish for hurting children.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I, for one, love it. But I've only had one cup of coffee and haven't actually turned my brain on. Others will find the problems with this approach. Ideally, all you need to distribute is a header with the filename, whatever id3 tags are appropriate, and a key to how big the final file should be. Then the file could be generated locally and the header thrown out (after, of course, being distributed to everyone you know). Then sit back, crack a cool one, and wait for the nibbles.
man, I feel like mold.
... an industry which shows so readily all the worst tendencies of big business
Try "organized crime".
RIAA is just getting back to its roots - the jukebox protection rackets.
("Hire our jukebox service for your diner - where we collect the money and give you a small cut. By the way, have you noticed that a lot of diners have been smashed up or torched lately? Seems they all either had no jukebox, their own, or some other services'. Tisk, tisk! What's become of kids these days?")
From there to here - an alliance with the number one protection racket: the government - happened in in several easy steps. But intimidation to extract payoffs has always been the name of the game.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Your not a thief no matter what they tell you.
You maybe breaking copyright laws which is a civil matter for the courts, not criminal.
If you live in Canada, the true home of freedom, you can download till the cows come home and be 100% guilt free!
I'm an attorney and my client will soon be sued by the RIAA because a minor in the household allegedly used Kazaa to download some music. I spoke with the RIAA attorney and bitched her out. I basically told her that her client was a scumbag and the lowest form of life on earth. The RIAA attorney kept teling me that I was "so nasty" to her. She said she was trying to be professional.
I said, "You're trying to extort the 14 year old child of my client for $4K. You're a scumbag."
I know I really wrecked her day and quite honestly, it felt REALLY REALLY GOOD. I have never taken so much pleasure in my life as to completely insulting and destroying the day of some scumbag attorney who represents the RIAA.
So now giving a child a computer is a crime, if the computer is used in commission of a crime.
Does this mean that the bands are also culpable if giving a child a computer was partially because they wanted to see the band's website which is on the back of the cd?
its NOT theft, and that has a big impact on how many people morally perceive the act. That is exactly why the the corporations try to mislabel it; its classic manipulation not unlike what the politicians do.
Culturally, the norms related to copying differ. In the USA, intellectual property is no longer a silly term and the government has been twisted into extending IP law beyond its roots, to an a different purpose. The culture is still behind from these changes, which they hope to make part of our "morals" over the next few generations.
The corporations in music, never did anyone a whole lot of good, and now find their worldview out of date and not very compatible. They are leveraging their massive power to try to force their old ways onto the world by exploiting systems any way they can. Their death or adaptation is inevitable; unless, they slow progress thru some sort of overtly oppressive means.....and they are trying. Same pattern thru-out history.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
.....do little to stop downloading IMHO. It however does:
- Piss people off (just look at the venom here on Slashdot).
- Generate bad press for the RIAA (suing kids usually has that effect)
- Basically encourage more downloading because people basically want to tell the RIAA to go FCSK themselves.
Way to go RIAA! You've really done a great job!
(Now if you'll excuse me I have some songs and porn to download over P2P neworks.)
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
*) punitive damages can be small, but need to be multiplied by amount infraction: for example, McDonalds loses a case about hot coffee. their legal fees will be far more than the damages---but if they continue despite losing, they get fined for each cup of coffee they sell, the state gets the money. So they better clean up their act within X days or they will be facing some large damages----and the state profits by enforcement.
*) special rules for citizen vs corporation. the corporation has to fit the legal bill or something like that. If its such a threat to them, then they can afford to pay double the legal bill. We must stop this corporate terrorism in our courts. (yes I used the T word because thats what it really is.)
*) Lower courts, a local judge who is picked from the community to serve for a month. Cases go thru there 1st, and don't cost people anything, sort of a moderation filter before entering the system. other countries to this to save money & on load. Its great experience for the people being judges. I'd also not allow lawyers. Its a kind of a small claims court. Citizen judges learn about reality and cost less than a local judge. So what if the moron down the street messes up your day in court? Then you move to a higher court. (but it costs you) I'm sure it will save the system more than it costs to run it.
Legal fees are motivation for most lawyers. capping it too low will stop decent pro-bono work. Perhaps a requirement system for firms for doing pro-bono work? The REAL problem is the system is so corrupt it can't be fixed. Lawyers are the judges and politicians who control 2 branches, and usually get whatever they want from the executive branch as well. There is a huge bias. Many provide benefits for their firms while in power.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Don't just put a message like that in it, put your own original, copyrighted content in it and make sure your title is legitimate (ie. has enough relation to the material in the file to be a reasonable title on it's own merits). Then when the RIAA comes after you not only do you get to countersue for harrassment, you get to nail them for trying to misappropriate your copyright. Get a few people doing this together and you could probably make it even more painful for them by showing they're engaging in a pattern of behavior to do this on a large scale.
So here's a question: If I have never bought music, I have never entered into any contract with any music producer/industry etc. If I never upload or use downloaded music for profit (personal use only) have I actually violated a contract that I never agreed to uphold? ----Just a thought
right, they seem to have a little "evidence" this time. She admitted to being foolish enough to use her own screen name instead of defaultuser@kazaa and not moving files out of the shared folder or disable sharing files with other users or whatever the option is. The only thing left would be to make her collection not match what's on the RIAA list, with a little work the time stamps can be made match the older files. If the search warrant says drugs and electronics are found, "We're suing your for having files 1-1 to 1-800" "But I dont' have 1-1 to 1-800, I have D-175 to D-975" it still may be illegal, but "these are not the droids(songs) you're looking for." Yes, I downloaded music but nothing on your list looks familiar and I deleted them before receiving your lawsuit.
I'm not familiar with that legal stuff, but what happens if you get sued for having something and it turns out you don't have it or have something similar to the stated items? If they are allowed to appoint a Guardian ad Litem who gets to pick who it is? She better hope it isn't some RIAA appointed monkey who will turn her over to RIC(artel)A. I wonder how they're going to get any proof if they sue only the daughter. The computer is the property of the mother. Can A seize the property of C when suing person B? And of course the list, was it accurate or was it made by some RICA agent who secretly entered her mother's computer, like they claimed to do in Oregon? And got themselves countersued.
The RICA started their own little war and have become so involved they're past the point of being able to withdraw and saving face, as if they don't already look like a bunch of fools. As the call center person told the lady in Oregon, they can't back down or more people might decide to fight instead of rolling over and paying their collection agency.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Yes, copyright is "artificial", but it's an attempt by an enlightened society to recognize that we're better off providing incentives for people to create. If everything is stolen the second it's produced, simply because distribution costs are zero, then there's actually a negative incentive to create those items, especially since creation costs are definitely not zero.
And said law may be artificial, but then again, so are those recognizing "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness". My pursuit of happiness, however, is held in check when it comes in contact with yours. I'd happily punch you out, but the law says that doing so would probably make you unhappy, so I can't. A balance ensuses.
Same with copyright. A balance needs to be maintained between creators and consumers, and the rights and needs of both sides need to be respected.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
It amazes me that people continue to buy music and support this mentality.
Hey RIAA members:
I am really enjoying your new customer service policies, and you're winning a lot of great press! I mean, suing your own customers is a good way to encourage them to buy from you, right?
Four easy steps to big profits:
It's a great business process and you should patent it. In fact it is such a winning idea that Microsoft has taken cue and now sues customers who refuse to upgrade, buy used but retired licenses, or turn to (in some cases free) competitors' products. With an idea that has Microsoft's backing, what could possibly go wrong?
You're making great press. After all, bad attention is better than no attention, right?
I, for one, no longer buy non-compelling CD releases (I consider material from Pink Floyd to be compelling) and will not buy anything from RIAA members until they recognize that try-before-you-buy works. The folks who would buy the CDs would not be willing to put up with the crappy sound quality usually found from P2P downloads. Most people rip using Windows Media Player or MusicMatch, both of which rip badly, but are "good enough" to learn whether or not one likes the music. In fact when Napster(I) was in its prime, I bought more music in the 13 months I used Napster than I did in the previous 13 YEARS I owned a CD player. Why? Because I'd search for random words, listen, and buy the material. If it weren't for Napster I'd never have discovered Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, I'd never have discovered that I actually have an appreciation for some of Chuck Mangione's and Henry Mancini's work and would have never, ever bought any of their material otherwise. P2P works and random downloads generate sales.
Since Napster's death there have been no real P2P alternatives (Limewire sucks. Gnutella sucks. Kazaa is spyware-ridden and Windows-centric, etc.) and as such I have not purchased any new music - because I haven't been exposed to any new music. I don't listen to playlist-driven radio stations (I refuse to listen to stations who give in to payola), I listen to talk radio and classical stations now, and occasionally a local oldies station with actual DJs. I abhor RIAA members' tactics and refuse to be a consumer being patronized by manufactured pop stations. Sure, some of the new material may be good, but let it earn airplay on its own merit, and not due to payola.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Can public oppinion kill the RIAA?
Big entertainment has put out some crappy movies of late, as the suits and not the creative folks are running the show. The MBA types all want a product that will return money, and damn the content. Entertainment doesn't work like that. Put some good ideas on the screen and some of them will make you rich.
i c/
But I digress. The MBAs are not making the wads of cash they expect. So, let's find some other source.
Bob: "How can we get more cashola?"
Darl: "Well, we can sue the mother of a copyright breaker"
Bob: "We tried that, got some bad publicity... not that it matters to us."
Darl: "Then sue the kid! Really! Just because the product you offer isn't appealing to anyone doesn't mean that you can't try to McBride the cash. If they don't want to pay up at the box office, they can pay us in the court room!"
Find out how they blew it at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mus
You forgot Jesus Loves You. Oh really? How does a guy who's been dead for 2,000 years love me?
Just nitpicking on a pet peeve of mine, but after puberty, you are no longer a child, you are an adolescent, until which time you become an adult. Theoretically, at 14, she could be a child, but I seriously doubt that in this day in age of hormones in all our food products and puberty beginning even earlier in children all across the world that this young lady is still a "child".
The penalties available for criminal infringement are codified at 18 U.S.C. 2319. For the misdemeanor violations, a defendant may be sentenced to up to one-year imprisonment and fined up to $100,000. See 18 U.S.C. 2319(b)(3), 3571(b)(5). For a felony violation, where the infringement consists of the reproduction or distribution during a 180-day period of no fewer than ten copies or phonorecords which have a total retail value of more than $2,500, the maximum penalty can be three or five years imprisonment, depending on what purpose can be proven. If the government proves that the defendant acted for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, and obtains a conviction under 17 U.S.C. 506(a)(1), the maximum sentence for a first time offender is imprisonment for up to 5 years and a fine of up to $250,000. See 18 U.S.C. 2319(b)(1), 3571(b)(3). Those with a prior copyright infringement conviction are subject to up to 10-years' imprisonment. See 18 U.S.C. 2319(b)(2). If a financial motivation is not proven in a felony case, and the conviction is obtained under 17 U.S.C. 506(a)(2), the defendant can be imprisoned for up to 3 years -- six years for the repeat offender -- and fined up to $250,000. See 18 U.S.C. 2319(c), 3571(b)(3). http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/ipmanual/ 03ipma.htm#III.D.
No doubt some pseudo mod here will mod me down, but I have a point to make and make it I shall.
I know that a number of individuals here believe that copyright infringement is not theft but I think they are not understanding what they are doing.
1. They take something that does not belong to them (whether material or not) - That's theft.
2. They take a legally purchased CD and upload it onto some shabby p2p network although they didn't get permission from the author. - That's copyright infringement, which is a crime.
What part of this is not illegal ?
Show me somewhere in the law that states this is OK. I'll point at someplace it's stated that it's not OK... like right on the back of the damn CD's folks.
It's theft. Theft is illegal. The lawyers (no matter how heavy handed they appear) are going to make you pay.
The P2P networks know it, the majority of people know it, I know it, but somehow the dullards here believe it's 'morally' ok and so the law should not apply to them.
I know it tastes bad that a 14 year old kid is in court and probably going to have the worst time of her life, but basically she IS old enough to have known better.
Q.E.D
Legislating to create value where there is otherwise none is an abuse of law and government, plain and simple. This is obviously not "theft".
Clarify then, if you will. If it has no value, why would people be interested in aquiring it? If people want it, it quite obviously has value.
Nah, that's just no good... Here's a better idea.
A friend or family member of a independant musician illegally shares the copyrighted music, misleadingly named to look like a much more popular RIAA artist.
The RIAA eventually downloads these songs and files a lawsuit. The person who shared them gets out of the lawsuit because it's not material RIAA owns the copyright on. Then, the independant musician who actually owns the copyright can use the RIAA trial as incontrovertible proof that agents of the RIAA illegally downloaded his music, and sue them for truck-loads of cash...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Well giving them money certainly won't help. DO NOT BUY FROM THE RIAA. Check RIAA radar before purchasing.
When people stop buying from RIAA labels, the labels are going to go to the government screaming piracy because they can show what they think the numbers should be they will blaim the loss of revenue from piracy. There will be no consideration of a Boycott. Then congress will start taxing things like burnable CD, digital media players, to make up for the lost revenue due to piracy. They've already tried to have laws passed allowing them to break into people's computers so they can investigate music piracy.
Congress only listens as long as the bribe money keeps coming. Do not fund RIAA lobbyists by buying from RIAA labels.
You're indies labels will be forced to start supporting the RIAA as well, because the equipment they use to press the CDs can be used to press pirate CD, the RIAA will demand a tax or surchange there. If they have them pressed overseas they will find a way of getting revenue from that too.
Indies don't need plastic. They have internet distribution. All the indies need is a paypal.
You reall want to stop the RIAA? You need laws like RICO, and Sherman Anti-trust. You need lots of independent lawsuits to bankrupt them. The RIAA and MPAA are predatory cartels, if you want to stop them boycotts aren't going to do squat, you have to sue them into oblivion.
That requires money be spent on lawyers and bribing congressmen. If you decide to take that route, please use proceeds saved by not buying RIAA albums to do so. You might want to pool your resources with others by donating it to someone like the EFF as well.
DO NOT BUY FROM THE RIAA. Check RIAA radar before purchasing.
Did you even bother to prove that it was theft, or did you just rant endlessly? What is one (or a group's) defintion is not nessecarily, and in this case HARDLY what the law calls theft. The simple fact of the matter is that this crime is prosecuted under copyright infringement, and like all the other delludes here who believe that there is no point but justification for posting this ideal, let me remind you that this is all strictly on what the law calls it and correcting a factuall error (not an opinion). Copyright Infringement is illegal, not too many people who argue it isn't theft would say otherwise, but seriosuly, you didn't prove much of anything, whereas I have the case of Dowling VS the Untied States to back up my claim where they state that the crime of copyright infringement, despite still being illegal, is not equatable with theft. It may not be that good anymore, but I think for now it will be sufficient.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Services is something done by someone on your behalf for your benefit.
Typically, it's got the word " service " attached to the mix:
Cable service.
Phone service.
Mobile service.
Internet service.
Power service.
Theft of service is actually taking something, a service, the effort of producing something like electricity, etc., without paying for the said effort. When you use it, it's gone in most cases- such as time on a phone line, power, etc. Hence, the term of "theft" being applied to the taking thereof without paying for it.
When you're buying music, movies, etc. it's NOT framed as a service- never have had that done. It's not and can't be framed as such under the laws worldwide. Radio could be a service, but CD's/DVD's- nope. This means it's a published work- if I make a copy thereof, you, the producer is not deprived of anything but a prospective sale of the work and the media it resides upon. You've lost nothing save the potential proceeds of a sale in that context- you can make yet another legitimate copy of the work and sell it to someone else, or even the person who made the illicit copy for that matter. That is the reason why it's defined differently in the law books AND the Dictionary. To call it "Theft" is to use the wrong term and is something as wrong as the act in question.
Words have meaning- and with everything you're trying to map your moral leanings to what you THINK the law is or should be, you're perverting the words themselves. It's as morally wrong as the people you're trying to label as "Theives".
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I only use the word "guilty" here because the mother has basically admitted that her daughter did exactly what the lawsuit alleges.
/. article pointed to a fairly unprofessional piece of writing. I am all for a sensible point of view. That said, RIAA has clearly demonstrated it is NOT a sensible organisation. Like a typical cartel, it demonstrates a complete lack of sense and concern for anyhting that is outside its immediate interests.
The fact the child was implicated by her mother is indeed valid evidence in support of RIAA's case, but from a journalistic point of view calling the child a "Guilty Person" could be considered hearsay. Being implicated by another party doesn't mean someone is guilty. Hell, even a confession by the accused herself doesn't always mean the accused is guilty. That is why the media generally is very careful about throwing around the word "guilty" or calling a murder suspect a "murderer" even if the evidence appears quite obvious.
Get rid of the "think of the children!11!1" emotion from the situation, and look at it from a more sensible point of view
I agree wholeheartedly that the emotion around this issue contributes nothing to the debate, and the link in the
can someone tell me what recourse the RIAA *does* have when people infringe their copyright? And how is their pursuing such action in any meaningful way different to that of any other copyright holder or representative against an infringer?
Suing little girls, or any individual for that matter, for millions of dollars over music files just does not make sense. Even from the financial aspect alone the damages they ask for are orders of magnitude more than any demonstratable revenue loss. The punishment is simply not reasonable. In my opinion, a teen casually sharing music files is about as serious as a traffic ticket--it doesn't warrant the same kind of treatment as an executive bilking investors out of millions. Save those penalties for the mafia-associated pirates making millions from selling bootlegged MS Office, music and movie CDs.
It is also no more reasonable for RIAA to sue ISPs or software developers for enabling users to share files. There are legitimate uses of their technology and services and it is unreasonable for RIAA to force others to protect IP that isn't even theirs. If RIAA wants software developers and ISPs to help with enforcement they should put their money where their mouth is and offer to PAY MONEY to them for their services. That is the least RIAA can do given how they expect everyone to pay for their offerings.
Of course suing the actual violators is a viable option, however RIAA has been going about it very haphazardly and without reason. How productive is it to sue a teenager millions of dollars? What case can RIAA make to justify such obscene valuations apart from 'x' songs found on a p2p network at $750 a piece? They've also done next to nothing to verify that a given IP address or P2P acocunt name belongs to a specific individual. Some of the accused have even offered to turn over their computers to forensic investigators to prove their innocence to RIAA, and RIAA refuses. I've heard of cases where people who did not know better left their wireless routers wide open, only to have the neighbours' kids or warpathers on the street suck gigabytes of music through their internet connection.
RIAA could also pursue other routes to combat P2P piracy. They could try pursuing non-monetary remedies as I mentioned before to seize the offending materials from people and restricting their use of the internet--in most cases 1st time offenses should be handled more lightly. RIAA could also do more to educate the public about copyright law--it isn't fair to convict someone for something they were not entirely aware was illegal. Right now RIAA and MPAA do next to NOTHING on the education front. That they DO contribute are stupid "public service" commercials that create furhter misunderstanding by making a no
Yeah, fuck those guys.
Like you, I haven't bought any CDs for years. I don't really like any kind of music that the RIAA sells, so I don't buy or download any of their crap. I agree that we (the public) need to do something, but what? A boycott among /.'ers will only get us so far. There has to be a way to reach the wider public to support this boycott.
Suggestions?
Problems: This would inconveniance legitimate users and would be slightly more likely to fail (ie, "This man set up a honeypot and we are now suing him because he wasted our time"). A slightly better solution may have the perl script randomly fill an mp3 file with random midi sounds (which you could then legitimately claim are music).
Actually I'm suprised no ones done this already. Anyone fancy a hack?
> If someone sneaks into another company and photocopies trade secrets, they are said to have stolen the secrets.
This is reasonably theft. Since they stole the secret, it's no longer a secret (since it's now known to more than just you). Therefore, you no longer have a secret.
> If someone copies enough of my personal information that they can and do pose as me, that's identity theft.
Once a person does this, they are utilizing your credit rating to get stuff. If they don't pay back the debts they incur then your credit rating will suffer, which means you no longer have a good credit score to use for yourself. Sure, they stole something non-physical (your reputation), but since it's no longer available to you to use, it's reasonable to call it theft.
> In other words, the word theft is commonly used to refer to taking something ephemeral, not just something physical.
In both of the examples you provided, you've lost something real (a secret or a credit score). In the case of infringement, the copyright holder still has the copyrighted work to distribute.
> You can argue as a language purist that what everyone else does is wrong, but if the word's new meaning is common among most users of the language, then the word has shifted meaning and you'll have to keep up with the times.
The argument here is that the RIAA is making a concerted effort to associate theft with copyright infringement to benefit themselves, and that we're not going to let them get away with doing that.
Virg
The RIAA should realise that if their customer base is spending money on lawyers then they probably will not be spending money on CD's. This should eventually be self limiting I think!
People need to wise up and boycott the RIAA and its members. There is other good music around. Check out www.iuma.com for instance.
Clarify then, if you will. If it has no value, why would people be interested in aquiring it? If people want it, it quite obviously has value.
The value is created through legislation. Does a blue sky have a value? No. But it would if you denied people from seeing it.
I love it. The RIAA can sue you for $150,000 per violation of their copyright on songs, meaning each song you "steal" is worth that amount.
Meanwhile, OJ had to pay the Goldman's $8.5. If lives were songs, that's only 57 songs for 2 people or about 28 songs per life. According to the RIAA, a human life is worth 28 songs!
talk about cowardly, instead of taking on the mother in court again they take on the child and try to get the child from her mother, cowards, pathetic little cowards. they can't win by an adult so they go after a child .
I think you're confusing value with supply and demand. Value isn't always created by supply and demand...in many cases, it created by simple human desire. This desire would exist or not, with or without the legislation you speak of.
If 10,000 people decide that they like listening to a certain song, no law will change this. The law might change the availability of the song, or the terms under which its enjoyment might be offered, but it won't change the fact that 10,000 people have decided that they like it.
In order to sue the kid, they have to sue the parent, and they can't assign a guardian ad litem. The kid is Candy's responsibility unless she is forcibly removed by child protective services, and unless there are gross abuses going on, that probably won't happen.
In short, case dismissed, RIAA found in contempt.
I can, of course, be wrong - those with more insight are welcome to correct.
This sig no verb.
I'm still waiting for them sue an embryo.
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
Only 14 more posts to go 'til 1000 on this topic.
What if all music were GPLd? Then a rip would be a derivative work and would be perfectly legal to freely redistribute as long as you made the source (raw) available.
I bet that would work...
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I think it's time to harvest the organs of the RIAA and toss the remaining pulp hair and bone to the hogs.
Darl got a woody.
for some reason none of the other RIAA cases were as bad as this one to me. I ofcourse disliked them and wished they would stop. But resorting to suing a 14 year old girl, who has no job and probably couldn't pay for the music anyways and then shifting it to her mother is just sick and disturbed.
One thing is for sure I'm not going to be giving the RIAA one cent of my money untill it either makes a drastic change in management (firing everyone that supports lawsuits or ever did of consumers) or if they don't change i'll just buy non-riaa music.
"Until somebody actually does some solid academic research into the numbers, nobody will be able to tell. "
Some people did study it and thoroughly, and found a statistically insignificant affect on sales in the absolute worst case. This has been mirrored by a similar and independent japanese study (for which i do not have a link).
Thus, that whole huge waffle is rendered moot. There is no net negative effect of filesharing on sales. However, there is a net negative effect of terrible PR and abusive practices (lawsuits, DMCA, price fixing, DRM) on sales.
I continued buying even though I could download on a fat EDU pipe.. until they started suing. when they started suing, it tainted the meaning of all the music they sell, so i had no desire to buy OR download it.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
HARVARD UNC FILESHARING STUDY
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
When they put the legal gun to the heads of consumer electronic and software producers and said "you cannot independently engineer compatibility by breaking DRM", that is when they overstepped their bounds.
It is one thing to have exclusive right to disseminate: it is another to have exclusive right to delegate access methods. Their monopoly is no longer over their works, it is now over other people's hard researched works (e.g. software, hardware which the **AA's have no right to impede).
I've seen it argued that it's morally wrong to prevent these companies from introducing DRM in their products. People who believe that the free market still applies to the issue of DRM are blind to the fact that the law prevents the essential balancing force of independent engineering of comatibility.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Perhaps the RIAA is trying to get us to equate infringement with theft... to screw with our own moral judgements
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
They thing if they go after the girl this will send a chilling effect on music downloading. Wrong. What is will do is show how heavy handed they are. They probably think when people start questioning there extreme response they can just say "well if the mother took responsibility we wouldn't need to go after the daughter".
Their cases against kids, disabled people or senior citizens will do more against their case than anything the CRIMINAL downloading all the music could do.
Euphemism, what is that a euphemism for something.
It would appear that the RIAA is legally entitled to bring a lawsuit against an alleged infringer of their copyrights. So be it.
But when the RIAA demands a payoff in advance to avert a lawsuit, how does that differ from criminal extortion?
Even a person who is totally innocent of any infringement (or contributory infringement) could easily decide to pay their demands rather than run the risk of paying substantially higher legal fees for a defense, regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit.
Its like the RIAA is a playtester of the US courts. Well, I am glad someone is.... :)
I just wish the US law would become stable enough for commercial release. I want to buy some of that.
So I am trolling again. Sue me
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Very insightful post (with the exception of a few factual errors, such as the length of copyright terms prior to the content industry's next attempt to retroactively extend them.
How different would your world be if Microsoft Windows 95 had just gone into the public domain in 2005 (not necessarily the source, just the binary even).
As others have noted, the copyright on software is effectively perpetual. By the time software lapses into the public domain it will be highly unlikely that computers will still be around that can run it. I think that this is one reason, actually, why open source really took root in the software industry before spreading to other groups. The media might not last that long either. Nor may we have the capability to read it in 2095 (how easily can you read that 5 1/2" floppy disk today)....
This being said, I want to nitpick on a few other things....
Don't confuse morality with legality. Their separation is at the core of our legal system's methods for making itself fair and impartial--the rule of law evaluated by balanced minds.
IANAL. However I have a deep interest in philosophy and linguistics both of which are very much at the heart of our legal system.
From a lingusitic perspective, morality is about how things make you feel--- think morale and moral support. The word Ethics is more inclusive and implies a formal system (as it is a branch of systemic philosophy), but it derives from root words implying that one's ethos is what is truely one's own.
Systemic Philosophy as a general field is largely broken up into three sub-fields: Metaphysics, Ethics, and Aesthetics. Metaphysics attempts to determine the nature of Truth, Ethics of Good, and Aesthetics of Beauty.
I would argue that of all these fields, Ethics shows the greatest division between the collective experience and the personal. For example, although prohibition in the US was an attempt to use the system of law enforcement to regulate individual and hence collective harm, it succeeded in mostly showing us that trying to legislate vice out of existance is not only futile but is also patently harmful and even dangerous to our society. Therefore when most people talk about morality I think that they mean some sort of personal level of ethics.
At the same time, reading judicial opinions of any interesting case leaves the reader with the idea that the judges really are grappling with the question of what is good. And the congressmen too (which is why it is vital that we write to them and tell them what we think so that the corporations are not the only ones talking). Sometimes they get it wrong (our current copyright system, for example) and we ought not pretend that we are a perfect country, but I think that there is a genuine attempt on the part of those who make and interpret the laws to deal with the fundamental question of ethics.
Personally, I define Good as indicated by a general reduction in harm.
Personally I think that what most people really mean by "morality" has as much to do with aesthetic reactions to things than to concrete good and harm. Take for example the abortion debate. Very few parties to the debate actually attempt to tell you why something like the legality of abortion is a concrete good or harm. Most people in the Pro-Choice movement tend to say something to the effect of not wanting the government to be in control of their bodies, while most people in the pro-Life camp say something to the effect that human life is so sacred that freedom is that failing to protect it is falling short of our obligations as a society. Yet it is very rare that we see anyone discuss it in a deeper or more systematic way. There are a few on the pro-Choice side who worry about the return to unsafe abortions, suicides of unwed mothers, and other issues (which are very real concerns in most parts of the world where abortion is banned, BTW), while the late Pope John Paul argued that the collective spirit of society and in particular
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
> But if it sucks so bad, why are people downloading it in the first place.
...
For the same reason men would **** a woman that they would not consider marrying
I always look for books at the library before I download them.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Piracy != Theft.
Piracy != Theft.
Piracy != Theft.
Amen.
geez, what will these RIAA guys NOT stop at, to do their "master's bidding"? This would mean that they are threatening to literally take the child away from the parent, by attempting to have the parent legally declared "unfit"-- and have the court literally "assign" another "parent" (guardian)-- (insert artificial breathing sounds here): YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE!
If you people are going to instsit on a strict meaning of the word "theft", please do the same for every other word.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
They still sued a fucking child after a failed attempt.
They better figure out that suing people isn't going to gain them any respect.
Three Words: Greedy corporate hogs