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."

Comments

This sort of thing...

[CdBee]

..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

Re:This sort of thing...

[bentcd]

When someone cuts your hair, there is an actual person spending his own time attending to you specifically. When you run off, his time was spent for naught. This is why such an example might be called theft. When it comes to copyright infringement, it is usually you spending your time to make a copy onto your storage media. Noone has spent any of their time or resources on you specifically and so not paying them is nowhere near what can be called theft. The word is only used in an attempt to evoke an emotional response in the audience.

Re:This sort of thing...

[sjwaste]

in IT you are tought truth. in the legal profession you are tought to lie your ass off at every chance you get. and who drives these legal suits against people? Lawyers. do the world a favor, vote to have all lawyers killed today!

I'm a law student, and let me tell you, we're not taught to lie. And in the end, its the RIAA management that drives this first, then the lawyers involved. The bottom line is there'd be no litigation if RIAA management didn't want it. Besides, the lawyers here are working for the RIAA to stop people from downloading music they didn't pay for. The RIAA may be all that is soulless and wrong in how it operates, but you can't sit here and tell me that their desire to have people pay for their music is wrong. Suing a kid might be wrong, but the parent should've taken responsibility long ago.

Would I personally choose to plead this case? Absolutely not, I don't think its right to sue a family into oblivion for this. That would be economic waste, in my opinion. So while I disagree with their method of action, I don't disagree with them trying to prevent filesharing of their copyrighted works. If I were the RIAA's counsel, my advice to them would be not to sue, but to get with the times and update their business model. It's quite outdated, and that's what's driving this.

Re:This sort of thing...

[Dashing Leech]

"And, in the processes, depriving the copyright holders of income."

And this is where this argument always fails for a variety of reasons. Income is only deprived if the person receiving the "free" copy would have paid for it in the first place had they not been able to get the free copy. I would love to see someone argue that a 14 year old kid with $10,000 "worth" of songs would have paid $10,000 for them had they not been able to download.

Also, depriving potential income is not theft. People are deprived of potential income all the time, from the city doing roadwork in front of a store, to boycotts, to simply a new competitor moving in. Deprivation of potential income is not a valid argument because it relies on an invalid assumption of what people would have intended under different circumstances. It's the deprivation of the property from which the income is derived that matters, and that's the difference between theft and copyright infringement. The former deprives the owner of the use of the property. The latter just means you violated their right to decide how something is copied.

One other point. There is no inherent right to earn income from a creative work, and that is not the intention of copyright law. For example, this post I am writing is actually a creative work, and usually something like this is automatically copyrighted under the law. Should you guys pay me? The intent of copyright law is to encourage content creators to share their works publically. The "limited time" (which it isn't really anymore) protection is merely the incentive for sharing the work. It's not a bad concept for promoting cultural development, but has become too distorted and abused to be a useful anymore.

Contradiction?

[DrEldarion]

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?

Re:And this surprising how?

[KiloByte]

Well, we already had a precedent for this.

Re:I can see the headlines right now...

[cluke]

I admire your optimism. More likely it will be stories about "10 signs that your child is an illegal downloader" and advice about how to turn them in for their own good before it's too late.
As far as the media goes, it's only "won't someone think of the children!" when the kids are at risk of being affected by outside forces. If it is the kids themselves offending, it's "try 'em as adults, and throw away the key."

Re:Uhh... who should they target?

[eMartin]

I got caught stealing music when I was that age, except it was CDs from the local music store.

I got a smack in the head from the clerk and was told not to come back. I can't imagine how my parents would have managed to pay for a lawsuit.

Re:And this surprising how?

[iapetus]

There are more recent precedents, in fact. In the UK, a letter threatening an ASBO (Anti Social Behaviour Order) was sent regarding Dominic Brown's abuse of his motor scooter. Which came as a surprise to his mother, because he wasn't due to be born until September.

The full story.

Lawyers and fault

[typical]

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.

Mass Spoofing (think fake japenese airfields WW2)

[Truth_in_Nothingness]

Has anyone considered the legal ramifications of civil liability if the RIAA can be proved to have sued over nothing?

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&state =31r9fc.1.1

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.

Re:Stop giving them money

[MadMoses]

I haven't purchased a single cd in almost five years. I'm still waiting to see the effects of my boycott.

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -Mahatma Ghandi

At the very least, your money isn't used to pay a lawyer to sue a child.