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...

[KiloByte]

Am I a thief? yes.

Tell me again, since when copyright infringement became theft?

Re:This sort of thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Several mistakes:

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.

2. No matter if he would pay or not, the correct term is still "copyright infringement". The word "theft" covers *removing* something from a person, and to remove something, he had to have it in the first place.

3. Disagreeing with using the word "theft" is not the same as agreeing with illegal copying. Personally I would be happy if illegal copying didn't exist at all, but that doesn't mean that I want the RIAA and their fans (that includes you, apparently) to pollute the language by using the wrong words to deliberately confuse the case. In the normal usage of words, it is not theft, it's copying. In the legal sense, it's not theft, it's copyright infringement. It's only theft in your fantasy, and the fantasy of the RIAA.

4. Two people disagreeing is not called a hypocrisy. Slashdot is not a person, it's a message board with lots of different people who have different oppinions, and who post on different topics. The GPL fans who don't care about the RIAA-topics have one oppinion, and the Kazaa-fans who don't care about the GPL-topics have a different oppinion.

5. In conclusion, how about learning the language before you post? Let me just list the words you have confused in your post:

Income vs Potential income.
Theft vs Copyright infringement.
Hypocrisis vs Different oppinions.

Please learn the differences. Then you'd be able to sound like an intelligent person and not just an RIAA marketing guy.

Re:This sort of thing...

[damieng]

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.

As does every reviewer who dissuades a potential purchaser.

If we are saying it is perfectly acceptable to sue anyone who takes potential income from you then society would be in a lot of trouble. The lottery would have to go, as would interviewing for jobs....

Re:This sort of thing...

[geminidomino]

"Music thieves" are admitting the work is not theirs. They are giving away a product that is not theirs to give away.

That's still not theft.

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

I'm doing the same thing by not buying their pap. Contrary to coprorate belief, that's NOT EVEN ILLEGAL.

Re:This sort of thing...

[geminidomino]

This arguement does not stand because once the person downloads the song, the copyright holder is deprived of the income the downloader would have paid for the song.

This claim does not hold.

Firstly, It has yet to be shown that RandomDownloaderX would have paid for it, rather than just never hearing it at all. RIAA propaganda, nothing more.

Secondly, unless the money or something tangible was IN their possession already, it is not theft (see below). They are not providing "services." By their own propaganda, they are selling "licenses to listen to music." Doing something without a license may be illegal, but is not theft.

Income is a thing. Theft also incompasses services. If you wish to play with strict interpretation: The original poster wished to know when he became a thief. A thief is one who steals (To take (the property of another) without right or permission) and as you said, it is intellectual property.

"Intellectual property" is a term invented by the people you're shilling for. It's not a real thing that can be removed from someone's posession, thus is not a valid target for "theft." "Income" is only such AFTER it is in the hands of the one earning it. Until that point, GP is right, it is "*potential* income," so unless the downloaders are reaching into the RIAA's pockets and pulling out wads of cash, they aren't committing "theft" there either.

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...

[KagatoLNX]

Ummm, violating copyright is not "wrong". It is simply illegal.

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.

That said, I don't think the existing copyright regime is morally justifiable either.

My copying of another's work costs them nothing, it's not like stealing their car. You do not have a right to be reimbursed by what you percieve to be an opportunity cost. Simply put, the opportunity wasn't there. Legislating to create value where there is otherwise none is an abuse of law and government, plain and simple. This is obviously not "theft".

Once you make something public, you lose control over it. Copyright used to balance the public's interests with yours by giving you limited protection. As usual it seems people have extrapolated this to mean that it's a "right", that they're "entitled to", that duplicating "intellectual property" is theft, and basically missing that loss of control of published works is a fact of life.

Current law extends some copyrights to the author's lifetime plus ninety years. Current law protects "work for hire" more than work you do for yourself. Current law doesn't limit copyright protection once the work is no longer owned by its creator. It is not balanced and blatantly designed to turn information into a commodity.

This has nothing to do with your rights. This has everything to do with Disney keeping their mouse. Just face that in the world of modern publishing, the original terms of copyright might actually be too long. If you can't make your money off of your work in five to ten years, I don't find anything that compels me to keep it out of the public domain. I think that this has benefits beyond compilations of Back Street Boys songs and old women trading cookbooks. 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)? We're increasingly giving people (and unfortunately corporations) more control over one another when we should be doing the opposite.

Next on the list

[Edunikki]

And, should that fail, against her goldfish for listening to the alleged pirated files . . .

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:Contradiction?

[Kjella]

Well, the last artice on slashdot was gross misinformation. The judge basicly said "Continuing as the same case is more complicated and has no advantages. If you want to do it, file a new case." Which they did.

Maybe

[Lego-Lad]

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.

In other news...

[dorkygeek]

In other news, an unborn is sued for cognisance as his mother listened to an illegaly downloaded song.

In other news..

[BlackMesaLabs]

RIAA steals christmas, kills the easter bunny, bombs a hospital, poisons a river and makes a general ass of itself.

Harvest Her Organs

[tucay]

Since Brittany will not be able to pay, the RIAA should be granted the right to harvest Brittany's organs.

Re:Family torn apart?

[Ihlosi]

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?

No, they'll do much, much worse things than send zombie warriors.

They send lawyers.

In other news...

[Afecks]

...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?

Re:Good thing I don't live in the States...

[Capt James McCarthy]

I take strong offense to your.....aw, screw it...ZZZZZZZzzzzz

Stop giving them money

[MadMoses]

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).

When does it end..

[dangerz]

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?

well at least they can't sue me...

[Vidiot3k]

I only use P2P networks to download porn

The Supreme Court disagrees

[Mr2001]

It's theft in the same way that declining to pay for, say, your haircut, is theft of services; and it is indeed illegal. Check section 2319 here, the bit titled "Criminal infringement of 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 :

Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud.

Re:I like the idea of breaking up families.

[thaddjuice]

Wow, talk about spreading FUD! A guardian ad litem is "A guardian appointed to represent the interests of a person with respect to a single action in litigation" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_ad_litem.

No one is taking this girl from her mother.

The Obvious Defense

[Gorbag]

D: Your Honor, Defense introduces exhibits A-ZZZ, the actual sound items defendant is accused of illegally downloading, which we will play for the court now, and introduce into evidence.

[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.

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.

Re:The Enemy

[Solandri]

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.

Yes the RIAA is a trade organization, but for the most part they represent the music studios, not the artists. See, the studios got an exception put into Copyright law which says that musical works performed by an artist belong to them, not the artist. Normally copyright is assigned to the creator/author/artist, unless it's a work for hire - I commission you (pay you) to create a piece of text, software, music, and it belongs to me even though you created it. Except the music studios didn't want to pay the artists so they bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobbied some Congressmen for a change in copyright law which says that audio recordings are a work for hire even if you don't pay the artist. That way they get the copyright, the artist gets "paid" a percentage of the album sales, and the costs of producing the album get taken out of the artist's cut. In other words, the artist pays for making his own album, but the studio gets the copyright.

So yes the RIAA is composed of members, but the members aren't the ones creating the music. They're simply the ones distributing music, and they're scared out of their wits because the Internet drops the cost of distributing music so close to zero that they children they're suing can do it.