Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Record Label Fights RIAA Lawsuits
An anonymous reader writes "Nettwerk Music Group, Canada's leading privately owned record label has
joined
the fight against the RIAA's strategy of individual lawsuits.
Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride says 'Suing music fans is not the solution,
it's the problem. Litigation is not "artist development." Litigation is
a deterrent to
creativity and passion and it is hurting the business I love. The
current actions of the RIAA are not in my artists' best
interests.'"
they have to go and make things so Complicated?
Fractured Element
I have to admit, I was becoming skeptical of this country this week when the Conservative party won the federal election. But this, this is what gives me back some faith in my country.
OH CANADA!
Even one person winning against the RIAA would be a good thing. Since most people cannot afford to fight them, this action is a step in the right direction.
Yep, that is joining the fight. It signals whos side that they are on and helps some kid at the same time.
Whenever someone stands up to say "No!" you're going to complain because they've only done it once?
This sets a precedent. Not to mention endears me to that company in particular. I may well go get a list of artists under that label and go buy something just to support them. Or send in a donation saying "Thank you."
Perhaps Nettwerk Music Group will make the same offer to anybody accused of downloading their music. Perhaps others will join in.
Also, paying the legal expenses is HUGE. Now they can get a big time lawyer, and not have to worry about how they can afford it. Lawyers are not cheap. This is why most people settle. Are you really going to pay $6000 to a lawyer to maybe win, or $5000 to the RIAA to make them go away?
But now the money is not theirs, they will fight, and I pray they will win. But either way, this was a Really Good Thing.
The British Phonographic Industry win a court case against two file sharers, with Judges handing down interim damages of £1,500 and £5,000 with costs and further full damages to be determined at a later hearing.
The link in the Slashdot summary goes to someone's blog (yeah, I wonder who "anonymously" submitted it). Here is the actual news item... err, press release... (as linked to from that blog).
But it's nice to see that yet another company is telling off the RIAA.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Greubel is accused of having 600 suspected music files on the family computer. The RIAA is targeting nine specific songs, including "Sk8er Boi" by Arista artist Avril Lavigne, a Nettwerk management client. The RIAA has demanded Greubel pay a $9,000 stipulated judgment as a penalty, though it will accept $4,500 should Greubel pay the amount within a specific period of time.
Hmmm....$9000 / 600 = $15 per song! and $4500 / 60 = $7.50 per song if you act now!
I see how this new price model works.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Publicity Stunt? No question and thats the idea. It gets publicity to the fact that not everyone in the industry agrees with the RIAA. And even though paying for one person isn't a big deal to the RIAA, the reasons behind it is to the rest of the people.
They could very well be testing the water, you know. Not many of the families being sued (sorry, extorted) by the RIAA have the resources backing them to even make it possible to stand up to them without going bankrupt in the process, even if they win. Make the RIAA start losing, you start setting precedent. Start setting precedent, the cases start getting thrown out before there is a trial because there's not anything left to back them up. If you can make them start losing, then it doesn't take a lot to end the whole thing; but it takes someone willing and able to stand up and fight back. Publicity stunt? Certainly. Exactly what's needed? Definately.
Dogma: Dead (mostly because your Karma ran it over)
Absolutely. The thing is, nobody has really stood up with a solid legal argument as of yet. The only real legal arguments used against RIAA cases has been "It wasn't me, it was my son" or other weak crap like that. These may work for the individual cases, but they don't really put a dent in the RIAA's case. If Nettwerk does this, they're going to do this with a big lawyer and they are going to battle the issues at the root of the argument. If there is a legal precedent set in court, it will do a lot more damage to the RIAA's campaign against it's own users. In law, precedent is the big battle.
If piracy is still rampant on P2P networks, and music sales are still down... doesn't that mean that more people are not buying the music that they claim on slashdot and elsewhere that they'd buy to support the band? What is going on with this? If most of the new music is so shitty you cannot buy a CD online for $12-$15 (sorry, most of the time claiming you're forced to pay $20 is bullshit with the internet) then why is piracy still rampant?
Unless... few P2P defenders want to admit that they really have no interest in paying for music that they could otherwise get for free. Look, I despise the RIAA as much as the next guy, but if you're downloading the music of a small band, you're not supporting them. No one will notice that and think "hey this is the next great band" except for maybe the hated RIAA's lawyers if they see a spike in P2P traffic. One of my all time favorite bands, Lacuna Coil, has only combined sold a few hundred thousand copies of their albums, most of which came from Ozzfest 2004, and I fail to see how downloading all of Comalies and their new Karmacode album would help them if I cannot see their shows.
Now that I am out of college, I find myself no longer able to support P2P networks used for this purpose. It's a great file sharing approach that's often spoiled by teens and young adults who do have the money to pay for their music, but won't. The turning point came for me when I saw a few poor metalheads non-chalantly paying $17-$20 at Ozzfest for Comalies, then noticed some of my almost upper class friends in CS had no desire to actually buy Comalies, even though they loved every song on the album.
For every 1 honest P2P user, there are probably 10 who aren't. Don't ever forget that the boom in CD sales with Napster in 1998-2000 corresponded to the dotcom bubble!
If they want to join the fight, then they should use their clout and cash to take a more substantive swipe at the RIAA than just a tiny, ineffective gesture.
Although they have some GREAT artists signed (Delirium, Guster, BT, Paul van Dyk, and of course their "superstars" BNL and Sarah McLachlan), most of whom have a good understanding of technology and its role in music in the modern world... Nettwerk really doesn't have that much sway in the industry overall.
You can almost think of it more as an artist collective than a real "label".
As for helping just one out of thousands of victims of the RIAA's SLAPP tactics.. Yes, I agree this counts as little more than a PR stunt. But not a self-promoting PR stunt; rather, it attempts to show that "the music industry" doesn't exist as a uniformly-evil and luddite monolithic entity. It shouts the message "go ahead and boycott Sony, but you can still buy new music without selling your soul to Rosen (Somehow, "Mitch Bainwol" doesn't have the same love-to-hate-him feel as Hilary Rosen...).
The true damage done to the RIAA in this isn't that someone is standing up to them, it's that a record label is standing up to them and saying "You are not representing the best interests of the Artists.".
This is a major broadside to the spin and misdirection campaign they have going (i.e. We sue sharers because they hurt the artists! We act for the artists! We're being the good guy fighting evil!). Now, one of "the fold" has stood out, and actually declared "You are stating you represent us, but in fact, you're acting way out of line and going contrary to our real wishes.".
The crux being, this record label is an agent for an artist mentioned in a case by the RIAA, and yet both the label and the artist are explicit in not wanting the RIAA to go ahead with the action. The RIAA are doing so. Thus they lose the moral high ground they've been claiming so long to the general public, and showing themselves blatantly to NOT be following the wishes of the artists AND their own members. Which really cuts out a fair portion of their reason for being.
> Paying the legal expenses and fines of one Texas teen isn't joining the fight. It's a publicity
> stunt. If they want to join the fight, then they should use their clout and cash to take a more
> substantive swipe at the RIAA than just a tiny, ineffective gesture.
It is a very big step. RIAA suing a kid is not newsworthy. A Canadian company standing up against
an American organisation to protect an American kid *is* news. Copyright law will not be fixed until
the masses realise how bad the situation is and they start to make noise. Then the politicians realise
that fighting **AA means popularity that means votes. There are always lobby groups who
will grease your palm but you have to be there in the first place and you need voters for that.
The only issue important to a carreer politician is the one that directly affects the votes.
Whether the Canadian company wants to get the "do no evil" image or wants to piss off the RIAA just for fun or
they happen to believe that a fairer copyright system means a less monopolised but more lucrative and dynamic
business environment (for the smaller publishers) is not important. Whatever the reason they stood up against the RIAA,
they did and it's going to be a lot harder to the RIAA to mow them down than a 12 year old kid or a grandma.
While they fight, a lot of people will get enlightened about copyright and that is a Very Good Thing.
Create a virus that installs a P2P client/server on each machine, and then randomly downloads and shares songs on the major P2P networks. Later, when they RIAA files a suit against a user, they can claim that it wasn't them, but the evil virus that shared these songs. Not only is it not the user's fault, but it's Microsoft's, as the unintentional sharing would have never happened without the security flaws! Proverbial stone of dual avian slaying +2
$6000? You MUST be joking. Defense like this would cost in the US, with just a regular "good" lawyer, $20,000-$40,000. Makes that $5,000 settlement REALLY attractive. Decent attorney here in New York is $200-400/hr. The PARALEGALS here are $120 an hour at big firms.
Has Slashdot found Darl's good twin???
EvilCON - Made Famous by
> Did I just see Satan go to his work on a snowscooter?
Yeah, but only because he needs to make a winter trip to Canada to straighten these people out.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
To see someone named McBride do something good.
Maybe Darl could learn from this... well probably not.
I think what they're doing is commendable, and we all have to start somewhere. Nettwerk is home to many great artists, and Nettwerk has been very generous with their works, people and bands like my favorites, Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies, Dido, Chantal Kreviazuk, and many more. I've gotten lots of free Sarah McLachlan stuff over the 15 years I've been a fan, so my loyalty toward her and Nettwerk is pretty well cemented in stone. They've always been an independent label who have not exactly toed the RIAA party line.
Ok I admit I am not very well read up on what the RIAA actually does and maybe this is the wrong place to ask this question, but what does an individual record company gain from being a RIAA member?
All I ever hear about RIAA involves lawsuits and similar activities. Do they actually provide anything to the individual record companies besides being a common lobby organization?
"If you can't live without me, why aren't you already dead?"
Yes, this ONE event allows them to 'enter the fight.' Assuming, based on your comment, you have zero understanding of legal decisions, I will try to give you an idea of why this specific instance was necessary for this company to enter the fight.
The RIAA is suing person X because person X downloaded songs owned by the RIAA AND by company Y. So, the RIAA is taking unauthorized legal action on behalf of company Y, without the permission of company Y. Company Y feels this is NOT the direction it wants to take with unauthorized downloading and is thus suing the RIAA and also agreeing to pay for person X's legal defenses in the fight against the RIAA.
The court system can only make decisions in existing disputes.. so until there's a proper existing dispute, company Y cannot really get involved.
So yes, company Y is definitely now involved in the 'fight' against the RIAA's heavy-handed legal tactics... Tactics which company Y (and most likely many other smaller labels) do NOT approve.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
The pigopolists have been loud, but the rest of us are quietly not using our wallets. Perpetual copyrights and DRM are out of bounds and no one is going to support them.
It's very simple, really, people want their freedom. If you don't want me to share the music you publish, I don't want to buy it. I won't go for technological restrictions either. I'm not giving my money to people who would make sharing a crime. Music is supposed to be shared and it's supposed to be unifying.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Even one person winning against the RIAA would be a good thing.
IANAL but I believe that falls under legal precedence, so once a legal decision is made regarding one case, it is applied to all subsequent cases like it.
...that the last CD I bought was a Nettwerk CD (Chimera by Delerium). It also seems it's one of the few labels that still pumps out interesting music. And yes, I downloaded three Delerium albums, two of which I bought eventually, and last one will probably buy very soon.
please excuse my apathy
Any label that had room for both Sarah MacLachlan and Skinny Puppy has to be at least kind of interesting.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
Uses DRM schemes on their CD's. A Delerium CD was one of the few CD's I could not actually rip in Windows (riped beautifully in iTunes for Mac though). Perhaps Nettwerk feels a little more secure in their ability to prevent unwanted distribution, but they are right up their with the RIAA in terms of limiting individual rights when it comes to how a person wants to listen to the music they purchased. Good to know that they won't resort to suing customers for breaking DRM schemes.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Not to mention they offer MP3 downloads on their Web site. How long will it be till RIAA sues them for putting copyrighted content in a shared folder??
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
You can almost think of it as what a real "label" will become as more artists break away from the coporate megaliths that form the RIAA and embrace distribution networks that let them retain some control over their music, not seem like part of an "evil empire", and make more money while charging their fans less.
This snowball has barely left the top of the hill.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
The Canadian Government will first have to remove the Levy that we Canadians are paying on blank CD's. The levy was introduced to help counter act the monetary loss they percieved was going to happen. We already are paying for our right to download music. And before people say it is still illegal under copyright, it is not here in Canada as long as you do not use it for profit.
Actually, it would smash their entire "doing it for the artist" excuse to bits. And the artists are the real owners of the rights. It would really hurt if all their artists did this to them.
on emusic. I buy there whenever possible, to 'protest DRM with my wallet' so to speak. Otherwise I just buy the CD and rip it.
Nettwerk: By standing up to the RIAA like this, we're sticking it to The Man! ... Maybe.
Generic Lackey: But, you are The Man. So does this mean you're sticking it to yourself?
Nettwerk:
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx
I've been reading that this is a PR stunt from a little Canadian label. Well, it may be ... but what you guys are missing is that they DO seem to "Get it"
Visit their site: http://www.nettwerk.com/
Guess what they sell. MP3s!
I for one, am going to be writing them a letter thanking them for understanding that not all their customers are crooks and that they shouldn't be punishing everyone because of a few bad apples.
Nettwerk++
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
Nettwerk has always been my favorite label, promoting the best early industrial bands including Skinny Puppy. I can understand how they 'get it' with file sharing, as opposed to the big conglomerates.
Didn't they get arrested on that tour?
The story as it was told to me was that they were mistakenly arrested. I was too young to see them then, but apparently they had some kind of Hollywood creature department-quality dog dummy that they could "vivisect" on stage, as part of their protest against that kind of practice in the real medical/scientific world. Someone thought it was real, and called the police.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Yeah but saying the Conservatives are furthest to the right of the four parties (the other three being as left or lefter than their their brothers in the U.S. Democratic Party) is not saying much. While visions of socialism or social democracy dance around the heads of the NDP, Bloc, and Liberals, it is visions of mercantilism, in one form or another, that dance about the Conservatives heads.
The NDP is probably the party that cares most about consumer's interests in laws being passed, but as usual, it is caring in a loopy hardcore leftist sort of way, which always tends towards solutions that disregard the voluntary and free choices of the property owners and tends to assume that the government is the real owner of everything in the country.