Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Sues Woman Who Has Never Used a Computer
boarder8925 writes "Marie Lindor, a home health aide who has never bought, used, or even turned on a computer in her life, was sued by the RIAA in Brooklyn federal court for using an 'online distribution system' to 'download, distribute, and/or make available for distribution' plaintiff's music files. She has requested a pre-motion conference in anticipation of making a summary judgment motion dismissing the complaint and awarding her attorneys fees under the Copyright Act."
How they managed to find this woman and sue her is beyond me... It just goes to show you that you can't get away from the RIAA even if you've never used a computer in your life. They managed to find one of only a handful of people who has never used a computer and sue her... I should be scared for my parents right now.
Reminds me of a colleague back in the UK who was taken to court for not paying his TV license fee - when asked what his defence was he responded "I don't own one".
Apparently the judge was not amused with the prosecution for not having bothered to do even this minimal check!
If this is the case (pardon the pun) with this action then I hope the RIAA get a really embarrasing and well publicised dressing down. Shame on them.
I can't even begin to figure out how they would identify her as a "pirate". I thought they usually went by IP addresses and such, but how can you tie one to someone who doesn't have a computer?
Has anyone been convicted? I thought that all of the RIAA cases were either settled or dismissed. Has any of these cases gone the distance?
Cow Cube
Name similarity.
My mother used to get all kinda of harrasing phone calls
because there was a women on her street with the same
first and last name. The collections people would
see on in ,
and that was that.
And they would always assume that what she was telling them
was a lie to get them off her back.
emt 377 emt 4
My in-laws (67 & 72 years old, born in Malaysia) have never used a computer of any kind, other than pressing the walk button at traffic lights, playing poker machines and playing video tapes and DVD's on normal consumer equipment set up by myself or another relative.
Maybe you were joking and I missed it. Lots of older people that I can think of would never use any kind of personal or work computer.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I remember reading about someone working for one of the big record labels in Germany letting something slip about the RIAA's tactics.
He hinted that it was in their interessed to create such absurd cases so their "hunt for pirates" stayed in the news. If nothing like that happens, people will forget the whole thing and start downloading again, as the papers will not print headlines "RIAA still hunting!" a few month after the first anouncements.
Presumably the RIAA actually offers "overwhelming evidence" against the people it brings to court, which probably amounts to a fast-talking lawyer. I wish she would have waited until the last possible minute to disclose this piece of information before court, once the RIAA had its (marked) cards on the table she might have caught them lying through their teeth. Actually, I'm not quite sure how the process works, it's probable the RIAA needs to submit that evidence in order to accuse her. In which case, I hope the judge looks over the RIAA's papers very carefully...
Sendou Wave Kick!!
My father (who is 55), had never used a computer until 2 years ago or so (sorry for poor grammar. "paster than past" tenses were always a nightmare for me). He just didn't have a reason to do it. Right now he's on the PC for most of his spare time, reading news, watching stock market (and making transactions), doing e-banking, searching for a new house (apparently that's not a task that might be accomplished faster than in 3 years), etc. I used to encourage him and now I have to pay for it. Whenever I visit them on weekends and try to do some work, all I hear is "are you done?", "would you please let me sit for a second?", "go help your mother" or "can you remove the snow from the driveway? now would be a good time". Last night he called asking whether he should restrain from logging into windows today (I can't get Skype to work under Ubuntu @ their place... some weird stuff happens). You know, that file-overwritting virus that's about to strike.
The point is: he's not 80 and he was perfectly fine without ever touching a computer as recently as 2 years ago. It's just not a thing that a regular person can't survive without. Yet.
I'm pretty sure the only embedded processor my dad (58) uses is in the telephone, and that's only because I gave a him a digital model with answerphone to replace his old one. He doesn't have a microwave, I seriously doubt either his oven or washing machine have a processor in. He doesn't have an ATM card; he gets money out at the till. Partly because he's a builder, and partly because he wouldn't trust an ATM card (and given this is a slashdot, are you saying he's *wrong* there?), not to mention that he'd probably find it very hard to remember a PIN.
As for medical devices, you generally have someone use them on you, you don't use them yourself, unless you guys in the US regularly conduct your own ECGs or something? (I'm in the UK).
He knows of the existence of email and has asked me to send some for him in the past. But he didn't realise that I could email someone while they were away from home.
Now this guy has a degree from Cambridge University, and speaks two languages fluently and two passably. So let's say he's above average...
Now, how do I explain to my dad what I do at work?
Ben
Reminds me of my boss, who goes by the name of John Shuttleworth. Now, he lives in a flat on the ground floor of a house which he owns. He rents the flat above to his nephew, who goes by the name of *drumroll* John Shuttleworth. We call the nephew "Junior" as a rule. Anyway, Junior went bankrupt due to some bad business decisions, and suddenly John Senior found himself not being able to use his credit cards anymore. He only managed to get them back after several heated phone calls...
They did give him £50 (I think that was the amount) when they found out they'd got the wrong guy. I can sympathise with the bank though - same name, same address, must be the same person, right?
One good turn - gets all the covers.
Good illustration with the pipe bomb example.
:)
:)
The only thing I disagree with is the lynch mob because we simply don't need it, society already does something much more effective: blatantly ignoring misconstrued laws. It's not even civil disobedience simply the aggregate of common sense. Imho RIAA lost close to a decade ago and have since been involved in a protracted harakiri as they continue to sue willy-nilly while not managing to follow their own rules and seeing major artists publicly state their support for ordinary filesharing.
I know it's little comfort for those unlucky enough to be affected by the death throes of RIAA. I know the justice system and most politicians are lagging at least 20 years behind society but that has always been the case and isn't any kind of surprise. If one tries to speed things up one should be very wary of doing more harm than good.
Rant warning!
RIAA really had/has no reason to fear individuals filesharing and should have jumped at this gratis opportunity for broad artist exposure and recognize the market for high-quality reasonably priced unobstructive digital formats. Instead of their centralized campaigns for a handful of artists they could have taken advantage of everyone promoting everyone for free and let the naturally popular artists rise instead of trying to manufacture them. If they had any business sense they would be actively promoting filesharing, making it easy for fans and casual listeners alike to support & pay those they enjoy, making it easy for artists and consumers alike to find each other and create communities. If they did all that they would be doing their job which boils down to having a living thriving music industry, as it is they're doing the opposite. They could still change course but they wont because they do not understand anything about their customers or the market. Businesses that have no clue about their own market disappear over time, I doubt the RIAA will exist in their present form come 2016.
Wow I've got to add a rant warning at the beginning lol
MPAA has tried to learn from RIAAs fiasco but the whole bizarre strategy of DRM, DCMA etc. is so fundamentally flawed that they can't have learned much. At the least they have not understood that the only people they punish with such strategies are their lawabiding customers and as such they're in practice fighting for "piracy" even if that's not their intent.
RIAA & MPAA shooting themselves in the foot is too much of a mild description; they're repeatedly stabbing themselves in the chest and have been doing so for years -- noone survives that but luckily it has nothing to do with the continued existense of great music and movies as eventually the cash flows will just end up being rerouted around them.
I'm eagerly avaiting the day a senators or congressmembers child/familymember is hauled in to court by the RIAA or MPAA, they share too. Hell, I'm pro-Bush but I'm sure there's at least one track on his beloved iPod that's "pirated" lol
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
On the relevant side, this my google quote of day:
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
- Hunter S. Thompson
That said, it's amazing how many slashdotters think that playing dumb and ignorant of the contextual or common meaning of a word or phrase makes them appear really smart.
While I want to agree with you, I'm going to have to call you on that. I suspect they make a lot more money by grooming particular artists and therefore knowing where their money will be coming from. To use an analogy, look at the state of animal husbandry. In medieval times, it was not uncommon to let your pig or cow free range for food. It was considered cheaper than providing for feed. Nowadays, I'm sure people would argue that it provides for a survival of the fittest, much as you state your idea regarding music. However, what typically happened was that there was little control over your animal and its productiveness. Your cow might be stolen by bandits. It might be shot by an errant poacher (or an earnest one). Even when it survived, you had no idea what it had been eating and who it was breeding with. And average production for those cows was small. With modern animal husbandry techniques, we now keep the naimals penned and well fed, control their breeding, and we wind up with cows who have easily 50 times the milk production of medieval cows. Right now, the RIAA has those penned and bred cows. They know they can milk those cows and be assured of a rich bounty because they bred them that way. And you're asking them to free range their artists? It's just not a smart move for them.
I'm eagerly avaiting the day a senators or congressmembers child/familymember is hauled in to court by the RIAA or MPAA, they share too. Hell, I'm pro-Bush but I'm sure there's at least one track on his beloved iPod that's "pirated" lol :)
Feh! Do you think their lawyers would let them get that far? I would not be surprised if they have a database of names which they automatically remove from consideration. At that, they probably do make a non-token effort to ascertain who's actually pirating out of the people they prosecute. It's only due to volume that we're getting these "never touched the Internet" people. If the RIAA were at all smart, they'd come out publically and state that this person was all a mistake and award her $500 worth of music from RIAA artists. It would be good publicity, the "we made a mistake and are making up for it" kind, plus it will cost them all of $5 plus shipping to do so, since they own the CDs.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
"Kind of like the old adage that goes something like "Discipline your child often."..."
OMG that is the most horrible piece of advice I have ever heard. I hope you were using it sarcastically, because if you actually did that to a child you would have the most horrible miserable child on the face of the planet.
Have you ever been punished for something you didn't do? You NEVER forget it, and you NEVER forgive either. It eats at you till you can find some way of revenge. I'll prove.... (most likely that I can do something really bad and get away with it, to balance out the unfair punishment.)
And even if they did do some minor thing, if you constantly discipline someone, they never learn to discipline themself. You never trust them, so they never trust anyone else, and they never learn to contain themself either.
At the most extreme you get kids like that elf on harry potter - they do something bad, and punish themself, then do something bad again. They never learn that it's bad to do something bad - all they learn is that if you get punished then the bad thing is neutralized.
-Ariel