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RIAA Drops P2P Lawsuit Strategy, Goes Local
An anonymous reader writes "Wondering why the RIAA hasn't announced 800 lawsuits per month any more? Well, they're still suing people, but have developed a new strategy according to Slyck.com. Instead the RIAA is looking to be more localized, focused and personal with its new strategy."
As another reader puts it, the RIAA "will opt to file lawsuits on a weekly basis and work with local media to give it a more geographically relevant feel." Perhaps they'll also pick their targets a bit more carefully.
Great.
"more localized, focused and personal?"
What, are we talking warm, fuzzy, happy, huggie-time lawsuits from your friendly neighborhood big-brother cartel?
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Translation : In national press we're getting made to look like the bad guys, so we're going to keep doing it but focus our attacks. So instead of it being in the big news papers it'll only make the local ones and we'll look like better guys instead of villians.
We see this in the UK when police raid places, it's ignored on the major news channels but local ones make if their main feature.
Either way it's the same shit, different day news wise.
I like muppets.
piracy had been contained!? Is the RIAA talking out of both side of its mouth again. Or, does one hand of the RIAA not know what the other is doing? Hmm.
idm owns me
Ha. This is a repost, but I thought it good enough to give another chance - I really think someone should run with it.
...
Boycotting the RIAA will only result in more cries of, "Pirates! Pirates!". I think a different boycott is in order.
On the RIAA page, there is a list of labels that associate themselves with the RIAA - remember, the RIAA is a group of labels, and other music related 'entities' that like the lobbying power that the RIAA gives them.
Not buying CDs, videos or DRMd files is not going to hurt the RIAA - they make their money from 'dues' from the individual labels. Not buying CDs will only help the RIAA make a case that it's due to piracy, and make that case to those who make the laws.
However, if a boycott was organized that picked, let's say five, (smaller) labels from that list, and let them know that no CDs from them will be purchased that month or year by the organized boycott, calls of piracy hurting sales could be refuted on that smaller scale,(Not that they can't be refuted now...)
Labels who think that calling their customers thieves, handing out lawsuits, restricting fair use, and lobbying for the demise of independent music is ok will get a message that their customers will not stand for it.
Issues with this:
In order to work this boycott has to be big, organized, and educated. Big, so the set of music the particular few labels include intersect with the boycotting group. The boycott doesn't work if no one was going to buy that music anyway. Those sales 'lost' to apathy will be blamed on piracy, and used to lobby for more restrictions and copyrightholder power.
Oraganized, so that the chosen labels (picked by size and choice of music: see above) get an actual message : "You are being boycotted by x number of people who have agreed that they will not buy your labels offerings until: (insert ultimatum here - hell freezes over, a year passes, or my favorite, disassociation with the RIAA) This notice should be sent anywhere that would reproduce it, and those not 'signed up' should be
Educated, so that they know what the RIAA is (not a company per se, but a collection of companies), why the boycott is happening, and how they can help.
There are certainly other things to take into account, such as the 'list' is by design, not accurate. There have been cases where the RIAA has claimed membership by some small (and suddenly successful) lables, in order to present a 'united front' and spread the message that RIAA=success/no RIAA=obscurity.
I'm convinced that the only way to kill the RIAA is to go after the legs - small and medium labels that support it. Once these smaller labels have severed their connection with the RIAA, the RIAA will have less money to lobby for DRM and the extention of copyrights, less money to pay lawyers to sue your dead grandma, less money to push their skewed facts, figures and arguments to an uneducated public.
Remember, the RIAA's money comes from labels and manufacturing, whose money comes from you. Small, focused strikes by a large educated group are the only way to win.
They turned off their automatic lawsuit generator.
Wondering why the RIAA hasn't announced 800 lawsuits per month any more?
World Cup?
839*929
Or the RIAA/MPAA are so befuddled that they sue people who aren't guilty of much of anything. If they think this is somehow going to put a better face on their draconian tactics then they are even more egotistical and deluded than I had previously realized. If nothing else, it will rally local P2P groups and rouse them into action, and the local publicity the RIAA/MPAA is seeking will not be as friendly as they imagine. In fact, i see this backfiring on them in the long run, as the average customer begins to wonder why they are paying so much for this content.
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You know, at first I thought that the attorneys who work for the RIAA were blood-sucking leeches for going after all of those people like they do. However, the more I think about it the more I think that they truly are brilliant. They have tapped into a seemingly endless supply of cash at the RIAA by trying to accomplish something that will never work: shutting down file sharing entirely.
If they ARE blood-sucking leeches, they are very smart blood sucking leeches. Bravo!
I guess I won't be needing that Swedish piracy insurance now.
Yes, the threat of legislation and consistent bullying tactics are a surefire way to get me to "enjoy" my music legally. Basically all they want to do is make it look like they are catching people every day (and I'm sure they are) and then publicize that in local papers. I don't care if Robert Vaughn in Washington D.C. gets caught for file-sharing, but if Jimmy across the street gets a fine, well then I'd better be scared.
I wonder if the RIAA has done any public image surveys since they decided to start terrorizing their consumers? It's one thing to try to protect your intellectual property; it's another thing entirely to shake down every person with an internet connection. I can't think of one person nowadays who thinks the record industry is anything but a pack of devils; I just wish there was some way of translating that revulsion into serious market reform. They're just jackals, plain and simple.
..for a more localized, focused and personal experience.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
So why are the local papers and stations acting as PR shills for the RIAA? Are they stupid or just getting cash?
Does any ./er read local news?
Our favorite villian, simply out protecting the rights of recording artists.
I guess the RIAA fills the role that the 'Narcs' and DEA agents played in the 1970's,
they're fun beat up on, mischaracterize, draw cartoon conclusions about, etc.
So lets get the posts going expressing outrage and rightous indignation over the RIAA just because you like to steal music.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
So they're adopting the Business Software Alliance model, right? Will they adopt it fully? Will they allow for retroactive purchase and penalties to be paid in an extralegal manner rather than pursuing the manner in courts?
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If you want some music, I'll sing. I'm not very good, but at least I'm free. You can pirate me all you like.
If i cared what was on digg, I would be over there, instead of here.
I know it's off-topic, but I think it's important to point out that the previous slashdot artical about the Spanish outlawing unauthorised p2p is completely wrong and should be withdrawn, or amended. ... there is no mention of making P2P illegal. Also try downloading the offical government document: http://www.todoscontraelcanon.es/index.php?body=pr ess_article&id_article=14&id_rubrique=11
I searched the Spanish press and can see no reference to this story (although there is plenty about the CD tax). Also, look here: http://www.todoscontraelcanon.es/
and so a search for p2p... you won't find it anywhere. The document only covers the CD tax.
Also, try finding any alternative source apart from the tmcnet artical anywhere. I don't think you will find any.
<downloads>
The RIAA represents a group of companies, whose business model has been rendered obsolete by new technology. Artists don't need them, we don't need them, nobody needs them. They had the oppportunity to offer legal downloads, but they priced themselves / put themselves out of their own market. The same people are now pursuing the SCO strategy - Death Spiral Litigation. Goodbye RIAA, the writing is on the wall.
I know most of you have an undying hatred of Microsoft, and you have your reasons. But at least Microsoft makes people happy. The industries are nothing but evil, in its purest form. There's forces of nature that are defied by their continuing existence.
Perhaps rather than coming up with new ways to sue people, they should embrace technology and higher consultants that can help them adapt to this change, rather than being the stubborn old men they are, and continuously screaming "Damn kids! get out of my yard!" However, this is just a phase. They *won't* last long. They are in their decline, and will soon die. It will take time, but through their own actions, Stubborn Old Men of America will die when they've run out of people to sue.
I think people use 'Ubuntu' in their posts to sound cool.
"We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties," Justice David H. Souter wrote in court's decision.
So Dell, Gateway, Microsoft, Apple, etc, all need to specifically have a disclaimer stating "don't use our stuff to infringe copyright"? Currently, it looks like Dell, Gateway, Microsoft, Apple, etc are all guilty...after all, their products are all used to "infringe copyright". Same with hard drive manufacturers, cd/dvd burner manufacturers, burning software manufacturers, etc.
That and, of course, we wouldn't want to hold individuals responsible for their own actions. It seems to me that gun manufacturers could now be held responsible for murder wouldn't it? Maybe a bad analogy, but is a gun really manufactured to specifically murder people? I agree with the lower courts decision completely - it just makes logical sense. But the fact that it was overturned 9 to 0 by a higher court tells me that a few people were bought and paid for.
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
I haven't read every case that the RIAA has brought against individuals, but if I have a wireless router, wouldn't it be impossible for them to prove that it was ME that was doing the sharing? Couldn't my defense be that someone hacked my wireless router and was leeching off my connection? I swear I read that this actually happened to someone that was sued, and the lawsuit was dropped. The burden of proof is on the people prosecuting you, and aside from raiding your house and taking your computer, how do they know where it went after it passes through your firewall/router? And, if they did see that it went to a specific IP address, after passing through your router, how do they know that it went to YOUR computer? If asked if it was the IP address to your specific computer, wouldn't you plead the fifth? Obviously, IANAL, but these are some things I would be interested in finding out.
Even music artists on smaller labels don't see much money from their record sales. Of course, the more money their label makes the more the label wants to use on their next album for production, promotion, etc.
After speaking to an artist on a small label I was told that the most money they see and retain is from merchandise they sell at concerts, excluding cd's.
Even cd's sold on websites don't necessarily put more money into the pocket of the artists, because the same percentage goes right to the label.
If you really want to piss of the RIAA and the record companies, while you're downloading the album illegally, just go to that band's website and purchase a t-shirt or some other piece of merchandise that does not contain their music.
(even if their label is associated with the RIAA or not)
I wonder if someone could come and sue me for NOT listenning to music. After all, they already TAX me when I buy blank media (I live in Canada,) and I never use this media for any music, data backups only.
You can't handle the truth.
Grind out a really shitty product, then charge everyone for upgrades, particularly the made-up security upgrades that seemingly fix imaginary holes.
That'd go great with my Old Glory Robot Insurance!
If you bought some adverts, they'd shill for you too (Advertorial). Also how about leaving Slashdot alone for a day and writing a letter to your local paper - they're probable desperate for free local content, so maybe they'd print it.
I'm more worried about publicising the personal details of alleged sharers. It's not safe when there are so many loonies out there. How would the *AA would react if individual record company execs were named and shamed like this?
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Looks like it will be time to sue the RIAA for libel when they start doing this. They are not just trying to scare the general public (there should be something illegal about the way they are doing this), but they are going to ruin individual's names in the process.
Time to copyright my name so that when they try to use me in the news I can collect from them and counter sue every time they put it in print.
Cheesy Movie Night
Robert Vaughn is currently abroad in England, filming his excellent con-man series Hustle. :) You don't have to worry about him getting sued in the US at all! (I'll bet that's a load off your mind, I like the chap too.)
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Let's see, 800 lawsuits a month, at $1,000 per suit, comes to a little under 10,000,000 per year in legal fees. So instead, they want to file fewer lawsuits and twist the arms of the local media to publicize their (five, twenty?) local lawsuits, and make it sound just as punishing. Score one for the bean-counters who were making the suits justify that budget. I mean, does anyone think they've been effective at stopping piracy?
Ibid.
It does indeed sir.
Nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained -Tom Baker, Doctor Who
They have no right, until an artist gives them that right in return for money.
So if Ed McMahon shows up at your front door early in the morning with a camera crew, you might
think back to whether you actually returned the Publishers Clearing House entry before opening the door...
Instead the RIAA is looking to be more localized, focused and personal with its new strategy.
Hey, it's Web 2.0 lawsuits!
They can not get the music a different way. Copyright is by it's very nature a legal government enforced monopoly. The only thing you can do is convince them that the music is uncool, so that they don't buy the music at all.
since no one is getting sued, since the major ISPs, charter, time warner and Ameritech told the RIAA to go get bent.
Hopefully more ISPs just tell them to FUCK OFF, nasty letter to follow. The lawsuits come to a crashing end because judges simply dont give a shit to bother signing off on a REAL subpeona, not those fake ones the music industry gets to write themselves.
If ISPs were smart they would just say "hey we dont keep logs of who was at what ip for that long, those logs may exist in our backup vault, but that will cost a considerable amount of money, we will be sending you a bill for 90,000 dollars payable before you get your info"
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
Do the RIAA and MPAA realize they're a joke? Maybe not to the unfortunate people who get sued (a good friend of mind among them), but to everyone else? In some countries you can get RIAA insurance! They sue people who have never used a computer, little girls, dumb parents, and pretty much anyone they happen to randomly pick.
This is not going to work, anymore than their initial batch of lawsuits did. There needs to be some serious discussion of how to reform the music and movie industries and create a system where:
1) Customers know what is and is not right/legal and why.
2) Customers WANT to get music and movies legally.
Neither of those things is ever going to happen as a result of restrictive DRM (which actually punishes customers who obey the law) and lawsuits (which generate extremely bad publicity and create a rebel/pirate underground that only intensifies the file sharing culture).
I'm not going to pretend that #2 is easy, but no matter how you look at it that's the way it's got to be unless you want to sue or put on trial a huge percentage of the US population including the majority of college students.
Haiku for you!
I doubt that a boycott against **AA will accomplish much. On the other hand, a better business model might just wipe them out completely. There ARE companies out there that use a better business model. For instance http://www.magnatune.com/ -- check them out! You can listen any number of times for free before you buy, you can decide how much to pay (within limits), half of the price goes to the artist (unheard of in **AA labels!!!), and the TOS allows you to share your download with up to two of your friends. Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Magnatune.com, although I wish they had an affiliate program (they don't), so I get no monetary reward for mentioning them. But I think they are the wave of the future.
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RIAA CHOOSES YOU.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
You bought Wal=Mart stocks. You're a fucking bastard. You bought into the whole global captial game in a cynical manner as possible and when you get fucked over and can't afford to retire becuase those stocks tank and your country doesn't offer health care to poor fuckers like yourself, then you will reap what you have sown. You are the bad guy.
Hmmm. This kind of sounds like, well, terrorism. I guess those guys are better funded than the news might have previously led one to believe.
I cannot believe they made me use the "T" word.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
I would, if properly convinced the defendant was guilty, fine him thus:
$3 for every song on his computer ($1 Itunes price, $2 punitive), minus $36 for every physical CD he owned ($3 a song, figure an average of 12 songs a CD).
It's enough to make the kid feel pain for violating the law, without being absurd. While a $20,000 judgement against you would suck, it's not unpayable.
Of course, a $20k judgement may not make such a law suit a net financial loss for the RIAA, but they can cry me and the rest of the Jury a river.
Also remember that the Jury is the ultimate arbriter of both the defendant and the law- even if the law says he's to be fined $1000 per song or such nonsense, a jury does not have to follow that in setting an award.
IANAL but you can read about Jury Nullification yourself.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
One of my favorite **AA tactics is ye olde 'CD sales have been going down' argument. You bet they have; around 1999 we all finally finished re-buying the crap we had already bought. It's basically the same argument as that dumb argument that global warming stopped in 1998
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Yes. What do you think they teach at Col's Ledge these days?
This has been my personal experience as well. Just to reinforce:
I've had the luxury of being a part of a band signed twice to a small labels. We made absolutely nothing, despite experiencing moderate success.
Since then, we've purposely avoided label interest so we can control our own music and merchandise (and destiny). We record everything ourselves and release all music under a creative commons license. So far, it's working well.
We have broken even on our bar tabs, equipment, promotion, and gas... we never broke even under a label.
I don't buy a bit of this "RIAA helps musicians" crap.
http://syriusjones.org/ - Shameless plug - see and hear for yourself.
Wait, I though tthat the RIAA had already won the battle over Piracy?
....
Well, I guess there is precedent for prematurely claiming "Mission Accomplished!"
In other stories we see that the Justice Department is trying to change the laws to require ISP's to keep records for two years of who goes where and does what. The reason given is to trace unloaders and downloaders of child pornography. The other reason given it to fight terrorists. The two year period would allow prosecutors to subpoena the records. It would also allow the RIAA to subpoena this same database and I think that the overwelming majority of subpoenas would be from the private sector and not by public prosecutors. Look for many more lawsuits if this legislation is inacted.
Whoa, whoa! So, by your logic, it's wrong to borrow something from a friend, try it out, and then return it?
That's exactly the same as downloading, watching, and deleting. And then buying if you liked it. I do it all the time and I see no difference between that and borrowing. Can you imagine how retarded the **AA would sound if they started saying that it's WRONG to borrow things? No one would take them seriously.
Anyway, that's why this is such a problem; the **AA is 'black-and-whiting' everything. So suddenly EVERYONE who downloads is a dirty pirate, as oppose to the probably small minority who don't buy things because of downloading. Only then does it really become wrong, when it has effected your buying habits.
Why 'small minority' you ask? Well: I highly doubt movie companies are losing THAT much to piracy. Movies still make millions and millions of dollars in box office sales. It would appear that the majority of us would rather shell out a few bucks to see a movie (at the theater) in good quality then download a craptastic-recorded-on-a-vid-cam one. The DVD sales argument might hold some merit.. but probably not as much as they'd like us to think.
I am not sure who they are really going after, but I thought it was against the mega uploaders not the downloaders
Nope; it's the downloaders. It's the people who download because they cannot afford to buy. I heard they once sued a college student who then had to give up his current education in the name of their profits. That's just plain awful.
I think paying to download music for a small fee is getting us somewhere; it's certainly making lots of cash. Now if only we could get rid of/fix DRM...
Whoever modded that "Insightful", by the way - you must not be familiar with the meta-moderation system.
Have someone take a picture of you sitting down surrounded by all your legit CDs. Be giving the camera the finger. Snail mail that picture to the RIAA with an explanation, what you said, you stopped buying CDs when they started suing the customers. You could go through your collection, pick out the "artists" who are represented down the line by the RIAA, and send them the same letter.
If it was me, I'd add in if they just dropped prices down to really really cheap they could pick business back up. There is NO reason for them to be charging what they charge for stamped disks anymore besides greed and (drug and alcohol induced most likely) insanity.
Personally, I just stopped buying disks except very very cheap and used and not very many of them either. I just don't care anymore, I flip on the FM if I want music, I like oldies geezer rock anyway, plenty of that on OTA radio.
When CDs hit and they didn't drop prices and charged the same as cassettes or 8 tracks, well, I just went FU to them in my mind, I will not support gougers like that, and,like you, stopped buying. They have *yet* to drop prices, and no way in hell does it cost them as much to make copies as they used to, it is just a tiny fraction of what costs used to be, yet they think people are supposed to keep paying the same prices?? What for? Computers have gone from three thousand to three hundred dollars in roughly the same time frame that CDs have gone from $15 dollars to $15 dollars. What's wrong with that picture?
"Our favorite villian, simply out protecting the rights of recording artists."
Do you really believe that? The share the recording studios pay to artist's is minuscule. Nearly all artists find the most lucrative part of their business are the live performances which would benefit from great circulation of their work.
"I guess the RIAA fills the role that the 'Narcs' and DEA agents played in the 1970's, they're fun beat up on, mischaracterize, draw cartoon conclusions about, etc."
In the 70's? Heck they are still at it with bigger budgets than ever. It is interesting that you choose to relate one horribly failed quagmire with another doomed to the same fate. The drug war and the laws and methodology used to enforce them are a total failure in their efficacy, and a damn train wreck in regard to our civil rights. What adults do to themselves is no business of anyone else's. If their actions in doing so place others in harms way, like say operating a vehicle under the influence or running meth labs, there are plenty other laws to charge them for violating. I have to agree with ole Abe here.
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." Abraham Lincoln
"So lets get the posts going expressing outrage and rightous indignation over the RIAA just because you like to steal music."
I don't steal music nor do I wish to, I have as to yet download a single track I have not paid for on some type of media. Yet I have several problems with the RIAA. One is about their attempts to circumvent the "fair use" rights via DRM technology which was merely used as a stalking horse for the creation of the DCMA. On the same subject line I have a problem with them negating the spirit of Democracy and the Republic with their bribes, oops sorry contributions to the politicians that voted the DCMA into law. They failed to update a business model in the face of new technology. Instead of moving to correct this they have choose instead to buy the legislation to legitimize and support the flawed business model of what is basically an organized criminal consortium.
Even if I supported the idea of violating someones privacy by allowing a commercial enterprise to hire legal whores to go fishing their ISP's logfiles, the punishment is way out of line with this petty crime. In my view the $1000 per song violates Amendment VIII (1791) which states: Prohibits excessive bail or fines and cruel and unusual punishment. This is a fine, a punitive measure because the price of the music itself is what, 1.00 per title, ok maybe 2.00 on over priced CD's at max.
Matthew