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RIAA Wants to Depose Dead Defendant's Children
Exchange writes "In Michigan, in Warner Bros. v. Scantlebury, after learning that the defendant had passed away, the RIAA made a motion to stay the case for 60 days in order to allow the family time to "grieve", after which time they want to start taking depositions of the late Mr. Scantlebury's children. Recording Industry vs The People have more details"
Are their lawyers salaried so that they can afford to go after the estate of a dead victim?
There ought to be a law against that. (Salaried lawyers, that is. There's already laws against extortion.)
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It's an industry association. It seems their strategy is to go after their targets as aggressively as possible, in order to send out the clear message that they can and will sue regular folks like you and me. They are effectively the "bad cop" while the individual record companies play the "good cop" giving the people the Brittany Spears and Korn they so desperately need.
You can argue that filesharing is on the rise, or that the RIAA's enforcement actions have cut filesharing, depending on whose facts you use and how you slice them. But in the end the strategy of using the industry association to attack customers, while individual labels try to pretend they play no part in it, probably won't work. In a world where alternatives to label-centric distribution are nonexistent, the labels would be able to make this good cop, bad cop strategy work. But the irony here is that the tighter they squeeze, the more systems will slip through their fingers (apologies to G. Lucas). Sure, there are no "good" big labels to defect to, but there is much more incentive to escape the entire label system altogether.
I keep waiting for one of the major labels to break ranks and start acting intelligent, giving customers fewer restrictions and defecting from the RIAA. It seems though, that none of them has the guts to do it, so they'll all keep pushing on consumers as hard as they can. The end result of the crackdown will eventually lead to a new business model in which the labels play a small or nonexistent role. Ironic, isn't it?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
And yet somehow the outrage only seems to be restricted to certain areas like
If this were really happening, what would you think?
I live about 30 seconds away from the RIAA Lawyer's office. Ann Arbor is a very progressive city, maybe I should go protest (but getting sued would suck.) Any suggestions for signs? "Dead people can't steal music" has a good ring to it.
Yep, a constant source of wonder for me, too.
Who are these people? At one point or another they must have started as "regular" citizens (fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, neighbours -- consumers). When did they change? And why?
A comparative study on criminal and corporate behaviour would probably be rather interesting... especially regarding the point when either subject decided that the interest of their immediate environment was not theirs anymore.
I do not want to insinuate that all corporate lawyers/executives are criminals, far from it. However I'd really like to know at what point (and why) people start making descisions which they would -- perceiveing themselves at the recieving end of -- in all likelyhood reject.
Has this been done? Does anyone have mor information on this subject? I'd be grateful.
sig? Oh, that sig...
I can just see it. Next thing you know, the RIAA hires hitmen instead of lawyers.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
A man ran a bagel delivery service, wherein he would deliver bagels, cream cheese, butter, etc. to customers each morning. Payments were on the honor system, and a box was placed next to the bagels for this purpose. On average, people shorted him by a small percentage, but not enough that the system didn't work.
One business that used this service was a bit unusual. It was a three story building, with the top management on the top floor, middle management and such on the second, and regular working stiffs on the first. Seperate bagel drop offs were made to each floor. Without fail, the third floor's payments were always short by the largest percentage.
There is something inherently wrong with the system when those who rise to the top are more likely to be dishonest than the general population.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Ohn his tombstone - "Over my dead body!!!"
The RIAA is going to have a problem with this. Not just an image problem - a legal problem.
The survivors just have to say "I don't know for sure. You'll have to ask him. Anything else is just speculation, and I'm not under oath to speculate."
Did you forget that their primary business is selling music? It's not to prevent me and you from committing a crime. If the publicity that they acheive from this lawsuit is bad enough to make Joe Downloader never want to give them money again, they hurt their primary business by focusing too much on their...erm...secondary business.
Of course, that's assuming people are smart enough not to buy from businesses they don't support. But maybe that's giving them too much credit.