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RIAA Goes for the Max Against AllofMP3
Spad writes "Zeropaid is reporting that as part of its ongoing lawsuit, the RIAA will be seeking the maximum of $150,000 per song for each of the 11 million MP3s downloaded from the Russian AllofMP3.com between June and October last year. This amounts to roughly $1.65 trillion, probably a tad more than AllofMP3 has made in its lifetime. A representative of AllofMP3 stated: 'AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York. This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws.'"
last time I checked and considering that they cornered 45% of the space launch business and is the world's largest exporter of oil and gas, the USA needs Russia more than Russia needs the USA, so good luck to the RIAA and their money wasting tactics.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If current trends continue, it's more likely to be a result of the prospect of a trillion dollars being roughly 10 rubles.
Hey, you know what I REALLY love? How everyone on the internet nowadays that either:
a) has a viewpoint that may be in favor of a corporation/organization that some people don't like (Microsoft, RIAA, Sony, US Government, etc)
or
b) likes a product that's from a corporation that some people don't like (Zune, PS3, etc)
is referred to as an "astroturfer" or "shill". That's quite honestly the worst argument since nazi comparisons, and I say we create a corollary to Godwin's Law just to cover it.
Because, you know, people can't have opposing viewpoints and think for themselves any longer. If they disagree with you, they obviously are being paid to promote that point. (It's especially ironic since so many people get caught up in the Slashdot groupthink.)
Surely the "R" doesn't stand for "Recording". Must be for "Racketeering"
The Racketeering Industry Association of America. Thats more like it.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
So why isn't the RIAA suing the RIAA equivalent body that AllofMP3 paid fees to, you know, the ones who are supposed to be taking care of all of the copyright stuff? Russian law dictates that AllofMP3 go through that body, which they did. If RIAA has a problem, they need to address it there.
Copyright violations aren't theft.
Theft implies that you took something from someone else resulting in their loss of the use of the item.
For example, if you steal my car, you have deprived me of the use of that car.
Not a troll, you have a valid point, but I'm curious which of the two would you rather we support?
From the information on their website, it appears that they pay a fixed percentage of sales to royalties. Registered artists, I presume, get royaties - I haven't looked into their financials, so I can't verify that. I don't read Russian either, so I probably couldn't figure it out even if I had the paperwork. The RIAA doesn't like the terms, so they don't want to play. Artists don't enter into it - they don't own their work. IF they did, they could hire a lawyer to do the paperwork, and get their money.
On a personal, philosophical level...
I'm all for compulsory licensing of any published creative work. Don't want it available? Don't publish it.
This would "fix" the Disney vault problem, and allow works to be re-published for a fixed fee. Presumably, original content owners could still create premium content by republishing with value added features. Most of the movie houses already re-release a title several times to get people to re-buy.
As for starving artists, I say get off you lazy asses, out of the studio, and go entertain in person. If your contract forbids such work...well, you signed the contract, yo ulive with the consequences. If you don't like it, go work 9-5 like everyone else. You're not required to make music to live.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
but the artists dont get *shit* when you buy your music there.
4 495
Because artists make SO MUCH on sales in this country...
(Don't particularly like using this as a reference, it's not exactly CNN or BBC, but it's the first reference I saw that looked decent...)
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=1
Rather than paying artists approximately 30 cents of the 70 cents it receives for digital downloads (after deducting payments to music publishers), the suit alleges that Sony Music treats each download as a sale of a physical CD or cassette tape, only paying on 85 per cent of such "sales" (due to a fiction that there is breakage of product), deducting a further 20 per cent fee for container/packaging charges associated with the digital downloads (although there are none), and reducing its payments by a further 50 per cent "audiofile" deduction, yielding a payment to the Sony Music recording artists of approximately 4 1/2 cents per digital download
I'd rather pirate the track and give the artist the buck directly. If only there were a way to do that...
As opposed to the US, where being on the correct side of the law means investing millions in lobby groups and election funds.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
I'm not a big fan of the RIAA, but I'm also not a big fan of AllofMP3. Yes, it's legal in Russia (through a loophole in radio licensing they're trying to close), but not here in the US.
Let me get this straight. When a company moves its manufacturing division from the U.S. to Malaysia to take advantage of the industry-friendly labour laws in that country, they're applauded for their ingenuity. On the other hand, when U.S. consumers take advantage of consumer-friendly copyright laws overseas, they're criminals.
American corporations love doing business in countries where labor laws are lax. They do business where labor laws are lax because they can work people there in ways that would be illegal to do so in the United States. The corporations would call this "globalization" and point the great benefits of the "global economy" at work.
American corporations also like to do business in countries where organized dissent to their activities is suppressed by "friendly" governments (friendly to their interests, that is). They do so because organized dissent is legal in the United States and has on more than one occasion 1) aired the corp's dirty laundry, 2) stopped them from performing harmful (but profitable) acts, and 3) called for the corp's to strike a balance between shareholder value and respect for the laws of the country in which they live.
What does all of this have to do with AllOfMP3? Well, American corporations have a long record of doing business (and making bundles of money) by going to places where they aren't restrained by such trite formalities as "laws". American corporations love to extol the virtues of the "global economy", just as long as they're the ones who benefit from it; after all, transnational capital alone should benefit from international business.
But for some reason, the average Joe using the internet to do THE EXACT SAME THING that American corporations have been doing for years is deemed wrong, illegal, unethical, and Lord knows how many other bad things. The average Joe who buys a song from AllOfMP3 is engaging in exactly the same type of transaction that corp's have done for years: gain financial advantage by offshoring their transactions.
Am I oversimplifying? Maybe. But chew on this: Either we have a global market (as we are told that we have as our jobs are outsourced), or we don't. And if we do have a global market, the rules were written long ago by the same people that are trying to stop us from following them.
Governments are not necessary.
Not to pick nits, but if in fact current trends do continue, exactly one thing can happen, that which current trends point to. Anything can happen if current trends don't continue, which if you look at enough trends, is always the case.
>>>"Downloading is a form of reproduction, and is illegal per 17 USC 106(1)"
so iTunes is illegal then?
I think the argument here is that customers of allofmp3 believe they are purchasing from a legitimate store. This store does pay royalties to the russian version of the RIAA, however this Russian RIAA does not pass them on. Downloading songs that you've paid for from a legitimate store is not illegal - there are many on-line stores where you can legally purchase music. THe issues is: 'is Allofmp3 a legal store?'. The RIAA believe it is not, the Ruskies believe it is. One is a government with oil and some legacy nukes, the other is a bunch of lawyers with deep ties into a government with shiney well maintained nukes.