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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.'"
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.
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.
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...
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.
Please also inform your son about the difference between theft and copyright infringement.