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Teen Accuses Record Companies of Collusion
evilned1 writes "A 16-year-old boy being sued by five record companies accusing him of online music piracy, accused the recording industry on Tuesday of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats."
While I support pissing off the RIAA, I wouldn't give him money. Ultimately, he did break the law by copying music he didn't have a right to [as stupid as that is illegal...].
Why not send your money to FLOSS projects, or sponsor a stipend for a budding developer to give a talk at a conference or something instead.
Or just keep your money...
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The kid had nothing to do with the legal arguments -- the reporting is just following the convention that your lawyer speaks with your voice and your authority. Its probably the same set of lawyers who worked when his mother was sued and, inexplicably, were not called in when his sister got issued a default judgement for $20k. (Yikes! People, when the process server gives you papers, READ and ACT ON THEM. Default judgements are 64,000 flavors of nothing good!)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Since he's under 18, can he even enter into a contract? Can he effectively use the court system by himself? If he can't, it's all in the hands of whatever attorney will help him (I'm assumig he's not an idle rich kid, and that he basicly has paper-route money).
This is intriguing though. For adults like myself, who have little time to spare and much to lose, quick settlements and/or rapid capitulation to affordable terms are usually the only way out. In other words, if the *AA extorted 10 percent of my wealth, it might be enough to make them go away, and it would be more expedient for me to let them do that then spend half my wealth fighting them.
OTOH, if I'm a 16-year old and I can legally ride my bicycle to the court house and file claims all summer as an "interesting lesson", then what could I lose? That has a certain appeal to it; but I doubt it will fly. They'll probably drag it out until he's 18, and can be subject to things that will bother an adult.
Still though, the idea of a smart kid sitting there in the library putting up his time and zero money, pitted against corporate lawywers who charge their clients 100s of dollars an hour, is intriguing. Even if he loses, he wins, unless they force him to pay court costs--then he's screwed.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Of course they've done layoffs. That's because once a star gets too big, they cost too much. It's not that hard for the record industry to create a new sensation and not have to pay them squat. Re: New Kids On The Block, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, The Monkees, Boyz II Men, 98 Degrees, 4ORCE, Hanson....
Looking http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sup_01_18 _10_I_20_96.html, if they can prove that RIAA is violating any of a multitude of State fraud laws, they can also be charged under the RICO Act. Might be quite a stretch though. They may have a better case persuing this under anti-trust laws to break up RIAA.
It occurred to me that this kid is going to rack up horrendous attorney fee's and court costs in a protracted legal battle in front of the jury, now the attorney fully expects that he'll never get paid if the kids counter suit fails and probably expects the good karma and publicity he'll recieve is enough. The court on the other hand has real costs like paying the jurors; if too many of these cases go through drawn-out the jury trial, lose the case, file bankruptcy cycles the courts are likely to lose patience with the RIAA. Now if the RIAA loses it's not like they will be able to file bankruptcy, so they are really in a no-win situation.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I think Tower Records suffered from the big boxes like Walmart and Best Buy flexing their corporate muscle more than online piracy. When selling physical media + accessories is your only game you aren't left with the resources to fight a company like Best Buy in a pricewar when they decide to sell CDs $3 or $4 cheaper than you can and make up the difference by selling you a shiny plasma TV. I would maybe buy piracy as an excuse if suddenly Best Buy or Target or whomever suddenly decided CDs were no longer worth selling, but that hasn't seemed to happen.
I'm not an idealistic type...at least not often. I do think sometimes the right thing to do has to be done in the wrong way. Sort of the Robin Hood thing. Sure he was stealing, which was illegal, but he was stealing from manipulative people who perpetuated wrong at every turn. And the end result of his theft was to help far more people.
This kid, in my own opinion, isn't trying to "fight the machine". I believe this kid is simply trying to weasel his way out of getting in serious trouble, and the best way he knows how is to challenge the companies that forged the law rather than challenging the law as it pertains to his case. It's a rare defense, mostly because it doesn't work very often. The difference here from all of the other times this has been tried is that there are some unique elements. First, 5 of the largest companies in the country are targeting a single 16yo boy, which stinks of bullying tactics. Second, the kid is using a counter-offensive that actually speaks to millions of people because it's what everybody is already thinking.
Sure, the kid broke the law. Yeah, he did get caught and he's going to get sued for it, and probably lose. But, and this is a great time for a 'but'...This needs to happen, and it needs to happen now. If it wasn't this kid, it's going to be somebody else who isn't going to capture public attention as well as a minor will. A judge and jury will be far more willing to side with the kid than an adult that could reasonably afford the music.
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
TWENTY-FOURTH AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE
Plaintiffs have crafted at least two additional and alternative forms of damages, which forms have not been offered to this Defendant, even though similarly situated. One alternative, explicated by Warner Music's CEO, Edgar Bronfman, is for a parent to talk to his or her children: "I explained to them [his children] what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that." As to what else he did to them, he responded, "I think I'll keep that within the family." Plaintiffs have failed and refused to offer this Defendant the same form of damages. [...]
And when were the prisoners in question validly tried and convicted? Looks like you should go back to the OP's point "accusation is not conviction". I'm all for punishing terrorism, but it's statistically likely that there are a few genuinely innocent people in Guantanamo, and some good ol' all-American trials would separate them from the people that should go away for a long time.
the frown is because of menstrual blood, which was from the article you posted, and it was smeared on somebodies face.
thats just plain disgusting, and unacceptable.
if a teacher in a school did that to a child who misbehaved, that would most certainly be considered abuse.
its the same principle because these people are merely being detained, its like a cop pulls you over and suspects that you are doing something illegal, he can detain you until he can get get a warrant for further search, and during this time he rubs menstrual blood on your face.
lol not cool, and totally illegal.
"think Tower Records suffered from the big boxes like Walmart and Best Buy flexing their corporate muscle more than online piracy."
Not to mention Sony/BMG selling music direct to consumers through their club for $6-7/CD. I'll bet Tower paid more than that wholesale for their CD's.
So the choice is free (illegal), discount (direct), discount (online), discount (walmart), full price (retail/tower).
Is it any wonder that fewer people choose to pay full price at Tower? It's the worst possible choice.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
..is if you steal a $15 cd from a store, you have a right to a trial by jury, but if you're accused of stealing $30,000 of music online, it's only a civil case, so there's no right to jury. Certainly, if these copyright infringement cases were tried by jury, almost no one would be prosecuted...
Besides, what 16 year old has $30,000? That's more than most 16 year olds make in two years of working - why not throw him in jail for two years? The average bank robbery nets $5,000 or so - has he really done the equivalent of 6 bank robberies?
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The second amendment is mainly for the states to be allowed to maintain militias separate from the federal government, and that has never come under fire. Hence, there is no need for the ACLU to defend it.
Furthermore, (and I address this point because a lot of people make it) making it harder to get a gun, or impossible to get certain types of weapons, does NOT constitute a constitutional crisis. I doubt you think citizens should be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Doesn't that fall under the (ridiculously broad) interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that would allow ANY 'arms' to the public? There's no logic to most anti-gun-control arguments that is internally consistent and fits into a non-insane worldview.
If I am off the mark and you see the 2nd Amendment actually under fire in some way, lemme know. I am interested to see which Amendment will be the last one standing (just a little black humor, I am not really that pessimistic).
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
Even in the case of uploads, in all but the rarest case, the RIAA cannot prove that the uploader knew that the downloader didn't have rights to the material.
To prosecute in civil court they must be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the plaintiff is guilty of the offense.
However, it is entirely possible that the plaintiff(s) made the friendly assumption that nobody without a right to own the CD would download it, and that their role in the process is not that of a pirate, but that of a friendly format converter who shares to those who don't want to hassle with converting CD's to MP3's, but who already have a legal right to own the material he reformatted.
Before you jump on that, consider it. The presumption should not automatically go to the prosecution, nor should it go to making negative assumptions about everyday people.
Now, perhaps those people are, by and large, guilty of that which they are accused, but if the RIAA cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the uploader knew they were sharing to people who didn't have a legal right to the content, hey, it's America, and we're innocent until (the possibly never-occuring event of being) proven guilty.
I can personally cite a real life anecdote: my house was once burglarized, and over 100 music & software cd's were stolen. A police report was filed, but it did not contain a list of the specific material that was taken. Afterwards, I took to downloading in order to replace what was lost. I never replaced all that they took. Legally speaking, I have rights to things that I don't have copies of. The RIAA was not about to replace the stolen material, so I can thank Heaven that Napster & P2P networks were available at that time.
Would that work in court? I'm not sure, but it sure sounds reasonable to me, and I believe that the people who uploaded replacement files (to me) were not guilty of anything, since I did in fact have rights to those files.
Now the RIAA is going to have a hell of a time trying to counter that argument, since it's their own constituent's policy (of not replacing lost / stolen materials) that leads to "underground" methods being more upright and righteous than their own.
Personally I think there are enough of those fringe cases to justify the claim of reasonable doubt (required to acquit, in civil cases) in a courtroom.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Quoted from the ACLU's website, because I think it is a very good, valid point:
"If indeed the Second Amendment provides an absolute, constitutional protection for the right to bear arms in order to preserve the power of the people to resist government tyranny, then it must allow individuals to possess bazookas, torpedoes, SCUD missiles and even nuclear warheads, for they, like handguns, rifles and M-16s, are arms. Moreover, it is hard to imagine any serious resistance to the military without such arms. Yet few, if any, would argue that the Second Amendment gives individuals the unlimited right to own any weapons they please. But as soon as we allow governmental regulation of any weapons, we have broken the dam of Constitutional protection. Once that dam is broken, we are not talking about whether the government can constitutionally restrict arms, but rather what constitutes a reasonable restriction. "
I would hardly call that a cop-out answer. The second amendment is there to provide a right to state militias to hold arms to protect themselves against the federal government should they need to, which is somewhat loosely what the National Guard is, though I don't think anyone would really know what to do. Interpreting it as a right for individuals to bear arms, you lose the point of the amendment. Technology has simply evolved beyond muskets and cannons. In order for the populace to defend them from a tyranny of the federal government, I believe the ACLU is right, you would have to give people access to tanks, missiles, etc AND provide them with a reasonable means of obtaining said weapons, otherwise one could make the argument that the government is not giving people the means to exercise their rights.
Would you really trust individuals with a tank? How would the police even stop that? The dangerous escalation that would come from an individualistic interpretation of the second amendment would be fatal, simply because the second amendment is outdated.