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RIAA Announces New Campus Lawsuit Strategy
An anonymous reader writes "The RIAA is once again revising their lawsuit strategy, and will now be sending college students and others "pre-lawsuit letters." People will now be able to settle for a discount. How nice."
Dear RIAA,
I feel that I must point out that the quality of the music distributed by your members has sunk to such depths that if I have to listen to any more of it, I might just gnaw my own leg off in desperation. Of course such a situation would be grounds for an inmediate lawsuit by myself against your members for the sum of $3,000,000 US. I ask that you kindly desist from producing such self-mutilation inspiring music and, failing that, I am willing to settle for ten percent ($300,000 US) in advance in order not to pursue the lawsuit in the event of my loss of a leg. Thank you.
Sincerely...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No "crime" has been committed. The action is a tort. The violation of the Copyright statute for non-monetary gain is a civil matter, not a criminal matter.
;)
So the wronged party (RIAA in this case) is approaching the wrongdoer and saying "look, we can sue you for $X in damages, but we'd like to spare you and us the trouble of a court proceeding to collect said damages. Sign here, pay us $N in reduced damages to cover what we feel are reasonable damages in this instance, and in this contract you are signing you will see that we voluntarily give up the right to sue you for this particular infringement in the future."
Just as if your kid broke one of my windows accidentally with an errant baseball. I could sue you, but I'd probably propose that we settle out of court for reasonable damages. Hardly a crime for me to propose that. And if you choose not to pay, I can of course take you to court.
No "crime" is being swept under the rug. Just because you wish it was extortion or blackmail does not make it so. You ANAL and all of the moderators here clearly ANAL
Purdue had around 40 notices from the RIAA when they were paying for the stupid Rukus music site for all freshman to have access. When they dropped the service because it was dumb(and I think it didn't even work on ipods), the next year they get over 1,000 notices? It shows the RIAA is just trying to extort colleges into signing what are probably expensive contracts with crappy and useless download services.