Slashdot Mirror
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."
Demanding money with an accompanying threat is still EXTORTION, whether there's an actual lawsuit or not.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Slashdotters are once again revising their RIAA strategies, and will now be sending RIAA extortionists and barrators "pre-letter responses." Barrators and extortionists will now be encouraged to go fuck themselves sideways with a bowling pin. How goatse.
Well I got hit by something similar. I downloaded a torrent of Green Street Hooligans, didn't even watch it. Recieved an email from the campus computer folk, told me that Universal informed them of my "copyright infringement", and if I delete the file immediately and tell them that I did so, nothing would happen, but if I did it again, I would lose my Internet connection.
I don't remember if they said what would happen if I didn't delete the file (which I did, I'm not going to stick my neck out for the principle of it) but I'm sure it would have been ugly. I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA is doing this too - intercepting communications out of your friendly campus and then telling the campus to enforce their restrictions. Way to scare your customers. How do they stay in business?
Any other people get busted/almost-busted/pseudo-busted at their university?
Tag this article: thievingcunts
Is this true? Does anyone have sales or statistics?
Who cares if it's true? They say it is, and there's not exactly a pirate's lobby to refute them. Truth is completely and utterly irrelevant. It's not a question of what's right or wrong, it's a question of what you say and how loud you say it. And the media cartels own the conventional news sources.
Do YOU have illegally stolen music files on YOUR computer? It's more likely than you think! If you do, then our new discount lawsuits could be for you!
Our patented lawsuit technology gives you a quick, easy settlement with no fuss. Order now and we'll even throw in this fantastic desk tidy. That's right: a discount lawsuit AND a desk tidy. All for the low one-time sum of 39.99
Call now, and get your George Foreman RIAA family discount lawsuit settlement. We accept all major credit cards. Get your settlement now and pay nothing for six months. SIX MONTHS!
Se habla español.
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.
Interesting. The Canadian music industry has actually benefitted from downloading. Even my cat knows that an MP3 is not the real thing and Im not planning on shelling out any money for a cd with 1 or 2 good songs. I end up test driving a lot of stuff before surprise, surprise I end up buying it. It just makes sense. This whole thing could have been done differently if the RIAA hadn't listened to the "wisdom" of people like Lars Ulrich. Sell Mp3s super cheap right off the start with a online purchase coupon that gives them a discount on buying the cd copy. Incentive marketing but the RIAA would rather be a fat old dinosaur. And we know what happened to the dinosaurs... Okay Im out of here before that Archangel Michael guy gets all preachy and self-righteous on me. I can already hear him saying "be a good boy and stand in line, individual thought is bad"
It might not be nearly as convenient, but I've been hearing that in the dorms my fellow students are posting the names of songs that they would like to "buy". Some cheap 32-128MB memory tokens float around; discreet messages are sent telling them to keep an eye on "the SanDisk with a sticker on it" or the "green Dell one that has a crack in the casing".
A while back Slashdot posted some articles which confirmed that RIAA's profits were up, but their growth was slower than the rest of the economy so they use that to say their profits are 'down'. I think the last article I saw Slashdot post about it was several months ago.
Buddy you're a boy, make a big noise
Playing music in school, gonna be a big man some day
You got music on myspace
You big disgrace
Kickin your ipod all over the place
We will, we will, sue you
We will, we will, sue you
Buddy you're a young man, pirate man
Shoutin' in the school gonna take on the MAFIAA some day
You got music on myspace
You big disgrace
Wavin' your napster all over the place
We will, we will, sue you
We will, we will, sue you
Buddy you're an old man, poor man
Pleadin' with our lawyers gonna make you pay today
You lost your court case
You big disgrace
The MAFIAA kicked you off of myspace
We will, we will, sue you
We will, we will, sue you
They could just send a letter to every student and figure the ones with guilty consciousness are going to settle. With all the popups I am getting about winning various sweepstakes, it may even be legal.
From TFA, it seems to me that one of the new aspects of this strategy is: So the student gets a letter delivered through the university. It's not clear if some kind of university action is implied or explicity stated in this letter, or if the universities have agreed to cooperate with the RIAA. Either way I bet getting the university to communicate with the student is a way of providing additional leverage. Perhaps now you are not only threatened with financial damage but with your educational status being revoked?
None of this applies to RIAA's actions in this case. Threatening you with a civil suit for the commission of a tort is not a crime; it happens every day.
Threatening you with a civil suit for the commission of a tort is not a crime when all you demand is a cease and desist. Demanding monetary compensation I would think would be a different matter. If not extortion, how about blackmail? "We know you've committed a crime. Pay us to keep quiet about it or we'll see to it that it goes on your criminal record, which you'll have to disclosed to any future employer preventing you from getting any well-paying job in the future."
And such payment won't be legally binding, so they could still press charges, and your payment will be used as evidence of your guilt.
IANAL.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I know what you're talking about, we did that a lot in the 90's and it was a lot more social
meeting face to face with people. And you know you get to meet people and you help them out
and then they help you out.. Like with my notebook lately, it has sometimes problems starting
up with new tunes and a friend of mine will hook it up to his notebook with what I believe is a
starter cable and jumpstart the music machine or the movie engine. Then sometimes its his
laptop that has novelty stalls from time to time and then we hook them together again with the
starter cable.
How long is it going to take before the public has had enough of this garbage and put a stop to it?
it could be stopped tomrrow.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I wonder if students can get financial aid to help with this...
Please share with the poor who will never see this stuff any way. Copying isn't stealing, it's sharing ideas. Don't let these dying businesses try for force their old ways upon you. Make them get with the digital age and employ different business practices if they want to continue to have a business. Of course, even with sharing, as we all see, they will still continue to make millions of dollars from their crappy uncomfortable ad-ridden theaters. Don't let their greed fool you.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Tossing it a free knife set to an angry student who's about to meet with a RIAA lawyer might not be the best idea...
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
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
Ok, I think I can guess the Powerpoint Slide that led to these letters:
1. Get postal addresses of students accross the U.S. via their University
2. Send them pre-lawsuit letters
3. Wait for a fraction of the students to take up the discount offer
4. PROFIT!!
Note the absence of both an ??? and an "prove that the individual is infringing copyright" steps.
"Pirates" can not be blamed for the failure of media companies to adapt to and profit from the Internet.
DRM was an attempt to put the Internet back in the bottle.
People expect to be able to download stuff at a reasonable cost, (and some amount of information people expect for free).
People expect to to their play and copy purchased media without barriers.
College students will "copy tapes", as they have no spare book or beer money to spare. if you use legal threats or take money from them, this will not increase sales, or create new fans.
The story has not changed since the days of Naptser and mp3.com. People would buy DRM-free media over the Internet for a reasonable cost.
But if MAFIAA refuses to sell unencumbered media, it is hard to buy it.
People do not want to go back to CD's and people do not want to go forward with DRM.
Welcome our independent artist labels, err, overlords. Maybe national CD sales aren't down, just "RIAA member" sales are down. I've purchased nothing mainstream for almost a year. I buy all of my CDs straight from the artists. Support your local talent. In New York City Subway, concerts come to you.
We are all just people.
"Threatening you with a civil suit for the commission of a tort is not a crime when all you demand is a cease and desist. Demanding monetary compensation I would think would be a different matter. If not extortion, how about blackmail?"
Listen to the AC; he's right on this one. Settling out of court happens all the time. Even "good" companies and people do it.
The trouble with calling this "blackmail" or "extortion" is there may be a day down the road when you think you've been wronged, or you know you've wronged another person, and settling out of court is the quickest and cheapest way for you to get things right.
""We know you've committed a crime. Pay us to keep quiet about it or we'll see to it that it goes on your criminal record, which you'll have to disclosed to any future employer preventing you from getting any well-paying job in the future."
Huh? I've read TFA; the RIAA isn't threatening (either explicitly or implicitly) to ask the feds to press federal charges in these campus cases. While the amounts of the purported infringement may technically fall into criminal infringement territory, the feds have better things to do; they tend to go after cases where the amount of infringment is in the high five figures and beyond. You know this; I know this; the RIAA knows this and the kids doing the file sharing probably know this.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
The RIAA's Department of Pre-Infringement sends you a letter warning that they know you were planning to infringe and demanding a settlement.
(Oops, I just infringed on the work of Philip K. Dick).
[Insert pithy quote here]
Okay, maybe I'll get modded down for this (or get modded up for writing that old cliche), but what exactly is wrong with this? The RIAA is locating pirates via IP and, instead of suing them, offering them a quick and easy settlement.
Back in 2000 during the Napster lawsuits, every Slashdotter including the editors said the RIAA should go after individual infringers rather than P2P networks. Well, now they're doing that, and you don't like that either. What's changed? Are you just opposed to the RIAA protecting its own intellectual property period?
"Sufferin' succotash."
All this discussion seems to miss the point about what happens if the MPAA actually is successful at stopping downloads of 'product'.
Since all the downloading results from an inability to come to an agreement of what price people will pay to watch MPAA product, then if people can't watch MPAA product then they will watch something else.
MPAA product is in its most basic form a sequence of video images edited together in standard film 'grammar' devised over the past 100 years that tells a standardized story (one of the 100 basic plot variations that literature and drama majors study). That's it. It's what all the fight is about.
The greatest misconception of the MPAA is that they are the ONLY source of quality video entertainment available and that all people will naturally chose to 'steal' their product when given any opportunity and technical means to do so. This is actually true at the present time for most people but will, within a decade, not be true given the incredible advances in video games.
Within a decade, games will cease to be only limited first-person shooters and cartoonish extensions of ZORK-style fantasy scenerios. They will take on the characteristics of MPAA product such as photo-realism, emphatic actors and characters, complex story and plot development, and scene editing that approaches standardized film grammar. Plus they will be fully interactive and allow multiple viewers/players to develop the plot line and dialog with each other. Basically 21st-century interactive synthetic cinema (it doesn't even have a real name yet, except for term 'video games') will be to the 20-century MPAA product what movies are to photographs. A completely different dimension and experience only historically and superficially related to the previous media.
When this begins to happen then the MPAA comporations will really be up shit creek. Because they will have alienated all their potential customers and supporters back when their could-have-been customers were young as a result of their clumsy and repulsive gangster tactics that used on college students back at the beginning of the 21st century. By the time that interactive synthestic cinema begins to really take off, the MPAA will have created such a wall of hatred and repulsion between themselves and their former customer base that they will not be able to make any connection between the corporations that they represent and their former audience. They will be as obsolete as 'white-only' drinking fountains, with the same general public repulsion.
This general extortion campaign directed against college students will eventually backfire in a big way when the MPAA comes to realize that they can't get anyone (except media history majors) to download their precious product. By then it will too late for them.
Ok turn on your mp3 recorder right now and record a copy of your voice.
Start out with this content is copyrighted by "Your Name"
Then you can just spend some time saying la, la, la, la, la, la, la or whatever
trips your trigger. Now put it on a p2p network share folder changing the name to metallica.mp3 or whatever trips your goat. Place a sniffer on the connection, when the goons grab your file
trying to figure out if you are hosting copyrighted tunes you slap them with a big ole fat lawsuit
for copyright infringement.
Got Code?
LOS ANGELES Feb 22, 2007 (AP)-- A man who allegedly uploaded a copy of the film "Flushed Away" onto the Internet after getting a copy from an Oscar voter faces a felony charge.
Salvador Nunez Jr., 27, was charged with copyright infringement and faces up to three years in prison if convicted. He was scheduled to appear in court March 1.
Prosecutors said he obtained a copy of the movie after it was sent in advance to his sister, an Oscar voter and member of The International Animated Film Society.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences received a tip in early January that someone put "Flushed Away" on the Internet, and a digital watermark identified it as an Academy screener film.
When interviewed by FBI agents, Nunez acknowledged he uploaded "Flushed Away" and the Oscar-nominated film "Happy Feet" onto the Internet, court documents said. However, investigators only found a copy of "Flushed Away" in his computer hard drive.
It wasn't immediately known whether Nunez has retained an attorney.
Man Charged With Uploading Movie to Web
There are many points of interest here, but most significantly the feds decision to prosecute the uploader on the felony charge. That would be a first and a major change in policy.
Personal responsibility and ownership of one's actions goes a long way here. Having that fast Internet connection sure makes it tempting to build your music library with P2P, but it's essential to understand the potential consequences and to also understand that you don't need to have that music -- and if you just can't do without music, there are plenty of free and legal sources. Trust me: I got through all seven years of college without once firing up a P2P app. Those kids could have, too.
I can certianly see a few pissed kids wanting to share the damage back to the RIAA. Somehow I see entire external hard drives loaded with MP3s being passed down the dorm hall for everyone to take a copy and add to the library just to spite the RIAA. The sneaker net will be back in full force. I remember those days with 12 inch LP's and cases of blank cassette tapes.
Portable hard drives are like cassette tapes on steroids. I have a 400 gig one. Too bad I'm no longer in a dorm.
The truth shall set you free!
I'd like to see them actually squeeze any money from my broke college ass, it'd be like magic.
It's USENET unfortunate USENET that USENET there's USENET no USENET decentralized USENET content USENET distribution USENET system USENET with USENET practically USENET anonymous USENET access.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I look at it this way:
1. College students as a whole can barely afford books, rent, or food, let alone music.
2. College graduates can afford lots, including lots of music CDs.
3. as a consequence of 1. and 2. it can be said that college students are a tiny market which will become the largest market for premium content, due to their massive disposable income.
4. It seems that because of 3. it is unwise to piss off said demographic.
5. I'm a professional, but I haven't bought a CD (or pirated music -- they don't even deserve mind-share!) in 7 years, because behaviour like this seems unethical to me, and pisses me off.
6. ???
7. Profit!
It's been a long time.
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.
Admit it--you just want to pirate music without any consequences.
Who the hell wouldn't want that? I would like very much to have a complete copy of the sum of human knowledge -- every book, every song, every film, every picture -- at my disposal. And I think that most people would probably like the same. Even if we only used a small fraction of it, it would be a great thing to have. And to get it for free (or nearly so) would be even better, since it's the cost of the thing that is generally the big obstacle to having it.
Are you saying that you don't want a copy of everything there is, for free?
Remember: copyright is like a necessary evil; it does a bad thing (temporarily and partially restricting the free flow of knowledge and culture) for a good reason (to encourage the creation of more knowledge and culture which can be partially shared immediately, and fully shared after a while). If implemented properly, the good outweighs the bad. But copyright is never a tolerable or desirable thing for its own sake, and it is always wrong to support copyright in cases where it would not produce more good results than bad results.
Piracy is basically a good thing (it is the free flow of knowledge and culture) but which can have bad, or more accurately, self-defeating, results (in that it reduces the encouraging effect of copyright). Still, if the good of piracy happened to outweigh the bad -- i.e. if the good of freely flowing information was better than the reduction of encouragement to create -- then piracy would be preferable to copyright.
We don't have to have absolute copyright or absolute piracy. We can vary them. We could arbitrarily say that copyright applied on weekdays, and not on weekends, if we wanted to. If this produced a better outcome than seven days a week of either copyright or piracy, then it would be what we should do (barring something better yet).
So maybe it would be a good idea to allow ordinary individuals, acting non-commercially, to pirate music without consequences, accepting that there would be a bad effect in that less music might get made, and accepting that there might be a good effect in that people would be more free vis-a-vis music, while we still kept copyright for commercial purposes as well as for corporate entities.
Don't dismiss the idea out of hand, and even if you ultimately don't think that it would produce a better outcome than the current system, if you think that there could possibly be any improvement to the current system -- particularly one that people could live with and which they'd be inclined to do anyway, even if there weren't a law about it -- then surely it would be worthwhile to consider it.
To quote George Carlin's description of the current generation: "Gimme that, it's mine! Gimme that, it's mine!"
Meh. I agree, that people are greedy. People who listen to music are greedy, and want free music. People who make music are greedy, and want to be paid for their music. Neither side is good or bad. Copyright, as a utilitarian system, handles this adeptly. The genius of copyright is that you can appeal to the long-term greed of music listeners by getting them to suffer some short-term deprivations, and you can use those deprivations to appeal to the short-term greed of the music creators, who suffer long-term deprivations. Everyone ends up a winner, so long as you do it right. But for decades now, we haven't done it right, and it's getting worse. The reason that piracy wasn't such a big thing in the past is not because people acted differently. People have always acted the same. It's because more things were legal, so the same sort of conduct in the past was unremarkable, while now it is notable. Conduct hasn't changed, but the laws around it have, and not for the better.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Will someone just bitchslap these shitfaced cockmasters with RICO already!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
As much as i hate the RIAA, as i am sure everyone else does....they are using a major loophole with these letters. I'll explain why. First off, if this WAS illegal...the RIAA wouldnt have publicly annouced it...they would have just done it and saw how much money they could make before someone blew the whistle on them. second, the definition of Extortion (accounding to britannica) is as such: Unlawful exaction of money or property through intimidation or undue exercise of authority. It may include threats of physical harm, criminal prosecution, or public exposure. Some forms of threat, especially those made in writing, are occasionally singled out for separate statutory treatment as blackmail. now, the loophole lies in the wording that the RIAA chooses to use. By calling the money they want from the person in question a DISCOUNT makes this not extortion sadly. By saying its a discount, they are saying that the person in question has a choice to pay this fee or not; and if not then they will sue. By definition, extortion is FORCING someone to pay money and/or property...so by calling it a discount gives the user the right to ignore it and take it to court or chose to pay it. In no way is this forcing the Receiver to pay, its giving him a choice to. Thats why these shanangians are legal, as of now. Using a loophole like that is terrible IMO. the fact that the RIAA is targeting specificly college students with this new strategy is extremely shrewed as well. They are targeting college students...not because of the access to broadwith or because The RIAA wants to ruin thier lives...its because they are the most likely to pay this insane fee. Thats right, they are picking on kids that are typically ages 18-23 because they are easy to scare into pay by sending them a possible law suit. On a general role, the average college student music downloader knows nothing about the RIAA and its scare tactics. So imagine you are kid, newly on your own in college...and one day after downloading the entire internet music database...you get a letter of impending legal action from the RIAA. In a huff, you carefully read over the letter hoping that it is a joke. But it isnt...but as luck would have it...the RIAA is offering that you pay a fraction of what they would estimate you'd pay...a god send for the average college student. And college students would pay the few hundread dollars so that they arent sucked into paying awhole lot more. The RIAA pretends to bring down the hammer on the average college students, and uses the fact that most students are either on ficantial aid or their parents money as a legal way to extort them. The RIAA offers a choice, and uses the recievers self-dought to excerise legal extortion. I hope this is stopped, this flagerent disregaurd for fair law must be stopped. But as i see how these letters are worded, and though it seems to be absolutely illegal, i'll bet all my illegally downlaoded music that its 100% legal as of now. I wonder if they would actually persue the people who dont pay if there is enough people that do actually pay up.
Students who don't have the money or time to fight the mafia are a easy target.
"Never say Never."
I wonder if you could fire back a pre-lawsuit threat to countersue them for legal fees and offer to let them settle for a discount...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Are you 1337?
Are you a PIRATE?
Are you a 1337 PIRATE?
If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then 1PAA (1337 PIRATE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
Join 1PAA (1337 PIRATE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time 1PAA member.
1PAA (1337 PIRATE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing 1337 PIRATE community with THOUSANDS of members all over United States of America and the World! You, too, can be a part of 1PAA if you join today!
Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!
* First, you have to obtain a copy of 1337PIRATES FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it. You can download the movie (~130mb) using BitTorrent.
* Second, you need to succeed in posting a 1PAA First Post on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website.
* Third, you need to join the official 1PAA irc channel #1PAA on irc.1paa.us, and apply for membership.
Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today! Upon submitting your application, you will be required to submit links to your successful First Post, and you will be tested on your knowledge of 1337PIRATES FROM OUTER SPACE.
If you are having trouble locating #1PAA, the official 1337 PIRATE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is pirateNET, and you can connect to irc.1paa.us as our official server. Follow this link if you are using an irc client such as mIRC.
If you have mod points and would like to support 1PAA, please moderate this post up.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Apart from the answers listed above, I would like to point out that the current legal atmosphere is in favour of the guy with the deep pockets.
If you get sued by the RIAA and you go to court, there is a chance that you'll win. This will cost you a lot (a LOT) of money and time, sometimes even years of your life. Sometimes you'll get cost awarded to you as in a recent case, but the RIAA will appeal, taking more time and more money. If you win without being awarded legal costs, you will most likely have spent more money than the RIAA was going to settle for.
Then there's the chance that you'll lose, and you'll have to pay everything the RIAA asked for, plus your legal cost and if you're very unlucky theirs as well (I think, IANAL).
So, basically, going to court will cost you, even if you win.
The RIAA knows this. That's why it's a little cynical that they're offering a "discount" now, don't you think?
And this is to enforce the law? Aren't there laws against doing such things?
Furthermore, what shitty evidence is an IP address. IP addresses do not equal individuals, for several reasons.
Gizmodo is calling for a one-month boycott of the RIAA sponsoring music labels: Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal, and Sony BMG. Don't buy anything during March 2007 to let them know what you think of these tactics.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.