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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."
Demanding money with an accompanying threat is still EXTORTION, whether there's an actual lawsuit or not.
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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.
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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".
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.
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?
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.
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.
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."
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.
That's why Microsoft is going to enforce an environment where all music and possible "Premium Content" has to be vetted by someone who has legitimately bought governance like the music industry. If you can't afford to buy the government then you should pay like the good little serf you are.
The point of your post is well taken but I see it from a different direction.
The problem with the media industry's heavy handed approach to copyright, puts
a damping effect on anyone who actually wants his copyrighted work to be freely
distributed. Part of the reason for this is that the idea has been firmly ingrained
in the minds of millions that "copyright" means "illegal to copy or distribute", which
is not always the case. Copyright and controls on distribution are related but not the same.
Also, people tend to assume that "copyrighted material" refers only to those items represented
by large corporate entities, and that individual works (insofar as people realize these even exist),
do not carry the same protections. Finally, the actions of the media industry puts a cloud of doubt
on the distribution channels themselves. The very protocols become synonymous with "stealing". This
definitely creates a chilling effect for anyone who would like to take advantage of those distribution
channels for purposes that are 100% legal.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
as long as it takes the geek to admit that he isn't entitled to everything that isn't nailed down.
the divide between town and gown is an old one, of course.
off-campus, no one cries in their beer when a free-loading student with time on his hands, a pricey computer and unlimited bandwidth has to cough up some cash or forfeit some privileges.
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.
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?
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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?