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Judge Deals Blow to RIAA
jcgam69 writes "A federal judge in New Mexico has put the brakes on the RIAA's lawsuit train, at least in the US District Court for New Mexico. The case in question is part of the RIAA's campaign against file-sharing on college campuses and names "Does 1-16," who allegedly engaged in copyright infringement using the University of New Mexico's network. In a ruling issued last month but disclosed today by file-sharing attorney Ray Beckerman, Judge Lorenzo F. Garcia denied the RIAA's motion to engage in discovery. This means that the RIAA will not be able to easily get subpoenas to obtain identifying information from the University."
Yeah well, California legalized pot and we saw how that caught on...
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Where the RIAA goes from here. They have managed over the last couple of years to really put the screws to people by skirting various legal and technical constraints. If this were to hold up they would have to engage in litigation more the way that normal organizations do it.
I imagine that they'll probably appeal until they get their way, but that won't be cheap for anybody. The best thing that the RIAA could do for themselves is actually follow the procedural rules, as in the long term a witch hunt only lasts as long as there are angry villagers to burn the resulting witch.
Instead of paying RIAA money by the shovel, the labels should wake up and realize the utter futility of RIAA and stop paying their lawyers.
Instead the labels can put more effort into a more generous licensing model, pay artists slightly more, and release tracks as MP3 in iTunes.
They could also try to identify real talent (Nor Ashlee) and promote them free of cost until the artist wants to sign an agreement.
The labels should wake up to the reality that paying lawyers shitload of money does not mean they win every lawsuit.
Spend on the money on identifying new lines of operations, and promoting music (schools concerts, etc) and STOP insisting on getting paid each time i sing a tune in the bathroom.
Labels: The more your RIAA goons try to restrict us, the more customers you are losing to emusic.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
So did the Judge get busted for selling cocaine to the RIAA, or did the RIAA get busted for buying it?
There is now a way to fight back! Now that the common user has a method of defense, there is opportunity to to take the RIAA down. Though, unless other judges take some similar course of action, there is little opportunity for hope. Another antiRIAA motion set forth!
That oughta slow our Corporate Masters down for at least a second or two.
... finally a judge that is requiring the RIAA to follow the law and due process.
One more nail in the RIAA's coffin - the question is what type of backlash can others (music buyers, other "potential infringers", artists, etc) expect now that it is getting harder and harder for the RIAA to conduct "Business As Usual"?
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
1. nobody attended the court to hear the motion being ruled upon
2. nobody read the court filings after the ruling
3. nobody bothered to get a transcript of the trial to see what happened.
In other words, the trial wasn't all that important to [news organizations].
And why wait a month to 'disclose' the ruling?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Wait - judges aren't allowed to deal blow, least of all to the RIAA
I applaud the judge, but until then, maybe we'll all just have to buy one of these- perhaps they'll make one for the rectum as well.
It would really be nice is the states made the feds prove the pot in question crossed state lines. If not, it's not a federal issue. irregardless* of what I think, the states pretty much roll over for the feds.
* I kid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This isn't a blow for RIAA in any way. This is a win for a fairer usage of legal system to punish copyright offenders.
The issue in question is the abuse of the discovery process by the MAFIAA -- they use subpoenas to get identities without the people involved knowing about it; they then then proceed to racket the people directly by offering them a 'cheap' settlement without giving the people a chance to mount defense.
The ruling only says that MAFIAA has to work out a process with the university to allow people to contest the subpoenas before their identities are revealed. This seems only fair, and it is not a blow, but a remedy instead.
If someone is caught violating the law, defend themselves, lose and are found guilty -- or decide to settle out -- things still work as intended, only they get a chance to be informed and contest charges.
Of course and as usual, the MAFIAA has the audacity to say informing people about the subpoenas is doing 'irreparable harm' to them. Yep, sure it does, since it would require them pony up some proof instead of racket.
To which the judge notes that RIAA will not suffer 'irreparable harm' because of that, since if they can produce proof they can still sue for damages and collect.
So, i don't see any victims in this ruling.
It's nice to see a judge applying some common sense to these RIAA fishing expeditions. You know what would be nicer? If the universities showed some spine. Something along the lines of: "Our students pay $x thousand per year to attend our institution. They entrust us with their future, their physical well-being, and every single piece of personal information they have. We have an obligation not to allow every scum-sucker who wants a piece of them to abuse that unique relationship." (As a public institution, UNM could also add something like, "The citizens of the great state of New Mexico do not allocate a substantial portion of their money to us so that ..." etc.) Honestly, if universities didn't knuckle under as easily as they do, most of these cases would probably never make it to court -- or if they did, it would be the RIAA vs. universities instead of individual students, which would at least be something closer to a fair fight.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
... in the long term a witch hunt only lasts as long as there are angry villagers to burn the resulting witch.
Actually, witch hunts (at least the "Spanish Inquisition" kind) worked by targeting the deep-pocketed serfs and, once they were convicted, splitting their assets between the church's witch hunters and the local governmental nobles. (That's why they didn't get going very well in England - where the swag would all go to the King.)
Similarly the RIAA witchhunt will continue until either the RIAA can't profit from it or the courts (the "governmental nobles") stop allowing it.
(Remember, too, that the RIAA can profit from it by dunning its members, even if it's not making money off the accused. The members may go along with that, thinking that the witch hunt is profiting THEM some other way - such as by diverting some fraction of music users from "pirated-content" downloaders to purchasers.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The article mentions a New York judge that ruled the opposite way in a similar case. Pardon my ignorance, but can anyone explain exactly how it's deemed even mildly legal for the RIAA to file suits against individuals and have motions against them when they're not allowed to face their accuser due to secrecy? This seems like an open and shut case to me.
So did the Judge get busted for selling cocaine to the RIAA, or did the RIAA get busted for buying it?
Unlike ISPs, which have either knuckled under or put up a very weak defense of their users, the university-as-ISP decided to put some effort into defending its students' interests against the RIAA.
For-profit ISPs have little to lose (beyond their own inconvenience) in handing over logs, and each customer represents a very small revenue stream. Bean counters might decide that failing to defend them costs the ISP little, while defending them costs more than they can ever recoup from that customer's fees.
Universities have a lot invested in each student and receive a lot from each in the form of tutition and various grant monies, along with other rewards from their success. And they have a lot to lose in other intangibles (such as security of their papers, reputation when recruiting students, staff, and faculty, etc.) So letting students swing in the wind is not just a bad idea academic-freedom wise, it's bad financially as well. (Doubly so if the RIAA's target is a faculty member, staffer, or administrator. Letting one of those get hit, or even distracted, by an RIAA suit comes right out of the University's "intellectual capital".)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You know what would be nicer? If the universities showed some spine. ... "They entrust us with their future, their physical well-being, and ... personal information ... We have an obligation not to allow every scum-sucker who wants a piece of them to abuse that unique relationship."
AIUI that's exactly what the University did, which is what got this decision from the court.
If the ISPs had shown similar spine the RIAA would have hit this wall long ago.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... file-sharing attorney...
Yo, Ray! Stop sharing those files, you rascal!
Only on topics as insane as the RIAA do one word comments get moderated insightful ...
I wonder if the judge was more concerned about the RIAA going after various John Does in Albuquerque, or Debbie Does Dallas?
Indeed.
(...that was my attempt at getting some "Insightful" points)
Isn't it usually, "Judge blows RIAA"?
Judge Garcia: WHAT?!? We'll see about that...
...file-sharing attorney Ray Beckerman... Ray Beckerman shares files! It must be true, I read it on Slashdot!You're using her as bait, Master!
One day, maybe the RIAA will realise that The Dave Matthews Band just isn't worth all that trouble protecting.
Oooh, or even better: what if we continue to see mergers between broadband providers and content providers (AOL/Time Warner anyone) and they combine forces to actually monitor what you're doing and lock it out when it's clear you're sharing music illegaly. Or, less obviously big brother, couple purchases of legal media with bandwidth restrictions. Idea: You have purchased The Matrix from iTunes. YOu are now authorized for 2 GB of additional high-speed bandwidth this month to download it. When you're done we will throttle your quota/connection speed back to the apporpriate level for general browsing. "Unlimited" service would then become VERY expensive (unaffordable for students maybe) in an effort to reap percieved losses by charging higher subscriptions. Keep it up, you'll see. . .
I hope in the future that you
will break
paragraphs
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
that's not what its meant to be used for
The RIAA is not the government. They do not dole out authority; we, the consumer, do. I am perfectly willing to pay for my music. I will not, however, pay the RIAA. The fewer artists who sign to the RIAA, the more artists go independent, which leaves more artists I can buy music from and feel good about it. When I buy music from these artists, I know they're getting money. I know I'm paying the money to a free man or woman, not one who sold their life into indentured servitude. I know they're making more then 2% of the money I pay them, I know they're not driving down other independent artists with legal action. As a consumer, I don't care whether they like the way I behave. If I do something illegal, I would, in fact, expect the law to be enforced. There is nothing, however, which forces a false choice of "buy RIAA, never listen to music, or commit copyright infringement." The RIAA is not the only organization which deals in music, as much as they'd like to be. Have you ever seen http://wwww.magnatune.com/ or http://www.emusic.com? Many independent artists are even sold on Amazon! Payola, questionable lobbying regarding copyright extension, and illegitimate tactics regarding lawsuits (including the prosecution of those who were either known (or should have been known) known to be not guilty along with those suspected to be) make the RIAA the problem, not the solution.
That's the most horrendous story of judicial misconduct I have ever read since this story! I mean a JUDGE! Dealing Blow!!! To the RIAA of all people? I mean, did they find out where he was getting it? Was it any good?
(Yes, this is probably the worst mis-read headline ever! Muhahaha!)
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0624041pump1. html
The link didn't work... I wonder why? There was supposed to be a link to the story indicated above where "this story" is written...
As soon as the distribution monopolies are broken, we have the possibility of thousands of talented musician's work getting out. Right now RIAA essentially suppresses thousands of musicians to create an artificially small supply.
Too many performers-- equals too small of an audience per performer.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
There will be no appeal. This is No Big Deal(tm) and TFA is making a mountain out of a molehill.
... RIAA proceeds with demand letters and litigation
... RIAA proceeds with demand letters and litigation
Current system:
==================
RIAA files suit against a bunch Does on the same ISP
RIAA: ISP (college) give us the ID of the account holders of these IPs
ISP: OK, here.
New Mexico System:
==================
RIAA files suit against a bunch Does on the same ISP
RIAA: ISP (college) give us the ID of the account holders of these IPs
ISP: Not without notice being given to the customers
COURT: Ya'll cooperate on a way to give notice, or I'll do it for you
RIAA sends one subpoena per IP/Date to Court, Court orders ISP to either give the subpoenas to customer, or give the Court the customer info so the court can serve it.
Customers can hire attorney to fight turning over account info.
Customers lose fight over being identified by ISP records, and ISP has to hand them over to RIAA
The next to the last step is key. If you have evidence that indicates someone may have committed a tortious injury against you (i.e. copyright infringement) you have the right to force a third party to identify that person. With copyright infringement, the screenshots the RIAA has are enough to justify examining the hard drive of the defendant to see if the files with those names, do indeed contain copyrighted content of the plaintiff. As noted before, the screenshots are not enough to WIN the suit, but they ARE enough to justify discovery and deposing the defendants.
Coke is it.
Someone hates these cans.
Suck my ass. you lily-livered, little, sniveling shit. There's always a pompous little twit who has to run to the defense of moral monsters with the old "Two wrongs ..." horseshit.
Put your pusillanimous effort into causing the monsters to cease their destructive (even if legal, as opposed to moral) behavior and the low-grade secondary wrong will go away for lack of a target.
As for the spirit of the law, think about the smug sons of bitches who, with their bare faces hanging out, respond to the constitutional reference to limited copyright with their cynical, "Lifetime plus seventy years is a limit, is it not?"
I say again, suck my ass.
The MAFIAA tactic is to threaten to sue, extortion being the common term for this. What they ought to do is get their proof in the form of connection logs, etc, either sue a John Doe and win and then find out the identity, or show some sort of probable cause and let the university / ISP privately contact the John Doe, who could then hire a lawyer to fight, anonymously, disclosure of the logs.
Infuriate left and right
The argument that DRM treats the consumer like a criminal is true and I agree
Does that conflict at all with the philosophy of "innocent until proven guilty"?
You're a bag of dicks. "bait" or-switch... which one is this?
Think of it this way: In 70 years, it will be legal to crack hd-dvd and bluray for some titles in production, but *illegal* to publish the details on how to rip HD copies produced one year later. Not a misdemeanor, it's a crime. In the event that the BD or HD associations go more than a year without revoking keys, it would be illegal to publish a key for some works, but public domain for others.
Also, Disney fought for the copyright extension. They based a large portion of their catalogue on expired works. They even waited, if I remember correctly, until Jungle Book expired to bring it to the screen. And the motion picture industry got its start by moving to hollywood, as far away as possible from the inventor of the motion picture technology on whose IP they would have to pay copyright.
The whole industry is based on violation or avoidance of copyright/patent.
When that dude in the movie intros tell me not to steal cos he's a stunt dude, I remind him that every other industry allows for test drives, even software. But movies don't. You got to buy it and like it, cos there ain't no returns, even if the movie sucks. And by "sucks" I mean, the best part was in the trailers.
Dickbag.
In the US constitution, citizens have the right to face their accusers in court. If the judge had allowed the trial to proceed without the Does being identified, those actual persons accused would essentially have been on trial without their knowledge, until they learned that they in fact were one of the Does in the case.
Finally, a story in the media where the little guy gets the protections that the constitution specifies! Thank $_deity.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Whatever their tactic may be in general, this order was issued as part of an actual lawsuit, Capitol Records, Inc., et al. v. Does 1-16, Civil No. 07-485 WJ/LFG (D. N.M.). The order is available online, for instance. Note the language "Plaintiffs, companies who own copyrights in various sound recordings, bring an action against unnamed Defendants, Does 1-16, for copyright infringement."
The mistake you're making is imagining the RIAA is some sort of independent body that record labels pay, and the RIAA is busy on their behalf doing stuff that is just done with so much as a phone call.
In fact, there is no difference between the RIAA and the record labels. They are the same. The RIAA is essentially a beard for the record labels so that you say "those bastards at the RIAA, they're suing the children". Meanwhile, the lawsuits are the creation of the record labels completely.
To put it another way, the RIAA won't sneeze without specific instructions from the record labels.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
(...that was my attempt at getting some "Insightful" points) Pthbbbt!
(What do I get for a no-word comment?)
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber" -- Plato
You are really bad at writing haikus, you know. This is why you fail.
Perhaps we object to its mission. Or perhaps just its tactics. Either way, the objection needs to be evaluated on its own regardless of the tactics of file sharers.
Oh, if they want to play in the technical arena, they have every right to be creative. They'll lose, of course -- which is why they don't want to play in that court exclusively anymore. When they start playing in the LEGAL arena, their "creativity" is something else entirely -- it's promotion and institutionalization of injustice.
Like most RIAA apologists, you've got the order backwards. The Draconian and strange moves on the industry's part which really make it hard for everyone -- Serial Copy Management System (which killed DAT) and the DMCA -- came BEFORE Napster. Ante hoc ergo non propter hoc.
As long as the RIAA (and MPAA) have the power to make things crimes -- and they do, no question about it -- their complaining about criminal behavior is simply a demand for obedience.
I think it's interesting how people work hard to find ways to circumvent copy protection, move files in sureptitious ways that violate the spirit of the law, but not the law itself, to avoid being sued, disabling logs so you can't track who visited a site, etc., to cover up the true behavior which is illegal file sharing.
However, despite this you blast RIAA anytime it tries a new way of getting at the information it needs to proceed with its mission of preventing file sharing. I don't agree with all their tactics, but if a file sharer has the right to get creative and try things, why shouldn't they?
I agree with a lot of you about fair use. I like having my music on a server so I can get to it wherever I am. But I think we all know that people who put their music on-line (maybe even passowrd protected) for their own use and prevent others from copying it is really the minority and the bulk of the traffic, torrents, etc., is really people just stealing music. You have a file (video, music, whatever) that you didn't pay for? It's wrong, regardless if you can prove through legal loopholes that the way you did it isn't illegal, or that you did it in a way that couldn't be tracked.
Trying to constantly one-up 'the man' by cracking all encryption, circumventing logs, etc., in the pursuit of acquiring that which you didn't pay for is wrong and to persist in this will one day result in some very draconion or strange move on the industry's part that will really make it hard for everyone. Remember when Mom &/or Dad said, "Well, if you can't be trusted with that responsibilty then we'll just take it away altogether." It'll probably have initial effects we don't predict. Example: The loss in revenue and pressure from stock holders results in music companies only signing the most popular acts who generate such volume that even with illegal downloading they'll generate enough revenue anyway. This would result in more 'watered down cookie cutter' type artists or groups that have the widest appeal and shutout creative and experimental artists trying something new (you like your up-and-coming indepedent artists too right?). We could enter an 'Orwellian' era where the only options are American Idol winners and runners up stocking the shelves. For access you could imagine something where they goto a streaming-on-demand model involving subscriptions or pay-to-play, perhaps encrypting them with some kind of time-sensitive key, rather than letting you get files or even CDs, or giving you files but tying them to a USB dongle with your permissions on it. I realize these technical hurdles I toss out might all be solvable by good hackers, but the idea is to point out that there may be some model that allows them to generate revenue while also reallly hampering file loading.
The argument that DRM treats the consumer like a criminal is true and I agree. But if you keep behaving in a criminal way. . .
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
My name is John Doe, you insensitive clod.
Unlike ISPs, which have either knuckled under or put up a very weak defense of their users, ... RIAA v. Verizon.
Good point. Make that "Unlike most ISPs...".
Rah, Verizon!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If you f..kers put HALF as much time into discussing the SUBJECT as you put into your mental masturbations on irrelevant side topics, /. would be a HELL of a lot better place.
I don't believe it!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's not just that they file a John Doe suit, it's that they join dozens or even hundreds of unrelated parties into a single lawsuit. The one and only basis for that is that all the Does in that lawsuit share the same ISP, which is not, to my non-lawyerly knowledge, a permissible reason for joining parties according to the FRCP. One Texas judge ordered them to put a stop to that very practice of "defrauding" the state of its rightful filing fees, yet the practice continues in other venues.
:-) For all I know, I'll end up being one of the Does by mistake someday (I don't listen to or like their crappy music, why on earth would I waste HD space on it?). I'd like to say that might even make them waste a little money responding or objecting to it, but I bet they'd make a form letter brief to reply to them if anyone made a habit of it...
Also, even once they have someone's identity, they've been known to play tricks with John Doe suits. I believe that, in the case of Mr. Merchant, he retained a lawyer and they offered to make his hard drive available, but only to outside counsel. The RIAA withdrew that lawsuit before they filed an answer in court (you can do that, it's a free pass to get out of court) and filed another John Doe suit in an attempt to get his hard drive directly, where they could have in-house people fish through it at will. By virtue of that being a John Doe suit, they meant to keep his lawyer out of the courtroom, preventing the counsel they knew he had from responding to their dirty tactics.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that although John Doe suits are perfectly normal, the way the RIAA uses them is not. They use pretty much any trick they think they can get away with, however dirty, even if it's contrary to the law. And when they pull these tricks, they try to make sure that no one is able to object.
To be honest, it tempts *me* to do things that I sincerely doubt are well supported by any laws at all. For example, can you file amicus briefs in random John Doe suits pointing out that Texas case? I have no idea, and incredibly dubious, but it might be worth the price of a stamp, especially because I could ask that the judge give those facts judicial notice even if the amicus itself was thrown in the trash... The other trick might be doing so anonymously. Can you even file an amicus anonymously? I haven't the foggiest. But I'm pretty sure I could just not sign my name. And I'm also pretty sure I could sign it "John Doe" out of an abundant sense of irony
Of course, these things being done ex parte also makes it pretty hard for me to find out about them before they're over...
Otherwise I'd be correct, but since I'm not, I owe you an apology. You'll probably have to sue to actually collect, though. Nyaah nyaah :-)
Infuriate left and right
Maybe the word is in the dictionary... but you still sound ignorant when you use a word which comes from a comedy show (where it was designed to make somebody look like a yokel).
No sig today...
Are the addresses for judges freely availiable in the US? Work address should do fine, no need for personal.
When reading this, I just kept thinking to myself: What if lots of people that are against RIAA tactics sat down and wrote a short letter each? Some positive words showing him that this is an issue that people actually care about. It's obvious that there are a lot of supporters on the net.
BTW, how many praise-letters does a judge need before it itself would become a news item?
I lost my sig.
It is a blow because their whole scheme relies on being able to make this happen easily and cheaply. They need to be able to easily identify people based on very shaky evidence, and bully them in to settling. They cannot afford to have to go through a real trial in each case. Despite what they like to pretend, they are not losing millions of dollars per person, and the people they sue don't have that kind of money. Plus, if they start losing cases, that sets legal precedent and can make future cases that much harder. So for this to keep working they need things fast and easy.
A big part of that is easy discovery. They need to be able to just hand the court a list of John Doe suits with IPs and demand that ISPs hand over subscriber info with no argument. If they have to actually go through the proper proceedings it may become quickly not worth their time, especially since they are likely going to need to get better evidence beforehand.
These are not solid lawsuits we are talking here, hence why they've never actually won a suit (at least not that I am aware of). They've bullied plenty of people in to settling, and dropped suits that went to trial, but they've never actually argued in court and won. They'd do it, if it was a strong, legit case but it isn't.
Hence this IS a blow to them.
Maybe misread but hey, one may dream, ok?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You have a file (video, music, whatever) that you didn't pay for? It's wrong...
Says who? The law? The law also said some time ago that I may buy and sell people of black skin color, that I may shoot native americans on sight, that I must not sell, own or drink liquor and many other things that I wouldn't consider too legal (or relevant) today. If you move out of the US (there are parts of the US legal system that I'm not too sure of, so let's continue with old Europe), there were laws concerning torture and how to apply it legally, homosexuality was illegal and it was (and afaik still is in the UK) high treason to burn paper money. Not to mention that according to a still existing law, the male population between the ages of 14 and 60 have to gather after mass under the observation of the clergy to fire arrows into the countryside, using a bow. I don't even own one anymore!
There've always been pointless, senseless or outright insane laws, there've always been laws that had little to no support in the general population and there have always been laws that we, looking back from our vantage point of today, deem horrible. Yet still, they existed and were valid, often also executed.
In a free country, laws rely on the support of the population for them. Laws that are not supported by the majority require a dictatorship and vast resources to be controlled to be forced upon the subjects. Many countries already fell over their laws, and the fact that their subjects did not support the laws and thus required an incredible amount of resources to be wasted on their enforcement.
Copyright laws in their current state fit into this.
Our current copyright laws enjoy no general support. Laws are generally far more successful if they do. If you know a murderer, would you turn him in? Even if it was your best buddy? He killed a human being! If you see someone shoot someone else, would you call the cops? I'm fairly sure, the majority of people would answer yes in all cases. Murder is something we do care about, something we generally consider a crime and something we want the culprit to do time (or get killed in return) for.
Now how about illegal file trading. Would you turn your buddy in? Hell, would you turn a stranger in? Do you care?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Universities have a lot invested in each student and receive a lot from each in the form of tutition and various grant monies, along with other rewards from their success. And they have a lot to lose in other intangibles (such as security of their papers, reputation when recruiting students, staff, and faculty, etc.) So letting students swing in the wind is not just a bad idea academic-freedom wise, it's bad financially as well.
There's also the possibility that a university student could have easier access to legal advice than a member of the general public.
Paying for something is to me more a sign that the payer thinks the receiver of the payment is "worthy" of it. That he "earned" it. And that decision should be in the customer's hand, not the seller's. I agree, mostly. Except the seller determines the price at which they feel their job is worth their time. The buyer agrees that the price is worth paying to have something done better and faster. Now, all that being said, entertainment doesn't fit my argument horribly well. The nature of putting a price on entertainment is so much more subjective to the buyer.
Please tell me if I've made errors in my assumptions; I'm kinda stuck with my point of view until someone shows me another one.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
In order for it to be money out of anybody's pocket, they would first have to prove in court that I would have in fact purchased the content had I not been able to download it. I'm willing to bet that at least some people who download files (music, movies) are too broke to buy them all. How can they say that they are "loosing money"? Prove that there would have been a sale had the download not been there, or else shush and stay out of courts of law please.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Exactly- I protest the legal way. I refuse to support the American record industry. I buy Japanese music instead (mmm- love that J-pop). (Note- Sony BMG is not the same as Sony Music Japan; Sony Music Japan stopped using DRM quite some time before the Sony BMG rootkit fiasco because they realized that it's not a good idea to mistreat customers, while Sony BMG... yeah- that rootkit DRM blew up in their faces)
OSx86 FTW
if it's trash, it's trash at any price. this concept of "i'll pay what i want" for a good simply doesn't work in reality. until the law says otherwise i say these people should go to jail as criminals and if you download music illegally you should go to jail too.
I'm not going to come out and say my music collection is 100% legal, but it's closer than most. My question is, if all these songs are broadcast on open air, and everyone has recorders and radios, how much legal difference is there? I may not have recorded a song off the radio, what if I get a copy from someone that did? The song's available, we just choose a different way to get it. I'm not wanting to bring in the fact that radio releases and cd releases aren't the same, or the people that download mp3's and use them commercially, just wondering about the legality of someone who rips from the radio all day long, and the guy next to him who has the same legal right, but doesn't put in the effort, and instead just copies from someone who did. Maybe copying from the radio is illegal (crappy quality anyway)...
More importantly, universities like New Mexico are public institutions. They have a greater responsibility to protect sensitive information of individuals than private institutions. Especially since they also have access to more sensitive information than an ISP.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Spelling "lose" with two Os is incredibly stupid, since "lose" and "loose" are two entirely different verbs, one meaning "to suffer the deprivation of" (lose) and one meaning "to set free" (loose).
The reason slashdotters think "loose" and "lose" are synonyms is that when you're running Linux and somebody trips over the power cord, in most distros Linux will check the disks and file systems when the power comes back on. If it finds an error it will offer to fix the error while warning "you may loose data."
However, the useage in that context is (kindasorta) correct: "you may be throwing away data". Setting it free, so to speak. Of course, since the Linux kernel and many distros come from places where English isn't a first language, it's likely that the error message is in fact an error rather than deliberate.
In short, I've never seen a looser set of losers. As to this fellow's comments, I spell it "blagh".
-mcgrew
My sleep-addled brain parsed it as "Judge Deals to Blow RIAA."
Coffee. Must have coffee.
"Oh boy! Are we going to try something dangerous?"
You're making the assumption that everyone the RIAA pursues is guilty, and that's not even close to being the case. The RIAA gets its list of names by shaking down ISPs. These ISPs aren't getting paid to do the extra work of tracking people down, so they're not going to invest the time to make sure they're right. They just put up a list of names of their customers and throw a dart. Who cares if they're wrong, it's the customer's problem. They can afford to lose a customer here and there if it gets the RIAA off their back cheap.
"I don't agree with all their tactics, but if a file sharer has the right to get creative and try things, why shouldn't they?"
Because two wrongs don't make a right, and because most of the people they're pursuing aren't file sharers.
But if you keep behaving in a criminal way. . .
Most people are not.
> Too many performers-- equals too small of an audience per performer.
Not true. If only X number of people could listen to a particular song and _only_ that particular song, then, maybe, this would be true. But the total number of people who can listen to an artist is, essentially, only bound by the number of people in existence, in perpetuity, hence, unlimited (until the Big Collapse).
My son had a band, and we'd - I'm using the plural sense because I paid for the equipment, drove them to the site, set things up, etc., so it was a shared effort, even if I didn't play an instrument - sometimes do shared gigs with other bands. Sometimes band members look at other bands and get competitive, as if the other band were stealing fans from them. But that's not true. Just think how many artists you like, and how many you could _theoretically_ like: it's unlimited. As long as I have money to buy their songs - or, even better, listen to them for free on the radio, which is, admittedly, a whole 'nother box of worms - I can listen to as many bands as I want. There really is little to no competition between bands. If one band has a catchy tune, there's nothing to stop another band from creating an equally catchy tune, and there's nothing to stop me from listening to both of 'em. It's all good. Anyone saying that creative talent is a finite resource is misguided. Technically, it may be true, since there are only 3.something billion people on the planet, but, pragmatically speaking, it's unlimited.
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
This is specious reasoning. I wasn't arguing the law, I said it's wrong to obtain the efforts of someone else's work for free. File sharing says, almost at its core, that the result of a person's efforts (say the artist in this case) has no right to compensation for the enjoyment of their work and that it essentially becomes public property. I understand that there are some artists, especially new ones, who will distribute their work for free to get initial notice, but eventually they will want to be paid for their efforts (cuz' they have bills to pay too). As implemented, copyright law is flawed, agreed, but I was making more of the argument that obtaining materials you didn't pay for isn't ethical and you don't have a right to other people's work, even if you do have the skills and ability to take it.
Somehow I misread that as "Judge Gives Blow Job to RIAA".
hmm, well that explains a lot.
I am of the opinion that when people mechanically regurgitate the often repeated wisdom that time equals money, they are all too often implying something other than what such an equation states on its face. I am afraid we are seeing that happen in this thread.
If it were really true that time and money were equivalences and that one could be exchanged for the other in some fixed precise measure, then people who say that time is money would be quite satisfied to recieve time rather than money as a form of payment.
Of course it's quite simple to see that this is not what people mean when they say that time is equal to money. So what do people really mean when they repeat this aphoristic phrase? My opinion is that what a person usually intends the audiance to accept is that, in fact, money is more valuable than time. I can imagine a situation in which this phrase makes perfect sense indeed.
Take this example as an illustration of how the phrase might be used with great effect. Let us imagine a person being paid for their time through some contract such as an hourly laborer. If the laborer was taking a nap while on the clock and the manager noticed, the manager might quite naturally accuse the laborer of cheating on the contract by not maximizing the efficiency of his work time. The manager might effectively admonish the worker by giving him a good shake and saying --"wake up you good for nothing, time is money!" In such a case, clearly the real meaning is that the money is what is important and the real message is that the manager's money is more important than the worker's time. In this case, it does make sense that by wasting time one is also wasting money.
But, that is a very specific case. We cannot generalize the logic of this phrase into a broad law governing the universal relations between time and money. That would be fallacious logic and certainly only a fool would fall into such a simple minded trap.
Let there be no doubt, language is a slippery thing. It is but a minor sin when analogies appropriate in one situation might be sloppily redirected into another where they are no longer of use. But it is no longer a minor sin when those inappropriate and poorly considered usages become the basis of heated self-righteous rhetoric. The more so when this ill founded false logic becomes the justification for vicious, tyranical and oppressive behavior.
Let me clarify how I reach that conclusion by taking the example of the present debate. Here we're seeing debaters take the position that people who "create" ideas need to be paid money in