Slashdot Mirror
Lawyer Asks RIAA To Investigate Bush Twins
tanman writes "After reading an article in the Miami Herald that said "[President] Bush's twin daughters gave him a CD they had made for him to listen to while exercising," a Florida lawyer calculated statutory damages of $1.8 million and has sent a letter to the RIAA asking that they 'display the same vigor in prosecuting this matter and protecting the rights of your rights-holders that it has displayed in enforcing those rights against other alleged violators.' From the letter: 'This is a serious violation of copyright. As you know, whichever of your member organizations that are right[s]-holders for the copied musical works may be entitled to statutory damages of $150,000.00 per musical work copied.'" Update: 06/22 18:55 GMT by KD : The lawyer in question has retracted his analysis and now says no laws were broken, probably.
Hold on - I think slashdot is b0rking them...
/ 06/copyright-is-dead.htmll ogspot.com/2007/06/copyright-is-dead-part-2.html
http://the_scrivener.blogspot.com/2007
http://the_scrivener.b
Yep, it is. There should be an underscore between 'the' and 'scrivener'. slashdot seems to be filtering that out for some reason, so I'm posting as "code" - you'll have to cut'n'paste links.
Have fun,
Nathan 'Nato' Uno
http://web.unos.net/
"There is a common practice in law these days called "selective prosecution"..."
You make it sound like this practice is considered legitimate by the Courts. In fact, if you can show evidence that you are being arbitrarily prosecuted and there isn't a legitimate justification, it is grounds in some courts, to have the entire proceedings Stayed as an 'abuse of process'. You must be harmed to bring a civil action. If you have no problem allowing others to infringe on your copyright, then there is reasonable grounds to believe it isn't really a harm. Under English Common law the Court has the power and responsibility to prevent any abuse of the judicial system. Treating individual offenders differently simply because they are a celebrity or politician or the President's daughter (etc) is such an abuse. In fact, not prosecuting the President's daughter may almost be seen as some kind of a bribe or attempt to improperly influence the Executive Branch.
A plaintiff with limited resources is justified in selectively prosecuting simply because they can't possibly go after everyone at once so have to choose their battles. This is not considered arbitrary, but it is a rational, and necessary evil. But the RIAA can hardly claim they lack the resources to prosecute the President's daughter when they are going after John Doe's, who for all they know, are dead broke.
Now perhaps this selective prosecution takes place behind the scenes where no one is looking. (I think we all know it does). But the courts have no power over what happens outside the court room where there is no evidence. It falls upon witnesses to bring evidence forward.
In this case there is evidence. The president himself has publically stated his daughter is guilty of making and distributing pirate music CD. I think that is actually a criminal offense now, is it not?
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Yep. You are exactly right. Except you can't distribute your mix tape under that.
An excellent point. Which is why the RIAA doesn't actually litigate against people for *making copies*, which is protected behavior. Unprotected behavior includes *distributing* those copies. In a general sense, in the United States at least, distributing five or fewer copies of a song is protected by such things as (ta-da!) the Audio Home Recording Act. Massive distribution -- the sort of thing you might be involved in if your P2P client were configured to, say, allow the entire universe of other users to grab a copy of the song stored on your hard drive -- exposes you to legal action. To repeat: to the best of my knowledge, every RIAA action has alleged illegal *distribution*, not illegal *copying.* So while this is amusing, it's not exactly exposing the RIAA as hypocrites, since the act of handing a single copied CD is clearly protected behavior...
"digital audio recording medium," as defined by the act, only refers to _audio_ CD-Rs. These are special recordable CDs made to work in audio CD recorders, which will not record onto standard data CD-Rs (audio CD-Rs will also work in standard computer CD-R drives).
These audio CD-Rs are a bit harder to find, and a bit more expensive than standard data CD-Rs, because you indirectly pay a tax on them to the recording industry (it's collected at the wholesale level).
So, the Bush twins _might_ not be subject to copyright prosecution. OTOH, they do have GW's genes, so they're likely too stupid to know all of that, and probably used data CD-Rs, opening themselves up to prosecution.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
However, pretty much everyone allows underscores in machine names now, so I'm patching Slash to allow it.
Here's the original, for as long as it stays up.
Yahoo's cache of retracted blog entry.