Variety Says Class Action May Stop RIAA Suits

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Variety reports that Andersen v. Atlantic, the class action which has been brought against the RIAA in Oregon may 'ultimately force the organization to drop or dramatically change the way it uses its principal weapon in the fight against online piracy"'. The RIAA responded to Variety saying that 'We are confident that (Andersen's) claims have no merit....We look forward to presenting our arguments in the next few weeks to the court about why this case should be dismissed. In all our cases, we seek to follow the facts and be fair and reasonable in resolving pending claims.' p2pnet opines that Hollywood's interest in the suit bodes ill for the RIAA."

Comments

rtfa....

[Arathon]

Apparently, you didn't RTFA. If you had, you'd have noticed that this class action lawsuit really doesn't have anything to do with illegal downloading; in fact, as far as anyone can tell, the lady starting the lawsuit apparently had the case against her dropped. Her lawsuit basically alleges that the way in which the RIAA goes after its 'victims' is not legal, in the form of not gathering anything but totally circumstantial evidence before choosing to sue.

Whether or not you approve of file-sharing, I'd imagine it's in your best interest to uphold the concept of innocent until PROVEN guilty. =P

Re:Won't work

[rlp]

Judges are appointed

True for federal judges. For states, it varies by state.

Re:I just don't understand the pro-file sharing ar

[quanticle]

At least average Joe is no longer sharing his entire catalog like many people were a few years ago.

Joe User is not sharing his entire music collection on Kazaa anymore, but that does not mean that he is not uploading. As more file-sharing goes to bittorrent-like systems, Joe User will be sharing what he is currently downloading. It makes little difference in the eyes of the RIAA, if one is uploading pieces of the file that one has a full download of, or if one is uploading pieces from a partial download.

I find it hard to believe that file sharing has increased.

You don't need to believe anything. Bittorrent is already 35% of all internet traffic, and its share is climbing. While Bittorrent has legitimate uses (World of Warcraft patches, Linux distributions, etc.) a lot of bittorrent traffic is in copyrighted material.

Re:I just don't understand the pro-file sharing ar

[Laur]

If there was no copyright then the GPL could not exist and the aims behind the GPL (That a people should be free to use, improve and then re-distribute GPL software) would fail. They would fail because all the code that is currently GPL would be taken up by companies, modified, improved (or just re-branded) and redistributed, in closed source form.

Yes, but if there was no copyright, it would be entirely legal to reverse engineer, disassemble, & decompile any closed source software. I imagine we would see an explosion in the effectiveness of these types of tools if their use was 100% legal. You could still release your own source code if you wanted, and if someone tried to close it you could disassemble their version and find out how it differs from yours.

DRM would be even more prevalent and probably more effective, it would be seen as the only way to make money from any idea (software, artistic work etc..)

DRM is impossible to implement 100% effectively, by its very nature. DRM schemes are cracked all the time (for example, games are some of the most heavily DRMed programs around, and are usually cracked very quickly), do you really think that the companies who make them aren't already trying the best that they can? How much faster will DRM be cracked if it was 100% legal to crack it and spread the cracked software around? Remember, only one person has to crack it.

Arguing for the total abolition of copyright is not a good and positive thing

While I think your points are silly, I don't believe in completely abolishing copyright either. I am more in favor of reasonable restrictions, i.e. a term of about 5-10 years, no automatic copyrights (you must file), and software can only be copyrighted if the source code is submitted as well (i.e. submitted to the LoC in trust until the copyright expires).

Re:I just don't understand the pro-file sharing ar

[David Gould]

What a stupid argument. How do you know if he was going to buy it? Once you give him a copy it is impossible to know if he would ever have bought it. Yes, and before you give him the copy, it's also impossible to know if he would ever have bought it. That's the problem with the RIAA's claims of "lost sales": The numbers they quote are based on the assumption that every single download corresponds to a lost sale, i.e., they assume that he definitely would have bought it. The truth is obviously somewhere in between.

Re:I just don't understand the pro-file sharing ar

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

The RIAA's "expert" has admitted [blogspot.com] that he doesn't have a clue as to what 'individual' may have been doing the file sharing, and that his methods and MediaSentry's methods haven't been subjected [blogspot.com] to any of the testing that is required for them to be usable as evidence in Court, yet in my presence, a couple of months ago, an RIAA lawyer stood up in court and said to the judge that MediaSentry's investigator "detected an individual downloading and uploading". I'm curious, would this not open that lawyer up to a contempt of court or perjury charge for lying to the judge? Perjury? No.

Contempt? Yes.

Rule 11 sanctions? Yes.