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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."
Persisting, the RIAA began to harass Andersen's 10-year-old daughter, demanding a deposition from her and even posing as a relative when calling her school to get access to her.
Wow, wouldn't just this issue alone be enough to sue those companies? harrasing a minor or something like that? I am sure you guys have some kind of law that punishes that ("think of the children").
Also, I found the following quote funny:
Ray Beckerman, an attorney who has represented defendants in illegal downloading lawsuits filed by the RIAA.
As I am not a native English speaker, I read that as "The illegal lawsuits, with the subject of downloading" or, illegal downloading-lawsuits and my first thought was, yeah, they surely are illegal indeed.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
As stated before: consumers could stop RIAA law suits fairly quickly and forever by declaring by the millions that they have downloaded music and requesting legal action against themselves.
If the numbers were big enough, literally millions, preferably concentrated in a local area (let's say New York City or New York State), where the court system would suddenly face prosecuting millions of people, sending them to jail (since all consumers would refuse to pay fine, they would insist on going to jail) - suddenly the whole issue would get into a real context.
It would reveal that that an entire city of state could be crippled by removing considerable portion of the work force, it would help to start up nation or even world-wide recession. It would be calculated of course that how much would it cost taxpayers to prosecute and keep in jail millions of people for illegally downloading music.
At the end of the day, politicians, lawmakers and society would have to come to the conclusion that the interests of RIAA is behind the interest of the cities, states, and taxpayers and it is simply impossible to enforce the law.
The idea is not new and fully tested: Ghandi and the people of India did it very successfully.
The British had to realize in India, that they couldn't put and keep in jail an entire country for violation of laws.
So... who wants to start up organizing the world-wide civil disobedience movement to put some salt into the gears of RIAA?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Why is it too much to ask that if you like the CD, you pay the money?
0 02UAX
It's simple. I'm out of money. Instead of $15 for a 40 minute CD, I bought 4 120 minute DVDs for $20 at Blockbuster.
It is a matter of value. I don't have tons of money to buy both the value products and the expensive low value products. DRM on many CDs has lowered their value even further. If you can't put it on your MP3 player, it's useless. If you find this out ofter the sale, opened items are not returnable. I learned early on to not buy a pig in a poke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_in_a_poke
Many Jewel cases on retail shelves don't contain a real Phillips standard CD and are not clearly labeled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defective_by_Design
For a prime example of overpricing the easy to duplicate back catalog music is still at high prices as though they are still paying for production costs which were paid for long ago.
http://www.amazon.com/Beatles-White-Album/dp/B000
The outrageous price is simply from created shortage, not by any costs of production.
Instead of buying this overpriced item, I can buy 4 movies that took orders of magnitude more to produce.
Care to do a cost of production comparison for the Beatles White Album and the movies Monsters Inc, Cars, Toy Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Finding Nemo, and other large cast or high tech creations.
When comparing value, the White Album costs more and has a much less talent and production complexity. At the current value/price points, I'm simply buying movies instead of albums. They don't have the value.
The truth shall set you free!
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..), Oh and that GPL material that had been closed sourced? that would be sat under layers of DRM too. Arguing for the total abolition of copyright is not a good and positive thing, not unless you could provide some other legislative or social mechanism to address the damage done.
The problem with current copyright legislation is the length of copyright and the terms associated with it - see one of my previous posts for more,
I read the first couple of pages of the Andersen vs RIAA filing, looks like her lawyer has done a pretty good and interesting job on this one.
... now waiting for the day the RIAA will John Doe someone close to top government officials. It'd be funny if someone hijacked G.W.Bush's residential WiFi and got the RIAA to John Doe him :)
This passage might explain why: "In May 2004, for health reasons, Ms Andersen had been forced to leave her position as case manager for the Department of Justice" (p.12)
If I were a RIAA lawyer, I would probably think thrice and most likely decide to forget about about filing a lawsuit based on flawed and illegally acquired evidence against someone who worked for the DoJ. I think it is safe to presume Ms Andersen is acquainted with a number of both actual men in suits, lawsuits and men in suits who deal with lawsuits. The RIAA might really have bitten more than they can chew on this one.