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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."
The RIAA has a very unusual and skew view of the words "fair", "reasonable" and "facts". Could someone buy them dictionaries with those words highlighted please.
Stick it to the man in the suit! That's the way to do it... Oh, you meant LAWSUITS , my bad.
A $15 CD is 3 hours of minimum wage work. Most of the people who do that work are high school and college students, an audience that spends nearly $200B of disposable cash according to marketing estimates thrown out in some of the magazines I've seen. Why is it too much to ask that if you like the CD, you pay the money? It's not like we're hurting for options on how to get it cheaper than a typical overpriced local store.
When it comes down to other IP rights, why should those be sacred? It doesn't bother me at all when the latest GPL violation is posted on Slashdot. In fact, I say that the rights of developers working under the GPL should be totally ignored as long as we're going to cheer on people who are getting sued for downloading music they didn't buy. Both are copyright violations, and neither is more sacred than the other.
It's not everyday you see CLASS and RIAA in the same sentence.
I thought you where going to say "forget the Artist" which the RIAA already did
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
The issue is not that guilty people get sued. The issue is that the way the RIAA gets evidence is immoral and probably illegal (invading people#s computers, entrapment etc.) then of course the fact that many people get sued for copyright breach that never happened. And finally, the fact that they aren't sueing someone who stole one mp3 for $1, they're suing for hundreds of times the value of the mp3. There are more reasons than that, but the fact is we side against the RIAA not because of what it does, but rather how and to some extend why, they do it.
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
Walk with Music;
Think about it -- because many of these suits have a high number of defendants based on digitally obtained lists that may or may not be accurate based on the tool used to auto-generate the list. I can just about guarantee that another program took their lists and auto-generated many of the filings. [because I don't see the RIAA hiring masses of para-legal qualified folks to type up their legal filings....]. So at the minimum there is a
- software list "maker" generating a list connected to
- a software file-creator for that fills up the postal or other mail services for
- the purposes of ostensibly extorting legal settlements,
- and yet another set of programs filling up the legal system with cases based on program talking to program talking to program.
Anybody else have a problem with corporate law being conducted like that? To my way of thinking every filing should have to be done without the intervention of a software list generator, wouldn't you think? That way a corporation must risk the cost of the data entry and hand operations to generate their filings, just like the rest of us would. Seems fair enough, doesn't it?...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
No you do not! You demand outrageously overinflated damages and target people with all the accuracy of a drunk stumbling out of a bar. Most importantly, you are extorting money from people who have never used p2p file sharing and violated NONE of your copyrights. You then proceed to rely on scare tactics realizing most of these lawsuits will be settled out of court because the prospect of going toe to toe with a major corporation in the court room is downright terrifying and can financially ruin an individual of far lesser means than you.
You have every right to protect your member organizations' copyrights via the court system. You *do not* have the right to pick people at random, bring financial ruin down on them, and harras them and their families.
I don't have a huge amount of faith in the court systems these days, but you really need to lose. And badly. I'm not talking about $5.00 coupon-for-a-CD settlements. I'd really like to see a judgement so harsh that some of your member organizations are driven to bankruptcy. After all, it's what you've been using the courts to do to people these past few years. Turnabout's fair play.
When it comes down to other IP rights, why should those be sacred? It doesn't bother me at all when the latest GPL violation is posted on Slashdot. In fact, I say that the rights of developers working under the GPL should be totally ignored as long as we're going to cheer on people who are getting sued for downloading music they didn't buy. Both are copyright violations, and neither is more sacred than the other. The issue isn't the actual right of authors to control distribution of their work. The problem is the shady practices and dodgy logic that the RIAA uses to press their suits. I fully support the right of a artist/author/creator to control the distribution of their work and profit directly or indirectly for their efforts. However we protest that IP = undeniably unique identifier, That use of any means to gather information is fair, that intimidation and harassment or misrepresentation to obtain information are legitimate tactics. They simply are not. The RIAA have bought the courts, they aught not be allowed to behave in such a manner.
We also do not agree that simply making a copy of works we own physical media to are in fact copy right infringements. Even more organizations like the Sound Exchange or acts like the Canadian media levy where a agencies is granted rights to collect monies for artists but in turn do not turn it over to the artists is unethical. If my unsigned band allows Digital imports to distribute our works via streaming radio the SoundExchange has no rights to charge any fee for this.
We protest these not the right to steal music, but the ethics and actions of the various agencies representing DISTRIBUTORS. As the members of the RIAA are not artists themselves but the distributing agent (Sony, EMI, Virgin etc..).
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
- If people decide to just stop buying the good, than the market completely collapses. No demand and no buyers means that all of the providers go out of business.
- However, if people decide that they need the good, then a second market will appear, providing lower prices and filling demand. The first market's providers get choked out from the undercuts, and die unless they stop fixing prices.
So, what we have in this case is a second market. It is a black market, a market that is not legally sanctioned. The cost of goods on this market is effectively zero, making it a free good. The RIAA can't possibly undercut or fairly compete with a free good like pirated music, so instead they resort to these lawsuits to try and scare people away from the black market. Does it work? Not really.So, what should the RIAA do? They should stop fixing prices and let the market sort itself out. There are two types of participants in the black market: People who want the good, but don't want to pay for it; and people who would pay for the good if it were a bit less expensive. The former will never leave the black market, but the RIAA could court the latter if they would only stop fixing their goddamn prices.
That's the economics of it, anyway.
~ C.
you'll understand this issue when you realize that music is not an "Entertainment Option" it's a "Cultural/Spiritual Nescessity" and that most folks around here that want to stick it to the man aren't actually sooo desperate to get their hands on the latest crap; they are merely (merely?! maybe very!!) excited that, unexpectedly, joyously, there is now a way that future generations of americans (think of the children!) have a way to enjoy their cultural norms without fat business fucks acting like they are the priesthood of a new information age chapel.
In other words, most people are far more excited to see the monopoly/monoculture fall then we ever were with what is actually being shared/downloaded. We came *this* close to being sucker punched for *generations* by DRM. And it still might happen if you don't do your part.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
Funny thing is, back in the day's of the original Napster, I purchased a lot more music. Someone could tell me about a group, and instead of saying "they might be good, but it's not worth $15 to find out," I could check them out before buying.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
This is just Collateral damage. It sucks, but in the real world people only respond to severe efforts.
So, in other words, the ends justify the means?
I disagree. One of the central principles behind our system of justice is that the defendant is "innocent until proven guilty". The burden is on the RIAA to collect sufficient evidence in a legal fashion to show that I was sharing copyrighted material. It is not my responsibility to show that my computer is free of unauthorized content.
I don't agree with or like their methods, but they are working.
If their methods are working so well, then why has file sharing traffic, as a proportion of total internet traffic gone up consistently since the shutdown of the original Napster?
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
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!