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Lindor Attacks Record Company Copyright-Pooling
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Back in March, 2006, Marie Lindor called the record companies suing her a collusive cartel, and their joint agreement to pool their copyrights "copyright misuse" (pdf). A year and a half later, the RIAA apparently got nervous about that allegation and made a motion to strike the allegations. Ms. Lindor has struck back, pointing out to the Judge not only that the RIAA's arguments had no legal basis, but also that its brief was completely silent as to any justification for the record companies' copyright-pooling agreement. Such a justification would be necessary for it to pass muster under 'rule of reason' analysis mandated by the US Supreme Court. Ms. Lindor, a home health worker who has never even used a computer, let alone infringed anyone's copyrights with a p2p file sharing program, is the same defendant who exposed, with a little help from her friends, some of the weaknesses in the RIAA's expert testimony. She also obtained a ruling that the RIAA's $750-per-song file damages theory might be a wee bit unconstitutional."
Hope she wins and gets a couple of million from the RIAA (as well as setting a precedent)
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote
I really want to buy this woman (and her lawyers) a drink. They are probably doing more for our digital rights than any single group of people right now. I don't mean to discount the contributions of organizations such as the EFF (I have, in fact, contributed money in the past), but it's hard to root for a nameless, faceless group like that. This woman is fast becoming an icon for fighting the good fight against the frivilous lawsuits that the RIAA continues to file.
It may be a tad melodramatic to say this (especially now), but I certainly hope that she finds her place in the history books.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
The RIAA bought and paid for elected representatives. Those representatives created laws which allow the RIAA to metaphorically rape anybody who has stepped out of line causing them the loss of any amount of potential revenue. The courts need to respect the laws that our corrupt politicians have put on the books.
If you can't hire corrupt politicians to make a mockery of the constitution at the expense of normal citizens then what can you do?
It should be as easy to buy judges as it is to buy congressmen.
I can't think of a single song that is "worth" a 10th, nay a 100th of that value.
I'd pay that to hear a funural march at the RIAA's funeral
-mcgrew
I'm not so sure about songs being "worth" a particular value, but I would be more than willing to shell out ten to twenty-five dollars for a CD/DVD recording of a concert that I had been to and particularly enjoyed. (And obviously, wanted to be able to listen to again!) The amount of money something is "worth" is usually related to how much it cost to produce, not how "good" it is. I think that sort of a measure would be more useful in determining how much a song is worth -- but unfortunately, how "good" something is (or, rather, its "quality") is a difficult standard to work with because everyone has a different opinion on the matter; personally I don't like rap very much and wouldn't want to pay more than a few cents per song (two, maybe three) for it if I had to purchase it, but on the other hand, I'm a big fan of folk songs and japanese music, and I would pay upwards of a dollar per song for it if it were easily available to me. So, it really depends on the person's tastes in music.
The playground bully getting their ass kicked by a girl. lol.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
One of their own, Dr Dre, will have said it best: "We have your...record company surrounded. Put down the candy and let the little boy go."
Which is why most restaurants that used to have their employees sing Happy Birthday to patrons celebrating their birthday now have to sing some contrived crapola instead. Another example of how copyrights can seem to live forever and dorks (oh, excuse me "greedy corporations" but dorks works too) try to grab money for something they never should have really owned and certainly didn't come up with.
Her arguements seem like the most systematic, potentially successful, and logical takedown of the riaa's tactics I've yet seen. Is there a legal fund we could donate to? Seems like it'd be some money well spent.
Better make that a non-alcoholic drink, because I can guarantee you the state will prosecute her just as maliciously as the RIAA has.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I say! She's challenging the bedrock of modern law! It's all written and owned by the cartels, corporations, rich and poweful and they've earned it! They have worked very hard and at no little expsense to get those laws, buying representatives, influencing judge selections and so forth. How dare the little ordinary person challenge this status! This almost made the monocle pop right out of my eye! I shall have to see what I can do to prevent these common rabble from believing they were hah! created equal.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We can also always count on the random A.C. who doesn't have even a smidgen of understanding to carry on about STEALING. There's this thing called "the Big Picture" which you are apparently failing to see. You had best understand that both sides in this conflict have rights under the law, but only one side is interested in removing the other side's rights ... permanently.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
a home health worker who has never even used a computer
Uhh... WHAT??
Let's donate some money to her defense fund ... Too bad she doesn't have a website for that.
The Raven
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Man, I'm sure steamed about that. Restaurant employees can't sing the actual Happy Birthday to customers.
Man, is there any limit to the harm copyrights bring to society?
Meanwhile, back in reality, the most of us would like to see a law passed making it illegal for restaurant employees to burst into any song at all while we are trying to enjoy a meal.
Not yet. It's still copyrighted until 2030.
I figure that another reason restaurant chains don't use "Happy Birthday" is so that they can create a custom song that contains nothing but two notes separated by a single semitone. It's their attempt to make it a tiny bit less excruciating to listen to the bellowing of a group of waitstaff with a sum total of zero singing talent.
"Ms. Lindor, a home health worker who has never even used a computer, let alone infringed anyone's copyrights with a p2p file sharing program, is the same defendant who exposed, with a little help from her friends, some of the weaknesses in the RIAA's expert testimony."
/. articles, I have to say I had no idea that most /.ers are such excellent lawyers.
Considering how all the links from this particular quote are to
Hope she wins and gets a couple of million from the RIAA (as well as setting a precedent)
I hope she wins and the RIAA members effectively lose the copyrights to every song involved in these suits.
That's the point of the "copyright misuse" claim: Part of the penalty for misuse of a copyright is the loss of the ability to enforce it at all.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Happy Happy Birthday,
I really hate this song!
But if I do not sing it,
I won't work here for long... Hey!"
Copyright (C) 2007 quantum bit Productions
Redistribution permitted under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
It was only a matter of time before someone managed to use Slashdot for it's ability to harness ideas and viewpoints. Usually it's just spitting into the wind with no one making any effort to record the good ideas that do pop up.
Our friend, the NewYorkCountryLawyer, has not only made Slashdot his personal soap box, what the Russians would call the 'Father of all soapboxes', but he has managed to harness all the good ideas generated from several Slashdot stories and put them to good use. Not only has he put these ideas to his own personal good use, he's doing good for society as a whole, and sticking it to the RIAA in the process.
Sir, I tip my hat to you. Keep up the good work.
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
You aren't paying for the single.
You are paying for your unlicensed and unlimited redistribution of the single through the P2P nets.
Meanwhile, about that drink......
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I think the pirates are looking forward to setting sail, not abandoning ship.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Several years ago, a record company exec made a really good point. "File Sharing" isn't really "sharing" because when you share something with someone, you don't have it anymore.
But here's the obvious next logical step (which said executive of course failed to make): File sharing isn't really "stealing" either, because when you steal something from someone, they don't have it anymore.
File sharing is a violation of copyright. It's not sharing, it's not stealing, it's a copyright violation. And when it's put that way, if that doesn't sound as serious as stealing, maybe the people who make these ridiculous laws ought to take that into consideration.
The "unlimited" part isn't established.
You are also paying for being treated like a hardened commercial bootlegger.
That who the original statutory damage amount was targeted at.
Those absurd damage claims are simply the end results of the RIAA
getting to pay to distort the law so that you are conflated with a
Chinese CD/DVD factory.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I know what you mean about one side trying to permanently remove the rights of the other.
I still can't believe the RIAA successfully lobbied congress to prevent Americans from being able to purchase Digitial Audio Tape machines in the 1980s. The sheer gall of using congress to shut down entire technologies just because you think they threaten a business model you've become accustomed to making a killing at.
Having our rights curtailing like that really stings. The RIAA really has it coming this time.
What part of "sinking ship" does the lawyers and/for the RIAA not quite understand???
You'd think that by now they'd realize that the fudge they were pushing would eventually catch up to them. This lady obviously either has some serious smarts, or has some very savvy counsel with her and I'd be surprised if there isn't someone in Washington helping this by looking up things at the Supreme courts too!
Eventually this will get overturned, and the floodgates will open to all involved with the RIAA and many of the record companies. What do you think their defense will be to the courts???
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Well said. It should happen more often.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
You're probably thinking of ASCAP and BMI, which are copyright clearinghouses for songwriters and publishers. Even so, they aren't a musician's union, either.
My blog
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
OK folks, I am pleased to announce that the PayPal account for Ms. Lindor's legal defense has been set up.
The email address is:
wraymond@hotmail.com
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
What's wrong with the RIAA? They don't typically want to pursue litigated cases to begin with, and they are now being hit with allegations that if nothing else, would potentially be a very expensive discovery process for their clients. Even the smallest discovery (and this is potentially much larger than small) for documents and interrogatories would be expensive in terms of executive time and pulling the information together, whether or not they are right. Then when you see the gaping holes in the RIAA's legal filings to strike, you almost have to question the competency of their counsel. That or the RIAA is pressing on in spite of legal opinion to the contrary? This is a losing proposition, even if they are right, and I'd be running to get out of this. So .... why aren't they?
Such a justification would be necessary for it to pass muster under 'rule of reason' analysis mandated by the US Supreme Court.
The RIAA has goofed big time on this one. What they were doing was marginal at best. Now with the litigation campaign and the examination of the law as a result is starting to bring down the house of cards. I think they goofed on the litigation campaign in hopes everyone would roll over and play dead. I don't think they expected a fight with intelligent people who could see the flaws in their assertions.
They played the lottery trying to get shady practices cemented as standard operating practices. They played the gamble that the defendants would fold as the cheap option. They gambled and stand a good chance of getting copyright law handed to them on a platter with shady practices exposed as a big RICO problem.
The truth shall set you free!
Hmmm.
I always wondered what happened to my recipe for making apple pie after I shared it with a friend.
I have a vague memory of telling someone how to program a VCR too-- now i realize when I shared those instructions with them, I forgot them myself.
It's amazing we can share any knowledge at all! I am sure one person.. somewhere in the world.. knows how we do it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This distinction is too detailed and irrelevant — even if they were a musician's union, they would still be attacked for copyright pooling. The article — and most of the discussion — are raging against the very concept of the marketplace participants uniting to further their interests.
America's perception of this concept is hypocritical. When the entities are people, we tend to nod in approval (even if they are Teamsters scum), but when they are businesses, we hate them (even if they are artists, such as Metallica).
In my opinion, all such unions should be monitored with suspicion and anti-trust laws should be applied vigilantly against both businesses and people agreeing (conspiring) to raise their prices.
That record companies are being blasted here for merely pooling their copyright interests together to reduce the infamously high costs of litigation, while various union scum (UPS vs. Teamsters, NYC vs. the union of MTA employees) are getting sympathy in their racketeering, is an example of dual standard.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Just to sum up the salient points from that article: in the US, only the lyrics are under copyright; the melody is public domain. In most of the rest of the world, both lyrics and melody are under copyright
However, I am tickled to see that the copyright on the lyrics expires at the end of next year. That's assuming that the info on Wikipedia is accurate, which obviously is a very big if. Anyway, that means that as of 1 January 2009, for most of us the melody will be copyrighted and the words public domain, while in the US the melody will be public domain and the words copyrighted ... and never the twain shall meet. Until 2016, that is.
Something I've wondered is, if I pay them the $750 for a song, does that mean that I actually can distribute it far and wide since I've already covered the damages? Not that I'd want to, but the whole 750 per song damage thing has me confused.
I'm more fond of Go Robot, It's Your Birthday by MC Chris, as popularized by Sealab. It's a lot more singable. ;) I'd just love to hear that sung at a restaurant.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
I like what you do, but let's not get carried away here. That's like saying the GNAA trolls were originally hired by Microsoft in order to try to disrupt the conversations at slashdot so people can't spread anti-Microsoft discussions here. The more likely scenario is that people just enjoy trolling forums on their own and thus are doing so.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Isn't this exactly the same as the copyright pooling Lunix organizations are doing in an effort to browbeat companies into supporting FOSS?
I don't see how it's different: the RIAA is trying to get money, and teh FOSSies are trying to gain control over commerical software developers. Different goals, but the exact same method: pooling copyrights in a quid pro quo extortion scheme.
ALL things can tempt me from this craft of verse: One time it was a woman's face, or worse-- The seeming needs of my fool-driven land; Now nothing but comes readier to the hand Than this accustomed toil. When I was young, I had not given a penny for a song Did not the poet sing it with such airs That one believed he had a sword upstairs; Yet would be now, could I but have my wish, Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish. :-)
They don't have diminished profits now; they had excessive profits before. Good luck to Ms Lindor!
Best of luck to Ms. Lindor, I hope she succeeds and deals those bastards a serious blow that'll make them think twice!
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Ray, some people do so much for common sense and MORAL justice that they achieve credibility simply by their actions.
:-)
Slashdot may occasionally be a bit mad but most of this crowd is not fundamentally dishonest, which is why they rail against the RIAA labelling everyone as hardcore criminals - for profit.
Given that you're fighting the good fight I can't see someone modding you down.
The only way is up
Insert
But I can't, so instead I just mailed her $50, and you $5, so you can have a beer on me.
Good luck!