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Motley Fool Says RIAA Hitting a Brick Wall
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Motley Fool business site says that the RIAA's litigation campaign is in the end game. Monday it reported that 'the music industry's lawsuit crusade against defenseless college students and housewives appears to have hit the skids,' predicting that the RIAA's tactics are 'all about to change.' Today the Fool confirms that 'the change is happening in Internet time, which is somewhere between "instantly" and "yesterday,"' noting that the RIAA's abandonment of its 'making available' theory shows that the end is near. And this is before the RIAA faces its first jury trial, set to begin Oct. 2 in Duluth."
Takes a fool to know another, perhaps?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Duluth in the house!!!
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
what's the conversion rate between internet time and the SI unit for time, the second?
minnesota or georgia?
Why did the RIAA target people who could defend themselves? i.e. the inocent.
Couldn't they have found a few people who were guilty, guilty, guilty and taken them all the way, and nailed them to a tree? Wouldn't it have been a better strategy to just drop any suit if the defendent was in the least bit sympathetic?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
...to enhance that brick wall? I'm thinking maybe some sharp aluminum spikes on the face of it, and possibly a webcam or two so we can watch the violence via YouTube.
Perhaps the people who were bludgeoned into settling with the RIAA will bind together in a class action counter suit to recover what the protection money they paid.
There's more to it than this.
Scare tactic.
The idea is "If they will sue a grandmother without a computer AND is blind... what the hell would they do to ME??"
Before RIAA did anything about it, we all doubted what we're doing with music torrents is illegal and may get us in trouble.
Now, RIAA, after many years and millions of USD working on the issue, confirmed it's in fact perfectly safe for us to carry on.
Thank you, RIAA!
The legal team they have may be moving away and pretty much trying to give up the strategy, but there is no way the record company business management is going to drop it. They have too much of a since of entitlement over making unlimited amounts of money off the same music forever.
It's much more likely you will see the experienced members of the legal team quietly move out to other jobs and new inexperienced members will come in and do the same failed strategy as before.
If it was going to end, we would have seen some level of common since out of the RIAA by now either dropping music prices drastically and providing consistent DRM free music. Drastic price reduction is the only way they are going to cut piracy and that is something they will never do. They are spoiled with years of charging insane amounts of money for something that typically costs them nothing or next to nothing. They are not going to change there thinking until they lose most of the new music being recorded to other venues.
Wow, I'm impressed. Way to milk it, guys!
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
While the change (or absence) of the RIAA's boilerplate argument is certainly notable, I'd suggest that a far more weighty indication of their losing position is Amazon's new DRM-free music service. The pace of the publishers' relatively tentative movement into DRM-free distribution (i.e. one in which the customer is shown a reasonable amount of trust and respect) seems to stem from a strange combination of lingering distrust and a desire to save face on the part of the record execs. Hopefully we'll see a rather more enthusiastic embracing of DRM-free digital distribution as time goes on.
That said, many thanks to the folks who have been fighting the good fight against the RIAA and their attack dogs. There's no doubt in my mind that we wouldn't been seeing Amazonmp3 or iTunes Plus without their efforts.
cheers.
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So is the 2 October jury trial going to be a one-time thing, or will it set some sort of precedent? I mean, once one case goes to jury trial, do all subsequent cases also have to be heard by a jury?
After all, all these cases are pretty much identical:
RIAA: ZOMG PIRACY! YOU GETTIN' SUED, FOO!
Plaintiff: Don't sue! Here's some money to make you go away.
RIAA: Okay.
(or)
RIAA: ZOMG PIRACY! YOU GETTIN' SUED, FOO!
Plaintiff: What? Fsck that! We're going to court!
Judge: Court is now in session.
RIAA: We're going to drop the case, because our scare tactics have no legal merit.
the RIAA still has some wind left in it's sails, but it's certainly winding down.
The Jury trial next week is going to be another of those fun trips through surreal litigation land, I bet. I expect a lot of time spent on who actually owns the copyrights to the songs (which, Although I haven't read any reference to it yet, means the RIAA lawyers will have to identify the the song, AND but the actual copyright holder for the specific recording or performance itself. That should layer a new level of complexity.. Imagine the RIAA identifying some tune that is covered by a few bands:
first; prove it was an audio file and was copyrighted material.
Next; Identify the specific performance, because copyright extends to the artist performing, not just the composer/writer.
Then; you get to establish chain of copyright ownership through the various library transfers and company mergers through the years.
Finally; convince a jury that all the things you assert along those items are true.
I point this out, because I see a lot of evidence concerning screen shots, and such, but don't actually see where actuall files are used as evidence, only lists of files and logs. I'm sure, since forensics on Hard drives have occured, that there have been instances of found files that are identified... But that seems pretty rare.
I'm still trying to decide if I am hoping that the chain of ownership is broken or not. If it's broken, there is a precedent for dismissal of a lot of cases, and additional reasons to demand a jury trial that it seems unlikely the RIAA can win (whether the defendant is actually guilty or not). On the other hand, if they can establish copyright ownership, then there is a case for misuse of copyright. My understanding is that "misuse or copyright" voids the copyright. This is all pure speculation, of course, but it doesn't seem like it would take more than one case where copyrights were removed to halt virtually every case out there, since such a judgment would quite literally turn the industry on it's ear overnight.
I believe that the industry is going to (has, though some companys don't seem to understand that yet) change. I supposed, in a twisted way, we should thank the RIAA, ultimately, their actions have changed the landscape faster than it would have otherwise, I think.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Personally, I don't see the RIAA giving up just like that. Thus, perhaps the more worrying question is - What are they going to try next to dissuade the 'pirates'? More MediaDefender-esque practices? Viruses or Malware on P2P networks? Ninja assassins? Either way, I'm sure it won't be pretty. Or do them any good from a PR perspective.
They are moving onto another, probably more sophisticated consumer terror campaign.
What infuriates me is the YEARS have they been able to get away with abusing the judicial system. Could NewYorkCountryLawyer abuse the judicial system, much less a man off the street so much with no consequences whatsoever?
With the sodomized condition of the Federal Attorney Generals Office (200+ political officials have the capacity to meddle in their affairs) and the campaign contributions flowing, there's no consequences awaiting any of the media conglomerates.
This is a perfect example of the powerful working with wanton disregard of the rule of law. Sadly, too few participate in our political system, so the abuse continues.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The Motley Fool points out that most people are honest, and want to pay for their music, so long as they can get what they want.
I think that's mostly true, but that it's far less true than it would have been if the industry had pursued different polices over the past several years.
There's a whole generation out there now that's grown up with piracy, and that's totally comfortable with it. Because this fight has polarized people so much, it's pushed a lot of people into the pro-piracy side who wouldn't have been there otherwise.
I think we should use the time it took to migrate from IPV4 to IPV6 as the unit of internet time.
The basic unit is calculated as:-
now - 1994 + 2 earth years
and known as an RSN.
This unit is unfeasibly large for normal usage so I would propose the
perhapsSec (1/100000th of an RSN) being approximately the time taken
to read a Slashdot article when you are supposed to be doing something else.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
With Amazon offering DRM free MP3s in the industry's attempt to kill Jobs' stranglehold on the digital music content download business, isn't the RIAA litigation status "irrelevant"?
I would love to sit in the courtroom during jury selection on these cases. "Ladies and gentlemen, please raise your hands if you have ever illegally downloaded an mp3." could keep the court busy for months trying to find enough jurors to go forward.
I am a big fan of the Motley Fool website, but these guys are an "investment website", which really means they're simultaneous trying to attract readers to entertain them and hopefully sell their various investment newsletters. Generally I think they have a fair bit of credibility, focusing on things like investing over a decade-long time horizon, not piling into the "next big thing" and watching things like mutual fund expenses.
That being said, I'm not sure why we particularly care about this particular article, other than the fact that it parrots the party line here at Slashdot. These guys aren't lawyers, and don't spend a lot of time examining the recording industry. In fact, over the 7 years that I've been reading their articles, this is the *only* one I can recall that discusses the music industry at all. It strikes me very much as an op-ed piece rather than a serious legal or business study of an industry, and I don't give it any more credibility than some guy ranting on his blog.
To be sure, the RIAA has suffered legal defeats and setbacks, but just because a financial news and opinion site happens to pick up on it does not mean that the industry is going to collapse, nor does it mean that those who are being/will be sued should stop worrying.
If you follow this legal saga at all, you know that the RIAA members have lately been fighting primarily to avoid paying the defendants' legal fees -- and losing. Instead of a quick and easy cash machine, the labels' lawsuit machine has become a costly public relations disaster, and it seems unlikely that any sane and responsible manager would order the madness to continue much longer.
Somehow it's fitting that the RIAA is getting sucked dry by the laywers...
Until the fat lady sings ( and doesn't get sued in the process ).
They may change tactics but i don't think they will ever abandon the war.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm forced to wonder, is the RIAA coming out ahead at the end of all of this? Did enough people settle that, despite all the garbage, they're still in the black? And, if they aren't (as I suspect is the case), why would the client-companies of the RIAA keep the RIAA legal staff employed? I know, were I in charge of a mega-media corporation and a team of lawyers screwed the pooch as badly as the RIAA legal team appears to have done so, I'd be handing them all their walking papers...
I hope the jury gives an award equal to 10 times the net worth of the RIAA.
I will be at the trial and might be able to post as it happens. ..more to come-
I will certainly post something when I am out of the trial if nothing else...
Safe Journeys Space Fan, Where Ever You Are
Maybe the RIAA should hire some of SCO's lawyers to help them out?
Like the beaver, it's just Dam one thing after another
It was actually Harry Houdini (Erich Weisz) that was one of the first proponents of the "do it once and make profit forever" media visionaries.
In the abstract, it make a lot of sense, and in its own way fair. Harry knew that age and injury would eventually destroy his ability to make money. This new "moving picture thing" was a way he could perfect his skill and make money showing people his tricks without the personal risks, expense, and the inevitable corruption of age.
This made sense when distribution and production of this material was in and of itself and expensive proposition. By the very nature of the medium be scarce, you could charge for viewership.
The problem with the internet, and one the copyright cartels don't like, fully understand but refuse to accept, is that the internet and computers remove the scarcity of the medium. There is no resource based "natural" regulation of the flow of media.
Make no mistake, this is the downfall of civilization as we know it. A civilization were information is *free* as in beer and as in access is a threat to ALL governments, even the ones we think are democratic.
Without regulation, without "profit" in the system, (which translates to expensive barriers to entry) common people can participate. When common people participate, history shows that wealthy people and powerful governments crumble.
The 21st century will be exciting!
Party at my place.
100 Anonymous Coward road, Duluth, USA.
You know which torrent tracker to visit to get the MP3 of the 300-baud-modem-scream of the ASCII text directions to
MY HOUSE
As a Duluthian, I can't agree with the following.
These people would buy the spiel of the RIAA that MP3 piracy is closely linked to funding terrorism, paedophilia and the clubbing of baby seals and end up giving some poor bastard the death sentence for downloading a Celine Dion CD.
Duluth is a VERY liberal town, with a somewhat conservative outlook. In otherwords, you better DAMN well have a good case, to come into our backyard and sue some good-old-boys (ya sooper don't ya know). And frankly, as many slashdotters would agree, the RIAA often seeks excessive damages. BTW, civil cases are about proving real damages.
Just cause its wayyy uppp north (ya know), don't go making asinine assumptions about what people will and won't buy. There are 3 universities in an 120,000 person area, and I'd generally consider people in the area to be fairly reasonable.
BTW its speil not spiel
It would seem that not only is the RIAA's evidence in this case pathetic they are also trying to pursue their discredited and recently abandoned "Making Available" charge. This is because they have no evidence that the songs they allege the defendant was sharing were ever downloaded by anyone other than the RIAA--who are presumably authorized downloaders and not illegal downloaders.
A funny thing. When napster first came out, I downloaded a bunch of songs, which got me excited about music in general and several bands in particular. In the year before napster got shut down, I probably bought a dozen CDs. Then for quite a while I lost interest in music, or just played the music I had. Then I got broadband and an iPod and discovered eMule, and ended up buying another dozen or so CDs after a few years of not setting foot in a record store. The the RIAA started cracking down, and well, I just sort of lost interest in music again.
What a bunch of morons.
It is also complicated by the chain of evidence in regards to proving what computer and user was involved. The ISP's network infrastructure, logging, and security mechanisms will have to be vetted in order to tie an IP address to a particular user account. Then they have to get through the customer's router, local network, and computers to tie a particular computer to that IP address. Finally, they have to tie a particular user to that computer at the specified date and time. This is made more difficult if their are multiple computer's on the customer's network or if wireless connectivity is enabled.
As a defendant, I would want a detailed analysis of the ISP's logging systems to determine the reliability of the ISP's IP-to-customer testimony. At a minimum this would include testimony from the ISP's network staff and would likely include testimony from their vendors on how the each part of their testimony was arrived at and how reliable that information is.
I always thought the "making available" claim was dubious at best. If I'm reading a book in a restaurant and I leave it there by mistake I can be sued by it's author because I've made the content available for someone to copy? That's absurd. That example is a vast oversimplification of the issue at hand but that's essentially what the RIAA was arguing and it's laughable.
Copyright is exactly that, your right (or lake thereof) to make a copy of something. Making something available to be copied is not the same thing as actually making a copy. There's a very important and practical line there. If you were guilty of copyright infringement every time you made something available to be copied you'd better carry every book or copyrighted piece of paper with you at all times or you'd be infringing copyright by making that document available for someone else to copy when it's not in your immediate possession. You better not go to sleep either. You're evil college aged brother or sister might steal said book or document it and copy it while you sleep.
You can argue all day long about the person's intent when they have music files on a P2P network but the intent to make something available for copying doesn't (yet) factor into the laws governing copyright infringement as many courts are interpreting them. The real question is how long will our laws stay that way? It's only a matter of time before intent becomes a crime. I bet the RIAA lawyer goons have already written the text of laws that factor in intent and are just waiting for a Senator and Congressman who owe them and have the ability to sneak it into the next copyright or patent "reform" act intended to "update" our laws so they "keep pace with the rapidly changing technological landscape" while "protecting" the rights of artists. That's always the kind of language used when politicians (corporations) want to further erode consumer rights.
The RIAA isn't there to make money. If it loses money it will just get more money from the labels and the millions of dollars thrown at the RIAA is peanuts compared to what they spend on promotion. So long as the labels believe that the RIAA is providing a useful service for them... by deterring unauthorized copying... they have no incentive to pull the plug.
I consider myself a standard music consuming guy. Nothing out of the ordinary. The reason I download some albums or songs from the Internet (the way it is illegal in the USA) is because either
a) I want to listen to one specific song (for example, just yesterday I remembered a pop song I wanted to play in the guitar, but I do not have it... so I go to emule). To handle this problem, artists must provide a way to get "immediate availability" and cheap. I used to get all those kind of songs via allfomp3 (and I would do it but I think it is not possible to pay by CC). But threre is no way I will pay £1 for a song which I will listen two times and then delete it. And the other issue is that as this song is not very popular... I will have to hunt in several music stores... open an account in *each* of them. And there are some stores which you can only access with specific software (iTues for example) which is not compatible with my operating system...
Or instead I just fire my Edonkey client and search for the song and download it... easy!
b) I want to buy a complete album in CD (because I am a fan of the group, or I liked some songs... personally I enjoy having old school CDs with cases and all that), but they are really expensive... from £8 to £20 (more over £20 for the groups I like). The cost is prhoibite. Back in Mexico there is a music shop which has CDs at $99 MXN (about £4.5 ), I completed my collection of Joe Satriani CD's buying at that price... but those are not new albums.
Overall the problem with the RIAA is that they refuse to acknowledge that their current manufacturing/production/distribution/advertising chain is not working... you see car manufacturers, computer manufacturers and almost all other industry companies (even software companies!) struggling to reduce costs of their products but these guys refuse to modify their 30 year old process...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The modded up comments are all retarded, and show that the real goal is to get free music online without interference. Even the EFF has fallen for this socialist crap.
They could be paying because it is easier. This is a big one. Getting music from most infringing sources is always hit and miss to a degree. You don't know what is available, you don't know how good it sounds, you don't know how fast the transfer will be, you don't know that it will be what was promised. I mean suppose you get on a P2P network, find what you want, but there's only one source. Turns out the guy is on a modem and it takes 2 hours to fully get the file. Then, it turns out the idiot mislabeled it, and it isn't what you wanted.
This is an easy thing to beat commercially. If companies offer the whole libraries for download from fast servers that are always available that really is just easier for many people and thus worth paying for. Doesn't really matter if the encoding is only 128kbit or whatever, it's just the fact that you can get what you want, right away, with no effort on your part.
That's worth a lot to many people. Plenty of people who have a decent amount of disposable income, and are willing to spend it on things that make them happy and make their lives easier. Even if you ignore any other merits like doing the right thing, that'll be enough for a great many people. Just not worth waisting the time and effort to get it for free if you can easily get it for cheap.
I think that your viewpoint comes though, as "a decent lawyer" (as in "decent human being") whereas for the other variety it seems to be a combination of massive power trip combined with the fact that they're likely getting paid megabucks (for the moment) whether or not the have a case.
So, my guess would be that it's perhaps not very good lawyering, but still profitable. Kinda like the SCO case (*somebody* made money off it).
It's one of the reasons I went into technology rather than law, despite a strong interest in both (to be a tech lawyer sounds grand though)... you seem to get the choice of either being a tick-like parasite or a flyswatter, and the parasites tend to come in groups and with a stronger backing.
That being said, keep up the good fight! I think pretty much everyone here is rooting for you.
Next time cry some more in your lyrics. It's what all you wannabee hard core rappers, as Eazy-E said, "studio gangstas", are now doing anyway. Maybe sample in some Usher in your post next time to show your softer vulnerable side. Is it any coincidence that top 40 rappers cry the hardest when their music is copied? Wannabee thugs, "studio gangstas", pwned by people on computers, lmao. No bling 4 j00!
I know you're joking, but you can help right here.
That's for the Marie Lindor case, handled by NYCL. I believe she's the home health aide who hasn't ever used a computer, but I can't keep all the defendants straight any more so I may be wrong.
I don't know that it'll ever make YouTube, but NYCL has made it to radio at least (NPR) and if things go on, I wouldn't be surprised for him to get on TV eventually.
Free market is how I roll. If I make a product and sell it to someone, and they turn around and copy the shit out of it and give it freely to anyone, then its MY fault for not finding a way to satisfy the customer base.
What does the recording industry really lose when someone copies their music? NOTHING. Unless they owned some of the fiber line the music ran over, then they had to pay $.00000000001 to continue the packets. Though in reality they were probably paying a fixed cost for the fiber and ended up losing nothing. Unless the line was at 100% usage, so their latency might have been increased by 20ms because of someone downloading a song.
I do not dispute at all that the industry did not gain revenue from. Was there lost revenue? NO. Not gaining is different from losing.
Its just like the democrats crying about "Cuts" in the federal budget. There are no cuts, there are only reductions in the rate of increases (ok, maybe there's a couple, but not like they're being protrayed).
I think you're arguing that $750 is fair because they're allowed to sue for 5x their actual damages. So you think that they actually lose $150 for EVERY song someone places in a publicly-available folder? I still don't buy it. If they were suing for $50/song, maybe that argument would sway me, but they're still horribly, horribly inflating things.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Replace "reap" with "enjoy".
Well, we now see how the trial turned out, i.e., not the way a lot of psychics in the comments predicted. The "making available" tactic was not abandoned; Jammie Thomas in fact lost. And the cost per song was an astronomical amount.
Not that I'm happy with the results at all, but it just goes to show that the RIAA's campaign of terror hasn't petered out as many have been predicting.