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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."
Hey! We're capital-F Fools, which is totally different from the foolishness of the RIAA. :)
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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 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.
No, some of us understand the concept of theft just fine, but we also understand the concept of a legal system that favours the rich and powerful, too. Get your troll head out of your ass.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
That's probably the last thing anyone would want, as eventually you'd end up with a jury full of people who have probably never used the internet in their lives, and would even less have an idea of the ease involved in illegally downloading MP3s. 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.
(Guys, no jokes about how a death sentence for Celine Dion listeners would be putting them out of their misery, please, it's cruel, irrelevant and unneccessary. We all know that just a few years of intensive psychotherapy could see them able to take their place in society, so cut it out, OK?)
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
IANAL.
No, they don't 'have' to be heard by jury, but the judge will take it into consideration that another case did.
And there's been a couple cases later that don't fit your 2 patterns:
RIAA: ZOMG PIRACY! YOU GETTIN' SUED, FOO!
Plaintiff: What? Fsck that! We're going to court!
Judge: Court is now in session.
Judge: I'm dropping the case, because your scare tactics have no legal merit. You'll also pay the defendent and their lawyer a lot of money.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Some of us also understand that the sharing of ideas and of artistic production is more important to our culture and civilization than whether or not rich guy makes 3 millions or 4 millions next year. Some of us live in a country where sharing such media is actually legal if done for personal use.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
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
One or two nits:
I think you were a strong propponent before you changed your views.
>400 years ago it was a non-trivial effort to copy a work, hence the team of scribes, and you, the copier, were responsible to bear the cost of transcription. Now it is trivial and low cost. Imagine hand transcribing your favorite book Vs. photocopying Vs. downloading an e-book copy. I'm not saying that (C) is a GoodThing(tm), but it provides a similar barrier as to what existed before (though it is a legal barrier, not a financial one).
Fact of the matter is that I sell my services, but give away data and analysis of results. That is my choice. If I wanted to make more money off my efforts I would consider removing the FDL license I currently use from future work I produce and charge some fee for it. To enforce that fee I would need (C).
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
If an AC can't do it then allow me. I'm revoking your geek card for failing to realize the futility of defending yourself on the internet.
My guess is that they will turn to entrapment. Create trackers and try to make people use them. Just like they did with MD. Then support that with more scaremonger suits against those entrapped, so people are scared to use public trackers. Won't solve the problem, with private trackers and closed sharing networks, but will hit the "masses" of users. The answer will most certainly be more private and closed-circle trackers. Which in turn will create attempts to get into those circles.
But generally, all you described was already here (well, except maybe the Ninjas), and it all failed in the long run. Personally, I wouldn't deem it impossible for them to try spreading spyware through P2P networks that reports infringments, so they have some kind of "proof".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The big premise here is the "work and get paid; don't work - don't get paid". Unfortunately, it is everyone's natural inclination to try to figure out how to "don't work and still get paid", which is why a lot of people really like copyright and patents, and why they'll fight tooth and nail to make terms longer and more in their favor, as opposed to letting it degenerate into what it was before we had copyright.
I still stand by my other post though, as even if we got everyone to agree that copying anything was okay - just like before we had copyright - I think you'd still find the majority saying "but you have to ensure that the author still gets credit " for all copies of their work. This is much easier to do today worldwide than it was 400 years ago; it was also much easier with the printing press than it was before the printing press for smaller regions (e.g. localities, countries, etc.).
And, as I pointed out in my other post - this is essentially what Open Source Licenses basically seek out to do. No matter how they differ in details of distribution, modification, etc - they all require attribution to the original author remains intact.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
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 hate to keep making this point on RIAA threads but...
I ran an electronics service business out of a white ford van for a while. One night a drunk driver totaled it, and was actually caught. I was legally able to sue him for 3x damages, because he committed DUI and Hit and Run, both criminal acts, and so punitive damages were allowed on the civil side. (I ended up getting almost exactly what it cost me to actually replace everything, but that was more than what I could really prove in court he had destroyed, and replacement costs on all the ruined equipment were higher than the original costs, so 'punitive' damage rules helped get actual justice).
The RIAA is using a law that gives them a 5x damages rule (it multiplies a 30,000$ damage cap to 150,000$ if a test is met - that's 5x). The only have to prove the violation was 'willful' to get that multiple. The standard to prove willfullness is much, much easier than the standard I needed to justify 3x damages.
This is a matter of fundamental equality. Even if I was sure the people running torrents and such are doing severe damage to the RIAA members, even if it is every bit as costly as the RIAA claims, getting special laws passed that make everyone else effectively second tier in court is a damage to the whole legal system. I can't support the RIAA's actions unless they are subject to the same rules as the rest of us. I'm not sure how anyone else can.
Who is John Cabal?