Slashdot Mirror
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."
From the linked page: A big-F Fool is one who sees, among other things, people being small-f fools, and isn't afraid to say it.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
...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.
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.
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.
Why did the RIAA target people who could defend themselves? i.e. the inocent
I dunno... cos they're idiots?
Actually, that's probably being slightly unfair to the RIAA (something that's quite hard to do). As the article pointed out, it's not enough to prove that people were making files available; they had to prove that the files were actually given away. They could, I suppose, download some of those files themselves, but that raises a few intriguing questions of its own; if the RIAA - which presumably acts on behalf of the Record Label who owns the copyright - downloads a song, does this constitute illegal sharing? After all, you're only giving it to its legal owner.
And if they get a third party to download that song, does that third party become complicit in the crime for downloading a song illegally?
Obviously IANAL or I'd know the answer to these questions.
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.
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.
Well that's a tricky question.
Internet time fluctuates with the clogging of the tubes, which we all know the internet is made of, and how many libraries of congress worth of emo-ranting the so-called "blogosphere" is putting out per forthnight.
So basically you divide your local time by zero and OH SHI-
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Even the Millennium Falcon couldn't catch up with that joke as it flew over your head.
I read the internet for the articles.
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.
If they were asking for $5 or $10 a song - and being more careful about who they sued - sure there'd still be some people claiming they should never ever sue anyone, but I think many people would be at least a little more sympathetic. At least I'd only think they were being silly and self-destructive for clinging to an outdated business model, rather than seeing them as extortionists and fear-mongerers. And given that they're settling for $3000, you can't tell me that they actually need the whole $750/song for legal fees, etc. They use it as a scare tactic, plain and simple, so they can get their $3k with no fuss and muss.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Here's why I care.
The fact that an investment web site like Motley Fool and a business program like "MarketPlace" (which just did a 3-part series last week on the record industry's grand mistake) take hold of the issue isn't necessarily of interest from a legal point of view or a scientific point of view, but it is of great interest to shareholders and would be shareholders.
The impetus for dropping this campaign won't come from
-the lawyers who have been the principal beneficiaries of this juggernaut,
-techies,
-the entrenched management who would never admit to their shareholders that they've been on a fool's errand for the past 4 1/2 years,
-the RIAA which has been destroying the record companies, or
-anyone else.
It will come from shareholders when they come to realize they are being taken for a ride by a handful of morons who were too dumb to (a) realize the business opportunity the internet represented for them until it was too late, and/or (b) create a new business model that could harness the internet's energy.
The investment community is coming to realize that the big 4 record companies stocks -- all referred to in the Motley Fools articles -- won't be worth a damn until the record companies leave the past, enter the present, and work to survive into the future.
That's why the article means something.
PS As a lawyer, I think the Motley Fool author's understanding of the legal issues was pretty good, certainly a lot better than that of the RIAA lawyers I've met.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
As to the "walking papers", I imagine the shareholders are on the verge of doing that pretty soon.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
There are A LOT of arguments out there against copyright and patents, ranging from the economic to the historical, from the social to the political, and dismissing all of this on the basis that "copying is obviously wrong" amounts to nothing more than a very crude oversimplification.
If you want a simple example, here's the historical one. Since the beginning of recorded history up until the first half of the Modern Age, the copying was considered by EVERYONE, from writers to actors, from musicians to singers, from inventors to manufacturers, as an obvious right. Libraries, for instance, existed for thousands of years, and beyond allowing you to take a book and read it, they all had full teams of scribes who would copy any work a customer wanted, or, if he so wished, would allow him to do the copy himself. Everyone interested in any intellectual production did this, and everyone felt it was the natural way of things.
It was only half-way through the Modern Age, and at first only in certain regions on Europe, that thing started to change. It took centuries, literally, for our system of "copying rights" to develop and turn in 180 degrees how we handled the subject. And while many industries organized and flourished around and from this system, it never, ever, ceased feeling unnatural to those taking contact with it for the first time.
What the Internet, and the "pirates" in it, are doing, thus, isn't so much contrary to the way things ought to be, but quite the opposite, a return to way things always were. A way that was artificially twisted 400 or so years ago, but is now being slowly and painfully put straight again. In this matter, they're surely a bunch of very conservative old-timers as one rarely sees.
If this is the case, how can they be "wrong"? They're "wrong" only from the very limited perspective of a limited subset of modernity and most of the contemporaneity. From the perspective of the (25 times longer) Ancient and Medieval worlds, their actions are pure common sense.
If they win, and they will, the Copyright Age will be seen as nothing more than a very small period of time sandwiched between the two huge Copyrightless Ages: the one that existed before, and the one that is starting right now.
The faster the "progressive" copyright-defenders accept this, the better. For everyone.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
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.
And that doesn't even take into account the 'official' explanation of the Kessel Run cutting through a black hole field, thus necessitating a powerfully fast ship to cut as many gravitational "corners" as possible ...