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White House Lauds MN RIAA Win, Analysis of Victory
cnet-declan writes "The Bush administration's copyright czar says the RIAA's $222,000 recent jury verdict against a Minnesota woman shows copyright law is 'effective' and working as planned. C|Net's coverage has comments from Chris Israel, the U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement. Israel is formerly a senior Commerce Department official appointed by President Bush in July 2005 who previously worked for Time Warner's public policy arm (Warner Bros. Records is one of the plaintiffs in the RIAA case). The site also features an interview with Rep. Rick Boucher, no fan of the RIAA, on whether Congress will change the law, an analysis of why U.S. copyright law is broken, and four reasons why the RIAA won."
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Liberty and justice for all corporations!
-- Cheers!
...
:) that is put out there for your consumption. I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back hard. It's already showing some resistance (file sharing and what-not) to being in favor of one side heavily over the other with respect to the original idea of copyright. Some term extensions are fine with me. But the current system of life of the author + 70 years AND digital rights management is obscene and a kick to the crotch of the idea of copyright.
At this point, I kind of get a kick of seeing how the copyright system is thrown in favor of those who are responsible for most of the "content" (not worthy of the term "music" eh?
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
Princess Hacka: The more you tighten your copyrights, the more songs will slip through the P2P nets.
This making available is wrong. They do the same thing when songs are played on FM radio. This is the flaw in this case.
Somebody should post the 24 songs and the bands names so they can be shamed in public. Remember don't by those band music or any RIAA member music in the future.
I will be amazed if history does not label him the worst President we have ever had, along with the worst Presidential crew (cabinet and appointees) we have ever had.
The guy and his friends, as a group, have been almost unbelievable. What is even worse, is that on the rebound, a lot of people might actually think that voting for Hillary is a good idea. (shudder)
If you do not know who Ron Paul is, do yourself and others a favor and look him up. But if you really do not think honesty is important, go ahead and vote for any of the others.
"Effective" and "working as planned" are two phrases that I'd _not_ like to hear coming from Washington at the moment. Not until 1984, anyway.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Not surprised that she lost. She was uploading music, that she had downloaded. So, it started out not hers and then she gave it away. Copyright laws EXPLICITLY prevent that. OTH, had she bought the CD, or simply borrowed from friends, and the only offered it to friends, then I believe this would have been an interesting case.
It will create more siphons, but hopefully, the press will point out that this case was NOT about downloading, but about uploading to strangers.
As to the white house, I only hope that the more that laud this ruling, the more that it comes to haunt them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Instead of fine of $222,000 , why can't they just tell her not to do this again . And if i am not wrong , she did not make money by reselling the music. I for one want to listen to music at least 3 or 4 times before i buy .
:)
If software can be given on trial basis , why not music
IMHO the honorable court should have been more sympathetic to this women as she is not financially as strong as other parties . I don't know if she is capable of paying this fine , if she is not , i guess then she has to sell her house or other assets , where will she live if she has to sell her house ?
I am not from your country , but i can say for sure that law is not same for all , if i am correct did not some one from white house was pardoned by your president , and that person was accused of revealing a spy identity
My country is no better , we also have draconian laws . May be someday , we all move to new planet , with our own happy laws
Please pardon my English
Isn't it great to see that punishment has been served, and now a strong example has been set as a deterrent!
Screw the woman's life, and scare the living flesh out of all those evil filesharers that have committed similar crimes.
Now we can all sleep better knowing that the artists and their friendly record companies can survive in the Land Of The Fees. And thank god that the record industry does not have to deal with many artists like Prince... obviously artists like that don't get by, and what about the industry!?
does not mean that same thing is fair or just
I'll leave someone else to think of a car analogy
Two things need to be attacked;
- The length of time of IP. That has become silly. In particular, America's pushing our version is the worst. Australia's was actually, pretty fair. Hopefully, more nations push back against US and push for something like Australia's was.
- DMCA WRT DVDs/Music. We bought the movie and/or music. It is our right to back it up and use it how we see fit. As long as we are not distributing it, then there should not be an issue.
Though, Good luck. There is not much difference between a dem and pub, other than a pub runs monster deficits. They both love the current version of IP.I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The purpose of copyright law is to grant a temporary monopoly on the rights to copy a piece of art - be it a painting, song, book or whatever. A bit like a patent provides a temporary monopoly on an invention.
/.
The fact that a lawsuit has been won by the copyright owner demonstrates that the law does exactly what it was intended to do - set out a series of punishments for those who would break the law and copy a piece of art which they have no right to do.
I can see two bones of contention here, but they're more related to how the law is designed than whether or not it's working as intended:
1. Is the law morally justifiable?
2. Is the process of enforcing the law fair?
Both are very reasonable questions. If they're something which is important to the general public, then they'll probably become issues at the next election. But right now, I'd imagine most politicians are more interested in the easy political points - things like crime, education, war in Iraq - than those which are generating a lot of noise on
As an adjunct to point 2 I should say that the price of "content" in a market based economy is what the market will bear. That's capitalism, the fact that governments have awarded monopolies on distribution rights shouldn't be allowed to change the underpinnings of our economic system. At market price, music is so cheap that piracy is hardly worthwhile.
This is all moot anyhow since the major labels are already dead in the water.
I was thinking earlier of putting together a nice looking website that puts the issue into easy terms for people to understand and frames things so they'll care. Anyone good at drawing? My graphic artist isn't up for anything that might involve conflict. I have some ideas of how I want the website but I'm not good at drawing.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
broken law
You will note that the RIAA is no longer DIRECTLY taking on that deal in the open. It is now close door and very quiet. I know that allofmp3 pays to the local RIAA, but does that money then flow back to the west's? IOW, do the artist still get paid in some fashion? Do not get me wrong. Right now, the concept that America has where money MUST flow to a BS corporation who represents ALL musicians (even those that want NOTHING to do with them) is wrong. But if Russia is playing fair, they will see that the money that they get for the re-sell goes to the owner of the music.
As to you other issue, I have NOT a clue. I think that our IP laws have gotten way out of hand, and need to return to what they were long ago.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No it wasn't, and that is the problem a lot of people are having with this ruling. On this occasion I would recommend that you make an exception and RTFA. This case was not about uploading, the RIAA never proved that she uploading anything.
Jury Instruction 15: The act of making available for download copyrighted material is in itself an act of copyright infringement with a fine of $750-$30000.
Based on a screen-shot of kazaa showing some song names against her IP address they have fined her $220000. If you can't see why this is a travesty of justice then stop and think about it for a second. They have not shown that she violated copyright. Instead they have altered the law to say that "if it looks like you were going to violate copyright" then that is now a crime.
Thank god I don't live in America, and the laws here are a little more sane.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Just a question ... are Americans teaching their children that it is good to share, or that it is bad to share?
I for one don't have hundreds of thousands laying around or in assets :)
In Europe they cannot take away your means to live (ie., force you into poverty by a ruling) as that is against human rights directives.
So, is this just on paper or how do they get the money?
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Hey Kids! uncle George W says: Don't steel music of the internets!
Make SELinux enforcing again!
...its about prolonging the inevitable death of the labels business.
........ no sale.
.. then I won't listen and won't know about artist I might just like enough to buy.
Remove the labels and replace them with a business model that understands the enormous cost savings of technology and the internet for production and distribution.
It should be obvious, even from the court records.
I very rarely buy music and when I do I try to buy directly from the artist, but this does not stop me from lisening to a great deal more music than I have purchased (not rented).
I don't pirate but I have heard mixes others have done that remined me of plenty of songs and artists I liked years ago. But at about that time this RIAA crap started up and I figured I liked the artists and their works, not the contradictory business model of the labels as represented by the RIAA. So of course I dropped the idea of locating the music I heard on such mixes, that I might buy it.
I mean since the Mix was illegal, I wasn't supposed to hear it and certainly in not hearing it I wouldn't be remined of
I don't Pirate nor do I support rabid dogs out to bite th hand that feeds them.
The music industry labels has a history of questionable dealings such as Payola to get radio stations to play.... This sort of thing was determined to be illegal, unfair, etc... But the objective was that of getting coverage.
Now that there is plenty of coverage.... they are complaining... Why? because they are not controlling it, its more open to public choice....
Such controlling bias is not beneficial to but a few artists.
So in the mean time I wake to music I don't pay for, drive to work and back with music I don't pay for and when I get an itch for irish music I tune into livelreland and I don't pay for that either.
In fact I'd say on average over years, the music I listen to is better than 90% music I didn't pay for. And all without pirating. Most of which I wouldn't buy anyways, regardless of the fact that by the time the radio stations stop playing it, I'm sick and tired of it anyway and certainly won't have anything, and I certainly won't allow an illegal mix years later wrongly influence me to go out and buy....
Why buy and why pirate when there is plenty free and legal.....
If they shut down internet radio
Perhaps the Labels should just shut down all radio stations music playing..... That'll save them.
The DMCA does not have a Fair Use clause. So she would have been royally boned even if she were only sharing with her friends or even (going by the letter of that legislation) having them listen to the music in her lounge.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Clinton argued (he was a lawyer) that 'making oneself available' for a blowjob is not sex, but is sex for the one performing the blowjob (Monica Lewinsky). Which explains why he didn't perjure himself (the actual impeachable offence that lost him his law license) when claiming he "did not have sex with that woman".
George on the other hand (who isn't a lawyer) would have to fail to use the 'making available' defense, and perform the blowjob himself (on someone else?) in order to commit perjury, which could then lead to political pressure on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings.
YES let every person in canada and the usa get sued for 220, 000 $
and then when we default and cannot pay we all lost our jobs and go on welfare the whole of sai dsystem comes crashing down. As one poster before said when the punichment metted out is so great that an application of it too everyone would devaste your economy whose really screwing stuff up.
I for one wish they'd sue me. Seems they never go after anyone who can speak for themselves wihtout a lawyer let alone with. And any 12yr olds and grannies, doesn't that show you what they people are truly about? YES bush we know your that kinda.
Facist I have said it since the irrational reation to 9/11 and the patriot act.
AND no ONE listened.
I at first thought that the RIAA having a successful legal precedent was an exclusively bad thing, of course...but then I realised something.
People have wondered how the BSD license is any more secure than straight public domain. It's more secure because it relies on conventional copyright law. It also seems to me that the idea that conventional copyright being toothless is one of the primary justifications used for existence of the GPL.
If it is demonstrated that conventional copyright law still has some teeth, then it can also be demonstrated that the BSD license is at least concievably enforceable likewise. That might not be good for people who want to swap mp3s, but it might just be good for the BSD license.
I know there was some talk a bit back about extending use of the GPL to other forms of media, such as music. Perhaps if we have a few more cases such as this, we could demonstrate that a permissive use license such as the BSD could be used even for such works, while if copyright is shown to be enforceable, would also be sufficient from a legal perspective to protect the copyright holder as well.
RIAA wants to get $150,000 per infringement. If they nailed only 1/10th of the users on just the eMule network right now, each for a single infringement, they would net far more money than they normally make in a year. How can you seek damages so far removed from reality? RIAA wants us to believe that the $40 billion dollar music industry is the being victimized by eMule users to the tune of $600 billion worth of copyright infringement at any given moment.
+0 Meh
Ron Paul is actually a crazy right winger, not the salvation wingnut Slashdotters seem to think he is.
I don't know if I missed it in the articles, but it doesn't seem that the RIAA had to prove that they were the owners of the copyrights of the songs in question. The RIAA does not support the artists, and "artist(s)" isn't even part of their name. This misconception of the RIAA supporting the actual artists is what is scaring the people, or to put it in more accurate terms, they're scaring away their own customers. Yep, a musician here, although out of practise for a few years, I still do not grant the RIAA any rights to my materials, nor to collect royalties on my behalf (as they have the goal of wanting to collect royalties on every song played anywhere). These rights do not belong to the RIAA, but to ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, or whatever organization that actually does represent the artist(s) and publisher(s) connected to said copyrighted materials. The RIAA never gets around to telling that to the public.
This "copyright czar" Chris Israel should better check his kids' (if he has any) pcs and ipods. The majority of the families in the US are at risk for a similar verdict.
But then of course his risk is quite diminished: the Bush administration has an effective system for preventing that their friends are prosecuted. The time that justice was blind is behind us.
God, that was funny :-).
:-)
Class.
Now, if you really want to kick the industry in the chins it's very easy, but I don't have the time for it.
(1) Register a site "BuynoCDsDay" and put SENSIBLE arguments on there why what the RIAA and the record industry in general is doing is wrong. Talk about the RIAA acting as a second police force, talk about the total absence of rational proof (i.e. lack of evidence) and talk also about alternatives (saying something is bad is easy, offering alternatives is evidence you've been thinking about it)
(2) Plan a day somewhere around Xmas where normally their sales volume is quite high and ask people not to buy a single record that day. Nil, none whatsoever, and to tell their friends as well. Give good arguments (for instance, list the consequences of what happens when the RIAA is allowed to continue abusing the law) and maybe also identify that the RIAA is a primary reason of records being so expensive (here's a question for you - it costs millions to make a movie, yet I can buy a movie DVD for the same money as an album CD, why?). Try to go as wide as possible - get people to translate the site as well because the bigger you make this, the more it will hit.
(3) Market the crap out of this site. Talk to The Register, Slashdot it (which means you'll need to keep to text and small image sizes), get it in Boing Boing, Ars Technica etc, the works. Make promos and stick them on YouTube. In other words, keep hitting it. Email the BBC about what you're doing. Get on the news, annoy your parents with it, come up with a good slogan and yell it everywhere - democracy is being able to say what you think (but without insulting people - ther'e such a thing as good manners).
However, there is ONE thing you should not do. Do not promote illegal activity. Breaking copyright is wrong, whatever your reasons are you have no right to break the law. Just send a signal to the RIAA that the game is up - and this "win" of theirs (which will surely be challenged) will make all those others accused even fight harder (except the dead ones, of course).
So there, instant revolution recipe. I'll go and take my tablets and lie down now
Insert
Ok, this is years back in school. But I do believe there is an ammendment in our constitution stating that "Fines and penalties should be fair and affordable".
Back then they saw the value of using a fine as a means of punishment. The thing is they also saw that you cant issue a fine of $220,000 against a person who makes $30,000 a year. It is unrealistic and unfair.
Though for many politicians making these obscene laws, $220,000 fine to them is like $220 for us everyday people. Their problem is they cant see nor understand what life is like for the vast majority of people in this Earth.
This country needs another Abe Lincoln. A poor man who worked his way up the political ladder. Too bad he'd be filtered out of the system before even starting.
Who re-elected him OR by not voting did nothing to oppose him? There is a saying, in the land of the blind, one-eyed is king. Think about this and see what it means to those ruled by Bush.
That you also lobby for Ron Paul suggests to me that you are not just a blind person ruled by a one-eyed freak but have lost all sensory capacities as well, rounded off with frontal lobotomy.
What I think is wrong with the world (Bush is far from the only "how the fuck did we elect him" leader) is television. Not the violence, or the sex but in how on tv solutions always come easy. Every problem is always one-dimensional and always gets solved before the end credits. Even "deep" series like Law & Order always only have ONE problem at the time. If the recent RIAA court cases were is TV land they would either just have the problem of how you indentify someone on the net, OR the moral problem of prosecuting someone for millions when they are pisspoor OR the issue of the morality of copyright BUT NEVER all at once, as in the real world.
You can even see this in the Oprah type shows, when she still had "difficult" shows, they still were about one thing and one thing only. The persons in trouble would abuse drugs OR have gambling problems OR come from broken homes OR have mental issues. The reason real world people are often so difficult to help is because they got ALL these problems at once and very few places are fit to deal with their combination.
But that is to difficult for tv, so everything is simplified and dumbed down till the point that perhaps many of us start to believe that simple solutions do exist.
Take the issue of that famous 300 dollar tax break, it is a pathetic amount of money based on even a low yearly income but what was the cost to society because of the numerous spending cuts that had to be made to pay for it?
Even if you believe those spending cuts were a good thing, then the US would still have been far better served if that money had been invested, if it had simple been put into a simple bank account, it could have been used to balance out any future required spending, like the disaster in new orleans or the war.
But no, people felt the effect of a down economy, so we get a simple one liner solution of being given a small amount of money and voila, guy gets elected.
But hey, what am I bothering for, you think Ron Paul is a good candidate. He has a lot of one-liner solutions, but if you actually would implement them then you would be hit with a ton of problems once the side effects kick in.
Get out of the various defence pacts like NATO? Where would the US base its operations out of that help secure the trade routes it needs for its economy? No the guy speak simple solutions for a simple audience who can't handle thinking about complex problems and reasoning out what any action might mean in the long term.
That is why really good leaders never do anything, because any change no matter how simple upsets everything else. Only once you have analyzed completely what each change might result in can you act. Do this for me, go to Ron Pauls wikipedia page, scroll down and read what he wants to do, then try to write down the total impact of each of his decisions. Can you even begin to imagine the chaos?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sony owes Steve Popovich $5,000,000 and won't pay. Sony has lost the lawsuit and two appeals. Yeah, copyright law is working all right.
http://oneamericanagainstsonymusic2.blogspot.com/
Sony shouldn't be able to collect any money for copyright violations until they pay for their own copyright violationss.
GWB sticks up only for his friends in corporate America. That's how he got to be president, he's not going to change anytime soon.
We have one. Justice Clarence Thomas. Read his book. And yes, we should go back to copyright terms of 14 years, renewable once.
And all the folk tunes you know are plagiarized from Shaker songs, including Copland's Appalachian Springtime.
Then why, when I play my hi-fi so loud my neighbour bangs on the wall, am I not guilty of copyright infringement by making my loud music available to be recorded by my neighbour?
That's not a directly equivalent example, but it seems copyrighted materials are regularly 'made available' by individuals in the course of their everyday life, yet the onus would be on another person to actively 'copy' those materials before copyright violation occurred.
If I leave my audio CD collection in my front garden, passers-by could conceivably remove, losslessly duplicate and replace them. If I lend my ipod to a friend, they can copy my mp3s. Being fined for either of these activies would clearly be preposterous, yet are these examples fundementally different to 'making available' on kazaa?
Does "it .... being used as a stick to scare to the rest of society rather than an as an actual punishment, and is therefore out of proportion" apply to the death penalty? I ask because often people say that capital punishment as a deterrent is one (of a handful, admittedly) justification for the death penalty.
.... don't think this mean the Democrats are the anti-RIAA party. The interests of Big Business is important to both parties.
You people and your slight differences disgust me! - Prof. Farnsworth
This might sound like a huge victory for big corporations, but from a legal point of view, decisions by juries don't lead to important precedents. Even more, it's totally feasible that they appeal this case, and it gets overturned. Then this white house aide will really be eating his words.
> Breaking copyright is wrong,
It isn't.
> whatever your reasons are you have no right to break the law.
If the law is unjust, it's not only wrong, but your obligation to break it. If the world worked by your logic, the civilisation would have never developed past the slavery, monarchies, colonialism, and so on, because every of those steps required breaking some kind of then effective, but unjust law. If you didnt ignore, fight and break unjust laws, you wouldnt even live in the US but would be a massively exploited british colony. If you happen to be black, you would still be prohibited from learning something and would have the lagal status of a "thing", could be sold, bought and auctioned, and if youre a woman, youd be prohibited from voting, studying, appearing on streets without a burqa and so on.
FUCKING NOBODY who is not profiting from artificial, enforced scarcity, perceives either this judgement or the underlying copyright fascism as "just" or democratically approved, and without massive civil movements, there seems just to be no way to change the laws, because the persons in power simply "dont allow" the people to do it bacause they know that copyright, as we know it now, wouldnt survive a single night if people _really_ decided democratically about it.
Let's face it. RIAA is doing a lot of the dirty work for the open source movement. IF, a judge were to rule, or the congress were to decide, that copyrights did not somehow apply to electronic documents, or that, users could freely copy a digital image without having to abide by any sort of license or royalty restriction, the OSS movement would be screwed because the GPL would become utterly meaningless. That is, if the little consumer can steal a song, then mega corporation can also violate the GPL, as both are based on copyrights. You could, when the dust all settles, be allowed to copy music legally, but then, you would also have to allow companies to grab all the GPL code, commercialize it, and do exactly the very thing that spawned the GPL to begin with.
This is my sig.
for years.
The suckage of the RIAA's client's 'product' is legendary and I see no need to support it in any way.
Unfortunately, is still too expensive to make movies because there isn't an independent movie market place for the CREATION of movies, but its coming as production equipment, (like film cameras, lenses and editing software,) keep getting cheaper and better.
It will become possible to finance the creation of movies, the distribution of movies over the internet through something like podcasting. You can pitch ideas on the 'net, see what sort of an audience would be interested (that gives you an upper limit on budget,) and go produce it.
The same with movie houses trying to compete with 1080p and 41"+ screens.
They are going to be in real trouble in a very few years.
But back to the RIAA:
There are lots of indie artists who's record companies get my money instead.
The RIAA is one last gasp of any industry trying to hold back the tide.
Like buggy whip makers, they are trying to force cars off of the roads. We all know where that led.
I'm going to quite myself from next Monday's podcast, ("bad form" I know), but the RIAA only represents a very few clients:
"* Arista
* BMG
* Capitol Records
* Elektra
* Fonovisa
* Interscope
* Lava
* Loud
* Maverick
* MGM
* Motown
* Priority
* Sony
* UMG
* Universal
* Virgin
* Warner)
Personally, I think the RIAA's lawyers are tone-deaf, evil, profligate dwarves who have neither senses of shame or of proportion.
I will never buy "any" of products from any firms they represent. (There are plenty of alternatives.)
Kiss my ass, RIAA. Kiss my ass."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Then why, when I play my hi-fi so loud my neighbour bangs on the wall, am I not guilty of copyright infringement by making my loud music available to be recorded by my neighbour?
You are but the RIAA doesn't have the technology to track those kinds of violations yet.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
IMO: Few people that express political opinions about, justice, civil liberties, or even decisions by the U.S.Supreme Court, seem to be aware of our founding fathers original views. In simple terms the basic defense against government "tyranny" in our original constitutional concept was the jury.
My Quick and Dirty Background
In 1670, the traditional right of trial, by a jury of the defendant's peers, became much more powerful. The King's Chief Justice ruled that a jury could not be punished for bringing in a verdict that the Judge thought was unreasonable. This gave the jury the right to nullify the law in any specific trial! It's no accident that our U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights mention trial by jury six times. Our founding fathers understood the importance of the jury to protect the citizens from any state including a republic.
Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper No. 83 -
"The friends and adversaries of the plan of the [constitutional] convention, if they agree in nothing else, concur at least in the value they set upon the trial by jury; or if there is any difference between them it consists in this: the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty; the latter represent it as the very palladium of free government."
Thomas Jefferson's views were much stronger! -
"I consider trial by jury the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of it's constitution." If you think that Jefferson overlooked the right to elect our representatives, you should consider a second quote of Jefferson, from a letter written in 1789, while serving. as ambassador to France: "Were I called upon to decide whether the people had best be omitted in the Legislative or Judiciary department, I would say that it is better to leave them out of the Legislative."
One Historical Example: A Glorious Tradition of Free Speech
In 1735, jury nullification decided the celebrated seditious libel trial of John Peter Zenger. His newspaper had openly criticized the royal governor of New York. The current law made it a crime to publish any statement (true or false) criticizing public officials, laws, or the government in general. The jury was only to decide if the material in question had been published; the judge was to decide if the material was in violation of the statute.
Later "Judicial Refinements."
A U.S. Supreme Court decision, (Sparf and Hansen v. U.S.) in 1895, declared (in legal principle) that jurors did not have the right of "jury nullification." It could be said that they were proclaiming the jurers in that seditious libel trial of John Peter Zenger to be criminals! The acceptance (in principle) of the immunity of a seated jury limited the full impact of the decision. However; in most states trial judges now tell jurors that their only job is to decide if the "facts" are sufficient to convict, and that if so, they "should" or "must" convict. Defense attorneys can face contempt of court charges if they urge jurors to acquit if they think the law is unconstitutional or unjust. However, in England "Rumpole of the Bailey" can use the following defense - "Yes my client did it! So what! Does any member of the jury really believe my client deserves to be punished?"
This subject is explored more fully in the book, -
JURY NULLIFICATION: The Evolution of a Doctrine , pub 1998, by Carolina Academic Press, Author: Clay S. Conrad.
More recently - California has allowed judges to enter jury rooms, under certain special situations, to evaluate if the jury is reasoning properly! These actions have been examined (2001) by the California Supreme Court, and found acceptable based on the 1895 Supreme Court decision.
The ability of the Judge to "judge" the reasoning processes of seated jurors, under admittedly rare situations, is only true in California.at the present tim
The problem is that she is a human being, who is probably going to pay for the rest of her life for the "copyright violation" of just making the stuff available, rather than a corporation, who could either afford it or just go out of business, while the corporate officers pocketed the money and go on to start up the next shady deal.
I'm not recommending it, but it would illustrate her plight if she would commit "sepuku" in front of the RIAA offices for TV cameras, in exchange for her kid's safety, as this would illustrate the actual attitude of the RIAA (I like to think that the sight of a woman gutting her self like a fish all over their carpet might give some of them nightmares, but I don't really think it would.)
Basically, she was a single individual going into a system designed for corporations to KILL each other.
Now her life is ground meat. She'll spend her life paying for the mistakes on lost of peoples' parts.
In old Imperial Japan, her head would have been separated from her body.
Those ARE the stakes.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I don't suppose there's a Civil Liberties Czar by any chance...
Bush probably doesn't even an mp3 is. If this woman hadn't tried to cover her tracks by replacing her hard drive and then lying about it, she probably wouldn't have been convicted.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Heh, figured I'd get more folks reading this if I used that subject :)
But yeah, ok, the entertainment industry, including all of the RIAA and MPAA members, gives more money to democrats than republicans by a factor of about 4:1. In addition, for the "family value" conservatives the entertainment industry is the next thing to the devil. So, why exactly does the president in particular support the RIAA? They're supporting his enemy on both the financial and ideological fronts.
morons.
when the laws are being bent, so too the people
paying the piper shouldn't be a life sentence
In response to such outrageous abuses many propose "no-buying-cds" days and other utterly useless measures.
But what would really hurt their pride and lessen their damage would be for the community to set a fund and help this person with her legal fees.
This would really show that the people won't tolerate someone's life being ruined to set an "example" and instill fear in everyone else.
(note: I'm not an American citizen, somebody please set it up instead)
Not only is it that others were downloading from her system, but it was when the user with her name had it, that they were downloading. SO, if somebody was at her house AND used her system her windows system with her ID, then maybe. But let's be honest. She did the dead. It is pretty obvious from the case (looking at other articles as well), that she not only downloaded, but was also uploading. And it is was the uploading (distributing) that gets her in trouble. Yeah, the laws here have gone insanly towards the corporate world. At times, I think that Musolini would be proud. Now, the question is, will the liberals who have Hollywood backing bring things back to normal. Somehow, I doubt it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A friend copying your music is NOT a violation (fair use). Your playing the music is also not a violation. You leaving your music available outside (esp. if you made copies for them) for strangers to take would get you a lawsuit from the RIAA (and I think that they would win).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is wrong on so many levels. The RIAA once again shows they are not a reasonable or honorable organization. The only redeeming thing they could do is let her pay a much smaller penalty of say, $5k, and call it a day. Punishing a person with such a harsh penalty for such an insignificant crime is an abuse of our legal system.
Sonam Genphel
Anyone who voted Republicrat or Democan, shut up and go sit on the sidelines.
You've already demonstrated that you want an intrusive, activist government who backs corporate interests and not the rights of citizens that is laid out in the constitution. You have no room to complain now as corporations and the unconstitutional laws passed were created by the government against the ninth and tenth amendment, You ASKED FOR THIS.
______________________________________
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself
As far as I can tell, they think it's working if you can win big money in the lawsuit lottery.
As for me, I think I'll follow NYCL's advice from the previous story and send a little something to help her appeal this. NYCL said to make out checks to Chestnut & Cambronne PA, Esqs. with a note that they're for Jammie Thomas's case and to mail them to:
Brian N. Toder, Esq.
Chestnut & Cambronne, P.A.
204 North Star Bank
4661 Highway 61
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
And that their phone number is (651) 653-0990 if you need it for FedEx.
The $ amount is scary, but what is even more scary is the White House praising that a woman's life was destroyed, saying that this is how it was supposed to work, too. Mindboggling. Good thing I don't live there...
Now, excuse me while I go and see what I can do to support local "EFF" organization, so that kind of crap won't ever go through here.
I pledge allegiance to my Flag,
and to the Republic for which it stands:
one Nation indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for all.
October 11, 1892
I pledge allegiance to my the
Flag of the United States,
and to the Republic for which it stands:
one Nation indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for all.
June 14, 1923
I pledge allegiance to the Flag
of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands:
one Nation indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for all.
June 14, 1924
I pledge allegiance to the Flag
of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands:
one Nation under God, indivisible,
With Liberty and Justice for all.
June 14, 1954
"I pledge allegiance to the brands,
of the Fascist States of Amerika,
and to the companies,
for which they stand,
one purpose, for profits,
with liability, and surveillance, for all."
Seems to be the current one
Give it a few years and movies are where songs are today.
About 20 years ago, making and recording a song was expensive. You needed some studio, good (==expensive) equipment, some way to market and distribute it, in short, you needed the aid of a studio. Today, this all vanished. You can create great music "at home", with rather low cost, your average monthly income will buy you whatever you need.
Let technology grow a little and we got the same with movies. We are already today at the point where great FX are no longer a matter of multi million dollar hardware but rather one of skill and a decent but affordable FX program. Video cams getting better and cheaper every month. Professional editing software also dropped from many thousands to a few hundred bucks. In no more than 10 years, the movie studios will face the same problem the music studios have today: They become obsolete for the ambitioned creator.
They don't "feel" the pressure yet from both sides, only from the customer side where movies are now being shared like songs have been for over 10 years now. Only recently (i.e. about 5 years now) bandwidth has been large enough that it becomes an issue. Now they react. Now it's too late.
We'll see more laws about this. In 100 years, we'll look at those laws with the same chuckle we now feel when we see laws for the protection of horse drawn cabs, about a man waving a red flag in front of a car or similar crap, lobbied in by a dying business.
Unlike them, the **AAs have a choice, though. They can turn from the middleman that tries to hold artists and customers in a stranglehold to a valuable marketing and PR tool for the former. They have all the necessary tools, knowledge and people to push your songs into the charts and make it a seller. They are, if anything, great at creating a hype. If they can change to this model and become an "advertising agency", they can survive.
If they instead try to cling to a dead business model, they will perish.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One of the problems that the current RIAA approach is that they are ignoring the large scale publishers by going after these petty criminals. And this Minnesota woman mentioned in the articles is just that. She is accused of opening up to some friends a couple of CDs worth of MP3s.
I have seen some very large scale operations of blatant copyright violation in the past, including network sharing of copyrighted material. For crying out loud, I've had co-workers hand me nearly their entire CD collection compressed as MP3s on a couple of CDs.
This is also completely missing the Chinese CD copy pirates that even have complete CD pressing facilities, print up scanned jacket inserts, and sell the CDs as the real thing when in fact that isn't the case at all. And don't tell me these CDs don't end up in the USA, as I know for a fact that they do. This kind of activity is blatant copyright violations and involves criminal activities where not only is the "criminal" making money off of the duplication of the content, but it also does real damage that can be measured in a genuine sense where some individuals are buying this content thinking it is the real thing, completely unaware that it was made through an illegal process and the artist gets absolutely nothing in return.
I've also see websites... and they still do exists... that have hundreds or even thousands of CDs worth of data, and even hundreds of complete DVD movies available for download in blatant disregard for copyright laws. I know some of them have been shut down, but that just means they are avoiding to advertise on Google and other search engines, and you have to "go underground" to find these websites. If you search hard enough, you can still find them.
What this woman did was the equivalent of a shoplifter taking some candy or other low-value merchandise from a store. Certainly it is illegal and perhaps needs to be prosecuted. But it doesn't need to become a national news story, nor draw the attention of multi-national corporations to fly their lawyers across the country in order to prosecute individuals who are for the most part clueless to begin with. Certainly the $300,000 fine+ court costs is way over the top.
I would also like to ask this rather tough question to the RIAA: If any of this money is collected, will even a single penny of that money go into the hands of the artist you were representing?
This is tragedy compounding the situation, as copyright law is really there to protect the content creator. These organizations like the RIAA do very little to help the plight of the ordinary musician, nor does a prosecution like this ultimately help out a journeyman musician. I'm not talking the grand masters that are at the peak of popular culture and earn their deservedly millions of dollars. They can usually negotiate reasonable recording contracts and keep most of their money. I'm talking the more ordinary folks who are getting screwed over by the RIAA, where a prosecution like this will result in that same Minnesota woman simply declaring bankruptcy to get out of the debt, and the RIAA will then claim what little was paid toward the fine as legal costs. The only people who "won" in this case was the RIAA lawyers themselves, and not their "clients" for whom they were supposedly representing.
It's working as intended L2P
That's what it boils down to, and that's also what made the communist countries fall. The people did not support the system that held them down. You cannot, at least in a democracy (or something resembling it) create laws that the majority of people either don't care about or oppose.
Imagine you know a murderer. Would you go to the police and tell on him? Most likely. Even if he's your friend. He killed a person! Most people would certainly support a law against murder. NOt because they're directly affected, but because murder simply is something that does not appeal to us. Maybe it's part of our culture, maybe even religion, maybe just the fear that you could be next, but generally you'll at the very least consider turning him in.
Now imagine you know a filesharer. Would you even ponder going to the police? Most likely not, because at the very least you don't care about copyright laws, and if you do, you'll more likely support your friend against those laws.
Most people either don't understand copyright laws, don't understand their purpose or simply don't know something like this even exists. "Virtual property" is a quite artificial concept and hard to grasp. It's not one of the things that make sense immediately, and even when you grasp the idea intellectually, it still doesn't "feel" wrong to copy content. You didn't really "steal" anything, it's still there. That someone didn't get money who should've gotten money, or whatever reason is usually given, is something that doesn't immediately affect us.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
$200,000 for 24 songs might be nutters--
But..
To those who believe that recorded music should be given away for free-don't complain when your favorite artist signs with a big, greedy label.
Why?
A common way for people to rationalize not paying for recorded music is to say "well, I support the artist by going to their shows." Good thinking--in fact, that's the exact argument that record labels have been using for years. "Yeah, you won't be making much per CD, but
We'll make you famous.
We'll make you a star.
And you'll make money by touring.
Oh, by the way... which one's Pink?"
They might be greedy bastards, but nothing will promote a band as well as a label that spends hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting your music--not "file sharing," not "word-of-mouth."
If you are an artist who has to choose between being fleeced by the RIAA and being fleeced by your own "fans," you may as well go with the option that allows you to make a living on the road.
I have 1,000,000 songs I am going to release through Bittorrent.
Go To Hell.
Sincerely,
Kilgore Trout
I think your analogy is inappropriate. We have developed past the slavery, monarchies, etc. You're living in a democratic country, however wrong the laws or the policies of the government you consider. Just imagine what would happen if everybody unsatisfied with the current laws started their own "revolution", bringing your country into chaos.
I'm from Hungary (sorry for my English), and here some far-right groups tried to make a "revolution" and a "real political transformation" last year - of course they failed pathetically. Nevertheless, it would be terrible if everybody broke the laws they found unjust.
I suggest that any American who can, should attend a rally in Washington on July 4th 2008 to show their dissatisfaction with the present system of copyright and patent law.
The use of the legal system to coerce and intimidate the population into paying high penalties for minor infractions is extortion. The current time frame of copyright removes many useful things from the public domain, and many highly insightful and socially relevant parodies using imagery or concepts decades old have been removed from the public arena due to threats of legal action - not, note you, actual legal action, only the implied threat. And these actions are successful even with the legal (and constitutional) right to use copyrighted material in satire.
The initial American revolution began as a protest over the imposed British taxation of tea - at least according to history. A most famous American statement from that era is 'No Taxation Without Representation'. The entertainment industry has been lobbying to reduce the rights of the citizens to use and enjoy products they have bought, in any but an 'approved' manner. It is their stated opinion that the public does not have the right to listen to music, or watch a movie on any device without purchasing a different copy of the product for that device. You do not have the right to play a CD/Movie in hour home stereo, home theater, computer, xbox, or any other device unless you have a copy for each individual device. You can only play it on one device.
The entertainment industry has gone so far as to sue, and force the Girl Scouts of America, to pay $10,000.00 a year, for the simple act of singing songs around the campfire during summer camps. This action alone, causes increased costs for young girls to attend these camps, and many of the families the organization is trying to assist cannot afford the increased cost - thus effectively removing the right of these young citizens to have a positive influence on their future. Try telling a ten year old she can't attend a summer camp because some guy in a suit says Paula Abdul's Mercedes is more important than her future.
This constitutes a level of taxation on the populace that is even more odious than the British tea tax.
Additionally, the American entertainment industry has become more blatantly criminal in their pursuit of their perceived right to be sole distributors and managers of music, television, movies, and any other form of entertainment. This is the natural course for an industry that has been thoroughly dominated and controlled by organized crime for over 70 years.
The American Government needs to be sent a strong signal from the public that this behavior is not going to be tolerated by the population of the country. Making snide and witty comments on slashdot and other forums is fun, and it's nice to share our frustration, but the reality is, unless and until the current administration sees a significant number of citizens in the street exercising their right to protest, then it will always be 'business as usual', and it will be the American people who will pay the ultimate price.
So any and all of us who care about this issue, and can do so, should get off our asses (and keyboard) and do something about it. Call friends, associates, enemies. Organize, and have as many citizens as you possibly can, show up for a protest in Washinton DC on July 4th, 2008 and let the people who are supposed to look after the interests of the American People see the American People for a change.
It's your future - are you going to take any action, or simply bitch about it without doing a thing to make any effective change.
BTW: Make sure you all bring TEA - make the message clear.
Not a huge fan of Bush but he doesn't deserve blame for this. Copyright laws existed when the Constitution was written and they began getting utterly ridiculous far before Bush was a politician.
So you are seriously claiming that none of these laws existed before Bush's administration? I just think it's so funny when people get a hot-button issue and use it as a scapegoat for everything even when it has nothing to do with it. Many liberals have been in office and they have not changed copyright laws in your favor. Neocons are not the root cause of this issue.
I look at it this way: if the RIAA is getting $150,000 per song from some people (or even some smaller amount, like $9000), then that surely means that there's a lot of other people who can then safely copy/download for free without having to worry about the copyright holders being fairly compensated.
The only downside is that I'm not sure how I'm going to find enough time in the day to do enough downloading to equal things out.
Tweet, tweet.
breaking copyright IS WRONG. in law, and ethically. comparing ripping off music to fighting slavery is ABSURD. what sad little freeloaders you ilk are.
if we could duplicate physical objects (like food and shelter) as easily and cheaply as digital information then you may have point here, but until that age comes, asking for compensation of created data should be awarded. and there is NOTHING UNJUST ABOUT IT.
Just imagine what would happen if everybody unsatisfied with the current laws started their own "revolution", bringing your country into chaos.
I'd imagine that there'd be a lot fewer laws, as only the ones that everyone could agree to would be on the books. I'd also imagine that, eventually people would get sick of all the rebellion and would form a government that'd be agreeable to all.
I'm from Hungary (sorry for my English), and here some far-right groups tried to make a "revolution" and a "real political transformation" last year - of course they failed pathetically.
That's because they didn't have any popular support. Without that kind of support any protest (for right or wrong) will fail. The monks protesting in Burma were crushed too. Does that make their protest wrong?
Nevertheless, it would be terrible if everybody broke the laws they found unjust.
So the mass campaigns of civil disobedience that led to independence for India, civil rights for African Americans in the US, and the end of apartheid in South Africa were terrible?
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Where was the Justice Department Czar when RIAA lost and was forced to pay legal costs to the defendant?
Am sure Gonzales would have "forgotten" to make a statement.
It is high time we elect Ron Paul and clean out the spider web of corruption that Eisenhower warned us about.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
FUCKING NOBODY who is not profiting from artificial, enforced scarcity, perceives either this judgement or the underlying copyright fascism as "just" or democratically approved, and without massive civil movements, there seems just to be no way to change the laws, because the persons in power simply "dont allow" the people to do it bacause they know that copyright
I perceive copy right law as just in certain cases and am not making any profit from the enforced scarcity that you mention.
Look at it this way: an artist should be given the right to determine how, when and where his/her art is displayed. If that artist wants to sell out and take a check from the man, that's their right.
Now, I believe that the judgment is excessive and hope that she is able to appeal and have the judgment reduced but just because this example shows abuse in the system doesn't mean that the system should be thrown out. It just means that the system needs to be fixed.
A person has been stripped of everything they own because they shared some songs. There is no better evidence that copyright law is not serving the interests of the people than that. White House advocacy of such obvious tyranny shows that the White House does not believe in justice, democracy or serving the best interests of the American people.
It is time for regime change. If no reasonable alternative is offered, I will vote for unreasonable alternatives. The Republican party has abandoned it's core principles of fiscal responsibility, international isolationism and limited government. They have become an abusive advocate of government power for the benefit of select, multinational corporations. They must be removed from power, even if the alternative is another group of corporate whores. A disrupted and ineffective government would be better than the one we have now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Q4: Should the laws be applied differently based on a person's socio-economic status?" No, ... is almost always based on a Citizens' socio-economic status. IMO: FauxDejure!
...
...).
..., when regurgitated by a proselyte ...?).
that would be like totally cruel, evil, and unjust. I agree strongly justice in the US, EU,
China, Russia, India, Persia, Arabia
Money buys the best symbolic judicial,
political, journalism, religious
pseudo-patriotism, faith-glass, and
dogma-hype [all three are AKA: Plausible Bullshit].
To paraphrase OpPort: 'When crooked politicians, of a non-representative
bought government; says, "laws need no tightening" it only means they are
happy with the present levels of Corporate States of America (CSA) welfare
provided by the serfs and indentured servants in taxes and penalties.'
In the USA for the last (at least) three decades, laws are passed to provide
at least one of two things: (1) Ways to tax Citizens (with less) a little more,
and (2) Ways to provide the CSA big-holders more welfare (Corporate farms
subsidies, HMO inflation, IPR hostages , Oil hiking
Original wit/ethics of philosophy, dogma, politics
has limited meaning, less understanding, and no value to anyone (except for test, impress, distress a/o
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
You're all whining about this, you all imagine yourselves to be some kind of sonic Che Guevara with a bandoleer of ripped music; thinking you'll bring down the evil empire.
But you're all too lazy and weak to stop buying music; the only way to hurt the companies, the only way to get the artists to start screaming at them. U2 has their private jets and all. You thing they're going to upset the apple cart if YOU don't start abandoning them? Weaklings. I kick sand in your faces. HAHAHAHAHAHA!
You're attacking the problem with all the intelligence of three year-olds.
The tech is cheaper and more accessible - at entry level.
But $25 will buy you a paint set. That doesn't make you a Renoir, a Monet, a Picasso, or a Wyeth.
Consider last week's premier of Pushing Daises on ABC. Disney. The premise alone is worthy of Tim Burton: "First touch, life. Second touch, death, forever."
Consider the magical realism in the design of the sets, the use of color. The scripting, the acting, the pitch-perfect narration of Jim Dale.
This isn't amateur night. It is the work of pros at every level.
but until that age comes, asking for compensation of created data should be awarded. and there is NOTHING UNJUST ABOUT IT.
Don't you think the only reason you're saying that is because you've been 'educated' to do so? I can imagine people like you being the ones saying there's no problem with slavery a few hundred years ago, because to you it seems fine. Why isn't it? It's the way things have been done as long as you've known... but you haven't dared to dream whether things could be better if it went away.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
(here's a question for you - it costs millions to make a movie, yet I can buy a movie DVD for the same money as an album CD, why?)
Duh. Box office. (otherwise your rant is right on)
In no more than 10 years, the movie studios will face the same problem the music studios have today: They become obsolete for the ambitioned creator.
What about the fact that decent actors/actresses (or ones that people want to see) want huge amounts of money, upfront?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I happen to agree with you on this single point. I think his "pro-life" (which really isn't) stance is his one big failing.
But on just about every other issue, he has showed more courage and integrity than any of the other candidates. For example, he has actually voted exactly the same as he has said he would during his campaigns. Try that measure against ANY of the other candidates.
The answer is simple. You are infringing copyright when you do that. Ever seen a label like this? --
WARNING - Copyright subsists in all recordings issued under this label. Any unauthorised broadcasting, public performance, copying, re-recording in any manner whatsoever will constitute infringementThey really mean that. They just don't have the apparatus to catch you. They do routinely dog people who have the temerity to have a radio on in a restaurant; once they're allowed inside your home -- and you probably already own some hardware that does allow them in, just not your hi-fi -- they'll go after you too.
So why don't you run yourself?
GWB had a lot of one-liner solutions, too. And look at what his attempts to implement them have done.
If you really think that is what Ron Paul is about, you have not been listening. What he actually advocates is going back to some solid concepts THAT ACTUALLY WORKED, rather than "experiments" (that really aren't) like GWB's that do NOT work.
But if you want a measure of the quality of a candidate, how about one who actually votes the way he says he will during his campaigns? By that measure, I will hold RP up against any other candidate, and by that measure alone, he gets my vote. If he were to fail, at least he would do it honestly, not like some kind of lowlife slime.
Set up a PayPal (or similar) account for this lady and everyone give her a dollar to help cover the legal costs. In the same way, stand up for anyone who must pay the RIAA. Done. Well, unless they start handing out jail time.
Where did you get that idea? Do you really know anything about him? Ron Paul is not "right wing" at all, if by that you mean anything like these "neo-cons" who are running against him. Rather, he adheres more to what the Republicans have always said they stood for, but never really did: limited government, lower taxes, more personal freedom.
The fact that historically, the Republican party has been amazingly hypocritical about those ideals does not mean that Ron Paul is. Try looking at his voting history. He is someone who -- for a refreshing change -- actually believes in what he is actually doing.
why I think more of my fellow Americans should be proficient in the use of firearms.
I will slide right by your insults and elaborate on my point which you completely missed:
Copyright rewards creators. Creators who make games, movies, music, porn, books, paintings, code, etc. Creators are free to give away their work. They may also ask for compensation.
Under your "Dare to Dream" scenario digital information has no value. Jobs and supporting industries disappear. Only the most popular creators can survive on tips (if the original creator can even be identified amongst imposters). The rest are forced to find jobs in service or physical goods. Massive creative energy is lost.
Non-linear online content (like WoW) is the only thing that retains any economic value. Crushing DRM is implemented to keep these online communities exclusive.
Battlestar Gallactica goes off the air. What will be left for the freeloaders to download? The current ratio of pirated vs. non-pirated content on big trackers is what -- 100 to 1?
And that is the thing about freeloaders. They will complain about Britney Spears and moan how Hollywood is ruining all that is good and holy. But they are not downloading stuff they hate. Or amatuer stuff. They are downloading content they enjoy and stiffing the creators.
The term is Civil disobedience
Oh c'mon, how hard can it be to find someone to say "whoa" credibly?
In other words, of course you can't simply pick anyone from the street. But hollywood showed us time and again that you don't need good actors to make a movie.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Where you're wrong is that you consider the law the thing to fight. I can see that becoming a necessity in the US where you're currently only a democracy in name, not in deed (there is a large amount of irony in trying to force 'democracy' on Iraq, for instance, without a prior vote, but I digress).
Laws are the glue of society, but it has become apparent that in the US there is this strange impression that people have rights, but no obligations. It doesn't work that way, and copyright law is a nice example of that. The timed monopoly was given to allow an artist to profit from their work. What the RIAA et al have tried their best to bury is that there was a reason for such a granted monopoly to have an expiry date: the greater good should be allowed to benefit from this contribution. All we have now is the right, not the obligation to support the greater good afterwards.
What you're asking for is anarchy. Where do you stop if you start ignoring one law? Why not all? Why drive on the right? Why can't I kill that guy that just cut me up on the highway? Who says I have to pay for something I take from the shop? Laws aren't just there to annoy you - they also make society possible. Without laws you wouldn't be able to take a food supplier to task for adding chemicals to the food (sorry, wrong example, you still have Monsanto). There are also laws to stop people abusing the law, but since you allow Bush to exempt himself from so many you have set the scene for HUGE problems. Explain to me why you indict a man for lying about a blowjob, but not one for taking the whole nation to a war and to destroy any standing and trust you had in the world, on information he KNEW to be false. If it wasn't for people like Randy Pausch showing the better side of the US nature (and there is, despite Washington doing their best to obscure it) many would have given up hope.
However, I think we agree on something as well - democracy is really about deciding together. If copyright law is no longer working for the voting majority then there MUST be discussion about change, something that is slowly starting to penetrate teh thick skulls in Washington (you're voters, remember). I just don't think that behaving like a thief without any morals gives you any credibility. Those who are taking the RIAA to task do the right thing - they follow the agreed rules. The RIAA has the problem that they haven't - and they'll pay for that eventually, but it takes a lot of people to make it happen.
The Xmas "Buy No Music day" is IMHO a good idea to send a signal to both politicians and the RIAA members. The politicians see something they can win votes on, the RIAA members will know they're on thin ice and it hurts them where it counts: shareholder wallets.
However, although the RIAA needs some very clear signals, it would IMHO be foolish to do it in a method that would allow them to neutralise you by sticking you in prison.
Just IMHO, of course..
Insert
I don't remember where NYCL's comment was in the prior story, but here's some corroboration from his website, and here is the comment on his own blog where he points people to that information.
I don't blame you for wanting proof; I think it's smart to double-check things like that.
"OTH, had she bought the CD, or simply borrowed from friends, and the only offered it to friends, then I believe this would have been an interesting case."
No it wouldn't have been, because in that scenario there wouldn't have been a "case" at all.
Back in my day (speaking as an old fogey), it was common for one person to buy an LP and make cassettes for his friends. Or a group of people would pitch-in and buy an LP and make tapes for everyone in the group. It wasn't legal, but the "industry" didn't really care. Surtaxes on cassettes, (and later, blank CDs) were imposed and the revenue given to the "industry" to cover this small amount of piracy, and such piracy also helped spread word of the artist involved, enough to make up for the low amout of piracy involved.
It was only when people started to upload content to millions of their "friends" did these suits start, because the scale of piracy today is so many orders of magnitude greater than it was in the past, that it's really a new problem rather than just the same problem to higher degree.
The way I look at it, producers and consumers made a deal with each other. Consumers agree not to pirate en masse, only share copies among a handful of friends, and producers would turn a blind eye and not impede the ability to copy their works for fair use. Consumers broke that deal when they began sharing with millions, so producers had no choice but to lobby for DCMA-like laws, impose DRM, and bring these law suits. Consumers have their own selfishness to blame for what is going on today.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Depends on who is winning the big money. Don't forget, this administration is really big on tort reform, limitations of damages, etc.
The fundamental idea is that some defective product can kill you or disable you for life, and you'll get less than the record company will if you pirate a few of their songs.
The administration has come out in favor of the "ownership society," remember. (By the by, "creators" are not necessarily "owners," either.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
In a world without copyright, LittleGuy has every right to take and use EvilCorp's code TOO. LittleGuy can reverse-engineer it, extend it, release it closed source, and give EvilCorp the finger because they likewise have no claim of ownership over it.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Pardon me, you were correct. I had non sequitur confused with another phrase. My mistake. That point is still, however, that the reply was out of context.
I have no problem seeing someone prosecuted for stealing, but I'm worried that Justice is failing in this area. First, I demand a clear, concise boundary for fair use. I don't care what SONY says, I'm not buying a "CD"; I'm buying the right to hear music when and where I want. This means I should be able to use the "device" that has the music I paid for in any way that allows me to meet my goals, as long as I don't deprive the copyright owner of a legitimate sale to (or for) another party. Within my household, having the music on my MP3 player should not preclude my daughter or guests from listening to the original device.
Second, the suit in MN was decided on a "preponderance of evidence", which is a lower standard than a criminal act which requires "evidence beyond a reasonable doubt". Stealing is a criminal act. It should have been prosecuted as a criminal act. I don't have all the facts available to the jury, but I don't think this would have passed any "reasonable doubt" standard. If it had been prosecuted as a criminal act, and if the woman had been convicted, it would have been a perfect opportunity for the jury and judge to practice "reparative justice" by making her pay damages and punitive damages. (Sending a person to jail for stealing may temporarily prevent further theft, but it doesn't do the victims any good without reparations.)
I think this case fails both my criteria, and I'm disturbed that Justice is being used unfairly. (OK, I know this is not an ideal society, but I still have a DESIRE for a more ideal society, and I can criticize what I see as shortcomings.)
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Let technology grow a little and we got the same with movies. We are already today at the point where great FX are no longer a matter of multi million dollar hardware but rather one of skill and a decent but affordable FX program. Video cams getting better and cheaper every month. Professional editing software also dropped from many thousands to a few hundred bucks. In no more than 10 years, the movie studios will face the same problem the music studios have today: They become obsolete for the ambitioned creator.
Except time isn't getting cheaper. There are artists out there that you can hand them an instrument and they can play something that's CD-worthy. Creating a set with all the props, actors, clothing, makeup, directing, lighting, sound fx, music, cameramen etc. is never going to be cheap. Even with free tools, editing it takes a lot of time and a lot of skill, not to mention any kind of FX/CGI. And if you ever want to do anything involving stuntmen or pyrotechnics, watch your bill shoot for the sky. Sure you can try to do everything with green/bluescreens, but the cost doesn't vanish - a lot disappear but you spend a helluva lot of time fiddling with virtual sets and scenes instead of real ones. Most virtual actors need an equally expensive puppeteer which is why they're not being used, only as mass extras in big scenes.
Sure, it's possible for certain types of films - Blair Witch Project had a $25k budget and could probably be done for somewhat less today. But if you take something like LotR - I don't care if you get free cameras, free editing tools, free FX tools and I'll throw in a free greenscreen and everything else that isn't people time too. Make it or fake it, it's going to take a helluva lot of manhours that'll need to be paid.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The tech is cheaper and more accessible - at entry level. But $25 will buy you a paint set. That doesn't make you a Renoir, a Monet, a Picasso, or a Wyeth.
So not the point. Of course you have to have talent to make good music. But talented musicians used to have to rent very expensive recording studios, whereas now they can do it themselves for a fraction of the cost.
The scripting, the acting, the pitch-perfect narration of Jim Dale.
Here's hoping they give him his damn cameo in the next Harry Potter movie.
While your plan might raise awareness of your cause, it has the same fatal flaw as most boycotts: The day after the boycott, people will just go out and buy the CDs that they wanted. It's like a gasoline boycott- people just fill up MORE on the day before and the day after.
Maybe a site called BuyUsedCDs.com would be more effective.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
1. Unequal representation of the powerful and weak.
2. Civil lawsuits that require very little proof.
3. Suits in Washington whom sell laws to big business which, in this case, allow for an unreasonable punishment without proof that a crime has actually been committed.
The actions of the RIAA do not bother me so much. I am not surprised that they are a heartless bunch of bullies. But I am ashamed and deeply saddened to be an American today.
1) Instructs people to make themselves familiar with Ron Paul.
2) Instructs people who do not think honesty is important to vote for anyone else.
You should probably reread your comments. They make no distinction that they only apply to people who aren't familiar with Ron Paul, and any such distinction is negated by the fact that you are instructing any and all people who "don't believe in honesty" to vote for "any other candidate" after they make themselves familiar with Ron Paul.
Personally, I suggest reading one of his fundraising letters yourself before making that sort of instruction. Honesty is extremely important, but I think sanity is even more so. Ron Paul's got crazy conspiracy theorist written all over him.
Hell, Al Sharpton & Dennis Kucinich are pretty honest about their position on most matters, and I don't see you advocating for them.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"... it costs millions to make a movie, yet I can buy a movie DVD for the same money as an album CD, why?"
I was thinking about this and concluded that it may have something to do with movies being works for hire but music is not. Yes/No/Maybe?
How about BuyOnlyIndependentCDs.com? Then the actual artists get the money, and the RIAA leeches get nothing, ever. There are plenty of great independent recordings out there, it just takes some looking around. It's the right thing to do.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
What can you expect.
The corporatist welfare given to the plaintiff in RIAA's case was the result of 12 swayed jurors' deliberations as directed by the judge, the law, and the un-refutable evidence presented in the district court in Northern Minnesota. Most of US have no problem with good honest folks being jurors; However, we do have many problems with the well financed and purchased laws (maybe even at times judges and officers of the law/courts) that allowed an oppressive, cruel, and unjust punishment of other US fellow Citizens.
... the victim of this FauxDejure would have had more rights and better representation as a member of a large crime syndicate.
... is not the issue/problem. The problem/terror is RIAA-DMCA type laws, taxation without representation, tax-dollar corporate-welfare, customer IPR (iPhone...AT&T) hostages, protectionism, anti-capitalist laws are destroying US, EU ... innovation is happening 10+ years after potential reality.
The law and the CSA agenda embodied in the RIAA allows anti/non-judicial institutions to criminally prosecute, persecute, and subjugate the rights of US Citizens in pseudo-criminal cases by mimicking a civil damages lawsuit is draconian. The law does nothing to prevent or stop large CD/DVD music and movies black-market crime syndicates in the USA and worldwide. Oddly enough as the RIAA-DMCA is applied in the USA
So FYI, liberal, working class, seat of power, "capitalist pigs", corporate America
While these thoughts may elude your cognition you may want to ponder, how 12 very ordinary men and women close too unanimously found O.J.Simpson innocent of murder "The Gloves don't fit, You must acquit."
Does the RIAA pay you for this excellent spin-truth. Most of US and EU know that the LAW frequently ain't got much to do with any justice.
My problem is never with folks doing their job. My problem is with all the plutocrat-crap [AKA: corruption and nepotism] that creates law intended to criminalize kids/students/moms...Citizens, and ignores major crime organizations, while benefiting corporatist-enforcers working for institutions like the RIAA/politicians.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
That might be cool, but is it necessary for entertainment? Thornton Wilder made do with a bunch of benches for Our Town and I've often been enthralled by some guy with a $1000 guitar and a $1000 P.A. system.
Before the advent of mass media, people would go and listen to the best banjo player in the neighborhood, or the best storyteller, and they liked it just fine. Now with the Internet, we can watch the best banjo player or storyteller in some other neighborhood, as long as someone has a couple thousand bucks worth of hardware to put together a video or audio recording of the performance. We don't need corporate media. We can entertain ourselves, and entertain each other. There are many people on this planet, and a significant portion have excess talent they are willing to donate to the common good. It seems reasonable to think that there could be one listenable singer-songwriter for every 50,000 people in America... If so, there are a lot of them out there!
My truck is like a series of tubes.
Does the white house realize that a multibillion-dollar organization just won a $200k victory against a single person? Doesn't this seem straight up unfair at the core?
Yes, the OJ trial was a travesty of justice - that doesn't mean our system of courts is broken - but some are. In this case the courts performed well. The plaintiff had a plethora of hard evidence including testimony from a dozen expert witnesses including Dr Doug Jacobson. Ms. Thomas hard-drive had time-stamped files during hours where Ms Thomas was home and NO activity otherwise. Likewise her ISP records correlate with the time stamps on her hard-drive. Likewise her screen name "terreastarr" - which she tried to disown with Kazaa - happens to be the very same one she uses with several other legal sites such as "My Space". Many people don't understand that this is a civil trial - there's no guilty or innocent here - no beyond a resonable doubt. In civil cases it's only the perponderance of the evidence that has to satisfy the jury. Another interesting facet to this case is that the original hard drive in Ms Thomas' computer is "missing" - you'd think you'd be smart enough NOT to continue illegal activity after ditching your dirty HDD....but then you'd think she would have been smart enough to settle for $4K like the RIAA offered!
great idea... and i would have thought that barely a few minutes would pass before the domain is registered and there's a site up (assuming away the dns propagation issues :) ), given the audience of this site. but no, still nothing, domain's still available. so, who's actually going to do this?
After this decision I will never buy another CD from any artist!
Its just that simple.
They are so fucked up, their top copyright evangelist doesn't even know the laws are broken.
WE THE PEOPLE.
NOT we the fucking corporations!
what more proof do you need that your government is not working in your best interest? Time to vote these nitwits out of office.
They're using their grammar skills there.
From what I recall, some aspects of the riots in Hungary were legitimate greivances. The fact of the matter is, sometimes 'revolution' is necessary when those in power and their 'power brokers' do not respect the ideals of democracy and liberty. That is what is happening in the US, and its spot on justifiable. I'm surprised our situation here is a peaceful as it is. That said, I'm sure as hell not going to rock the boat, I have a good paying job (finally) and a family to support, and am too focused on getting my life and finances secure to run out and join in a full scale revolution of any sort. I'll pay it lip service and give small amounts of support where I can (REAL support, not just throwing $100 at some bullshit PAC).
I know someone from Hungary who escaped during its days of communism and votes Republican since he became a US citizen, thats all changed due to Bush. (Republicanism's "ideals" were more favorable, and the situation in Hungary when he left made him determined never to support any communistic ideals due to the way the Russians treated the Hungarians.)
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Apparently there's twelve people who did.
The difference is, the American moviegoer has never been interested in quality or substance. Hype is the only real reason most people go pay $9 for the privilege of paying $10 more for Coke and popcorn while watching a movie that will cost them $2-3 for the same benefits, two months later. It doesn't matter if the next Star Wars is produced by some college students for $10,000-without a nationwide advertising budget, internet word-of-mouth is only going to reach a fraction of the total market.
> whatever your reasons are you have no right to break the law.
If the law is unjust, it's not only wrong, but your obligation to break it.
Or to not enforce it, not help in it's enforcement, obstruct it's enforcement, etc. Even if you are not actually breaking an unjust law there are plenty of ways to oppose one.
What about the fact that decent actors/actresses (or ones that people want to see) want huge amounts of money, upfront?
Nobody starts as an expensive actor, not even the son/daughter of one. IIRC there is no lack of supply when it comes to competent actors.
Not neccessarily. Movies studios have five advantages:
Even in the computer age, making a good movie requires a considerable concentration of skills, and the movie studios are good at gathering those. No, I don't think they'll become obsolete; I think that they will continue making movies for theatrical distribution, and use the hobbyists as a hiring pool.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Before the advent of mass media, people would go and listen to the best banjo player in the neighborhood, or the best storyteller, and they liked it just fine. Now with the Internet, we can watch the best banjo player or storyteller in some other neighborhood, as long as someone has a couple thousand bucks worth of hardware to put together a video or audio recording of the performance.
Another way of looking at it is that the "neighborhood" just got a lot bigger. So that for every banjo player and storyteller there are a lot more people who might want to listen to his or her playing or stories.
We don't need corporate media. We can entertain ourselves, and entertain each other.
The interesting question is how many "banjo players" do so because they enjoy playing the banjo, enjoy playing to an audience, want it to be their main source of income. Ditto for storytellers.
Right, because a bunch of "amateurs" without a common studio behind them can't pull something like this together. It's never happened, and OSS is but a dream.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for this woman. Stealing is stealing. Period. If you want cheap music, go to lala.com. Stealing music and offering it up for others is criminal.
Copyright rewards creators.
No it doesn't. The reality, not the fiction that you're pushing, is that it tends to reward distributors, middlemen and assorted other parasites. Creators sometimes get lucky and are rewarded but it's the exception rather than the rule.
Naive people like you who think "copyright is goooood" are a large part of the problem. That and lying astroturfers fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
The rights of many different parties are being balanced here, including the rights of billions of free citizens to do what they damn well please with what they have in their hands. Your "sky is falling" nonsense implying that copyright is the only incentive for creating content is also silly. People have been creating and sharing since the dawn of time and the jury is still out on how much of an incentive and/or disincentive copyright is to that process.
---
Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
Maybe the RIAA should check the president's ipod? http://www.boingboing.net/2006/04/16/gw-bushs-ipod-contai.html
Now that you mention it, there are indeed very few OSS games, and the few there are are mostly strategies, puzzle games and MUDs. These games can be incrementally improved, making the OSS model viable. But there are no OSS equivalents of FF7, Fate of Atlantis, or almost any other such game. The reason is simple: making such plot-based games means that someone writes the plot and the rest simply polish it. You can't create them by incremental improvement.
So yes, a bunch of amateurs - without quotation marks, for there is nothing degadatory about the term, it simply means someone who isn't doing it as his job - can indeed put a movie together, and indeed many have. But the end result is not going to be the same level than a movie studio which can hire real actors, maskers, costumers, etc. Besides, such productions tend to be parodies, based on universes already established by studio productions; getting people to do "an original sci-fi movie" is a lot harder than getting them to do "a Star Wars/Trek parody". Not to mention keeping them on the job; the biggest problem such projects face is people just plain walking out on them halfway to the finish line.
So no, the studios have nothing to worry about. Even with modern technology, getting a movie - especially a good movie - done is so difficult and work-intensive that very few people will end up doing them.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Wow. You and Ron Paul are a perfect match. The way you selectively read his letter and picked out the two parts most favorable while ignoring the rest shows that you've got the perfect conspiracy mindset.
- What about his claim of "elites" trying to put together a North American Union like the EU that will dissolve US sovereignty?
- What about his claims of "forced mental screening" for school children?
The whole "American way of life is under attack" saw can be used for ANY change in America. It was used against desegregation, it was used during the Red Scare, it is used in anti-immigration rallies, and it is used now on both sides of the War on Terror debate. It doesn't mean anything except, "Please be very afraid of the other side because they don't respect our values."
You choose to use the NSA wiretapping scheme as an example of our values under attack, but don't forget that Ron Paul caucuses with the very party that brought us this attack to our values, as well as the Patriot Act and the national ID card.
Furthermore, he takes the crank approach of viewing UN treaties as "UN control" of the issues they are over. The UN doesn't pass laws -- it provides a staging ground for countries to come up with treaties that they choose to sign onto or not -- like Kyoto. People who think that the UN is some Illuminati-like institution out to take away your rights and dissolve your government are lunatics.
Let's not forget that his entire letter starts off with an accusation that the "elites and political power-brokers" would do "anything" to prevent him from winning. That's classic conspiracy theory paranoia right there, and it's an appeal to those who think the world is run by shady power-brokers who are unanswerable to the people. Ron Paul's letter is an appeal to people who don't think the system works at all to make a futile gesture against "the Man."
If you still like him after reading that letter, then that's fine with me, but don't go around thinking that your conspiracy goggles are showing you the "truth" that everyone else is "just too blind to see."
As for my original comments, you can twist my obvious meanings to your heart's content, and convince yourself that you are correct, but you are wasting your time trying to convince me.
Correct. It is a waste of time trying to convince you. You've drank the Kool-Aid, and you don't have the capacity for self-reflection to go back and reread your words as they were written. This post is more for the sane people who might be reading this discussion.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
There are no "elites" trying to form a North American Union? Man, are you out of touch. What the hell do you think GATT and NAFTA were part of? Do you honestly think that our "benevolent" government put them in place to help US??? If so, you really are an idiot. Look at the effects they have had... overwhelmingly negative effects to the U.S.
I do disagree with the term "elites". "Elitists" would have been much more accurate. But if you really do not think this is real, then you really haven't done your homework. You can believe others are nutjobs all you want... but that does not make it so. Try paying attention to the world around you, and gathering a few facts on your own. (I did not learn of any of this from anyone having anything to do with Ron Paul. I researched the issues on my own.)
You seem to think the Kyoto pact would have been a good idea. If so, you did not do your research (no surprise there). I am not a supporter of Bush, but refusing to sign was one of the GOOD things he actually did. The restrictions called for in the "Kyoto Protocol" would have been extremely costly to the U.S. economy, while NOT demonstrably doing anything significant to reduce "global warming". Cost without benefit is a BAD thing, dude. And I happen to be a strong environmentalist.
Your mention of the Republican Party in connection with the illegal NSA wiretapping is classic misdirection. First, you fail to address the actual issue I raised, then you state that he is a Republican, despite the fact that our discussion has already included mention of how different he is from those "neo-con Republicans" who actually were responsible. You typed a lot but you did not really say anything. There certainly is nothing there resembling an "argument" that supports your "side".
You really are a piece of work. Lots of arguing, but you cite no real facts to back up your claims. Just bald accusations without any meat behind them.
While some of the concepts mentioned might sound crazy at first to the uninformed, all you have been demonstrating is that you are in fact uninformed. I will state again, and this time I will stick by it: until you do your homework, and come up with some real facts to argue about rather than empty insults and claims of "crazy", I am done responding to you. This is a waste of my time. The reason you can't convince me is because you have not done your research. Try citing some facts next time that refute the arguments made by the other "side" of the debate, and maybe you will convince somebody. As it stands, I think you must have flunked debate class at school... if you were ever exposed to the concept of logical (or even persuasive) argument at all.
I am not claiming that you are too blind to see, but perhaps you are too lazy or too stubborn to go collect real information on the issues for yourself. Because otherwise you probably would have presented some facts that support your arguments, like most intelligent people do, rather than just spouting "crazy" and "conspiracy" at every opportunity.
THE LAW! How it came to exist and make kids, moms, students, friends, citizens ... criminal. THE LAW! With the form and intent to prevent innovation, competition, and to provide the RIAA CSA-welfare.
... in the USA over the last 30 years.
... eventually everyone gets canned (Like Enron, GlobalCrossings...) sold, and consumed (except the nuts who keep their ill gotten property).
Granny Thomas (whoever) can sell her fanny for all I care. The courts, judge, and jury folks are doing what they believe is expected of them under the LAW!
RIAA (many Corporatist institutions) and Politicians SpinTruth and build FauxDejure crime with evil intent to defraud the public.
WMD [White Man's Disease] in Iraq is just one of many plutocrat examples of SpinTruth, FauxDejure, PseudoPatriotic, FakeProphet
To believe any political, religious, or corporate plutocrat is indicative of close to schizoid suicidal behavior, and calls into question the mental and emotional health of any individual. IOW: The nuts are running this peanut factory
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
And abortion is a death sentence.
Constitutionally Correct
Declan knows better that the person was Commerce department so saying it's the White House made the comment is factually incorrect, but that is the media I suppose, never let the truth get in the way of a good headline.
Sad news in general that they did bother to make the comment.