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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!
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:) 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.
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.
Just a question ... are Americans teaching their children that it is good to share, or that it is bad to share?
...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.
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
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.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
They did that once. 'America', I think they called it.
> 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.
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
I don't suppose there's a Civil Liberties Czar by any chance...
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.
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.
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.
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.