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A Look at The RIAA's War Against College Students
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "p2pnet.net has put together a fascinating retrospective on the RIAA's war against college students, commenced February 28, 2007. The campaign is described as one to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy — corporate "content," as the Big 4 call their formulaic outpourings.' In a scathing indictment not only of the major record labels, but of those schools, administrators, and educators who have yet to take a stand against it, Jon Newton reviews a number of landmark moments in the 11-month old 'reign of terror'. They include the announcement of the bizarre 'early settlement' sale, the sudden withdrawal of a case in which a 17 year old Texas high school student had been subpoenaed while in class during school hours to attend a deposition the very next day during his taking of a standardized test, the call by Harvard law professors for the university to fight back when and if attacked, and the differing reactions by other schools."
A large predatory animal can be quite dangerous once wounded (by lack of CD sales) and will attack anything
Its not the years, its the mileage
"The campaign is described as one to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy -- corporate "content," as the Big 4 call their formulaic outpourings.' "
If it's really crap like you say, is it really worth listening to at all? Why even download it "for free" if you think it's crap? It just sounds like a sad excuse to download. There are alternatives to "Big 4" music, unfortunately, sometimes the anti-RIAA crowds neglect to mention them.
The way I see it is: If the content is so terrible, don't download it. As you will not be infringing on anyone's copyright, you will not get sued.
If the content is good enough that you want access to it, you either have to pay for it, or accept a small but nonzero chance of being sued and fined for copyright infringement.
I also don't see that universities need to cover for students engaging in copyright infringement. If you connect to a torrent of 'Heroes' or 'House' or whatever, your IP address gets recorded, and the copyright holders subpoena the university to know what user had that IP address at that time, why does the university need to 'take a stand against it'?
Now, I'd certainly agree that some stories on slashdot talk about inexplicably large fines being requested. And certainly innocent people who are wrongly accused should be entitled to reclaim reasonable costs for their defence. But to say students are being forced to buy record labels' music, or to say that universities have a responsibility to cover up lawbreaking by their students, doesn't really make sense to me.
In other words I found the article less 'scathing' and more 'worded emotively'.
Just my $0.02.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
This is nothing more than a mere glance at the true extend of the RIAA's campaign. The number of students the RIAA has sued, most of whom couldn't hope to pay off a settlement or a lawyer to bring the case to trial, numbers way into the thousands. The truly insidious part is just that: the RIAA has billions of dollars available to sue people, and could keep the cases in litigation until the defendant just runs out of money and is forced to settle. There is no due process here, there never could be in cases like these.
Palm trees and 8
Fleur de Sel
This coming from the same guy who complained that only 1 in 5 people who downloaded Saul William's album, which he produced, chose to pay for it. I find that to be a pretty good ratio considering they didn't even offer a way to sample the album without downloading the entire thing.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The day we use technology to unite in collective effort, disseminate intelligence and wisdom to dissolve ignorance and share a single intention then the consumer the citizen will take control as master.
The "Many", the consumers combined wealth far exceeds that of the "few" because the consumer delivers real value every day.
Many of those individuals or corporations that control vast wealth only do so because we perceive the fiat currency, the intangible symbolic units to have value. As soon as this illusion is destroyed their power is gone.
We the people control the cash flow of business and labor, the worker produces the products and services that make the world go around and this is where the real tangible value is.
We the people are very powerful, but we have been blinded to our own power by an illusion created by those that benefit from the current systems and don't want them to change.
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
> The way I see it is: If the content is so terrible, don't download it.
I don't. Wouldn't be caught dead listening to their music. However, there are a couple of factors you've neglected:
1) They sue the wrong people often enough. Remember that guy who didn't have a computer? I wonder if MediaSentry gave one of their boilerplate expert reports in that lawsuit? Because it would be really interesting if they had.
2) Anything popular is crap, according to simple statistics. That's a contradiction in terms, right? But a really good song might be liked by 80-90% of the people who hear it (the actual percentages don't matter, just accept those numbers as an example). So now we have 10-20% of the people who hear it who don't like it to some degree, a few of whom will likely hate it. Now realize that every song has a different percentage and that percentage is made up of different people. So the more popular you are, the more people there are who hate your music. In fact, the more people who hear it, the more likely it is that there are people who hate every single bit of music you've produced.
It may be counter-intuitive, but it's pretty clear that the more popular your music is, the more it's heard, so there are more people who hear it and hate it. It's the "Curse of Popularity"
There's a counter-point to this, too, BTW. If enough people hear an awful song, there's likely to be at least *one* guy who really loves it (probably the guy who wrote it). Thus, you have niche music that's horrible to most people, but which attracts a tiny fan following which absolutely loves the music. This is how you explain the Indee crowd.
Oh, and nothing here is exclusive to music. You can get the same thing with wine snobs, art, sex or anything else based on personal taste.
anonymous != hackers. mediafag.
Because, of course, you would be dead...
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
I must say, he really swings from one extreme - "steal, steal
These guys made $140,000 in three months. If they used opportunities like the interview you linked to put out a positive message, those numbers could grow, maybe to the point where they could "cover the costs and perhaps make a living doing it." Hell, they could even partner with one of those evil record labels at a later data and release a physical CD ala In Rainbows.
Whining to interviewers that four fifths of the people who downloaded the album you put on your website "stole" it and proposing to tax everyone - even those who don't listen to pop music - doesn't entice me to buy - or steal - his album.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Umm, if you could copy cigarettes would you consider it necessary to invent a law to prevent it or would you consider that an insane law that could only exist if the government were corrupt and taking bribes from cigarette manufacturers?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Perhaps 'cause:
Sure, I use to buy music when I was younger, but I don't buy much anymore -- nor have I ever downloaded anything. I've purchased 3 CDs in the last 10 years. What I already have is either better than what's new, or I'm simply just happy with it. In the car, I either listen to a CD or NPR; commercial radio is crap.
Great music never goes out of style. Perhaps some of the younger crowd have music from their parents :-) I mean, would you really want to listen to "Oops, I did it Again" over anything in your parents collection? How about instead of a baby whining on an airplane - oh, wait, that could be Britney too.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Well, here's what the blog CastrTroy linked to has to say on that:
And here's the relevent quote, again according to the blog:
Is Trent saying that those are not his words? Because if they are, it sounds a lot to me like he's endorsing a tax on ISP use as a means of compensating artists, just like the tax Canadians pay on blank CDs.
The problem with these taxes is that they are levied against everyone, including people who don't "consume" Trent's music. They also penalize - and put at a disadvantage - those who use blank CDs or Internet connections in the running of their own small business or even the production of their own art.
It's great that Trent is out there talking about these issues, I just think he needs to take a more moderate point of view. Somewhere between stealing everything and taxing everyone, there is a solution.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Don't forget, among the other recent RIAA college sins, their quickly pulled back "audit package" based on GPL'd software for the colleges to use in tracking song swapping. It was another clear low point in the RIAA's campaign of terror and extortion.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"to identify the person using the IP address at that time"
Mike,
this is where it all falls apart.
You can tell the *account* that has the IP address, but in many households, NAT'ing means at least 2, if not more, computers share that address. In my house, for example, there are 6 computers, and 8 people who share in IP address.
So you can't tell the person.
Can you file a civil lawsuit against the account holder? It may be possible, but the burden of proof, I imagine, is much higher. That's why for speeding/red-light camera tickets they fine the car owner, but not the driver. Primarily because they don't know who was driving. We have 2 cars and 4 drivers in my house. If a ticket shows up, it's hard for *us* to figure who was driving.
So the "evidence", in the most scrupulous of circumstances is at best unclear.
That's just another problem for the RIAA.
To recap:
1) The RIAA doesn't seem to be able to gather accurate IP information
2) Even if they do, there is no chain of custody, that is, there is no attempt to determine if you actually downloaded the song(s) they claimed
3) There is no chain of custody of evidence to show that you downloaded anything copyrighted
4) The RIAA cannot demonstrate they represent the copyright on any song they're suing you for
5) The IP address does not address the person who committed the crime.
Is that enough for you? Any one of those produce reasonable doubt in my mind.
If $$$ were king, they would figure out what the consumer wants and provide huge archives of back catalog at cheap prices and people would flock to the offerings for stuff their 30 to 60 Gig media players. How many people hit the national average and only buy 2 CD's per year? Their fight to keep the ASP high has killed the sales as much as anything. There is competition for the entertainment dollar. An upgrade to broadband, better car, bigger house, new flat screen, etc are replacing the CD's as a consumer choice item.
Wold you buy more than $25 worth of music in a year if it was 5-10 cents/track?
The truth shall set you free!
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful