Slashdot Mirror
Comparing the RIAA To "The Sopranos"
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to commentator Therese Polletti at Dow Jones MarketWatch, 'the RIAA's tactics are nearly as bad as the actions of mobsters, real or fictional. The analogy comes up easily and frequently in any discussion of the RIAA's maneuvers.' Among other things she cites the extortionate nature of their 'settlement negotiations' pointed out by Prof. Bob Talbot of the University of San Francisco School of Law IP Law Clinic. His student attorneys are helping private practitioners fight the RIAA, and the the illegality of the RIAA's use of unlicensed investigators. She goes on to cite the fact that the RIAA thinks nothing of jeopardizing a student's college education in order to make their point, as support for the MAFIAA/Mafia analogy."
Nearly as bad doesn't cut it. As much as I agree that they're bastards, these guys don't kill for profit (probably because it's not worth the hassle anyways), sell harmful products, torture people, etc. Handling mobsters and handling major trust figures have some differences and similarities. One thing they have in common is that you can fix the problem quite efficiently by catching them in some horrid act and successfully convict them. But given that they are a trust, treat them like Microsoft and split them. The government is one of the few forces powerful enough to take them on, and if normal civilians get together and make a campaign against them, there is a chance that you will have a fair fight in the courtrooms. The only trouble here is motivation, and these bastards simply have to piss more people off before anything like that has a chance of succeeding. But it looks like they're on their way.
Help fight spam
that is, that punishing a crime, real or perceived, with a punishment that is worse than the crime is not actually justice or morality
upload a song, owe thousands may not be as awful as steal some bread, have your hand chopped off, or commit adultery, get stoned to death, but the riaa's tactics shares with religious fundamentalist notions of justice this same disproportionate massive punishment for comparatively mild crimes
it's very simple: you don't teach anyone to respect morality with fear and terror. you just teach them that fear and terror are more important than morality
they need to learn that lesson in rural yemen as much as they do in riaa headquarters
a truly just society is one that metes out punishments that are milder than the actual crimes being punished (but not too mild, just milder). in such a way does a society provide stability and a respect for justice. if the punishments are too severe or too mild in comparison to the crimes, then justice is disrespected, not served, and society is destabilized and impoverished as a result
the impoverishments under religious fundamentalism are apparent. the impoverishments unde rriaa tactics are simply less cultural riches for us all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I have an uncle who has a sizable fortune and decided after he retired that he might want to get into producing music. To his dismay, he found the industry laden with actual mob men. He ended up quitting the business and this is a guy who doesn't quit anything when it comes to business stuff unless he's damn good and ready. Granted, this was 15 years ago but I doubt those people all just packed up their bags and left such a lucrative industry. So, it's no surprise to me that the RIAA uses the exact same tactics the mob uses because the industry is littered with those people.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
That's because so much of the traffic is moving to methods that evade the ability for the RIAA to see what is going on. More and more P2P is taking place within smaller groups that are harder to join (you have to be nominated and voted in to get access). That traffic is also encrypted, so no one along the sidelines can even see what it is. One group I heard of has rented a dedicated server of their own (so I guess they have dues to be a member to pay for it) and they access it via SSH and store files in a big "world" writable directory. If I were going to do that, I'd also keep the files therein encrypted just to be safe from the ISP. It wouldn't take more than about 20 people to get a big server at $5 a month each. They don't even need a domain name. What they do need is a few people that are also members of other such groups to provide a linkage. There have been porn trading groups like this for years. So I guess the P2P crowd is finally catching on to what the porn people learned a long time ago.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This seems to ignore the fact that it is VASTLY cheaper to download an mp3 or an album than it is to download a video game. For one, games can be 2GB+. Second, if you look at the size of the public that plays video games and those who LISTEN TO MUSIC, I'm sure you'll find that the latter is orders of magnitude greater than the former. I'm never one to side with the RIAA, but when you buy a game, you're getting the nice box, instant gratification vs. hours on torrents, the manuals, a guaranteed crapware-free install, tech support, online play and possibly other benefits. When you download an album, you're getting the entire product. Winamp will even download the cover art for you. Want the lyrics? Google. Want posters? eBay, allposters.com and a thousand other sites that sell posters at decent prices. In other words, piracy would most likely never kill the games market, but mp3 downloading almost certainly *could* kill CD sales in 5-10 years.
So an illegal practice is threatening their business, and they should react by enhancing their product at much more cost to themselves? Would you pay $25 for a CD if it included a poster that you could buy for $12 on eBay and download the mp3s for free? Would they bundle a $15 music CD with a $20+ poster instead of selling both in a store to poor idiots who don't know about torrents? I despise what the RIAA does, but your alternative doesn't make much business sense given that piracy is illegal, and the music business is just that -- a business.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
by Ohio University. Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, was the number one target of the RIAA. Until, that is, it paid $60,000 plus $16,000 a year for the 'filtering' software its expert witness's company was peddling -- then suddenly the subpoenas stopped. Not a single subpoena since Ohio University started paying off the mob.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
It's wouldn't OR couldn't. For example, I would love to have a copy of Photshop CS 3. It is $650. I could afford that but would never spend that much money on it (i.e. I wouldn't ever buy it at that price). So, if I pirate it they have not lost a sale to me.
Another scenario: I would very much like to have the full version of Ableton Live 7 ($500). I can afford this comfortably after I save up for 6 months or so and then will probably buy it. Now... if I pirate it before then and buy it after I save up, they lose nothing.
You see, intellectual "property" is really nothing like physical property. Physical property can be stolen, and then someone always loses something. With IP, making a copy does not always result in a loss of sale. Very, very different.
P.S. Another example: I watched all four seasons of Peep Show on YouTube recently, and will definitely be buying the DVD. In this case, the BBC (or whoever) is actually gaining a sale because I pirated their show: I most likely never would have seen it if it wasn't on YouTube.
An RIAA/IFPI agent (iMesh) is actually pirating a GPL'd project on their behalf by threats and extortion.
Check the ongoing Shareaza P2P travesty, http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/02/26/102239.shtml
iMesh represents the record companies' interests in P2P and has been building a 'marketplace' monopoly using RIAA lawsuits to 'kill' the competition. The chairman Robet Summer was RIAA president, IFPI board member for 'piracy,' and head of Sony 'Rootkit' Records. He got $30 million (and a convenient RIAA suit) to buy out Bearshare before, and is going after Shareaza now. Using friends at the French RIAA (SPPF) and the new custom "Vivendi-Universal Amendment" to sue some American kid $2.5 million for the domain name.
And then use their copyrighted material, file for their trademark, delete their software, and have lawyers riteously threaten them for being in the way.
Oh, but the money laundering goes from an empty Cyprus front company through several continents on the way to the RIAA.
The idea that copyright infringement is theft is unnecessary to the concept of copyright infringement being wrong or undesirable. If you were to argue: "There are some benefits and costs to the various positions on copyright, but on balance, because of X, Y and Z, society will benefit more from strong copyright protection and infringement of those rights is wrong" it is much more difficult to refute. If you argue that copying = stealing it is very easy to refute and therefore weakens your arguement overall.
Personally, I think there is a very good case to be made that copyright infringement costs society more than it provides benefits. "Copying = theft" is not a part of it. Essentially, trying to equate copying and theft is making an emotional appeal rather than a logical one. It is trying to use people's objection to theft to persuade them against something which is not theft. If you want the basis of a sound logical arguement, you could start by stating that we could:
Keeping in mind that the author of these words, Thomas Jefferson, also said:
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.
Laws, moreover, abridging the natural right of the citizen, should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson.html
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl220.htm
http://marriedmansexlife.com/