Slashdot Mirror
BusinessWeek Takes On the RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "BusinessWeek magazine has gone medieval on the RIAA, recounting in grisly detail the cruel ordeal to which the RIAA has subjected a completely innocent defendant, Tanya Andersen of Oregon. Nobody can read the story and come to any other conclusion than that the RIAA and its lawyers are total jerks. Of course we've been reading about Atlantic v. Andersen on p2pnet.net and on my blog, and discussing it here, but there's something extra special about a mainstream publication like Business Week really letting them have it."
...if Slashdot started naming the large companies behind the RIAA at every occurrence, so any misbehavior on their part is directly related to the "Big Four". Right now, most of us reading about the RIAA don't directly associate them with Sony, Warner, EMI and Universal. And this is exactly what they intended! Let's not endulge them any further.
"The RIAA is fighting very hard to make sure that [Andersen's case] never reaches a jury," says Heidi Li Feldman. I would too if I were doing something on the fringe of legal in a twisted business model that pits your clients (recording artists) vs. their money source (consumers). Asshats!
Funny thing is, that I think their first statement is actually right. The damages are "incalculable" since they quite often used flawed studies, doctored data, fallacious logic, etc. to come up with that "3.7 billion" number in the first place.
Of course at the rate they are going it won't be long before they claim that every single TCP session established with the defendant is an instance of possible copyright infringement, or theft, and that it would just be easier to calculate damages based upon some one's bandwidth
Gabriel says it's not accurate to say the RIAA dropped its suit for lack of evidence. He says the user name Gotenkito may have been inspired by Kylee, since she admitted she liked Dragon Ball Z, a Japanese anime TV series that has a character with a similar name. He also says Andersen said in her deposition that she knew or listened to some of the country and rock artists whose songs were offered for download.
If you take a far enough stretch, you can 'prove' anything.
Hey, anyone here ever heard of Bon Jovi? THERE! PROOF YOU'RE A THIEF!
Hey, is your kid a fan of a wildly popular TV show? THERE! THE COMPLETELY UNRELATED GUY'S USERNAME WAS VAGUELY JAPANESE! PROOF POSITIVE YOU'RE A THIEF!
Hey, RIAA member companies brought Rammstein, a german band, to prominence. Hitler was German. THERE! PROOF POSITIVE THAT THE RIAA HELPED RUN NAZI DEATH CAMPS!
It's been a long time.
And here's the part that worries me, "The record labels declined to comment for this story, referring questions to the RIAA."
Lets take the best case scenario and say this class action lawsuit ends up being 100% successful and destroys the RIAA. The record labels behind the organization will simply dissolve it, like a snake shedding old skin. The next day a new association will spring up, using new devious tactics for the next 10 years before they too are finally ousted, and so on. Until Sony, Universal, EMI and Warner are held accountable for the actions of the RIAA this won't change.
They've done it at least once already, "The Settlement Support Center was a less public part of the initiative. Its name may suggest a neutral organization set up to resolve disputes with evenhanded objectivity. In fact, it was financed by the record industry and operated like a cross between a call center and a debt collection firm. The SSC has since been dissolved."
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
About time. The more "mainstream" pub on this whole debacle, the better. I think, if you were to lay out all the facts and history in front of the American people (well, those with brains, anyhoo), they would feel this way:
Is piracy wrong? Yes.
Does much P2P activity infringe on copyrights? Yes.
Do copyright holders have the right to defend and protect those copyrights? Yes.
Do the "yes" answers above justify bullying, intimidation, and harassment; spurious, questionable, and sometimes downright wrong technical claims; spying by 3rd parties; end runs around the legal system; or a general reluctance to allow accused file sharers to defend themselves, or take their case to a court of law? NO.
The last question is where the RIAA loses whatever moral high ground they may have.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Reading through this story, it continues to shock me -- not what asshats the RIAA etc are -- but that we here, at the collective hive-mind that is Slashdot, haven't already come up with a way to help people wrongly being prosecuted by them and their sleazy lawyers.
There seems to be a clear pattern to their targets - people who know relatively little about technology and who are more likely to settle than battle it out in courts. I'd argue that we need to help these people out.
About halfway down the story, the defendant, Tanya Andersen is said to have looked up information online, hoping to find information on similiar cases.
Why don't we, through /., set up a site, aggregate information about similiar cases and build up a body of evidence to "[...] show that the RIAA engaged in serial bad-faith lawsuits [...]". In the long run, the space could serve as a place for debate on the current copyright regime, the inflated monetary value assigned to the songs/movies downloaded, etc.
I'm sure that some of us here are lawyers as well - maybe some time could be spent decoding the various court documents/legal stuff that the RIAA sends out - a distributed legal advice centre (cue Beowulf joke)...
This is just an idea, of course - but I'd be happy to get involved in whatever way I can. I have some small amount of expertise in building websites - perhaps that's the first place to start...
Yesterday I heard about Nine Inch Nails new album (Ghosts) on NPR. I visited the band homepage, paid $5 (yes $5) via paypal, and downloaded the new album in FLAC. I didn't have to install a special software client (this turned me away from the amazon store), didn't have to use a centralized service, didn't have to create an "account" with a new password I'll never remember, nothing. Buy and enjoy. I'll admit I have downloaded unauthorized copies in the past. But at $5, which mostly goes straight to the artist, what is the excuse?