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."

Comments

It would be a good thing...

[HetMes]

...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.

Re:It would be a good thing...

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Yes, it is our fault but not for the reason you give. It is our fault because we give corporations, an immortal entity, the rights of a mortal man. Worse, because those corporations have no motivation beyond greed, they wield their power to feed that greed even to the detriment of real people. Corporations don't have motivations; they're not sentient. The shareholders, directors and employees choose how they act, are through whom they act and who take their profits have motivations. They're not sinister supernatural beings; they're just collections of humans being collectively human and responding to the incentives put on them and that they put on each other. And, of course, real humans are greedy, especially when they don't see the sharp end of their greed. If you want to change the behaviour of corporations you have to do it by changing the incentives on real people. And that can only be done through people - en masse - voting, buying, working and investing differently. It isn't going to happen by everyone pretending they're battling a monster from outer space. xelah, what you are saying is reasonable, but the GP had a good point. Essentially, under our legal system, a corporation is

-a creation with a perpetual life,

-whose primary function is to serve its shareholders' financial interests.

I.e, it is an immortal sociopath.

While consumer disinterest, etc., can have an effect, it is important in our society that the government -- which creates such 'immortals' -- regulate them quite carefully. To assume that market forces are alone sufficient to deter their excesses is just wrong.

If doing harm is profitable, corporations are programmed to do harm. They are programmed to do anything they can get away with. It is up to the government which created these extraordinary creatures to limit what they can get away with.

Regrettably, our courts have not yet shut down the RIAA's excesses, and our Congress -- far from shutting them down -- has shown itself to be quite deferential to the recording companies' wish to steal the internet from those who made it what it is.

Good on you

[jnmontario]

"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!

It's worrying actually

[Xelios]

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."

Let's Stand Up - A Call to Action (mildly O/T)

[rathehun]

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...