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RIAA Says "Wanna Fight? It'll Cost You!"

Posted by timothy on from the come-the-revolution dept.

jeiler writes "Ars has the details on an RIAA strategy to double the cost of settling copyright infringement suits for students who try to quash the group's subpoenas in court. In a nutshell: settle early, pay $3,000; try to quash the subpoena and the settlement cost rises to $8,000."

14 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Shouldn't matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    No, you'll probably win if you haven't done anything illegal. "Illegal" and "wrong" are very different things.

    e.g. IMO, it's not wrong to share music data (or other data) freely, just don't plagiarise (claim you wrote it or performed it). However, sharing it is often illegal under copyright law. Shrug.

  2. Re:Really... Really? by ericbg05 · · Score: 5, Informative

    How is this not racketeering and extortion? I mean, c'mon... It's not either of those things, I'm afraid.

    My girlfriend IAL; she says this particular practice of the RIAA is perfectly legal. A party to a civil litigation can alter the settlement terms basically however they want, whenever they want (subject to public policy, of course: RIAA can't alter the terms to include the forfeit of your firstborn child or whatever). A settlement is just a contract, after all.

    This makes sense, so the argument goes, because a party's costs for litigating a particular case become higher and higher as the case progresses. So, the settlement costs must increase concordantly.

  3. Re:Shouldn't matter... by KDR_11k · · Score: 2, Informative

    Only if you get the court costs back and maybe fronted. Huge companies are very good at making trials last forever.

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  4. Re:And remember by Beale · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, copyright infringement is a civil offense, not a criminal one, no matter what the RIAA tells you. At least like this it means that even if the RIAA's team of lawyers manages to bribe you guilty, you'll never get a criminal record.

  5. It's complicated by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    So yes, copyright infringement can be criminal. However, the RIAA's evidence is extremely weak, not nearly enough for a criminal case. What's more, not all infringement is criminal, some is civil. Same sort of thing with traffic tickets. Some can be criminal, but many are not. If you get a simple speeding ticket, that's not a criminal ticket, it's a civil one.

    Now also many crimes can have a civil component as well. Take a hypothetical situation: Suppose you are the owner of Evil Corp, and my wife works for you. Because you are evil, you don't give two shits about your employees and knowingly put my wife in a very dangerous situation. This causes her death. You end up getting charged with reckless endangerment and plead to manslaughter. Ok, great, however I'm still now a single parent trying to raise kids. Something that might help is some of the vast amount of money Evil Corp has made. So I file a civil suit against you for wrongfully causing her death. I win this, and thus get a large portion of your money.

    OJ Simpson had something similar happen. He was acquitted of first degree murder charges. However he lost a civil suit charging him with causing wrongful death.

    There's good reason for the system to work like it does, and to have civil and criminal components to a given case. However the RIAA is abusing it. They are trying to use civil suits to be able to go after people on extremely shaky, and often outright incorrect, evidence.

    It is certainly a loophole that needs closing, but you have to be careful. While the civil system does allow for things like this, it also gives you the ability to go after people like the hypothetical Evil Corp, and does so even if the DA refuses to bring criminal charges.

    1. Re:It's complicated by swillden · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you get a simple speeding ticket, that's not a criminal ticket, it's a civil one.

      Uhhh, this is completely wrong.

      Civil cases are about injury, where one party injures another and the injured party sues for relief. Copyright law is mostly a civil issue (e.g. you created illegal copies of my recording, and damaged my ability to make money with it), though the legislature has recently added some criminal provisions in the last few decades.

      Crimes are about protecting public interests. All moving violations are part of the criminal code of your state; they're laws passed to restrict certain driving behaviors in the interest of highway safety. Traffic court is generally a little different from other criminal court, in the interest of efficiency, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a criminal court.

      The difference between traffic violations and most other crimes is that most traffic violations are treated as minor crimes. Crimes fall into one of three categories: infractions, misdemeanors and felonies. Most states also define various grades within those categories. Most traffic violations are infractions, which means that you cannot go to jail for them. However, there are some more serious traffic crimes which are misdemeanors, which can carry jail time, and even felonies, which can carry a lot of jail time and remove other privileges. Reckless driving is a misdemeanor, for example.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    2. Re:It's complicated by Free_Meson · · Score: 3, Informative

      Isn't the whole problem that the damages sought in the civil suit are 'punitive', ie they are meant to punish the accused rather than to seek just compensation for the damage done by the infringement (which is minimal for any "non-career pirate")? And isn't it really strange that anything beyond just compensation is tried under civil suit rules?
      The damages in these copyright infringement cases are not punitive. They are statutory. The copyright lobby had congress incorporate into statute the damages recoverable for copyright infringement, so that plaintiffs in copyright cases need not prove damages if they seek a judgment within the range of the copyright statute. There's an economic justification for such damages (they catch 10% of the infringers and charge them 10x, or the like) because enforcement is expensive and each person they catch would likely not be worth suing for provable damages.

      Of course it's gotten much easier to catch infringers and the damages haven't been revised downwards, so the damages being awarded are nonsensical.

      Punitive damages are generally used to punish defendants who knowingly choose to act negligently/wrongfully. For example, punitive damages would be applied when a defendant knowingly poisons some town's water supply because the cost of dealing with the lawsuits will be less than the cost of proper disposal of the poison. Most punitive damages awards are dramatically reduced or eliminated on appeal and in many jurisdictions the nominal plaintiff only gets a small cut (the rest going to the state). They are a trivial part of our civil litigation system that gets a lot of press because the press doesn't understand their function and ignores what happens on appeal.
  6. Re:Shouldn't matter... by SirMeliot · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, it was to do with safety. The 70mph limit was introduced in to 60's after whole string of accidents.

    It was briefly dropped to 50mph during the oil crisis.

  7. Re:Shouldn't matter... by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2, Informative

    Montana for many years said only that one must maintain a "reasonable and prudent speed", and only set a numeric limit in the 1970s. However, speed limits (elsewhere) in the USA are much older than that. Existing speed limits were lowered in many cases in the 1970s, but that's not the same thing.

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States for more info.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  8. Re:Keeping up with the times by Gnavpot · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think this is one of the reasons people download (the other reasons being ridiculous prices, etc). People realize that technology changes - CD collections have been superseeded by portable MP3 players (ipod and the likes), VCR's replaced with DVD's which will eventually lose out to blu-ray (once the prices down).

    That is not a very reasonable reason for illegal downloads.

    If you know that existing media will be incompatible with new players, and there is no legal way to move purchased content to new media, you are somewhat right.

    But that is not the case in your example. You can play a DVD movie in a Blu-ray player. You might even get better quality out of your old DVD since a lot of new players can upscale the picture resolution so it fits your new HD TV.

    So if you buy a DVD now, you will not lose the content (at least not this time - we can't know if the next movie media will be incompatible with both Blu-ray and DVD). You will of course not get Blu-ray quality from your DVDs, but it wouldn't be reasonable anyway to expect better quality than you bought originally.

  9. Re:Move your assets offshore by bigbird · · Score: 2, Informative

    When I got sued by a rogue recruitment agency I had lots of silly advice like this. Getting sued is a nasty, horrible experience that will be worse if you follow the advice of friends who don't have a clue. Always always get a good lawyer.

    PS Going bankrupt is almost never a good idea. Hiding assets offshore isn't either.

    --
    Great Windows SFTP Server!
  10. Re:RIAA! by Pop69 · · Score: 3, Informative

    They already have in the UK

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7029892.stm

  11. Re:And remember by nomadic · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, copyright infringement is a civil offense, not a criminal one, no matter what the RIAA tells you. At least like this it means that even if the RIAA's team of lawyers manages to bribe you guilty, you'll never get a criminal record.

    Copyright infringement is both a civil and a criminal offense, and you can certainly get a criminal record for violating copyright law. There are plenty of laws the create both criminal and civil penalties for the same action; copyright law is one, RICO is another.

  12. No, it's not wrong by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2, Informative

    Read a traffic ticket someday. They have fields for criminal and civil complaints, and different language. With a civil ticket it will say something along the lines of "Without admitting responsibility... etc," for a criminal ticket it'll say "Without admitting guilt... etc." Criminal proceedings are to establish guilt, civil are to establish responsibility.

    Or if you don't believe me, here's a Justice Court page about "Civil Traffic Violations": http://www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/justiceCourts/CourtsAndSections/trafficviolations/civiltrafficviolations.asp

    Please don't shoot off your mouth and call someone wrong if you haven't researched the background. Law is a complex field.