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RIAA Says "Wanna Fight? It'll Cost You!"
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."
He's got a point - it can't possible be a frosty, on account of the post made before it.
ResidntGeek
If it's a traffic ticket, it doesn't get raised if you take it to court and fight it normally. Why have these racketeers not been thrown into prison for this illegality?
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
new to /.?
Then you are a fucking idiot.
has it occurred to you that it's not just 'the big corps'? It seems that to people like you ANYONE who tries to make a living from software, movies, music or games is part of some silly 'EVIL CORPORATE' group that you have defined as the enemy, despite the fact that probably everything in your house, and everything you wear was made by some corporation, big or small.
Small companies are defended by copyright law just as much as larger ones, in fact more so, because we cant afford tons of lawyers and security measures to defend our stuff. The internet was a *fantastic* opportunity for small companies like mine to get publicity, to get known, and to deal direct with our customers without middlemen and gatekeepers. For the first time ever, a small one man company could create something innovative and sell it globally direct to the people without anyone taking a cut.
And then assholes like you came along and decided for no fucking good reason you would just take everyone's work (including the small guy's) and make it freely available to everyone.
End result...
Small guys crushed out of business, and the big corporates with their retail monopolies are back in power.
nice work asshole.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Small guys won't be crushed out of business, if they choose a NON-PREHISTORIC BUSINESS MODEL.
Like software customization. Customize free open source software, and rent your worktime instead of selling a product. As long as companies want changes, you'll have a job.
OK, you want to sell music? Make it good, and sell it cheap!!! Just like Radiohead did with In Rainbows(TM). They gave the music for free, higher quality mp3 costed a bit more, and then they sold the limited editions which costed a hundred bucks. Wanna know how much the guys earned? Around a f***ing million dollars. Which is WAY MUCH MORE than if they had sold their souls to the RIAA.
You want to sell books? Sell e-books. And sell them cheap. If they're good, you'll have people from all the world buying them from your online store.
You want to sell games? Give them away and get the profit from game add-ons or a subscription service (it worked for Blizzard. But guess what, if the game creation software you're using is free, your profit will be much greater).
You want to sell movies? Well, you have bad luck because you have to invest thousands of dollars on software because there are no decent Open Source Video Editors that can rival the commercial ones. So what do you do? Push it on the moviegoers with overpriced popcorn and sodas. However, if you make a good movie, the people will tolerate that sh** because the movie's worth it. No matter how much movie piracy there is, you recover all of your investment within the first week in the theaters.
But you could earn even more if you began distributing the movies on DVDs, cheap, and without copy protection of any kind.
If the software and material to make movies becomes easily accessible, then the end product will cost you less to make and you won't have to whine because people keep sharing your precious software, movies, music or games.