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"Probable Cause" Hearing Against MediaSentry
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "RIAA sidekick MediaSentry's 'illegal investigation' problem, which surfaced the other day when it got caught in a lie in Michigan (or got caught telling the truth after having told 2 years worth of lies in Brooklyn), has taken another turn for the worse. We learned today from court papers filed in North Carolina, in one of the cases targeting NC State students in Raleigh, that the North Carolina Private Protective Services Board has scheduled a Grievance Committee hearing to determine whether there is probable cause to investigate an alleged violation of the law by SafeNet (formerly known as MediaSentry). Fortunately for MediaSentry, they won't have to testify under oath, according to the notice (PDF)."
"...government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
I guess it's perishing. It's now becoming:
"government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation"
Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.
I'm not saying all downloaders should be criminalised, that's a batshit insane approach.
I'm thinking a parking ticket type system, so if you get caught, you pay a small fine, and move on without your life being poured down the crapper.
A parking ticket type system would acknowledge that not everyone plays nice, but there is a possible consequence if you choose to grab something of TPB rather than buy it. I'd say a ten, or even 100 buck fine every time your caught (not per file or anything like that) would be suitable. It would be enough to discourage some people, and if you did get caught? Pay up and move along, no big deal.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
This is also the kind of signs us wags here on /. have been prophesizing (and wishing for) since this campaign of terror started. It has taken a while for the momentum to be slowed, such as we have seen with the small gains made monthly, but if the courts and the accompanying PI licensing boards go after the methodology of the RIAA, then it becomes much easier to finally stop the cases on multiple grounds. We have already seen the multiple cases summarily decided(or abandoned) in the People's favor, including with awarded attorney's fees. Now, we get to see every link in the chain as vulnerable, and a good lawyer(i.e. one on the People's side) should be able to attack every aspect of their pre-litigation discovery including their methods for discovering the IPs, the Does, the ISP's Customer, the ISP's Customer's friends and family, etc.
Thanks, NYCL, let's keep the ball rolling and see if the court system can finally stop these suits completely. Maybe the day will come when the RIAA will drop the case automatically if you refuse to pay their Settlement center.
--The FNP
Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.
The media companies make most of the profits from anything created these days. Maybe we should start by cutting out the unnecessary middlemen (like the RIAA) and get the media companies to reward their artists & creators accordingly.
What?! Only in a country where a democratically controlled congress passes a bill giving a free pass, sorry for using pass so much, to the telecoms for violating the law would the courts allow a company that illegally collects data to testify in a case without being under oath. Now how about the defendants, they get this free pass too, right?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.
Such as concerts? Today the RIAA basically gets most of the profits from CDs/iTunes downloads for any signed band. Now when you buy those burnt CDs from a local indie band, most, if not all of it goes to the band, but as for signed bands, they make money from concerts. If we take out the RIAA, we have a nice stream of income from CDs and because it is the bands and not some media overlord, downloading will be tolerated, if not legal.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
This is also the kind of signs us wags here on /. have been prophesizing (and wishing for) since this campaign of terror started. It has taken a while for the momentum to be slowed, such as we have seen with the small gains made monthly, but if the courts and the accompanying PI licensing boards go after the methodology of the RIAA, then it becomes much easier to finally stop the cases on multiple grounds. We have already seen the multiple cases summarily decided(or abandoned) in the People's favor, including with awarded attorney's fees. Now, we get to see every link in the chain as vulnerable, and a good lawyer(i.e. one on the People's side) should be able to attack every aspect of their pre-litigation discovery including their methods for discovering the IPs, the Does, the ISP's Customer, the ISP's Customer's friends and family, etc.
Thanks, NYCL, let's keep the ball rolling and see if the court system can finally stop these suits completely. Maybe the day will come when the RIAA will drop the case automatically if you refuse to pay their Settlement center.
To quote Longfellow:
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small."
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Legally speaking, corporations are considered to be individual entities. But this causes all sorts of problems with understanding what's really happening under the cover of darkness under which corporate management operates too frequently.
Every corporation is run by a group of ordinary people, making decisions for themselves, the stockholders and (on occasion) their employees and customers.
It is this impedance mismatch between the legal interpretation and reality that causes such difficulty: The people whose decisions determine the corporation's behavior in society are insulated from responsibility by the "corporate veil". This insulation of personal responsibility from corporate authority is the cause of great difficulty.
Someday, I hope our use of language will be altered to reflect reality. A corporation is run by a group of people which is best understood conceptually as they, not a singular entity which is incorrectly referred to as an it. And it stands to reason that they need to be held to account for their decisions.
Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.
Why? They chose to invest in a market with no intrinsic value that depended on an artificial scarcity.
I wish someone would find a (fair) way of helping me to make a living from sleeping all day, but that's not a reasonable expectation - and neither is yours.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The problem is that we,the people,and the *.*.A.A had a contract,which they have broken through bribery and manipulation of our laws. The whole point of copyrights was the granting of a LIMITED monopoly,for a LIMITED amount of time,in return for sharing it with the world at the end of this time through a richer Public Domain. We should have all the great music of the '50s and '60s for free right now. But they are still charging a buck a song on iTunes,why? Because through bribery and manipulation of our laws they have rigged the game in favor of themselves.
To actually feel sorry for the greedy pigs to me is just the height of insanity. It is like feeling sorry for the dealer at a blackjack table who is dealing off the bottom so the house always wins. Personally I haven't seen any of their garbage that I want,but if anyone wants to rob them blind,I say more power to them. Until a new contract is written,one in which BOTH sides get something out of it, the copyright laws are as corrupt and evil as anything passed in your average banana republic. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
So, just stealing it and later saying "the system is broken" is some pretty strange logic. Ford makes cars. Should we just steal those too?
No. But if someone burned me a copy of their Mustang I would probably take it.
That would only work if there were an infallible (or near infallible) method of determining when copyright infringement occurred. There isn't, and the only way to make that happen would require technological infringement upon so many other rights that it would be unacceptable. Furthermore, who would you like to have in charge of issuing said "tickets"? The RIAA? Ha.
Even cops, who have the luxury of actually seeing a citizen commit a crime, often get it wrong. Worse yet, what you're proposing would be wide open to abuse and would, in effect, become a tax, not a penalty. Presumably there would be no court time involved, so we would end up with an automated MediaSentry-like system spitting out demands for cash. No thanks.
Copyright law is supposed to be a balance of the needs of society and those of content creators. Keep in mind that society is supposed to determine that balance, not megacorps who have acquired ownership (through often dubious means) to works they did not even create. Regardless, they've resorted to bribery of high government officials to maintain their hegemony. That eliminates any claims to moral high ground to which they might otherwise have been entitled.
Keep firmly in mind that this is not about We the People vs. The Artists. This is about We the People vs. a corrupt government colluding with an equally corrupt entertainment industry that does not, and has not ever, represented the creative members of our culture.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
...
do football players get paid each time someone watches their past performance?
...
No, they don't. But the body that owns their work does... does this sound familiar: "Any rebroadcast, retransmission or other use of this telecast without the written consent of the National Football League is prohibited"
"I wish someone would find a (fair) way of helping me to make a living from sleeping all day"
1. Get hunderds, thousands, perhaps millions to see value in your sleeping all day.
2. Let that value be enough to make a living
3. done
"but that's not a reasonable expectation"
I don't see why not.
Let's say I make a movie - let's say it costs me a mere $1,000 to make. That $1,000 has to come from somewhere. ... I digress) so let's say I price the thing at $0.10. That's still $10,000 but what the hey, I can use that $9,000 to make 9 more movies, or maybe 3 more with better quality props.. or I'll donate the $9,000 to charity.. whatever.
Now a hundred thousand people watch that movie and are entertained, the value they found in it being said entertainment. Now comes the difficult part... turning that entertainment value into monetary value. Presume it was a regular movie ticket... $8 or so. That's $800,000 that would've been mine. But alright, I'm sure I'm not entitled to $800,000 when the thing only cost $1,000 to make... (and yes, I find $5,000,000 actors unreasonable - same as I find multi-million dollar baseball players unreasonable, but that's not stopping people getting baseball tickets to a single event that they can't even tape with their own HD cameras and
I would say that $0.25 for a full length movie is not just *reasonable*, it's ludicrously cheap.. you won't even find scratched-up mangled rental-place DVDs for that price.
And yet... somehow... the mindset of the masses is that that's not reasonable at all - they feel that the only reasonable price for intangible goods is $0. And that is what I find unreasonable. Paying $50 at a restaurant for foodstuffs that will just come out as fecal matter... that's unreasonable. Paying $4/gallon gas to drive 5 miles back and forth every day... that's unreasonable.
I'm all for reform and getting media creators to get with the program (some do - opening their own YouTube channels and sharing in ad revenue, for example)... I'm not for the mindset that media creators will just have to find a job making tangible goods which magically -are- worth actual cash, and do 'that media thing' in their spare time as a hobby for zilch. If enthusiasts do want to make free media - go for it, that's nothing new - but that doesn't mean that we should all be forcing others to do the same just because we're cheapskates.
So as for the grandparent... the technical solution is simple - offer the things in online stores for cheap. The mindset problem is another one altogether.. and the genie may be out of the bottle on that one.
Not at all. The little white lie is lubricant which makes civilization possible. Most of us, in fact, don't even want to know the absolute truth about the people we know, love, and with whom we work.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
That would be all fine and dandy, except they want you to pay once for the CD, once for your iPod, once for your cellphone, once for your car stereo, once for your home computer, once for your work computer, once for... you get the drift.
If they could they'd make us pay once everytime we hear it, whether intentionally or not, even if it's just in the radio of our mind.
AC has it right. Also, the NFL has no rights over what happens to anything transmitted over the airwaves once it reaches my property, it is mine to do with as I please, including recording it, encrypting/decrypting it. I may not rebroadcast (but that's purely due to FCC rules and regulations) but the FCC ruled specifically about OTA broadcasting and things like the use of police scanners for citizens - once that signal hits your property, it's yours to do with as you please.
Of course, the media corporation's response is to try to force everyone to Digital *COUGHMODIFIEDANALOG* broadcasting and encrypting the media OTA so it would be a violation of the DMCA to record it successfully.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
And it would be perfectly truthful to say I'm not going to give that info out to random people on the Internet. Being truthful doesn't mean you can't have secrets, just that you don't lie.
That's a common view from a non-musician. If musicians made money solely from performances, it wouldn't be long before there were no more professional musicians left.
This would be bad because?
Touring and putting on shows and concerts costs money. It's that simple. Whether the costs are for gas, plane tickets, food, music equipment, or roadies, not to mention the cuts of ticket sales that go to the venues.
It's not unknown for venues to pay bands (and PA companies) to play there.
Every band/artist has to start out at the bottom, and many bands that haven't yet "made it big" often come back from a tour with not that much more than they left with. Expecting people to live on just that income would mean the eventual death of your PERFORMING artist.
You are missing that plenty of people want to see live music and they are prepared to pay to do so. They might not always be prepared to pay what "artists" think they are worth and be fickle when it comes to tastes, but that's just human nature.