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RIAA Gets Nervous, Brings In Big Gun
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "I guess the RIAA is getting nervous about the ability of its 'national law firm' (in charge of bringing 'ex parte' motions, securing default judgments, and beating up grandmothers and children) to handle the oral argument scheduled to be heard on Monday, August 4th in Duluth, in Capitol v. Thomas. So, at the eleventh hour, it has brought in one of its 'Big Guns' from Washington, D.C., a lawyer who argues United States Supreme Court cases like MGM v. Grokster to handle the argument. This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs, but the judge ultimately realized that he had been misled by the RIAA in issuing his jury instructions, and indicated he's probably going to order a new trial. But, not to worry. A group of 10 copyright law professors from 10 different law schools and several other amici curiae (friends of the court) have filed briefs now, so it is highly unlikely the judge will allow himself to be misled again, no matter who the RIAA brings in as cannon fodder on Monday."
Well, I didn't know the phrase amicus curiae before, so I looked it up in Wikipedia and... I can't help it, it sounds a tad bit like "lobbying for courtrooms".
How do courts keep this from happening? Or do they, actually?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Technically, it's closer to getting fined $14,000 for drinking coffee you found in the McDonald's dumpster. The company wasn't going to get any money from you anyway, but you still managed a caffeine buzz and a thirst quenchings. Meanwhile, dumpster diving means that you won't have to be asked "Do you want fries with that?" but it's questionable as to the quality of food you'll get, or whether you'll end up with a virus once you've finished getting what you're looking for.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Don't be an idiot. Copyright holds the concept of a derived work, and you cannot distribute a work that is derived from a copyrighted work without permission from the copyright holder. An encoded version of a music track is clearly derived from the original music track, and as such distributing it without permission is against the law.
Programmers tend to think that any law which can't be expressed in Perl (or Python or whatever) is too ambiguous to be useful. This is, however, not how things actually work.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
"That crazy amendment brought material that was in the public domain back into copyright!"
Now that is what I call stealing.
Anyway, if people think the pace of progress is getting faster and faster (or want it to be so), and that marketing and distribution is better than years ago, then it makes no sense that copyright terms should be getting longer and longer.
Logically they should be getting shorter and shorter.
I know I'm not buying any, and nobody I know is buying any. Anyone that knows how to is downloading it for free.
I buy plenty of music. On CD if I care about the quality (maybe 4-5 CD's a year). On Amazon if I don't (maybe an mp3 a week, though Pepsi has been upping that a bit for me). On P2P if it's otherwise unavailable (out of print, not digitized).
What possible reason could there be for not spending 89 cents for a song you want that's easy to find, of good quality, and immediately available? I mean, unless you're morally opposed or a hoarder.
I'd like to hear about a business model whereby the artists produce the music and put it out on the Internet for free. Where is the "business" here? If I download and never, ever even think about going to a concert or buying an overpriced T-shirt, where exactly is the "business"? I surely do not see one.
I wrote this here about 8 years ago. It mostly still applies. Concert tickets are too expensive - that means there's more demand than supply. So even if you don't go to concerts and buy $40 T-shirts, that has no bearing on the music economy in general. Seriously, if a band you liked was in town playing the local theatre for $10 a seat you wouldn't go?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)