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5 Years of RIAA Filesharing Lawsuits
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "David Kravets of Wired.com, who provided in-person gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Capitol v. Thomas trial last year, takes stock of the RIAA's 5-year-old litigation campaign, concluding it is 'at a crossroads', and noting that 'billions of copies of copyrighted songs are now changing hands each year on file sharing services. All the while, some of the most fundamental legal questions surrounding the legality of file sharing have gone unanswered. Even the future of the RIAA's only jury trial victory — against Minnesota mother Jammie Thomas — is in doubt. Some are wondering if the campaign has shaped up as an utter failure.'"
Take a position not shared by 90% of your customers, and you're guaranteed failure. It really doesn't matter what the law says is right. It's economics, and the RIAA has failed or will fail, one way or the other.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
... thanks, not only for the objective insight which permeates much of your postings, nor the informative summaries that accompany your submissions, nor even for the occasional comedic relief provided by your dry wit, but for writing a summary that *doesn't* end in a rhetorical question.
(seriously, though, WTH do all the damn summaries end with rhetorical questions or even just plain rhetoric?
"Some are wondering if the campaign has shaped up as an utter failure."
Some?! Wondering?! To date they've convinced the internet audience they so desperately wanted that the entire music industry, most telecoms companies, and quite a few governments are a parade of cash-guzzling corporation-fellating litigation-whores, and done absolutely nothing to peer-to-peer file sharing itself. Where is there any room for doubt as to its failure? It's like trying to give a guy CPR, but realising after hours of effort that you've brutally beaten the guy and his entire living bloodline to death with their own shoes instead.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Not sure how you could measure it by anything but a failure. All of the various ways of measuring it given by RIAA itself pretty much indicate failure.
If they meant to reduce file sharing, total failure there as there's been no slowdown. If they meant to give back to the artists, failure on their part as any winnings/settlements has only gone to fund more litigation. Not only that, they only have one substantive win which may be declared a mistrial as the judge reconsiders his orders to the jury.
The campaign is a failure. This would have been money better spent on actual innovation on distributing music.
Depends on your perspective... definitely not a failure for the trial attorneys billing by the hour.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
RIAA is merely whinging about market losses where this is a situation of an industry that has systematically refused to give the customers what is most practical, what intelligent customers want. Experimental computerized music synthesis of the 1970s (e.g. trying to *imitate* Bach or Beethoven as patterns) should have been a wake up call that computers and music could be cohabitating in the near future. The arrival of the music CD (80s) even as an anolog should have been a wakeup call to even the brain dead. The arrival of, say Sound Blaster 16 (1992), was the technology at the gates.
RIAA members have deliberately and directly avoided properly serving their customers for well over a dozen years. They have actively engaged in a campaign of tampering with both the laws and the laws' execution. They actively attack and extort those members of society least able to defend themselves, including total innocents, with ridiculous claims similar to common street thugs. One wonders what RIAA is going to do if avoidance or legal confrontation are replaced by outright vigilantism. I've seen this in other countries and the history books in other situations.
both van halen and heart have written the mccain campaign, more than once in the case of heart, that they do not wish their songs used to further the political campaign of a person they disagree with.
it's too bad that all these artists don't have some kind of professional organization to represent them. you know, it could collect dues from its members, and then stand up for them in cases like this, where their hard work and creativity is shamelessly co-opted as a marketing gimmick by those in direct and diametrical opposition to the artists themselves on any issue of importance.
like, an association of american industry recordists, or a recording association of american industry... something...
They will never stop until somebody makes the