The RIAA's Rocky Road Ahead

The RIAA's new plan to enlist ISPs in its war on file sharing, once it announced it was calling a halt to new consumer lawsuits, is running into rough sledding. Wired reports on the continuing legal murkiness of the RIAA's interpretation of copyright law. And one small ISP in Louisiana asks the recording organization, "You want me to police your intellectual property? What's your billing address?"

Comments

Multiple interpretations

[BadAnalogyGuy]

"What's your billing address?"

That's not exactly an unequivocal rejection.

Where would all you music sharers be if the RIAA responds with a valid billing address? It is just a matter of money before those ISPs start cooperating.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Thanshin]

It's worse than that; it's a new justification for the RIAA to ask for money.

RIAA: "Pirates are generating losses of millions of dollars. They force us to pay large amounts to every ISP so they enforce our demands."

"Now when we catch a pirate we'll of course ask for compensation of all those millions."

Soon sending a song through the web will bring larger fines than experimenting with nuclear weapons at home.

I can see the prison conversations.
"What are you here for?"
"Eating babies. And you?"
"Whistling a song in public."
"Friking depraved garbage! I hope you rot in hell."

Re:Multiple interpretations

[drsmithy]

As a legal user of P2P, and as a PC gamer (linux only, though), I really hate all the copyright infringements going on.

If copyright law were a more reasonable reflection of reality, there wouldn't be anywhere near as much copyright infringement going on.

I'd bet that the reason we don't see another monkey island or similar is due to piracy.

And you'd be wrong.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Kjella]

Soon sending a song through the web will bring larger fines than experimenting with nuclear weapons at home.

The fines are already at the level where it doesn't matter. The median household income in the US is about 50k$, and at 150k$/song you're being sued for your life earnings for sharing a CD with 15 songs. If you're sharing your music collection with your friends, say 200 CDs * 15 songs then even at a 750$ statutory minimum you're also looking at the same. It's the point where it just doesn't matter - if I owed 2 milion dollars or 200 million dollars or 200 trillion dollars it wouldn't matter. It's a "life" sentence for sharing music files...

Re:Multiple interpretations

[Bert64]

Piracy was already rampant when monkey island came out. It came on floppies which were easily copied.
But the fact is, making good playable games is less profitable than making lousy games with pretty graphics.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[BAKup]

As a result I feel it's necessary to "test drive" media before purchase. With CDs I can get legal samples online, but with TV shows on DVD there is no method except to download it and see if it's any good. It's illegal, but I do it because I don't want to get stuck wasting thousands of dollars on trash.

Other options.

1. Netflix. They even happen to have Galactica 1980 on watch it now.
2. Reading reviews online.
3. Reading reviews in magazines.
4. Netflix.
5. Asking friends about shows.
6. Hulu.
7. Youtube (Ok, this one isn't fully legal)
8. Blockbuster.
9. All the other video rental stores.
10. Did I mention Netflix?

I know not everything would be on all the options listed, so there's up to 8 other options, unless you don't have any friends, then there's only up to 7 options.

So don't say the only option you have is to download.

Re:Multiple interpretations

[IndustrialComplex]

I agree with you in principle, but I have to disagree with you on your analysis.

While you say that copyright was fine, until the public became aware of it, I would argue that copyright was not fine. It has morphed from the original concept of protecting works for a long enough time so that the creator could gather compensation to something that exists for such a long duration that copyrights today are effectively granted in perpetuity.

The life of the author plus 50/70 years is a damned long time. And it has now placed copyrights beyond the lives of human beings. That has made them the currency of corporations, and are no longer within the means of trade for us mere mortals.

I disagree entirely with how copyrights have become the currency for corporations.

Re:Viable business model?

[meringuoid]

I can't believe sueing people like the RIAA does is a viable business model. The costs must outweigh the benefits by far. Even if the RIAA manages to win a case against a poor grandmother who has never heard of P2P and the like, she won't be able to pay the fine because the costs of defending herself have bankrupted her for good.

It's a terror campaign. The idea is to intimidate the public so that they're afraid to pirate. It doesn't matter if they lose money suing one victim, if a thousand others are thereby frightened away from piracy.