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RIAA Backs Down In Austin, Texas
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In November, 2004, several judges in the federal court in Austin, Texas, got together and ordered the RIAA to cease and desist from its practice of joining multiple 'John Does' in a single case. The RIAA blithely ignored the order, and continued the illegal practice for the next four years, but steering clear of Austin. In 2008, however, circumstances conspired to force the record companies back to that venue. In Arista v. Does 1-22, in Providence, Rhode Island, they were hoping to get the student identities from Rhode Island College. After the first round, however, they learned that the College was not the ISP; rather, the ISP was an Austin-based company, Apogee Telecom Inc., meaning the RIAA would have to serve its subpoena in Austin. The RIAA did just that, but Apogee — unlike so many other ISP's — did not turn over its subscribers' identities in response to the subpoena, instead filing objections. This meant the RIAA would have to go to court, to try to get the Court to overrule Apogee's objections. Instead, it opted to withdraw the subpoena and drop its case."
As a RI resident, I can pretty confidently say that there no "College of Rhode Island".
No, it was entirely my fault. I was working from memory. The correct name is "Rhode Island College".
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
My experience has been that Portland (at least in the US) means Portland, Oregon. And no, I do not live on the west coast. It just seems to be a more widely-known city than Portland, Maine is, at least in my circles.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
If you read the judges' order you won't find the words "in Austin" there.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Granted, but then why are they only avoiding Austin?
Why they would violate the order, and flagrantly violate the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, on a daily basis, for 4 years... is a question I can't answer. You would have to ask them.
The reason they were avoiding Austin is no doubt that the judges who issued they order that's been violated would probably hold them in contempt and might even put them in jail.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Theft is a synonym for stealing.
Copyright infringement is copyright infringement. I am not aware of a synonym for it.
The RIAA uses the terms "piracy" and "stealing" in referring to copyright infringement, but do so inaccurately, as part of their propaganda.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
You're trying to make a point, and I understand what you mean, but you're really arguing something that's irrelevant. You are also making people focus on the wrong thing, dragging what point you were trying to make off into the weeds. When someone says "pirating is not stealing", they are not talking about what you're talking about when you say "pirating is stealing".
If you would drop the semantics and make your point without using the words "pirate" or "steal" and instead use "copyright infringement" you would start to see how your arguments actually aren't that different from the ones you're arguing against.
Also, note that US copyright law considers the financial impact of any potential infringement, among other things.
"Piracy" has generally been when someone copies something and sells it, like the Chinese DVDs or Windows for a dollar. Clearly you are reducing the market value, if people no longer have to pay full price. More recently, "piracy" is being used in the sense of simple copying for personal use, for situations like downloading music that you already own so you don't have to convert it to FLAC/MP3/AAC. This could be considered fair use because there is no financial benefit to you and no financial loss to the vendor (ignoring the uploading part, since those parts would be available regardless of whether you were uploading them because you got them from somewhere, so your actions are not materially contributing). So even talking about "piracy" is a muddy conversation if you don't clearly define what you're talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Comparison_to_theft
http://www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/basics/fairuse_rules.html
And if anyone wants to copy this the next time someone like this pops up, i release any copyright claim on this comment and it is public domain. Copy, paste, improve.
Here's why I download all the hell I want:
If the RIAA were to obtain my hard drive, they'd find that I have HUNDREDS of full albums that they gave away FOR FREE.
I can point out EVERY site that I downloaded a song from, and most of them just happen to be directly from the artist's site.
So tell me, how the fuck can they justify suing for shit they're giving out for FREE? I've got 80+ gigs of 192-320kbit MP3s, EVERY LAST ONE LEGIT.
What we need to do to put a stop to this is file a collective lawsuit, millions of people against this conglomeration of assholes. Make the justice system listen to our voices until they go DEAF from it. Maybe then we'll put an end to this nonsense.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The term is defined as: larceny, theft, thievery, thieving, stealing -- the act of taking something from someone unlawfully . A song copied unlawfully is certainly stolen.
Herein lies the rub: You define stealing as the act of taking something from someone unlawfully, then you indicate that copying is stealing.
Copying and taking are not synonymous. I'm either making a copy of something, or I am taking something.
Stealing is the act of unlawfully taking property from someone else, from which if I take the property from the owner means the owner no longer has possession of the property. To steal something the original owner must be deprived of the property, because a requirement of stealing is to take.
If I make a copy of the property, be it a car, a piece of furniture, a chapter in a book, a photograph, or bits of information, the original owner still has possession of the property as I have taken nothing. Therefore it is not theft or stealing, it is copyright infringement.
This is why copyright infringement is not prosecuted under criminal theft laws, they are not the same.
I however, am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
As long as it is above zero — and you don't dispute that — the actual figure is irrelevant to our determination.
"Impossible to quantify" does not rule out the quantity "zero", so your claim is false. Alternate universes where certain things may or may not have happened cannot be used as evidence of loss. Copyright infringement is no more "stealing" based on loss of potential sales than is using deceptive advertising to pull in more sales at a store. Deceptive advertising is illegal, but a competing store has no claim on the profit made via that deception.
Seriously, it's no more difficult than looking at the relevant sections of law. "Theft" or "stealing" is defined by law as the unlawful taking of real property. Songs and other such fruits of our common culture are not real property. That's why copyright law is covered by its own section in the US Code--- because it isn't covered by the sections on "stealing".
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.