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RIAA Walks Away From Another "Discovery" Case
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "You may recall that the RIAA walked away last week from one of their 'discovery' cases seeking the identities of 'John Does' who attended Rhode Island College. We have just learned that they walked away from another one, BMG Music v. Does 1-14, in Greensboro, North Carolina. 2 of the 14 John Does had settled, but the other 12 — who hung tough — will never be identified to the RIAA lawyers and will not have to pay any 'settlement.' This adds fuel to the debate over whether the RIAA has finally seen the light or is still sneaking around in the dark."
I object to the verb 'sneaking' in TFA.
It suggests purpose, strategy, and some level of intelligence.
I suspect the two people who paid up are now wishing that they hadn't.
As has been posted here, the RIAA is changing its target from suing individuals to (trying to) sue ISPs who do not do the their dirty work (checking, tracking, denying access) for them.
Small ISPs who cannot do that (too few customers -> no business) will simply die from the RIAAs litigations, and the bigger ones (who can deal with a few less customers) are softer targets, as they have got less to loose (as opposed to an individual which can loose upto a few times his yearly income), especially not when simply ending a customers contract on the first sign of RIAA related trouble.
Lets hope the Judges are allready sensitivised to the RIAA to such a level that even seeing their paperwork will give them an instant itch ...
When someone shoots a photograph of your house, did they steal it? It seems you don't understand your own sources.
I know that despite the intense advertising campaign to call downloading music theft, legally the definition of theft requires depriving someone of their property, intellectual or otherwise. To deprive someone of any such item, they can't use it after you steal it. Therefore, while copying music is damaging to the RIAA, the RIAA's tactics of pretending that music copying is theft is just plain dishonesty.
Copying music is already illegal, so there's no need to add in theft charges. Just like there would be no need to add in murder charges for copying music because you are proverbially killing the artist.
It's hard to believe someone is actually defending the actions of the RIAA, but I checked your posting history and no, you aren't joking. Although technically you are correct and under existing law you could use the term thieves, you conveniently ignore the fact that the RIAA has run the campaign more like a protection racket than as a legitimate campaign to prosecute (or educate, depending on which RIAA shill you believe) the supposed offenders. They've collected "evidence" illegally, ignored court orders, used questionable legal arguments and arguments based on legal principles that do not exist. Any time anyone actually chooses to fight them in court they walk away in order to prevent a precedent from being set. The large corporations backing the RIAA can't or won't adapt to the changing market and instead are attempting to use legislation to cling to a failing business model. The existing body of law was largely set before the internet came into being, and subsequent changes have been heavily influenced by the same large corporate copyright holders. Your average person doesn't understand IP and your average congressman knows who is buttering his bread. Their entire campaign is a sterling example of how a large moneyed interest can abuse the entire legal system both in the courts and in their efforts to influence the lawmaking process itself.
All this leads me to one question: Why are you so mindlessly insistent that the law is just?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
If, instead of claiming that people are stealing their music, the RIAA would accept the simple fact that their product sucks, their marketing strategy sucks, their whole business plan sucks, then they could claim their problems are the result of the economic meltdown and get a few billion $$$ from Washington.
All that retreat mumbo-jumbo at the moment is just the precursor to what will be brought against the people in 2009 and beyond. Obama has selected an RIAA supporting ass. attourney general with David Ogden and now that the industry has a seat on the presidents team and wan't to "cooperate" with ISPs they don't need these awful lawsuits anymore.
... I sense a great disturbance in the warez.
My piratey sense is tingling
Careful here, how does copyright infringement force people to continue making music?
And slavery isn't fucking theft either. It's goddamn kidnapping, assault, probably some rape, all sorts of other crimes, but it's not theft.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
There, fixed that for you...
Appropriate (or "take") is still implying the same thing -- the taking of a physical object. It has nothing to do with creating a copy.
In fact, here's a dictionary, to back me up:
Appropriate \Ap*pro"pri*ate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p.
Appropriated; p. pr. & vb. n. Appropriating.]
1. To take to one's self in exclusion of others; to claim or
use as by an exclusive right; as, let no man appropriate
the use of a common benefit.
Creating a copy does not exclude others from creating a copy, so no.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
To take to one's self in exclusion of others; to claim or use as by an exclusive right; as, let no man appropriate the use of a common benefit.
Hmmm. Exclusion of others. That means it's not theft if we play it loud enough for the neighbors to hear?
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Why is it honest to sell out your client? You realize that a lawyer's job is to be a zealous advocate (though within the bounds of the law), don't you? A lawyer is not the judge and jury. It's not the attorney's role. Everyone deserves a fair trial, no matter how guilty. And even if found guilty, there is the question of how much punishment the guilty person deserves. I guess you think a lawyer should just say "Yeah, my client is guilty of crossing against the light. Go ahead and shoot him. What a minute, I'll do it myself." [bang]
Similar to the upcoming US election results
This adds fuel to the debate over whether the RIAA has finally seen the light or is still sneaking around in the dark.
Does it? Really? Or, does it point to them just not having the money in this downward spiraling economy to continue these frivolous lawsuits while they, in parallel, scramble to redesign their digital content schemes?
I have a feeling that this is going to be a lull for a few years while they regroup, retask and come at the file sharers again, or seek legislation to aid their fight; the latter being less likely under the incoming administration. The RIAA (and MPAA) are not going down without one hell of a fight. This type of battle may be ending, but evil never sleeps and is constantly trying to devise new ways to overcome good. These idiots are just confused and don't see the good in what file sharing does for their (still growing) sales.
To quote Frank Herbert, "This is all far from over..."
Any chance they could sue to get their money back? If the settlement letter they paid off is bogus (and it demonstrably is in this case since the RIAA dropped the discovery and walked away from it, which says they had no intention of following through with prosecution) it seems to me that the RIAA gained the money through something resembling fraud.
I'm not sure if it would be fraud, or extortion, or whatever - but it just seems to me that the RIAA doesn't have a legal claim on the money. "Pay us and we won't take you to court." So someone pays. But they didn't take the non-paying people to court and dropped the case. So the settlement letter is absolutely bogus. Shouldn't be too difficult a point to make in front of a judge. IANAL though, so I might be very wrong, but it seems that way.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Why not just continue conventional copyright protection for commercial use -- restaurants, television commercials, and so on -- while allowing unlimited personal use? Even without non-commercial use, there's still a revenue stream, albeit a smaller one, and still an incentive for artists to create popular music.
Plus, artists will always have live events and merchandise.
Musician and sound tech chiming in here, I smell a troll mod coming, but here goes anyway.
Copying music without authorization from the copyright holders is theft, no doubt about it. This notion that the copyright holder is in no way deprived of property is simplistic and misguided. Music is marketed in so many different ways and none of them are benefited by illegal file sharing.
If you think managers, agents, and labels do not investigate how much a band's music has been pirated before agreeing to promote them (or continue to promote them) you're dead wrong. If you think a band has never been deprived of market positioning because of illegal file sharing you're dead wrong. There are so many aspects that have to be in good order before anyone spends the $6-digit amount it takes to get a band the necessary attention in the mainstream, and that is exactly the market that is hit hardest by piracy.
I do not defend the RIAA's draconian tactics and failure to adapt to the market, in fact I detest what they're doing to my industry with such counter-productive campaigns. But theft is still theft.
Wanna really fight back at the RIAA? Don't buy their catalog, instead get out and see some live music and buy the albums of bands that deserve to make a living off music. Unsigned bands generally get 70-85% of album sales as profit, where signed bands are lucky to see 15%. Where would you like your money to go?
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
But what about morally? That seems pretty clear-cut - taking someone else's work without paying for it, and without permission, is stealing.
I am reminded of a proverb/quote/saying I heard once:
If I have a penny and you have a penny and we exchange pennies, now you have a penny and I have a penny. But if I have an idea and you have an idea and we exchange ideas, now you have two ideas and I have two ideas.
If you are going to discuss copyright infringement, especially as it applies to your own business, you should know the difference. Copyright infringement is NOT theft or larceny, legally OR ethically, and if you were suspected of copyright infringement, you would not be charged with either one! The law sharply distinguishes between them, and for very good reasons.
Theft deprives a property owner of the use of something they already own, whether that something is goods or money. Copyright infringement does not deprive the owner of his/her property, therefore it is not theft.
Copyright infringement, in some circumstances but by no means all, merely deprives the work's creator of theoretical profits that could be made from the work. In the vast majority of cases involving downloads or copying of CDs and DVDs, even that is not strictly true according to studies... most of the time there would not have been a sale anyway, so there were no profits "stolen", even theoretically.
Further, even when there is a lost sale in the case of music or movies, the studio and artists are not being deprived of anywhere near the retail price of the product! Usually all they would have gotten anyway is a small fee or royalty which represents only a small fraction of the retail price.
As an ethical analogy, consider the case of a "mountain man" in the days of westward exploration of the United States. If you were to steal his horse, you would deprive him of the use of that horse, which he may well rely on for his very survival. Therefore horse theft (rustling) was a capital crime: you could be (and many people were) hung until dead for that offense.
On the other hand, if you could somehow clone that horse from some "borrowed" cells, the only thing you would be depriving the owner of would be a theoretical stud fee, assuming the owner put the horse out for stud in the first place.
Obviously, the nature and severity of these "crimes" are vastly different, and there is no rational basis for treating them the same way.
"Copying music without authorization from the copyright holders is theft, no doubt about it."
No, it isn't! It is copyright infringement! The two are legally quite distinct from one another, for good reasons! See my post just above a little bit.
I am not defending the copying of copyrighted material. But I *AM* putting it in its proper perspective. It is NOT stealing or theft. It may be wrong, but it is not theft.
Further, your defense of a by-now-almost-bankrupt business model for the music industry is pretty pathetic. Most bands today don't want to give up their rights to some studio that is willing to put up a 6-digit amount to promote the band, because they are more sophisticated today, and understand that the same studio is likely to keep the vast majority of the 8-digit profits.
On the other hand, I wholeheartedly endorse your final comment. Go live.
Since you apparently don't understand, I'll explain what's happening: The record companies are throwing the mother of all hissy-fits over the obsolescence of their business model. In the old days, there were no record companies and artists made their living by *performing*. Then along came radio and the phonograph. The music industry was born, which was based on selling overpriced pieces of plastic, along with radio revenue. The pieces of plastic evolved into CDs and eventually cost the consumer on average over $20 each. The consumer really never had any choice as prices were essentially being set by a cabal of large corporations. Sure, the consumer could hear music for free over ad-supported radio, but the record companies (and occasionally artists) got a cut from that, too. Existing IP law conveniently played nice with this model, since you had to buy a piece of plastic to choose when to play it for yourself or else listen to whatever the radio station decided to play - a process heavily and often illegally influenced by the corporations. (Perhaps you've never heard of payola?) The great thing was, plastic wore out fairly quickly so you would have to buy another. Magnetic tape media was even more unreliable but much more convenient - essentially a wash. When DAT reared it's ugly head, the music industry, not the market, had it killed in congress, since they were afraid people could make infinite perfect copies and kill the golden goose.
Then came the internet and this fear suddenly became reality: instant worldwide distribution with virtually zero production cost. They greedily tried to keep the juice flowing by blocking any effort to sell digital files over the net, but existing IP and copyright law did not play well with the new model. Naturally, piracy was rampant since the average consumer knew a better deal when they saw one and Napster was king. Then they managed to co-opt Napster but I-tunes finally set the standard by negotiating a price of a dollar a track. Please take note that this was a far worse deal for the consumer than a traditional CD, since they didn't even get their piece of plastic just a DRM-laden string of electronic bits kept on as tight a leash as possible. Pent up demand meant sales soared regardless, but so did piracy, which you correctly point out is a better deal for the consumer. However, the consumer finally gets to decide where and when to listen to music - sort of like self-programmed radio without the ads.
Copyright law says the record companies get exclusive rights to sell their pieces of plastic (or digital bits) for a hundred years - a number dreamed up by big corporations with no regard for the public interest. Compare this to patents for pharmaceuticals. Hundreds of millions of R&D dollars, rigorous government mandated and supervised testing and an end-product which often saves lives. For all this effort they get 20 years of exclusive rights, (provided the drug proves safe AND effective, both of which have to be scientifically proven prior to marketing) whereas any moron who pens a ditty basically gets automatic copyright (as per the Berne convention) for a century (no thanks to Sonny Bono). Clearly the interests of the general public got bypassed when it comes to modern copyright law.
It's not that whole concept if IP and copyright law is wrong, merely that it's far too heavily skewed against the consumer and was written without taking into account the realities of the digital age. Why should record companies continue to exist in their current form? Their core business of selling pieces of plastic is in serious trouble because the consumer sees no value in participating in that market. Those days are gone for good. Think: who still uses telegraph? If nobody wants records, why do we need a record industry? Recording and promotion; perhaps, but not so much for records or CD's. The new market is all digital, where consumers can get what they want instantly and on impulse. Nobody needs music to survive - it's a luxury. What will earn record
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
I'll go the "Anonymous Coward" route...
My fiance works for a music distributor. They make an everyday wage and they're about to layoff 400+ people from their offices. Oh yeah, my fiance also has Multiple Sclerosis. Her MASSIVE medical expenses are paid for through health insurance provided by her company, which she will lose if she gets laid off.
So...THANK YOU for stealing music!!!
I'm sorry, but maybe you should be speaking to people and campaigning for healthcare reform and universal healthcare. (for my part, I graduated college into this recession, have no job, and am also uninsurable at any price. I'm quickly plummeting toward the precipice with 2k/mo in Rx. )
If it wasn't the downturn or the pirates it would be something else, but your husband would have eventually lost his job (thus his insurance), and from there it's a quick drop into disability.
The injustice here is not your husband's upper management making horrible decisions, then waging a war against an entire generation which is supposed to be their target audience.
The injustice here is that you both have been shackled to a job because of medical care.
As for my side.. Music was once my escape. I would plug in, put the phones on, and just relax at the end of a long and taxing day. It was the one thing I considered sacred in life. The lawsuits from your husband's company wiped all that away and made every melody into the horrific reminder of corporate greed and corruption. Now I can't listen to an english song anymore because I know it was the american music industry which strangled the entire tech sector.
Little factoid:
DMCA was passed in '98, but not scheduled to take effect for two years.
What happened two years later? What sector is now reduced to doing nothing but hollywood's bidding. Why is steve jobs dragging his feet with blu-ray again?
I'm sorry but there's only one thing which takes my mind off the chronic pain i experience right now, and that's the fact that your pet industry put me there by killing off every tech business model which their luddite staff didn't agree with.
Had these same people had their way back at the turn of the twentieth century your husband wouldn't have been working there anyway. They don't appreciate the repeated lessons of history, however, and killed off my jobs before they were born.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!