Slashdot Mirror
RIAA, Stop Suing Tech Investors!
The RIAA isn't just suing tens of thousands of music consumers; they've also begun filing lawsuits naming the directors of and investors in tech companies that they believe contribute to copyright infringement. NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "ZDNet urges the big recording industries to stop suing tech investors, and cites the draft legislation that I posted, which would immunize from secondary copyright infringement liability any work done by a director in 'his or her capacity as a member of the board of directors or committee thereof,' and any conduct by an investor based solely upon his or her having 'invested in any such corporation, including any oversight, monitoring, or due diligence activities in connection therewith.'"
Clearly there would be less copyright infringement without all these PC's lying around.
I should say - I think that this law suit is bollocks, obviously.
But if you want to prevent this sort of thing, all you need is a law to indemnify inventors and distributors of technological devices and other services against contributory infringement. Why single out the investors and directors for legal protection?
Investors and directors already have far too *much* indemnity against the actions taken with their money, generally speaking. This would set a terrible precedent, potentially causing tremendous harm to society in order to advance a very minor point of agenda.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
RIAA, we know you're running out of money, so by all means start suing well-heeled investors instead of grandmothers living off small pensions.
Hell, I'll even recommend a few law firms that bill starting a grand an hour to help you out.
IANAL but I thought the whole point of corporations was to limit investors' exposure to the amount of their investment. Otherwise your grandma could be sued for the Ford Explorer rollovers since she owns 100 shares of Ford stock in her retirement savings.
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
Let's see...
Any computer company (ibm, microsoft, apple)
All online auction sites like eBay (because they are full of nothing but counterfeits)
Any company that sells ethernet cards or cables.
Oh hell, let's sue the mining industry because they produce the copper for the cables, because copper carries signals that could be carrying stolen bits of data.
As you can tell it's pretty damn stupid.
The only companies that profit directly from copyright infringement are in China. Anyone in the US profiting from copyright infringement is exempt under the DMCA safe harbor clause.
The vast majority of the public doesn't have a clue what slashdot is. The vast majority of the music buying public is essentially clueless about nearly anything related to law and rights and all that. The popular commercial news will not report on these stories for a wide variety of reasons. Even if they covered the story attempting to demonize the people being sued, it would be VERY difficult to spin the situation to look this way considering the targets and especially considering the ones that were excused from litigation once they were identified.
I don't buy music... but not for the reasons you might think. My reasons include 1) today's new stuff sucks, 2) I am not moved by music as much as other people seem to be, 3) I realize that music is not a possession but a thing to be licensed but is owned and even controlled by someone else.
But take heart. The movement of public attraction to the indies is growing steadily... perhaps not fast enough but still growing. The use of DRM technologies is also on the decline which is also indication of where things are going. But the progress may never completely uproot the real problem here:
The public is being led around by the nose by a LOT of popular notions. People think they need a "good credit rating" (aka the "I love Debt rating") and they think they need all of the crap and nonsense they buy. I am guilty of all of this same stupidity but I see it and increasingly fight this addiction to plastic. I gave up debt financing on anything but houses and cars and will soon give up on debt financing for cars as well. Spending cash and watching your checking and savings accounts erode with each individual item is far more sobering than watching "bills paid" come out of my accounts. (We see bills as necessary to pay and so we don't anguish about that as much right?)
Okay, this seems to be going off-topic a bit. But the point is that we are living in this consumerist culture that will literally require a cultural revolution to get us out of. If Obama were REALLY interested in bringing this country out of financial ruin, he would start movements that would result in a cultural revolution or at least a return to more simple values. This consumerist culture makes a few of people rich off of nonsense and crap... but that's not as bad as the other, larger side of that statement! This consumerist culture makes a lot of people poor because of nonsense and crap.
The music and movie industries are part of a larger classification identified as the entertainment industry of which the other forms of media are enlisted members. (So is it any mystery that 'the media' doesn't want to cover this topic?) Entertainment is not considered to be a necessity by the standards of most people and when people start watching their spending, that's usually the first to go.
Lets think about how this would have affected the development of: the personal computer, the VCR, the tape deck, CD burners, torrent distribution, the xerox machine, the printing press...
What's really going on?
RIAA warfare against "piracy?"
or
The RIAA is attempting to buy legislation which would allow them to destroy technologies that allow independent artists to compete with them.
Suing individuals for ridiculous sums of money was like a playground bully beating up scrawny kids for their lunch money. It's easy, but there's not much profit in it.
Suing investors who can actually afford to mount a legal defense for similar sums of money is like trying to beat up the principal for his lunch money. And he's been itching to try out that new paddle.
Except wouldn't it take only a few investors to stand up to the RIAA, get the charges toss out in court (and hopefully damages awarded to the defendant), and set a precedent which would strongly discourage future frivolous lawsuits?
That is, supposing they don't just fold and settle out (I'm hoping that the insult and idiocy of such a lawsuit would be enough to discourage such).
Why is login restricted on your sig site? Should I apply for a handle?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I don't buy music... but not for the reasons you might think. My reasons include 1) today's new stuff sucks, 2) I am not moved by music as much as other people seem to be, 3) I realize that music is not a possession but a thing to be licensed but is owned and even controlled by someone else.
i take no issue with points 2 and 3, but there's a ridiculous amount of music that is both new and good - it's just not being pimped by mtv or whatever casey kasem clone happens to be favored by clear channel at the moment.
granted, most of my music collection is older than a decade, and it does seem that the art to detritus ratio has tilted towards the britney spears - 50 cent end of the scale, but the good shit is still out there. off the top of my head, here's a list of artists who have released excellent albums in the last 2 years...
Drive-By Truckers
Citay
Mogwai
Modest Mouse
Solar Fields
Iron & Wine
Explosions in the Sky
The Bees
ok, that wasn't quite as impressive a list as i had hoped, but i'm too lazy to search. my point remains, however - there is good music being made now, despite the saddening signal to noise ratio.
The public is being led around by the nose by a LOT of popular notions. People think they need a "good credit rating" (aka the "I love Debt rating") and they think they need all of the crap and nonsense they buy. I am guilty of all of this same stupidity but I see it and increasingly fight this addiction to plastic. I gave up debt financing on anything but houses and cars and will soon give up on debt financing for cars as well. Spending cash and watching your checking and savings accounts erode with each individual item is far more sobering than watching "bills paid" come out of my accounts. (We see bills as necessary to pay and so we don't anguish about that as much right?)
now that, however, is spot on. i've never had a credit card, and never bought a car i couldn't pay for with cash on the spot. accordingly, i've never had a really nice car, but i've never had a jalopy either. my only worry is buying land, which i'm not sure i'll be able to do without credit, or with my heroic lack of credit history. luckily i want to live in the middle of goddamn nowhere, where land tends to be pretty cheap...
the united states is a nation of laws; badly written and randomly enforced -- frank zappa
You are completely wrong. Go look into how credit scores are calculated. Dave Ramsey has a rather simple and easy way to explain how it works. This guy is a multi-millionaire, always pays his bills, buys everything in cash and has a pretty crappy credit score.
There are already laws in place to protect against the filing of frivolous lawsuits. Why do we need more?
If anybody believe the RIAA or anybody else has engaged in such conduct, they can protest it. Of course, it will be a high burden to prove that it's frivolous, but there's a reason for that, namely the principle of American Law that everybody gets a chance in court, and even if they can't prove their case, this doesn't mean they did wrong.
I was at the Chicago Maritime Festival yesterday, and had dinner with a bunch of folks I know, mostly musicians. One member of a the group was very outspoken about how the DMCA and all had *seriously* screwed her group, and all indie musicians. From what she was saying, you have to pay the record companies... and if you're not signed, there is *no* *way* to sell, other than individually, via the online sources that sell by the track.
In addition, the recent screwing by the RIAA & buddies to increase the fees paid by streaming media stations drove *many* under... and a lot of musicians, such as those who are on the renfaire circuit, lost their outlets....
Then, of course, there's the clip I hear of Arlo Guthrie saying that it took him THIRTY YEARS to get the first dime of royalties from Alice's Restaurant.
But the RIAA is *so* about musicians getting paid for their art....
mark
There are already laws in place to protect against the filing of frivolous lawsuits.
Name them. (And once you do I will show you why every one you name is entirely ineffective to deter the filing of frivolous lawsuits.) The fact is there is big money in filing frivolous lawsuits and the Big 4 record companies are the best customers for this product. They have spent far more on it than they have on product development.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I think it's a sign of how weak and sickly our nation has become.
This kind of behaviour is clearly rabid, and most civilized societies put a merciful bullet in the heads of rabid animals.
Whether literally or figuratively, the RIAA needs to be put down.
[End Of Line]
They want to sue investors and tech companies? Good. It will be suicide for them. They'll have to sue AOL for funding the development of Napster. In so doing they'll have to sue Time Warner, a member of the RIAA. Not to do so will show bias between members and non-members, making all their claims questionable and if I'm not mistaken leave them open to a RICO suit.
The news from the last year or two is misleading in saying Napster acquired AOL Music. AOL already held interest in Napster because they funded its development. Pages on AOL's web site stating this were major points used by Harlan Ellison's attorneys in Ellison v. Remarq, AOL and Various John Does. AOL's attorneys appeared to be completely unaware of this relationship which placed AOL firmly opposite to its own claims of being anti-sharing.
Such corporate merging, spin-off and reacquisition is a common occurrence giving surface activity for various legal and financial reasons while the investors and holding companies retain ownership all along. Whether the Mafiaa's landsharks are unaware of the above, or (more likely IMO) hoping the defense attorneys and the judged are, makes little difference as long as the relevant courts can be made aware of the information. Anyone interested in the specific supporting details can contact Charlie Petit at authorslawyer.com.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Can't be given to corporations? I know that RIAA is doing the "shoot yourself in the foot" task, but have to do it in each toe first? Whats next? Suing Obama?
I'm glad that they've finally been so blinded by their greed that they are finally attacking people who can afford to fight back.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Specifically immunizing investors from secondary copyright infringement suits is putting a band-aid on a festering wound. Number one, they're already covered by the corporate veil anyway, unless the RIAA buys the judges (in which case the laws won't help). Number two, the whole concept of secondary copyright infringement is something made up out of whole cloth by the courts; it doesn't appear in the statutes. So how about explicitly eliminating the doctrine of secondary copyright infringement entirely? It's pretty much used only for evil.
Actually, that goes for copyright period. So here's my suggested draft legislation
1) The United States denounces the Berne Convention and denounces and withdraws from all other organizations, treaties, and/or agreements which would require it to enforce any provisions of Title 17 of the United States Code.
2) Title 17 of the United States Code is hereby repealed, as of thirteen months from date of enactment of this legislation, or when all denunciations and withdrawals in paragraph 1 have taken effect, whichever comes sooner.
It seems that since they've already blown off both their feet, they're now moving on to what they have left. I'm pretty sure that was one of their arms right there.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
(The more they sue, the quicker they are gone. Essentially, ZDnet tells them how to live longer... against their will... Well, I say: In this case, let them have their will. :D)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
How was what he said wrong ? .. He basically said it makes you think more when paying cash as opposed to lumping a purchase in with a credit card bill... he said people (the general public) are into the credit score thing.. You tell us that this one guy is not. This Dave Ramsey guy may be the smartest financial genius ever.. who knows, but that doesn't make what the poster said about people and their credit scores wrong.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Considering recent events.. A lack of credit history may make it harder in the future to finance real estate. The thing is, although banks are the norm, banks are not the only way to purchase real estate. In fact, with banks being tighter, and a glut of foreclosed properties and buyers harder to find.. buying direct from a seller is probably not a bad way to go right now. Ideally a seller who has no pre-existing mortgage on the property he is selling.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I do not know of any law that effectively deters frivolous litigation, which is why I expect that the laws you will point to are ineffective to deter frivolous litigation. If you take the trouble to name them, I will not just 'claim' they are ineffective, I will demonstrate to you why they are ineffective. If you'd like to learn something, fine. If you prefer to beat your gums and remain ignorant, well that's fine too.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
There is no such thing as working on getting a good credit score. There is such a thing as buying one however. All you have to do is pay needless money in interest payments for something that should be paid for in cash.
Let's say you have a "perfect score" for credit and then you pay off all debt, close all accounts and remain debt free for seven years. What happens to your credit score? It goes DOWN. Why? Because you pay for what you buy instead of borrowing money and paying interest on it? In order to maintain a credit score, you have to maintain debt. How much sense does this make? It makes plenty of sense if you plan to stay in debt all your life.
Here is the unfortunate situation though. This credit score system is [ab]used by more than just lenders. It is used as a "reputation score" when it is nothing of the kind! Once again, a "pay in full only" guy like myself gets an unfairly low credit score and therefore an unfairly low "reputation score" when I live debt free and owe very little.
The way to avoid this terrible delemma, of course, is to borrow, pay interests and maintain a certain level of debt. But why does that sound wrong? Paying interest rates on loans I don't need just to boost and maintain a reputation score? Sounds like I am paying the system in order to keep in their good graces. If that sounds oddly like a tax then you'd be right to draw that comparison... but really, it's closer to "pay to play."
Don't get me wrong. There is a place for lending and borrowing. If we saved for things like houses, we could quite possibly die before being able to buy one. But for thiings that most definitely lose value the moment you buy them? (like diamonds, cars, computers, TVs and a whole host of other things) it makes less than no sense.
Somewhere between two and three generations ago and before, it was considered a sin to be in debt. If you are Christian, Jewish or Muslim, you will know that their scriptures ALL say that borrowing is a bad idea as it makes the borrower a slave of the lender. But somehow a push for all of this illegal under the law social security number as a national ID number and people tracker became successful. (You *did+ know that law was expressly written to declare the use of SSNs for any purpose other than social security records tracking to be illegal? The IRS recognizes this and will issue you a tax payer ID number if you request it! And lenders could also issue account numbers to track you with, but since the SSN isn't quite so easy to opt-out of, they all want to latch onto that unique number ostensibly to avoid being defrauded.) And now we are stuck in a system with ridiculous notions like "we need to be in debt to prove we are worthy of... what? More debt of course!"
So, anything at all that threatens the RIAA's hold over radio playlists must (in the eyes of the RIAA) be killed off at all costs, because the alternative is the death of the RIAA. They are like a cornered animal -- almost defeated, but at their most dangerous.
Ideas? What they may do? What we can do? (I doubt they'll hire assassins, so I'll just focus on more probable issues.)
Corporation != evil. It's a tax tool, damn good one too.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
I can't believe the negative and adversarial mood this whole story has provoked here. Surely this is good ?
they have widened their aim, but they have targeted people with similar resources now - people who can and will fight back.
Remember, first they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. They've just started fighting for real.
"The fact is there is big money in filing frivolous lawsuits"
Well, we certainly agree on that statement. I've seen your nick around, and read a few of your posts, but other than your opposition to the RIAA, I'm really not aware of your stands on other issues. Since you indicate that you're a lawyer, and since you made the statement about frivolous lawsuits, I have ask, doesn't that put you in opposition to most tort lawyers? My state has been called "Tort Hell" for the habit of tort lawyers shopping for the for the most favorable courts and juries, and filing frivolous lawsuits. When you say "frivolous lawsuits", are you including all the ambulance chasers too?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You are 100% wrong. I have no debt and an excellent credit score. I have numerous active credit card accounts, none of which have revolving balances. Therefore, I pay no interest at all. I even get cash back for using the cards.
Would I really be better off shoving my head up my ass, canceling all credit cards, and bitching some nonsense about having to "be in debt to get good credit"?
A corporation is far more than a tax tool, since generally you can't lose more money than you put in. With a partnership or sole proprietorship, if your business goes under, you and your partners are generally liable for all its debts. It doesn't matter if someone screwed you or even if your partner cashed in all the business's assets and bank accounts and moved to some exotic island. What do you think will happen if your business is sued? What if business isn't as good as you thought it would be, and your company racked up lots of credit? This is why you should never be in a partnership, and you should be very careful about starting a sole proprietorship. You may pay double taxes with certain types of corporations, but it may be worth it. Also look at LLCs (limited liability company) IANAL, you should really consult one if you plan to start or buy a business. Making a mistake can cost you more than those who chose to get an ARM mortgage, especially the ones who couldn't afford it in the first place.
So you are saying to shift the cost onto merchants, so we all have to pay more is a better plan? The CC companies require their merchants to charge the same for all types of transactions, so if you pay with cash, you have to pay more even though you don't use a credit card. How is this not "pay to play" like the above poster said? Also, even if you pay your cards off monthly, you are still maintaining a debt, unless you are redefining "debt."
It used to be music wasn't owned or controlled by anyone...except for fascist regimes.
As for boycotting the RIAA not doing any good, I agree. In fact they will still get money from you because of compulsory licenses. If you buy something from a company who advertises on a music playing radio station or a store which plays music, you are indirectly paying money to the RIAA. I won't even go into the costs of them suing anyone who produces tech they don't like.
... then sue the RIAA into the ground for patent infringement. I'm sure IBM has a "typing information into computer keyboard" patent lying around somewhere...
Citation Needed
Well said. I just didn't the have energy to 'splain it all to some kid who's been taught to think that the word "corporation" is a synonym of "evil".
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
"Name them. (And once you do I will show you why every one you name is entirely ineffective to deter the filing of frivolous lawsuits.)"
You know, up here in Canada, we have a mechanism that works quite well. In a civil case, the loser is required to pay at least part, if not all, of the winner's legal fees by default. That means that while there are some frivolous lawsuits, something like what the RIAA has been doing would bankrupt them up-front.
I've often wondered why the United States doesn't have such a measure...it seems to me that it would prevent frivolous lawsuits while opening the door for non-frivolous ones quite effectively...
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Just bought a couple Linkin Park CD's from Amazon Marketplace. The disks were labeled "Like New" or "Very Good".
Rather than spend $24 for the two I paid $9 bucks. The RIAA's cut? $0.00
That's what they can expect moving forward.
I don't like their attitude and I don't like their lawsuits against people.
I have a couple more CD's to purchase in the next few weeks. The RIAA can expect more of the same.
BTW, the Amazon CD's came as advertised.
Thanks for playing :-)
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
If you want to talk badly, please at least CC me so that I know which misconceptions to correct and which correctly observed flaws in my thinking I need to fix.
I'm waiting for the headline, "RIAA Sues Everyone With Ears" ... and I only partially expect that The Onion will be the one to carry that.