Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Filed 62 New Cases In April Alone
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Based upon a quick examination of the records in PACER, I detected 62 new cases brought by the RIAA against individuals in the month of April alone. In December, 2008, the RIAA had represented to Congress that they had 'discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August [2008].'"
The RIAA, lying? Who saw that one coming?
Bainwol: Lying? Baseless. We merely "made available" to Congress our statement that we would stop. You have no proof that we actually had intention to do so.
... they discontinued initiating lawsuits on August 31st and started right up again on September 1st. Everyone needs a few hours off now and then. =)
Just to get down to brass tacks, the representation in question in the letter seems to be:
"Also, during this past summer, we began discussions with New York Attorney General Cuomo, who suggested that now was the time to take our practice of last resort -- lawsuits -- and replace that form of deterrence with productive engagement by the ISP community in the form of graduated response programs. At his request, as an act of good faith in pursuing these alternatives, we discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August."
Either way.. so long as the lawsuits they file are legitimate (ie. the person being sued actually broke the law) I, personally, have no problem with it..
Because the laws they bought are "legitimate"?
I hereby propose a law stating D_Jedi may never own a car, see his mother, or use the internet again.
Lawsuits against you will follow.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The sentence "we discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August" really does not mean anything.
First, it doesn't say that the RIAA "stopped" doing anything. To "discontinue" does not mean to "stop," it means "to break the continuity of."
Second, anything it does say about the RIAA is limited to only the month of August. For example, if I say "Best Buy stopped having 10% off sales in August." That in no way means that Best Buy stopped having 10% off sales forever. It only means they stopped for a period, i.e., broke the continuity, for a single period of time, during the month of August.
Third, more ambiguity is added by the word "initiate." The use of "initiate" gives the RIAA a lot of wiggle room to start new lawsuits. If anyone complains, the RIAA can merely say, "this lawsuit was actually initiated sometime ago when we first started investigating it." And of course it gives the RIAA complete freedom to "initialize" new lawsuits after August.
What I don't understand is why the RIAA is conducting these lawsuits in a quasi-stealth mode. I thought the purpose of the lawsuits was to raise public awareness. But when they're "initialized" in secret, that defeats the entire educational purpose. So what really is going on with these reinitialized lawsuits?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083001418.html
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
In this case it was lying to Congress, so the body capable of enforcing sanctions would be Congress itself, which would have to cite the RIAA's representative for contempt of Congress. I'll let you guess what the chances of them doing so are.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Nope. Believe it or not, they were telling the truth, and it still applies. This is possible due to a little-known law enacted in the summer of 1837, which states that lawsuits are not really considered to be lawsuits, if they're brought against defenseless pensioners who have no idea what the charge means, much less how to defend themselves against it.
Thank you so much for the explanation; I never would have known.
And here I thought Mitch Bainwol was a lying, yellow bellied piece of garbage.
Boy did I have him wrong.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
There is not really any severe penalty to lie in front of congress. The RIAA aren't required to do anything they say to congress. Tonnes of businesses have done it. And Presidents
Poor innocent RIAA-tan will never catch all the piracy scofflaws using this time-consuming serial approach. Hasn't she ever heard of multi-level marketing? Or the classic wheat and chessboard problem? It's simple.
They need to sue the bejeesus out of someone, and offer to settle by forcing the person to buy the rights to a minor song, and then requiring that that person protect their rights by suing two other people. And those two other people will have to settle by each suing two other people, and so on, and so on.
Eventually everyone will wind up being sued, but at least having nice smelling hair.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
We need to wipe out RIAA's financing!
The best way I know of to do that is before buying any cd or mp3 go to RIAA Radar and make sure that the label is not a member of the RIAA... and of course to (a) spread awareness of the site, and (b) help the site out financially.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful