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Music Festival Producer Pre-Sues Bootleggers
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, if you even have been *thinking* about bootlegging the Mile High Music Festival this coming weekend in Denver you've already been sued. No joke. Event producer AEG has already filed trademark infringement claims against 100 John Does and 100 Jane Does in anticipation that they're going to bootleg the event. Since none of the sued parties have actually done anything yet, no one's showing up in court to protest the lawsuit either, so it moves forward... meaning that AEG can use it to get all sorts of law enforcement officials (US Marshals, local and state police and even off-duty officers) to go seize bootleg material."
Fuck this, I'm moving to Belize.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
You can sue people for things they haven't done yet? Well fuck. HEY GATES! I'm suing you for slandering me! You haven't done it yet, but YOU MIGHT.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
In that case, would pre-suing John and Jane Doe for a fatal accident/injury be cheaper than taking out life insurance? I'm fairly sure lawsuits pay out more.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Wait... they're suing anonymous people for things they haven't done yet? Who exactly is being served the suit?
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
I'm going to sue for my own wrongful death right now.
Bootlegging is the illegal *sale* of recordings.
Merely making recordings is not illegal, even if the promoter doesn't want it to happen. Many court cases have upheld that right. Many sites allow the legal sharing of those recordings (archive.org, etree.org).
That this guy's lawyer is given exactly 5 second before a judge before either (a) being dismissed, or (b) being fined for abuse of process.
I hope.
Yeah, but the last reasonable judge retired some time in the 1400s.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This should be thrown out and not allowed to be filed in court again.
This is exactly like me calling the police and reporting my car stolen, so when they arrive to take a statement, I point to my car and tell them that it might be stolen later that night so they're going to have to sit around and wait for it to happen.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I would like to see a John/Jane Doe counter-sue the promoter and request an injunction to prevent the event from happening. Using the **AA logic against them, canceling the event and refunding all the sold tickets and paying the resultant venue cancellation fees would be far less costly than dealing with the resultant piracy with very little hope of cost recovery from said lawsuit.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
Yes, but that is after your home is ransacked, your belongings destroyed/taken, your dogs killed, lose your job while you sit in jail, and your life pretty much ruined. Also you better hope they don't find anything else while they do their searches like that movie screener you got from a friend.
Personally this is scary nuts that it wasn't tossed out the second this was filed. The attorneys should be dis-barred and the judge toss in jail. This NOT how the American legal system works and is total abuse of it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Should this move actually be legal, I envision the arrests and ejection from the show of many people simply pulling out their phone at the wrong time.
So if I call and leave a voice message on CowboyNeal's phone with whatever music in the background, then would CowboyNeal be the guilty party for having the device that actually recorded said few seconds of BG noise, or would I be held liable for being the party that initiated the ability for CN's phone to record the message by dialing him in the first place?
And secondly, should they move to prosecute some of the John Doe's for something of this trivial nature, are they then out of luck in going after CowboyNeal if they've already chased down 100 other John Doe types who were less elusive?
How can this even be moving forward. You can't bootleg something that has not happened yet.
Therefore the complaint is bogus.
Any citizen in the city should phone and complain to their representative about the waste of resources.
The producer AEG should be charged with filing a bogus complaint and made to pay for all the actions taken plus a penatly.
According to AEG's new complaint, "only the plaintiff has the right to sell merchandise bearing the Festival Trademarks at and near the Festival."
This situation is what you get when you submit some bloggers opinion of an article, rather than the actual article. The blog even uses the word 'trademark', but somehow this got transformed from 'bootlegging merchandise AT the event' to 'bootlegging recordings OF the event'.
Idiocracy.
And considering that the t-shirts and whatnot have already been printed the entire issue of 'thought crime' goes out the window as well. There's every reason to believe that people will be abusing the trademark and selling unauthorized merchandise at and around the event, and every reason for the court to grant injunctive relief against it.
Unless we're transitioning into a world where rights-holders cannot even object to physical trade of knock-off products, I think a lot of the commenters here need to apologize to somebody.
Way to RTFA, bucko.
This is not about bootleg recordings. This is about bootleg merchandise (e.g., "Mile High Music Festival" t-shirts sold by someone other than the owner of the "Mile High Music Festival" trademark owner, with no royalties to the trademark owner.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I think it's wonderful that women are now considered equals when it comes to violating copyrights. You go girl!
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Rock promoters fear one thing: lawsuits. If this idiot wants to play lawsuit wars, he will not survive another season. Rock concerts like this have much bigger problems traditionally, and perhaps instead of "tapers" he'd prefer the good old days of broken glass whiskey bottles, date rape, stampedes, and under aged drinking and overdosing. This summer many died in Germany in a poorly managed crowd. The fact is that if this turkey thinks there is money to be made in lawsuits, than I say sue this idiot until he can no longer afford to obtain an insurance rider. The fact is that the current generation of parents were some of the woodstockers and Deadheads that perfected the art of concert going. But I remeber when I was promoting concerts in LA in 1980-3 that parents were not so cool, and that a cut on the foot due to broken glass at the venue was enough to swallow the profit margin of a sold out concert. Lets remind these idiots who the customer is, and what will happen to anyone who thinks that suing the customer is a good business plan. And while you're at it, this is a call to all tapers to circulate Denver and to guarantee a "Streisand Effect" on the sound boards. He'll have fun suing the entire planet while watching sales drop. We need another Bill Graham, not another Clear Channel-like corporate scum sucking maggot. Rock on, and let the music never stop.
No he'll try to convert you to scientology, jump up and down on your couch, then try to kill you.
Om, nomnomnom...
Wow. Slashdot journalism at play again. Anyone bother to read the complaint that was filed? It had ZERO to do with recording the music. It had EVERYTHING to do with people selling apparel. The company has US trademarks/copyrights and have filed under class 25 for apparel. This suit is to STOP people from trying to sell unlicensed clothing.
RTFsuit :)
Digging deep enough, they're saying, "only the plaintiff has the right to sell merchandise bearing the Festival Trademarks at and near the Festival." They're not going after people making recordings of the festival. They're going after people illegally selling bootlegged merchandise at the festival. This is likely to happen. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to file court proceedings and get police support when there is a high likelihood of specific, known crimes being committed.
It's like seeing a bunch of suspicious looking people standing outside a jewelry store with crowbars at midnight. Sure, a crime has not been committed yet, but you're a jackass if you don't report it to police.
I'm a psychologist (amongst other things).
For some artists, the free distribution of audience-generated recordings is an extremely valuable asset -- most of their marketing in fact -- and they specifically allow it. A few actually put audience recording into their contract riders. I see two or three of these in the Mile High lineup. (And I also realize that the suit is about counterfeit merchandise, not audience recording.)
The slashdot post made me aware of the festival... if I lived in Denver I might be tempted to go.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I think Frank Zappa put it well ...:
"This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...it is my responsibility to enforce all the laws that haven't been passed yet. It is also my responsibility to alert each and every one of you to the potential consequences of various ordinary everyday activities you might be performing which could eventually lead to *The Death Penalty* (or affect your parents' credit rating). Our criminal institutions are full of little creeps like you who do wrong things...and many of them were driven to these crimes by a horrible force called MUSIC!
"Our studies have shown that this horrible force is so dangerous to society at large that laws are being drawn up at this very moment to stop it forever! Cruel and inhuman punishments are being carefully described in tiny paragraphs so they won't conflict with the Constitution (which, itself, is being modified in order to accommodate THE FUTURE).
"I bring you now a special presentation to show what can happen to you if you choose a career in MUSIC...The WHITE ZONE is for loading and unloading only...if you have to load or unload, go to the WHITE ZONE... you'll love it...it's a way of life...Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...Hi, it's me, I'm back. This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...The WHITE ZONE is for loading and unloading only...If yah gotta load, or if yah gotta unload, go to the WHITE ZONE. You'll love it...it's a way of life. That's right, you'll love it, it's a way of life, that's right, you'll love it, it's a way of life, you'll love it. This, is, the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER!"
-- Source
-kgj
um no it's not. it's about concealing hip flasks of alcohol in the legs of boots.
For some artists, the free distribution of audience-generated recordings is an extremely valuable asset...
The Pink Floyd Pluse DVDs (I think it's that one) has a feature called "bootlegging the bootleggers", where they include bootlegged recordings people made at a couple of their performances. Which, of course, is pretty hilarious.
No he'll try to convert you to scientology, jump up and down on your couch, then try to kill you.
I'd rather have Arnold travel back in time from when the crime was committed and kill me now for my future transgression, it's much less scary.
If AEG worried so much about this happening, why shouldn't they be forced to hire extra security to look out for the copied merchandise? This burden should not fall on the taxpayers.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
obwiki
Until there is an actual incident to sue over, they are not supposed to have standing to sue, due to lack of ripeness.
Mike Masnick is a horrible, horrible source of information. He's quite the font of misinformation, however. Whoever approves these articles on slashdot needs to get their head on straight and understand that Slashdot, as a source of information, declines in credibility every time they cite Mike Masnick. Slashdot looks more and more like some "out-of-touch-with-reality but confirming everyone's biases and making them angry" news source everyday.
Nobody said it was legal, the point is that it isn't bootlegging unless the material is sold. People who only recorded cannot be brought up in this court case without selling what they've recorded.
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Personally this is scary nuts that it wasn't tossed out the second this was filed. The attorneys should be dis-barred and the judge toss in jail.
Huh? The judges should be held accountable because someone filed a lawsuit with the court clerk's office, even though the judge hasn't even seen it yet?
For one, injunctions against John Does are rare to be granted. Second they aren't asking for an injunction, they are asking for an injunction, federal marshals for enforcement, monetary damages and attorneys fees.
Hence depriving them of the royalties collected from selling those stupid little plastic bottles of beer.
IANAL but my cousin is and this is what he had to say:
(02:49:23 PM) PP: yeah
(02:49:34 PM) PP: well
(02:51:06 PM) PP: the issue you run into here is that in order to be heard you need to have a case in controversy, the issue has to be ripe
(02:51:36 PM) PP: if some one is about to do something that may hurt your business or place an undue burden on you, can file for an injunction
(02:52:37 PM) PP: to stop them from doing it
(02:52:46 PM) PP: now what you have sent me does not seem like it will hold up
(02:52:53 PM) PP: because there is no case in controversy
(02:53:00 PM) PP: if something hasn't happened you can't sue them
(02:53:27 PM) PP: for example I can sue you for wrecking my car if it has not even happened yet
(02:53:33 PM) PP: I can't*
(02:54:08 PM) PP: I don't see why a judge would accept this lawsuit
(02:54:20 PM) PP: there are is only one party
(02:54:27 PM) PP: judge would for sure throw this out
(02:56:07 PM) PP: Now if the suit is for past action but you don't know exactly who they are, you can sue Jane and John Doe
(02:56:29 PM) PP: and then try to discover who they are throughout the process
(02:56:46 PM) PP: I would imagine this would be so your Statutes of Limitation on your claim would not run out
(02:57:12 PM) PP: So for example if you get in a car wreck and have no clue who the person is cause the y ran away, you basically have two years to file a claim
(02:57:48 PM) PP: by calling them John or Jane Doe you are including them and preserving your rights
(02:57:54 PM) PP: to sue
(03:08:23 PM) PP: All this suit pretty much is is a way to scare off furture bootleggers letting them know they will be sued if caught. By getting this publicity they will get their message across
(03:09:42 PM) PP: it hasn't been filed cause there is no case number, its just a template and they are threatening to use it if something comes up, that is we will insert your name here, so don't do it
(03:11:05 PM) PP: All you need to take away from this is that it is not a lawsuit yet since it has not been filed, rather its just a warning of what they will file if you get caught.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
That word is very misleading; it should be called copy privilege, copy exclusivity, or copy monopoly.
Why?
It is a privilege, granted by the government in detriment of everyone's else right to copy
No, it is a right granted by the government. "Privilege" would imply that it's some kind of special reward, but (legally) it's not. It's a legal right.
The ultimate goal of copyright was as a richer public domain. It was for the benefit of ALL THE PEOPLE, not the artists', and certainly not the MAFIAA's.
And the mechanism for achieving that is the granting of rights.
If copyright has failed to give us a richer public domain, it has failed to fulfill its sole intended goal. Therefore, it must be abolished.
Wow, go off the deep-end much? What does that have to do with the legal definition of copyright? Do you usually just inject irrelevant statements into discussions?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Joe Sixpack does the bootlegging not, John Doe and Jane doe, is he allowed?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Wrong. Just because the soulless, misogynistic, thug-wannabe rap outnumbers it by orders of magnitude doesn't mean the good rap music doesn't exist.
And yes it's music. Geez man, you sound like my mother.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
If no one actually bootlegs the event, who pays the monetary damages and attorney fees?
The innocent single mother whose daughter's IP address is "erroneously" identified as an offender (more accurately: framed for the offense), and is forced to settle for a few thousand or face permanent bankruptcy.
Welcome to twenty-first century justice American Style(tm), where you've been found guilty, before you even get out of bed, of a dozen offenses you've never committed. Land of the Free, home of the Brave (as they cower before a legion of Hollywood attorneys and FBI agents jumping over the trussed up bodies of thousands of missing persons to get to hypothetical copyright violators before they get a chance to prove their innocence, but I digress).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy