Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Who Has Been Sued By the RIAA?
First time accepted submitter blackfrancis75 writes "We keep hearing different figures quoting the thousands of people who've been sued by RIAA for illegally downloading online music, but I don't know anyone personally to whom it's happened. In fact it seems no-one I know knows anyone to whom it happened. Do you know anyone who was sued for 'piracy', or were you sued yourself? What was your experience?"
It wouldn't surprise me if there's something akin to a non-disclosure agreement in the settlement offer, thus ensuring nobody should give specifics or post under their primary username. That's also likely the reason the submitter hasn't found much information about the experience.
Yeah I don't know anyone either, probably because thousands of people sued out of over three-hundred-million U.S. citizens doesn't make for a very high probability that you will personally meet someone who has been sued. The original submitter is a joke, and should never have been approved on this site.
But since you posted that as an AC, why are you still not talking about it?
It's mainly because of the technical reason you identified: it's hard to catch people who only download, unless they download from you (or you obtain logs from someone who was uploading).
There is a bit of legal strategy as well, though; even the RIAA has finite legal resources, and it's not as though the few lawsuits (or even the more common settlements, probably) are a profit center for them. Given this, it's more efficient to go for the head of the snake, as it were. That's why they like to sue / pressure people who are behind entire file sharing networks (e.g. Napster, Grokster, MegaUpload) since that could (if it worked) cut off lots of file sharers in one stroke. Suing uploaders is less efficient, but still could prevent at least some downloading from occurring. Suing a downloader is the least efficient thing of all, since it only stops that one person with no beneficial side effects. That isn't to say that it would never happen, but it can't possibly be a high priority.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
(Threaten to) sue you and force you to choose between a settlement or crushing legal fees.
They usually prefer the "threaten" route: less paperwork for them when they extort you. Really, of course, it is about creating fear in the hearts of people so they avoid anything the RIAA and kin dislike, so an actual suite is counter-productive and they usually avoid it unless they have a pretty solid case.
Of course, IANAL.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Is this really what Slashdot has devolved to? An AC posts such a statement, without any proof of veracity, and gets modded up to +5 Informative?
My attempts at sarcasm, to point out how ridiculous that is, are being modded down... WTF?
Regards
dj
Christ, dude, come off it. It was an answer to the question at hand. This isn't Wikipedia. There are no "citation needed" tags. The fact that the comment was anonymous has no bearing on its relevance and your attention to it is just bizarre. (I'm posting AC even though I have an account.) Modding up an answer to the titular question is in no way ridiculous.
Is this really what Slashdot has devolved to? An AC posts such a statement, without any proof of veracity, and gets modded up to +5 Informative?
My attempts at sarcasm, to point out how ridiculous that is, are being modded down... WTF?
Regards
dj
It's *you* who devolved into crude sexual comments about AC's sister. All you are is some crude and disgusting idiot with an obviously strong bias for attention-seeking who goes by the pseudonymous handle "djlowe" and keeps posting repeatedly about the same thing. I'll trust the veracity of an AC's statement over anything you say any day of the week. That's the W behind your WTF. Happy to have helped.
it's always been uploading the file to others that they're pissed off about, not downloading it yourself.
sure they don't want you downloading music illegally, but what they tend to sue people for is offering the file out to others. Which of course just about every peer-to-peer file sharing system does by default. So people confuse one with the other.
I think there's a pretty big difference (at least legally speaking) between leaving your (legal-for-you-to-use) files on an insecure ftp site that somebody might find by accident, and putting your files on a public site and then advertising their existence to people looking to download them.
I'm not saying that they don't both have the potential to end you up in court, but one is going to be far far easier for the prosecution to proceed with than the other.
hearsay and rumor, nothing else. it's the digital equivalent to "I hear you can't get pregnant the first time you have sex"
The question was does anyone know anyone who was sued. Not can anyone prove without a shadow of a doubt that they know someone who was sued, we'll need you to pee in this cup as well please. If someone wants to be a douche and lie, so be it, but an A/C claiming to know someone is a valid, if unverifiable, response.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
Not to mention that someone potentially on the RIAA's legal radar may well have a good reason to remain anonymous.
I'd tend to think that that has more weight than all of you AC's :)
None of it has any weight. No-one cares. It's a message board on the internet. If you start demanding proof for everything people say you're going to be mightily disappointed.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I took offense at the fact that it was modded to +5 Informative,
Please get a life
I call horseshit on this one.
There is no way that simply removing the credits, and anything that identifies who the original producer of a movie was, is enough of a change to classify it as a derivative work. It's not the titles and the cover that are "the work." It's the movie itself.
Therefore the whole thing would just about have to be re-edited to show your friends vision of what could be made using the same bits of footage for it to be derivative of the original. Otherwise it's just the original without giving credit.
I want to shoot the messenger!
settling is what normal people do. The RIAA and the MPAA have people whose 8-5 job it is to rake you over the coals of the legal system. even if you win it will drain you emotionally, physically and financially to fight.
he could loose is job to to absence and poor performance, his family due to stress. then there's the legal bill. likely it would cost nearly as much to fight so why wait?
our current system favors the wealthy and large companies and corporations . your average man must sacrifice their lives to get any justice.
he shouldn't have settled. his son would've been liable only for shown damages(extremely hard to show).
When giving legal advice that is utterly, 100% incorrect and potentially harmful to the recipient, it's usually a good idea to include a disclaimer about how one is not a lawyer.
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. This is not legal advice, but is for [my own] amusement only.