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?"
I've been sent 2 or 3 legal threats from copyright holders and my ISP over the years. I ignored them and nothing ever happened.
... all they need to do is to claim everything, including birdsongs, belongs to them
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/26/2141246/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-copyrighted-music
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"We keep hearing different figures quoting the thousands of people who've been sued by RIAA "
The people actually sued by the RIAA for file sharing is actually zero.
nil.
Nobody.
Because they don't own the copyrights. It's the studios that do. These studios are members of the RIAA, but in the US, at least, to have standing to sue, you must have the actual copyright yourself. The press always confuses the RIAA with the studios, because the RIAA has the loudest mouth.
We saw lack of standing with SCO. They kept insisting that they owned the copyrights to SysV, but the plain language of the APA didn't say they do, and in order for copyright to change hands (in that case from Novell to SCO) there has to be a positive statement *in writing on paper* that the copyright is transfered.
The judge in the case and Novell eventually got SCO to fuck off, but it took 7 years.
Similarly in these cases, it's not "The RIAA vs Joe Blough," it's "IRS Records vs Jane Sawless" because the RIAA does not own the copyright to "I Stabbed A Monkey" but IRS Records does.
--
BMO
Because I am not allowed to talk about it as part of the settlement.
My wifi is open (but I keep my own activity logs in case the FBI does a kiddy porn raid). The RIAA sent me some nasty letters demanded money. I told them to fuck off. They filed a lawsuit. The judge wouldn't allow my evidence. Apparently, calling a judge a cocksucker is a good way to spend the weekend in jail for contempt of court. Who knew. We're still pretrial (it's dragged on for over a year and a half now).
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.
At one point, I thought that the settlement that the RIAA pushed people to accept included clauses that prevented people from talking about the settlement. The RIAA, however, had no such restrictions. This way, the RIAA could say all they want about the "dirty, rotten pirate" they stopped but the sued individual couldn't provide their side. I'm not sure if this is still true, but could be part of the reason why we don't hear of many people on Slashdot who were sued.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It was during 2007 while I was just finishing up my PhD in the States. I got a court summons the same month I defended my thesis. My guess is that I got careless with my music downloads while I was getting lots of music to burn through the hours while working on my thesis. I just ignored it, defended my thesis, and went back home in Europe as I was planning to anyway. Got a few threatening letters forwarded to me for a while after... Ignored those, too, and never really heard anything else after a while.
I didn't get sued, but when I was in college I got an email from my university's IT department that if I didn't respond before 8:00 am the next day(which was about 16 hours away from when they sent the email) they would cut off my internet. Why? Because they received a letter from one of the MPAA members(I forget which one now, it's been a few years) saying that I was torrenting some random disc of a TV show off some Spanish torrent site. I basically responded to the IT department saying that I couldn't stop seeding the torrent file because I never had it in the first place and requested some more information on the actual complaint they had been sent, I'm not sure how they handled the complaint with the company but I never heard anything else after that.
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.
I know of someone who was sued by the RIAA, the fines are on the order of the following
1. pay 5k through an automated settlement system
2. try to fight, and get offered a settlement where you pay 125k (this effectively happens the moment you force one of their lawyers to be on the phone for more than 5 minutes)
3. continue to fight and see them try to charge you with the full 250k per infringement that they're allowed to hit you with.
The person I knew had a good case to fight it with, but had no conceivable way of coping with a 125k settlement. (they actually hadn't downloaded any of the songs )
Over the course of downloading several terabytes of materials in several thousand torrents, I've received 2 letters neither of which threatened legal action but were along the lines of, 'we caught you, it's illegal, stop doing it'. One was for a movie I had never downloaded, the other was for a tv series which is available freely on the Internet from their website that I had been downloading.
My response to both is the same. I've never seen the movie I was accused of torrenting and never will and I stopped watching the tv series.
I wasn't sued, but I was one of the first to receive a cease and desist letter from them back in 1998. I was a student at Indiana University and ran a server there in my dorm room which hosted one of my friend's website who had copyrighted "top 40" mp3s on it. Other than the university lightly punishing me, nothing really came of it.
I was USAF stationed in Germany. I wont lie.... I download a few things from Torrents... 99.9% of that was TV Shows since it was hard to watch 6 hours ahead (AFN is crap)... Right before i left Germany, i got a certified letter in the mail stating (in german) that i download Bens Fold Five or something. Anyone that knows me, knows i listen to metal.. and metal.. and mostly all metal... Also, they said i downloaded it around 8am on a sunday.... Again, anyone that knew me knows i dont even wake up till noon on sundays... The letter stated that i owed 6000 euro to some lawyer in Munchen. Well, since it came to me and not the base legal office, i ignored it... and left country a few months later (my tour was over)... So, i was never sued by the RIAA directly... but i was told i owed money for a song i allegedly downloaded.
Disclaimer: I am not in the AF... I do not represent the AF.... I may or may not have had a few drinks... and i "CBF"ed to capitalize my "i"s or even use correct grammar... Get over it...
You fall and receive 6334 damage.
You die.
So I used to work in the part of an ISP that dealt with the copyright complaints and law enforcement requests. The large copyright owners (like record companies) were the only ones that really sent us anything. They hired companies that represented them, collected info off of torrent clients, file sharing programs and websites and then sent complaints to us. That I know of, no request ever came for actual customer records. None... ever. While I worked there, no requests ever came, no that worked there could remember it ever happening, and I'm still friends with people that work there and they still tell me they've never had a request. We got law enforcement requests... but even those we're pretty rare. Local police don't really seem all that interested in anything more than emergency requests revolving around hostage situations (typically crazy boyfriends locked himself in girlfriends house with a gun/knife) The FBI would send requests to us, but they were often very elaborate requests having to do with con-artists or embezzlement cases where they were just looking for billing records. Wire-taps are VERY rare.
I'm not sure how many people get sued, but I serviced several million customers and none ever got anything more than a meaningless email from their ISP that likely went to a mailbox they hadn't used in years. I've believed for a while now that the lawsuits you hear about are more likely just scare tactics and there's really not that much legal action taken.
tl;dr. So did Ike end up getting sued by the RIAA or not?
I called the police when I was trying to download some porn and accidentally ended up with some pirated songs instead. It was Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, so they didn't punish me.
All the posts that I've seen from people who said that they simply ignored threats from the RIAA are stating that nothing ever came of the threats.
Are there any accounts of somebody who tried to ignore it, and found that they could not?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
Kind of funny this came up, I havent been sued by the RIIA but New Sensations inc has me in their sights.
I was contacted by my ISP that a company New Sensations representing copyright holders of about 7 adult movies I had allegedly downloaded. They listed the titles downloaded and the times. They also included a link for each case for a settlement I could just pay online. The settlement offered is 200$ per title and there are 7 which comes to 1400$.
The thing is I didnt actually download any of those files the internet while being in my name is used by a friend not even in the same house.
So I am wondering how I should handle this I could ignore it, but the email has language that seems to state if I dont take the settlements by april 5th they will proceed to sue. I contacted the eff about this but they just reffered me to some lawyers I could contact
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.
Interesting scenario. My mentor's friend was going to play a fundraiser at a bar or some other public venue. He's in a record contract and an ASCAP artist. Now this is a little different than posting your songs online for free, but he was told by ASCAP lawyers that the venue would have to pay $XXXX in order to pay for the ASCAP licensing as they would be performing ASCAP songs. Obviously they could not afford this fine, so he came up with the idea that he would only use his own original compositions. The ASCAP lawyers stated that, because he was an ASCAP artist, his songs cannot be performed either without violating their licensing agreements. I don't think he's with ASCAP anymore.
Long story short...probably. Furthermore, ASCAP can make the *AAs look good, but at least the majority of the money ends up in the hands of the artist with ASCAP (or so I've been told by many ASCAP artists).
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
The RIAA once sued my sister...
Mynd you, RIAA lawsuites kan be pretti nasti...
After he died. It actually made Slashdot.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
We apologize for the fault in the parent post. Those responsible have been sacked.
mod me funny
Well, in the first place: A claim by an AC, about a sister, has no veracity
Right, because if you're not posting as AC, it automatically means you're telling the truth. I'm sure nobody would ever lie when they are logged in. I say this as I sit here on my private jet filled with gorgeous naked women. And, since I have an IQ of 320, you must know that I'm telling the truth about that.
for a woman presumably born while Thomas Jefferson was president, her embrace of digital media is admirable.
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.
I'm in the middle of a lawsuit now.
I received a letter from a scummy law firm in another city. They blitzed the city I live in... more than 10,000 letter sent out apparently. They had "proof" in the form of an IP address that was apparently assigned to my account at my ISP and a P2P log showing that someone at that IP apparently downloaded a movie made by the production company they were representing. I've never heard of the movie. I go look it up on IMDB... it appears to be some terrible low quality, low budget SciFi that no one watched... ever. I certainly had never heard of it, and I never downloaded it.
The law firm was demanding money. If I didn't pay up the "I'm guilty" fee, then they said I'd be taken to court and sued for 10's of thousands. I called a lawyer who is well known for defending this sort of crap. He looked at the letter I received, immediately recognized it, and said.. IU know these guys, let me add you to the big pile of people I'm representing on this same threat and I'll make it go away. That was over 2 years ago...
I have had two letters from him informing me what's going on. Basically he said that this rogue law firm was full of crap, that there was now a Class Action suit open against them and they had a fixed period to reply... the law firm never said a word, so now the second letter said that it's going to court with more than 1000 people being represented... but it could take years for it to reach an end. Basically he said.. don't worry about it, it'll be tied up in the courts for years and it's not cost me a cent.
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
We apologise for the epic failure of the parent post to understand the Python reference. Those responsible have had their Geek cards revoked.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
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.