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First Three-Strikes Copyright Court Case In NZ Falls Over
Bismillah writes "The 'Skynet' anti-filesharing law introduced last year in New Zealand is starting to bite, with people being hauled in front of the Copyright Tribunal by the music industry after receiving three notices. Of the three Copyright Tribunal cases to be heard currently, the first one's just been dropped. Why? Nobody knows. RIANZ isn't saying. Interesting things: the accused was the ISP account holder, a student sharing a place with others who also used the Internet connection. The cost of the five songs downloaded is NZ$11.95 but RIANZ wanted NZ$1,075.50 because it estimated the music was shared/downloaded 90 times in total. A high deterrent penalty of NZ$1,250 was also asked for."
That line of reasoning only works if this one guy is the only person they're going to punish for the filesharing. i.e. Once he's fined, the other 90 people who downloaded songs are free and clear, since the punishment for sharing 90 songs has already been meted out.
If instead they're also planning to go after the 90 others who downloaded the song, and slap them with fines for it being downloaded 90 times, then they're effectively fining for 90*90 = 8100 songs being illegally downloaded. Clearly erroneous since it was only downloaded 90 times.
That's what this boils down to. Either fine each filesharer for a single download (the copy the downloaded for themselves). Or fine one filesharer for all the downloads, but in the process give up your rights to prosecute the other filesharers. The "making available" argument is so mathematically nonsensical it can fabricate fines for billions of downloads when there were in fact fewer than 100,000 downloads.
why does this conversation look like a bunch of chickens discussing the finer points on the morality of being fricasseed?
Let's get this straight. The recording industry is interested in the executives of the recording industry. All others can snack on feces and die.
They will make money in the process if they can, but that's not important and its not the point.
The point is to make huge public example of a few people who will be so horribly mauled by the corporation that nobody will ever think of making that mistake.
The intention is to create a system that allows a vanishing few to own and control most or all IP to the point that you will have no freedom to hum to yourself without an executive somewhere getting paid.
This is about control, and ultimately the control of thought. This is about an entitled few who believe its their birthright to milk the entire human race dry.
Are we now clear about what is actually happening?
Greetings and Salutations;
I have to say that I am glad that the case failed, and, with luck many more will too. The only people that will get nailed by these enforcement measures are, I fear, the naive and (mostly) innocent youth who are not the soulless thieves engaging in the wholesale business of selling copies of the music without passing royalties along to the artists (and, yes, I do include the recording industry in general in that latter category). IN America, the RIAA did, at one time, provide a useful service at a reasonable price to an artist. However, like many organizations, it has evolved to being in the business of getting as much money as possible from the consumer, and, giving as little of it as possible to the artists that provide its life-blood. Speaking of which...thanks to the creative accounting practices of the RIAA, a given artist might expect a royalty rate of 10% to 20% on an album, but, the actual rate never climbs over 2.75%. A quick search turns up a number of detailed articles about how this works....
But, I digress - so back to copyright infringement... If the recording industry had not spent the past several decades inhaling stupid gas by keeping its head firmly planted in its ass, it would realize that there are some simple steps that it could take to make everyone in the process richer and happier. I would propose these changes:
1) drop all chasing after individuals, and, go after the companies that do wholesale duplication and flood the market. Frankly, the recording industry's record of suing college students, grandmothers, and, 6 year old girls for mountains of money is not doing anything positive for them. It is not making the purchasing public think "wow...they are really standing up for the artists! I WILL buy that new album for full retail!", nor, is it actually causing a drop in copyright violations or filesharing.
2) Seriously reconsider the cost of a CD. One of the major reasons that filesharing happens is that few people are interested in paying $25+ for a recording that might have one or two good tracks on it.
3) Continuing that thought...stop producing mindless, shallow and mind-numbingly boring albums. I, over the years, have bought quite a few albums. One of the criteria I use to decide if I am going to spend my hard-earned money on the recording is the question - can I tell what track is being played? If I have an album where there are a dozen tracks, all of which sound identical to each other...I probably will pass on that recording. Now, here, part of the problem does lay at the feet of the artists. I think that they have realized that it is all about money, and that the music means nothing. This has depressed their creativity so much that they are phoning in the performances. However, I also believe that if given positive feedback, in the form of fan appreciation, and cash, they might well get that spark back.
4) realize and accept the fact that file sharing, rather than depriving the company of profit, is the best and cheapest advertising that they could get. The best salesman in the world is the person who has personal experience with the music, and, is pushing it to their friends. When Napster was new, and still legal, the recording industry pushed to kill it by claiming it was the reason that CD sales were down by 15-20%. Well, independent polls showed that people were using it to sample a new artist's music, and, more often than not would go out and purchase that artist's CDs if they liked it. At the time, I was in a fair number of chat rooms, and, I always made it a point to ask how folks were using Napster. About 1 person out of 100 said they were using it to get as much music for free and they had no intention of buying any more CDs. The remaining 99% were using it as a s
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/