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RIAA Sues the Wrong Person
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Sep 24, 2003 09:54 AM
from the just-looking-for-clowns dept.
from the just-looking-for-clowns dept.
Cildar writes "In the 'oops' category, the RIAA was forced to withdraw its suit against a 66 year old computer neophyte (read Apple User for god's sake) when they discovered she thought 'Kazaa' was a magician playing at local kids' birthday parties. The story is as reported in the Boston Globe." Update: 09/24 15:19 GMT by T : Note, the magician crack is a joke ;)
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BWAHAHAHAH! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:BWAHAHAHAH! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't underestimate their secret weapon, complete ignorance and total fucking arrogance. And of course their not-so-secret weapon, fat wads of cash.
Parent
Re:BWAHAHAHAH! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Manners maketh man... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please note, however, that we will continue our review of the issues you raised and we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant," Colin J. Zick, the Foley Hoag lawyer, wrote
What an asswipe.
Parent
Re:Legal fees? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmmm...I do sense a litigation opportunity after all.
Parent
But theyre still gonna keep an eye on her. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hm.. maybe that would be a good use for VMware or similar... "I dont even have Kazaa installed on my computer".. And your VMWare installation is ofcourse - gone...
Re:But theyre still gonna keep an eye on her. (Score:5, Interesting)
A more probable cause is someone used a net sniffing program and changed their IP address hi-jacking her assigned address to protect their identity. On a cable system, it's not too hard to do. It's also possible she has a laptop and has a wide open Wi-Fi. One of her neighbors could have borrowed her connection protected by NAT. I'm sure there will be investigations into this. If I was the wireless neighbor and saw this in the news, I would be ditching all my wireless gear about now and changing out my hard drive.
Parent
Re:But theyre still gonna keep an eye on her. (Score:4, Informative)
While funny, this is completely true. Here are the relevant three paragraphs from the article indicating the RIAA is ready and waiting to do exactly that:
Moreover, Ward uses a Macintosh computer at home. Kazaa runs only on Windows-based personal computers.
Beeler complained to the RIAA, demanding an apology and "dismissal with prejudice" of the lawsuit, which would prohibit future lawsuits against her. Foley Hoag, the Boston firm representing the record labels, on Friday dropped the case, but without prejudice.
"Please note, however, that we will continue our review of the issues you raised and we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant," Colin J. Zick, the Foley Hoag lawyer, wrote to Beeler.
See, they're ready to refile at any moment against this grandmother for using Kazaa with her Mac.
Parent
Re:But theyre still gonna keep an eye on her. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
RIAA also get sued(again) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:RIAA also get sued(again) (Score:5, Informative)
Your link doesn't work. [cnn.com]
Parent
neophyte = Apple User? (Score:5, Insightful)
Although a great many Apple users are not neophytes, the fact that a neophyte can run an Apple is a testament to their ease of use.
So there.
Re:neophyte = Apple User? (Score:4, Insightful)
She has an Apple and thus couldn't run Kazaa on her platform.
not
She has an Apple and thus is a neophyte and anyway she would gladly pay for overpriced shit like CDs although she would probably have iTunes anyway being the brainless anti-conformist conformists that Apple users are.
So calm down.
Parent
Re:neophyte = Apple User? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, I think they were trying to make the point that she has an Apple as Kazaa doesn't run on Apple, per TFA.
Let's read the comment again:
In the 'oops' category, the RIAA was forced to withdraw its suit against a 66 year old computer neophyte (read Apple User for god's sake) when they discovered she thought 'Kazaa' was a magician playing at local kids' birthday parties.
It is quite clear that neophyte is being equated to Apple user and the comment is meant to be read as "She's obviously clueless about computers, after all, she's an Apple User. And she thinks Kazaa is a magician. What a moron!" In other words, the person who submitted the article was just being a jackass and doesn't deserve to be defended. Her computer's ability to run the software was never brought up; instead, she was portrayed as too clueless to use it. And since there are Kazaa clients available for Macs, the point about her not being able to run it is moot.
Parent
Magician (Score:5, Funny)
And does anyone know where I can download David Blaine, the popular P2P filesharing program?
Re:Magician (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Collateral Damage? (Score:5, Interesting)
Magician at Kids' Parties? WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
That's super funny; only one problem. It doesn't seem to mention the magician thing anywhere in the linked article.
You've gotta love this part: (Score:5, Interesting)
The attorneys for the RIAA still plan to investigate her: "Please note, however, that we will continue our review of the issues you raised and we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant"
A user with a Mac, who can't even use Kazaa, and who has never shared music. Now that's obstinance for you.
William
Re:You've gotta love this part: (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike criminal cases where a judge is involved from the very first, civil cases, i.e. mere private squabbles over money, aren't State issues. It is often months after a filing before the parties have so much as a priliminary hearing and are strongly encouraged by the system to settle things amongst themselves long before that date.
If someone breaks your window and you sue them to recover damages, then they come to you and say "Hey, what gives? Why don't I just fix your damned window?," and you say ok, then there is no longer any issue of law to be settled.
You go down to the courthouse and say, "Ummmmmm, nevermind," and it's over.
No judge.
The RIAA withdrew its complaint (while reserving the right to refile. Nice guys).
KFG
Parent
Re:You've gotta love this part: (Score:5, Insightful)
But I'll expand my anaolgy using your own example.
What if your window got broken during a Little League baseball game and you weren't really sure who broke it or who is really legally responsible, so you filed suits against all the players and coaches individually?
Only you didn't know all of their names and culled them from newspaper articles.
One of these names turns out to be a 66 year old who was just mentioned in an article incidentally, wasn't there, doesn't have any grandkids and doesn't even like baseball.
It wouldn't be unreasonable, even for a lawyer, to do a quick check of her story through publicly accessable means, then send her a letter saying, "Ooops, sorry," and then procede with the other 260 cases you have pending.
Especially since actually hauling a 66 year old in front of a judge claiming she's a Little League player who broke your window, with all the pissed of townspeople there watching, could be highly embaressing and prejudice your other cases.
KFG
Parent
Without a REAL Judge (Score:5, Insightful)
At this point it should be made very easy for this woman to sue the RIAA, but without the resources of a large corp. it is just going to seem like an impossiable task for her. Thus the lawsuits from the RIAA will just continue with the harassment and scare tactics.
Re:Without a REAL Judge (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why, ultimately, I think the subpoena process the DMCA grants will be found unconstitutional.
It basically allows PRIVATE "search and seizure", under the guise of the courts, without ANY due process, judicial review/oversight, etc...
And, no one ELSE except someone invoking the DMCA has, or has ever had, such carte blanche unsupervised subpoena power. It's unprecedented. And quite untested in the courts.
Basically, it violates half the Constitution.
Not that the Constitution matters very much to judges these days.
In order to subpoena, you have to FILE a lawsuit, and get it approved by the presiding judge. Subpoenas are part of the discovery process IN an actual lawsuit.
The DMCA allows witchunts and fishing expeditions, UNSUPERVISED by a court, yet invoking it's power.
Methinks if some lawyer makes that point strongly enough to one of our fine, meglomaniac, unelected king for life Federal judges, it will get struck down.
Not just because it flies in the face of the 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendments, but because it is a REAL threat to judicial powers!
Parent
A strategy by the ISPs? (Score:5, Funny)
"Oops sorry, the DHCP must have reassigned that address,we THOUGHT it was the one you wanted...Sorry."
This would let their customers still enjoy what they initially signed up for (filesharing, you've seen the adds, etc.)
wow ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:wow ... (Score:4, Informative)
My impression of Canada on IP is that they fall in line behind the U.S. for fear of trade retaliation like higher tariffs.
I beg to differ [slashdot.org].
Parent
Re:wow ... (Score:5, Interesting)
DCMA gives an assistant/clerk(?) the authority to allow identification based on a subpoena.
Parent
I guess the RIAA doesn't know about Virtual PC (Score:4, Interesting)
~Philly
Strike 2 (Score:4, Funny)
The U.S. Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
Pre-US European governments used to be notorious for going after people without a leg to stand on. But it didn't matter. All that mattered was the witch-hunt-like frenzy. That was enough to get them hung or at least imprisoned.
That's when my good pals Hancock, Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson, along with a few other buds, got together and came up with this whole fair trial system. And that was pretty cool up until a few years ago when people really started using the internet.
Thats when, well everybody in congress, who's names are too many to mention, (and not worth mentioning considering what they did) overturned two centuries worth of a tried and true system.
And where does it get you? Sueing grandmas.
I guess those old guys really had some stuff figured out. Their system isn't really silly or outdated like some people might think.
Re:The U.S. Constitution (Score:5, Funny)
ObSpicoli: "So, what this Jefferson dude was saying was, we left this England place because it was bogus, but if we don't get some cool rules, pronto, we'll just be bogus too. Yea?"
Parent
Re:The U.S. Constitution (Score:4, Interesting)
The most important of which is (was) limits on the scope of government. Only by overturning these limits have we arrived at the system we have today: an overly complex, ambiguous, highly exploitable web of nonsense laws.
Parent
Get out of jail free card.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Concern? What concern? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Concern? What concern? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you have misunderstood the difference between a subpoena and a request for a comment.
Paul
Parent
Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Most annoying part (Score:4, Interesting)
So yeah, we screwed the pooch - but we might be back anyway!
On the one hand, I think that the RIAA has a legitimate issue with P2P services sharing their music.
Does that mean that I support the lawsuits? No - I think it's a civil end run around legitimate search and seizure. If I was the RIAA would I be using the lawsuits? No.
Personally, I'd take all the millions in lawyer fees and do something useful, like promote the iTunes Music Store, or pressure Sony and Buymusic.com to not suck more ass than a freshman prison inmate. I'd set up legitimate music downloading services based on Janis Ian's model, where all songs warehoused could be purchased for $1, or an album for $10. I'd set up 128 bit MP3's for $1, have 192 bit for maybe $1.25 - $1.50. Of that, 50% of the profit would go to the artist, 50% to the publisher. Note the word "profit" - it is assumed that the publishers would be taking a fair (bwahahaha - oh, sorry, I almost said that with a straight face) cut based on how much it costs a song to be stored in a central server and bandwidth costs (and that price should not go above $0.50 per song).
It should also be set up like Peanutpress.com, where once you buy a song, you can go back and download it again whenever you want, or can have it streamed wherever you are. (Since songs are much larger than eBooks usually, though, I can see some sort of minor "storage fee", like $0.01 per song per month - it should be your responsibility to back up your own stuff.)
And a quick note for the "$1 per song is too much", I'm sorry if you take this personally, but fuck you. $1 is perfectly legit for a song, $10 for a music album. If you're too damn cheap to pay any price at all for music, at least have the decency not to claim that the cost is too much. Just come out and say "I can't afford $1 after buying my $300 iPod!"
Then, and only then, if people were "sharing songs", then you could sue them, and I would feel you had done your due diligence in serving your customers and could have a solid leg to stand on for the lawsuits.
Only going after the worst offenders... (Score:5, Insightful)
Legally unjustifiable actions (Score:5, Insightful)
The suits claim damages of $150,000 per song. If one music company stole a song from another company, and published it separately, this may be a reasonable claim. The RIAA could claim maybe $150,000 TOTAL lost sales, plus whatever was made by the infringing company.
The problem is, they are holding EVERY FILESHARER liable for the entire amount of lost sales. This isn't just double-dipping on their damages, this is n-dipping. I can imagine that the company might lose $150,000 in total sales of a single song, but if only 1000 people shared the song (an extremely conservative number, probably only relevant for unpopular songs), their claims in total are $150 million in lost sales per song, which is just ludicrous.
This absolutely reeks of the record companies trying to capitalize on filesharing and count each share as a purchase. If the judges awarded the RIAA what they are asking for across the board, they stand to make orders of magnitude more money than they could ever dream of by their own devices. This puts huge questions on their claims of mitigating their damages - they allowed filesharing to go on for many years before starting lawsuits... to build up their claims of lost sales??
Nice write-up (Score:5, Insightful)
As for this being yet another PR disaster; the RIAA knows almost everything they do these days is going to be a PR disaster. They simply do not care: [com.com]
Clearly, record companies and the RIAA had some concerns about backlash before going into this. Certainly the story about the 12-year-old in public housing who was sued hit the headlines fast and hard. Are you at all concerned about public relations backlash?
We knew that this was not going to be a good PR experience from the get-go. But the (record) companies were of the view that this was something we had to do without regard to the PR implications. If PR were the dominant consideration, we would not have taken these actions, and the problem would be continuing unabated, and people would not be thinking twice about the legality of what they're doing. If bad PR is the price, it's a relatively small one compared to the size of the problem.
Please Oh Please.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What? (Score:5, Funny)
Where do I get that? Never heard of it... =P
What happens if they decide to persue her again? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the burden of proof is on the RIAA, then what can they do without a true warrant to search my home? That would go well beyond the powers granted to them by the DMCA and would require law enforcement intervention. There's no way to say "we know you don't own a Mac" without coming into my home to prove it.
If the burden of proof is on me, couldn't I just borrow a Mac or a receipt of a friend's Mac (assuming I was lying) to prove I do, in fact, own a Mac? Since RIAA can't come storming into your house (yet...), this seems like it would be more than satisfactory to meet a civil suit requirement for dismissal doesn't it...?
I hope this is a viable idea, and everyone uses it to stick it to the RIAA.
sheesh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? This is equivalent to saying "Sorry I pushed you down the stairs, but I reserve the right to do it again!"
This is complete and utter lack of respect to Beeler, but tells you alot of what it thinks of its own customers!
Obviously network pros are working on this. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Abolish copyright, and this won't happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Abolishing copyright would make various open source licenses unenforcable..
Parent
Re:Abolish copyright, and this won't happen. (Score:5, Informative)
However, for some of us, the whole purpose of open source licenses is as a weapon against copyright. RMS talks about the rationalization that it was okay to use copyright, which he did not agree with, as a means to fight against copyright. Hence, copyleft.
It's interesting reading, even if you don't agree.
Parent
Re:whee, here we go again. (Score:5, Funny)
Since they won't be able to sell their product because it takes them too long to develop them and the quality is barely acceptable in most cases, they'll just start sueing any company that did any work based on MS technologies (Novell/Ximian), any company that cloned the looks of windows (Lindows/Lycoris/Xandros), but also any user who ever used any pirated copy of any MS software (about 80% of the planet).
As you can see, we shouldn't be too worried about the future of Microsoft as a business entity.
Parent
Re:Abolish copyright, and this won't happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone is using a car to getaway from a bank robbery. Abolish cars, and this won't happen ever again.
Someone died trying to get high by sniffing carpet cleaner. Abolish carpet cleaner, and this won't happen ever again.
Twit. Just because you never had a creative idea in your life, does not mean copyright does not serve a purpose.
Parent
Re:Where? (Score:5, Funny)
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