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RIAA Threatens 15-Year-Old
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Nov 20, 2003 11:04 PM
from the kids-share-the-darnedest-things dept.
from the kids-share-the-darnedest-things dept.
MunchMunch writes "It looks like the RIAA is still going after teenagers--this time, 15-year old Megan Dickinson was caught sharing 1,100 files. At the maximum statutory damages for copyright infringement, this makes Megan's liability at least $825,000, at most a mere $165,000,000. Naturally, the RIAA benevolently offered a $3,500 settlement to avoid these moderate, legally sanctioned damages. As we can hardly forget, the RIAA has already used this technique to settle with a 12 year old. Megan's unsurprising take: 'Yeah, it seems ridiculous.'"
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End of an era...? (Score:5, Interesting)
You know what? (Score:3, Insightful)
The girl was illegally sharing copyrighted materials. She was one of many who have been contacted.
Slashdot, in a typical tactic of propoganda latches onto one example and drives it home. A 12 year old! A 15 year old!
Meanwhile, no matter how you shake it, they're still doing the legal thing--protecting their copyrighted works! Even Jamie of Slashdot knows what that is about--threatening the daily Slashdot summary site because they are "illegal."
Re:You know what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:You know what? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:You know what? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a bit like prohibition basically -- everyone at the time thought it was a good idea, but no one lived up to it, and it turned out to be mind bogglingly stupid. We were best rid of it.
Sometimes laws that are at odds with people's norms of behavior can and should be pushed through anyway. Desegregation for example. But look at how important of an issue that was. And how hard and painful it was to set things right, or at least make them better than they had been.
Copyright is not so important as to warrant that sort of effort. I think we'd be better off reducing it, and thus cases like this are useful in showing us _why_ we ought to reduce it; so that these suits are not brought in the future.
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Re:You know what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this a joke? Prohibition today is more destructive, more wasteful, and more immoral than ever before. For christ sakes, the US has the highest inmate/population ratio in the world, and over half of those "criminals" were convicted on non-violent drug offenses.
Alcohol prohibition was certainly destructive to society, driving up the murder rate and transforming a legitimate, peaceful market into a free-for-all for violent criminals. How exactly is modern prohibition any different?
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Re:Why these things get modded down (Score:5, Informative)
Or there's Ross Plank [theregister.co.uk] who was accused of being a big trader of latin music. Except, he doesn't speak spanish, and doesn't particularily like latin music anyway.
The problem with all of this is, the RIAA is bringing civil lawsuits against these people, which means you can either hire a lawyer, which will cost you more than the settlement, or you can just pay the settlement. And guess what! You're not even "innocent until proven guilty" in a civil trial. All the RIAA needs to prove is "more likely than not".
We have other names for this kind of behaviour like extortion. Do you think most people can afford skip work to appear in court for four or more months, and pay a lawyer to defend them? It's easy to get people to settle when the cost of fighting it would break them. It's truely a sad system, when accepting a guilty verdict is cheaper than fighting for your innocence.
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Re:"It's against the law!" (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's good to protect ownership of creative content but protecting the right of a company to make a profit by distributing music made by someone else has little to do with any issue of creativity or authorship.
The argument that people are hurting "the artists" by trading music on the internet is extremely weak. Most active musicians make most of their money by playing live shows.
Record companies made their money by distributing music to consumers more cheaply than any alternative means. The cost of buying a CD is factors of magnitude less than the cost of hiring your favorite band. In an age where the distribution of recorded music was difficult this made sense. It no longer makes sense. Most of the cost of recorded music goes to promotion and distribution, but the internet has made promotion and distribution cheap and easy.
It's time for a new business model. Perhaps less music will be recorded if there isn't a profit to be made anymore, but maybe more people will be involved in the creative process.
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Re:"It's against the law!" (Score:5, Informative)
With the current business model in the US, music sharing/trading does potentially hurt artist revenues. It sucks, and needs to change.
Most active musicians make most of their money by playing live shows. Wrong. In the US Musicians can make a decent living from live show ticket sales, percentage of liquor sales, and merchandise sales, but the real money is in royalty payments from performances, recordings, and of course, music sales. A good album release keeps paying the artist without him doing any work so long as the album is bought or music is used commercially (among other things).
Royalty payments is big money in the music industry, and this is why musicians can get so obsessed with impressing A&R reps to hopefully get signed on to a major label. These labels provide capital and assist with marketing and distribution to wide national and global audiences, something that is difficult for an artist to do on his own. Now there is no rule saying that artists can't make money through performances or other creative means. Unfortunately, and no offense intended, musicians generally aren't savvy businessmen and as much as the "system" is so crappy (odds are less than 1% of getting a record deal even after catching an A&R rep's attention) they tend to see no other way.
The solution to all this has nothing to do with the Internet, mp3s, or any file sharing technology. Even iTunes isn't too much of a revolution -- it's just another channel for music distribution that happens to play nice with both audiences and record labels. A real change would involve providing complete and available alternatives for (talented) musicians to sustain themselves while still exploring and sharing their musical universes.
Nuff said...this is already about to spill into another discussion altogether.
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Re:"It's against the law!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. No one ever said that the laws had to be favorable towards their making money. There used to be a thriving industry in patent medicines in this country -- then we created the FDA and it ran all of those snake oil hucksters out of business. This was not a bad thing, despite destroying their ability to make money.
As for why we might want to do this, it's for the same reason. If we thought that the public would be better off being able to copy works (assume that we might merely alter, rather than outright abolish, copyright, e.g. by reducing term lengths) than we would be otherwise, even taking into account the effect that this might have on the creation of works, than frankly we'd be stupid to _not_ do it.
After all, why would you not want to be as best off as possible?
We only grant copyrights in the first place due to a belief that we're better off doing so than we would be if we didn't; certainly through most of history we didn't have copyrights and no one complained.
Given people's attitudes, the increased ease of publishing and creation (e.g. not every movie needs to have a zillion dollar budget -- those may be unsustainable with regards to the laws they need to be worth creating not being justified), etc. the time might be ripe for cutting back on copyright protection in order to make everyone better off than we are right now.
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Re:"It's against the law!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright is supposedly a limited monopoly on distribution of a given work granted by the public in return for the owner's courtesy of sharing their work. This was meant to encourage creators to share their work widely, as it would enrich the public domain when the clock ran out on the limited monopoly.
However, copyright terms have been getting longer and longer. Since the moment distribution of recorded music became commercially possible, new works have stopped entering the public domain.
Add this to the fact that the RIAA does do an incredible job of promoting their own music, but doesn't do such a good job of making it clear that their music is used with permission. Usually the use of music in a movie is mentioned late in the credits, when most of the audience has wandered out. Listening to the radio spew out song after song at no cost to me other than the time spent dealing with (listening to or avoiding) commercials, I hear no legal notices explaining that the songs were used with permission from the relevant parties. Stations have to pause periodically for identification. Perhaps it would clarify to the general public that the music is used with permission if they would pause from time to time in a similar manner to explain whose permission allowed them to play such music and to remind the public that the music is a tightly controlled resource.
When you see a trademark used in print, there's a little symbol used to explain to people that the symbol in question is, indeed, trademarked. The fact that copyrighted works require no similar annotation allows the RIAA to dangle their music in front of our noses before slapping us the minute we start to believe that they're actually giving it to us for free.
All of this has lead to a public which doesn't understand why the radio can redistribute music, but we the people cannot. The situation also leads me to believe that the public is attempting to get a refund for the time-limited monopoly it has granted.
To put it in real-world terms, if I agree to let you borrow my car for a few hours in exchange for you washing it for me, that is a reasonable deal. You have exclusive possession of my car, but I benefit in the end.
However, if you were to try to extend the term beyond hours to days or even weeks without offering me significantly more benefit, I'd definitely reconsider the arrangement.
The RIAA hasn't brought the car back yet, and Congress keeps telling them that they can extend the joyride longer and longer. Decades beyond the death of the creator is too long, and the public is saying that the RIAA needs to wash the damned car and bring it back to the public with whom it belongs.
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Re:End of an era...? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also an unfortunate fact that most of the current music and media is censored. If it weren't then people would make great music that makes you think instead of the crap briteny spears cranks out of her ass. System of a down and Eminem are good examples of music that makes you think. When eminem made a song about killing his wife, people thought. It showed emotion and what hate is, gave the reasons for it, made ya sick. What if all music was like that? People would think instead of droning on. The RIAA is a dinosaur; it takes far more food to saciate a dinosaur than it does a couple hundred small humans, if the weather gets too cold or warm, they die. And finally, in our hit-by-a-gigantic-meteor world, they are slowly dieng off for all of these reasons.
All they will accomplish with sueing p2p sharers is to push file sharers underground to apps with better and better security. Some of the congressmen in our goverment are thinking "Uh, they're doing what?".
As for what this will do, I can tell you right now. "Oh fsck, I can't share eminem anymore! But I can share this porn on beta, and some funker fogt or de/vision! " In this fashon, music that's copyrighted by the RIAA won't be shared, and the good cyberpunk, indie and compeditive stuff will be shared. "*search for pop* devision, wtf are they?". When you type in Techno or electronic ebm you won't get a bunch of RIAA garbage, you'll get independant stuff. This will, in turn, increase sales and popularity of independant music and independant labels and take away the RIAA's consumeristic base slowly but surely.
This is in fact the reason their music sales dropped 15%; part of it is that nobody likes their tactics, part of it is that they are destroying their primary medium of advertising, and part of it is what I talked about above.
In the end, however, p2p will live on despite their actions. If without music fine, it'll just become a vast ever growing sea of porn, books, files, warez apps and other junk. You can't block the apps, you can't track them down, and you can't stop them without pulling a lot of shit. And if all else fails listen to some good ol' rantradio (www.rantradio.com). Because nothin' on there is RIAA copyrighted and they're one of the only completly legal and completly independant internet radio stations.
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Re:Oh, FFS quit with the "she's only 15" crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Side note - though I agree with your post. Neither example you cited are legal.
Time-shifting/format-shifting for personal use is legal and protected, but not distribution - which both of your examples include. You can record from TV on a VCR or TiVo just fine, and watch it at your leisure. However, you can't give that recording away, even to a friend (they could come to your place to watch it with you, and it's a grey area as to whether it's a 'public showing' or not, but you'd probably be able to argue it wasn't).
Nonetheless, since your friend could legally record the show himself, and since tapes have no source watermark, there's no way to prove, once he has it, that he didn't record it himself...
This is the same reason why possession of MP3s is perfectly legal. However, the distribution of them isn't. In every case, the RIAA is going after uploaders - because that's the only type of infringement they can prove.
-T
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I'm not afraid of you! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm not afraid of you! (Score:5, Informative)
Incomplete. You must've missed the very next subsection, which clearly provides: [T]he copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just.
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dude you're out of luck (Score:5, Informative)
read 504(a)(1) and (2) ... the plaintiff is entitles to ask either for actual damages OR statutory damages. In your case you can bet they'll go for statutory. If you've got 300 infringements then you're paying between 750 and 30,000 per.
any time before final judgment the plaintiff can ask for statutory damages.
if you were to make that argument in court the riaa lawyer would chuckle and say something to the effect of "thanks for playing, game over." and then you'd get the hose of justice where i'm sure you don't want it.
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Extortion countersuit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing better to do (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing better to do (Score:5, Funny)
If you have sediment in your piss, I think you have bigger problems than paying too much for your CDs.
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Why don't these people fight? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why don't these people fight? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and just on a side note... If peer-to-peer networks started encrypting their searches, whether or not it is strong encryption, wouldn't the RIAA have to stop. I believe breaking encryption, or bypassing the encryption could be considered quite illegal via the DMCA. Start using the DMCA against the people who lobbied it into place. The RIAA wouldn't be able to search the network for music. If they did, I believe that that would be bypassing a copy prevention scheme. Especially if it used something like the MD5sum of the executable for the encryption key.
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1100 FILES??? (Score:5, Insightful)
All kidding aside, ehh. She is sharing illegal files. She got caught. I'm not really seeing the "Shock and Awe" about this news article.
Re:1100 FILES??? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:1100 FILES??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Beat the RIAA? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I just have to say . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Then, while it writhes on the sidewalk, I'd turn to the MPAA, and say, "You're next, Nancy."
Then I'd swagger off to Moe's for a Duff.
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A sympatheizer... former... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it really legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is it really legal? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is it really legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Good idea? (Score:4, Funny)
RIAA's Day-after Thanksgiving sale already? (Score:3, Funny)
These criminals remind me of... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, you also have to remember that back then the common people actually had spines. They knew they were probably going to get raped; They didn't bend over and they sure as hell didn't relax and enjoy it.
It's like Marty says in BTTF 1: "If you don't stand up now, he'll walk all over you for the rest of your life!"
Nature of punishment? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that $3,500 is fair. If they went to court and won that amount, I would consider it fair. But extorting money from a 15 year old girl is just as bad as downloading 1,100 songs, if not much worse.
I've said it before.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Joe
If at first you don't succeed, lower your standard until you have.
Wait a second (Score:4, Insightful)
And I think that in terms of customer relations, the RIAA is making a big mistake, which will turn around and bite them in the ass.
And I agree that the RIAA has long overcharged for CDs.
But I also don't download files (or share them) in violation of copyright.
And I'd sue if my copyright were violated. As for instance, if code I'd licensed under the GPL were used in a closed source product in contravention of the GPL.
This is ludicrous, but save your moral indignation for Direct TV's suits against people who purchase legal hardware, or for Belkin and its spam-vertising, or for John Ashcroft's willingness to trample the 4th Amendment.
What the RIAA is doing is stupid and heavy-handed. What the 15 year old did was stupid and illegal. But moral indignation against the RIAA is misplaced.
Must she admit guilt? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can she settle the case with the stipulation that the settlement does not consitute an admission of guilt?
If the SEC can settle with Putnam and Morgan Stanley without forcing them to admit wrongdoing after they committed fraud on a huge scale and victimized thousands of innocent people, it seems to me that the RIAA could see its way to giving a 15 year old girl the same courtesy.
how the opinion changes (Score:5, Insightful)
virus writers please step up! (Score:4, Interesting)
Be a hypocrite. Hippos need crits. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you dispute that, please explain how this is different from the people who download full version warez under the premise "I need it to fully evaluate it" - despite the existence of a fully or almost fully functional trial version - and having these "evaluations" last.. well.. permanently.
The "Information wants to be free" argument invariably falls down when a person who'll quite glibly throw out that catchphrase suddenly falls quiet when asked to "free" their full address and credit card number.
Finally, I am NOT trying to justify the actions of the RIAA here. I think their behaviour is completely draconian and yet another really bad PR move on their part, but I also think it's somewhat over reacting to paint them as the big mean evil bully picking on the poor little girl for no reason whatsoever. Fact remains, she HAS committed a crime. The only question is whether the punishment is fitting. Personally I would say no, it isn't. It's complete overkill, but that's the ONLY problem I have with the situation here.
Incidentally, for the triggerhappy mods out there - If you really feel you must mod this as troll or flamebait, then go ahead, but please at least think carefully about it first. Troll != Devil's Advocate
Our Priorities... (Score:5, Insightful)
This fifteen year old is accused of illegally distributing music and faces a fine of up to 165,000,000 dollars.
Glad to see we have our priorities straight...
RIAA acknowledges sharing inadvertent (Score:4, Interesting)
In his testimony, [to Congress, RIAA chairman/CEO Mitch] Bainwol urged peer-to-peer network operators to voluntarily implement the following reforms:
...
"The law is clear. Yet the understanding of the law is hazy. Why? In large part it's because the file sharing networks like Kazaa deliberately induce people to break the law," testified Bainwol.
If this is true, the RIAA has a point. Such behavior on the part of the P2P services is hard to justify.
On the other hand, it means the kids using the service according to official RIAA testimony often lack intent to violate laws in general or to redistribute copyrighted material in particular ! The sort of random shakedown of well-intentioned end users (SCO anyone?) that we are now seeing is outrageous and enromously destructive, far worse than a total collapse of the recorded music industry would be.
If I can be assaulted by a squad of corporate attorneys when I think I am minding my own business, I will simply be inclined to avoid using any products whatsover that include any technology invented after about 1910.
If this kind of malicious attorney-goon-squad behavior is legal, it shouldn't be. Now here's a place for a federal law.
Re:Assassination? (Score:5, Funny)
Only in America. Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
However, most people don't "get it" like we do and still need to have it occasionally explained to them more fully. Not that she is absolved of any responsibility, as I'm sure the fine print makes this all very clear, but there can be mitigating circumstances.
Just my $0.02.
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Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only reason this gets press is because it's some BIG SCARY BUSINESS INTEREST sueing a _poor little kid_. These articles get posted because someone wants to enflame the rage of all the illegal file swappers against the RIAA. The RIAA is just following through with there legal right.
There are an awful lot of people who seem to think that if they don't like the law, they'll just ignore it. Then when the law comes back to bite them they get angry that its unfair. Well, m
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you see, I'm not sure about that. In order to get their information about who was sharing they used a modified client on a P2P network. This could quite possibly be considered as trespassing. Also, modifying the client, would be a copyright violation (assuming they didn't write it from scratch)... In either case, I believe they should get a call from the lawyers at Sherman Networks...
According to the Kazaa Media Desktop End User License Agreement you agree not to...
2.1 Transmit or communicate any data that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;
If you look at all of a persons songs an then mail them letters, that's an invasion...
2.2 Harm minors in any way;
Sueing ain't benificial....
2.3 Impersonate any person or entity or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
2.9 Interfere with or disrupt the Software;
2.11 Monitor traffic or make search requests in order to accumulate information about individual users;
Do I really need to say anything about this one?...
2.14 Collect or store personal data about other users.
3.2 Except as expressly permitted in this Licence, you agree not to reverse engineer, de-compile, disassemble, alter, duplicate, modify, rent, lease, loan, sublicense, make copies, create derivative works from, distribute or provide others with the Software in whole or part, transmit or communicate the application over a network.
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Re:What's stopping (Score:5, Insightful)
By offering to settle for less than it will cost to even defend against such a suit, they've pretty much guaranteed that nobody will actually let it go to court. And the people that actually have enough money to fight this just on the principle of the thing have much more to lose if they lose -- so they're likely to settle as well.
Presumably, their purpose is not to make money, or even to punish those they sue ... instead, the idea is to scare the 99.99% of the people out there that they don't sue.
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Re:What's stopping (Score:3, Interesting)
If the asking price gets too large, the kiddie will just say 'I don't have that' and go for bankruptcy or something - which also means bad press for RIAA. If RIAA come up with a smaller amount and it gets paid, RIAA trumpets another 'win'.
That'd be my guess.
Re:uh (Score:4, Insightful)
That is not theft. No matter what the RIAA wants you to believe. Theft is a Criminal act. Copyright infringement is a Civil act. That's why they're suing her and not throwing her in prison.
Her violation is not worth $165 million. Anyone who suggests that it is is a fucking idiot.
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