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The RIAA Sues 482 More People
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jun 22, 2004 07:27 PM
from the befriending-the-youth dept.
from the befriending-the-youth dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Today the RIAA said they have sued another group of people, 482 to be exact, for copyright infringement. The RIAA used their 'John Doe' litigation process in this round of law suits, because they do not know the names of the copyright infringers. After appeals court ruled that Verizon does not have to provide names of customers to the RIAA, the RIAA started using the 'John Doe' litigation process." (Similar stories at Wired News and CoolTechZone).
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How long will this go on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:5, Funny)
When SCO files for bankruptcy.
Parent
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:4, Funny)
When SCO files for bankruptcy.
For some odd reason this joke reminded me of the fact Creed is calling it quits. I've been having a rather poor day and you reminded me that hope survives. Thank you.
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Re:How long will this go on? (Score:5, Informative)
BZZZZZZZZZT. Wrong.
SCO wants the public to believe that, but it ain't true. SCO hasn't sued anybody for using Linux. They've sued IBM for breaking copyright and/or license contract with respect to their tech contributions to Linux, but IBM is a licensee of Unix; remember SCO "revoking" their AIX license? SCO is is suing Autozone because SCO claims Autozone--a SCO Unix licensee--is using libraries from SCO Unix in their Linux systems and violating the license and contract. They are suing DaimlerChrysler--a SCO licensee--for, uh...I forget.
But everybody they've sued is a current or former licensee of SCO's, and in at least the Autozone case they say they quit using SCO Unix over 7 years ago and aren't required to submit to the demands of SCO, yet SCO claims they never terminated the contract and must submit a list of processors SCO Unix is running on.
SCO has not sued anyone who is not their customer. They have not sued anyone for using Linux. They have not sued anyone claiming a Linux user owes them a license fee. They want you to think that, though.
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Re:How long will this go on? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:How long will this go on? (Score:5, Insightful)
So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that suing potential customers IS an effective business model, if you get more money from the suit then you would from their potential sales and if other customers want your product so much they're willing to buy from you even as you screw them. And seeing as how they're settling for $3k+ from filesharers who aren't likely to be buying 160+ cds any time soon, it looks like this is going to be just another line item in the budget. $5,000,000 from price fixed cd sales here, $2,000,000 from recouped advances, and another mil or so from suing grandmothers and preteen girls. Very effective; and you don't even have to call a sleazy accountant to do the books.
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No, that wont stop them (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps a national 'pirate tax', beacuse you know, EVERYONE is doing it, right? Bah.
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Re:How long will this go on? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care myself. I'm not going to deny myself good music just because the artist signed with a major label. Shit, I *like* Velvet Revolver. I don't care that they're popular nor that their CD had (easily defeated) copy protection. I wanted the disc, I bought the disc, I enjoyed it. I wouldn't have enjoyed it any more or any less if it were on Bumblestick Records.
Incidentally, I have never heard of a single artist who turned down a contract merely because it was with an RIAA label. It's hard to turn down worldwide exposure, active promotion, industry contacts and that nice advance just because they sued some freeloaders.
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Re:How long will this go on? (Score:5, Interesting)
These companies likely would lose very little money to begin with because A) they would have rented it from the library B) they would have bought it used C) they would have borrowed it from a friend.
People who have time to dick around for hours looking for music online is the type of people who have little money (other wise they would have worked a fraction of that time and bought the music instead).
Parent
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't act so smug and self-righteous. Congress has been degrading the public's right to access information for far too long. It used to be that you could go to places like the library and rent tapes, casettes, and relatively new novels.
The 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Act [keytlaw.com] and other recent IP acts extend the copyright term to something like 100 years. It's appalling, and serves no purpose other than to allow big corporations to buy and sell our cultural history just like so many other commodities. Our parents generation enjoyed the proper balance between protecting innovators and the public. It's clear that our current leaders have no respect for the value of the public domain.
We're raised on music, movies, and games only to learn that we have to pay a tithe to revisit our childhood. There's no reason we should stand for that. 5-10 years is more than sufficient time to ensure that an investor/artist is compensated. Until congress stops selling out the average american to corporations, there's no reason the average american should respect the acts of congress.
Parent
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:5, Insightful)
And ridiculous laws like the 55 mile per hour speed limit are routinely ignored. Also, the more silly laws there are, the more people lose respect for all laws, and start ignoring important ones. Laws against things that aren't wrong need to be changed.
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Re:How long will this go on? (Score:5, Interesting)
Putting a share up on Kazaa is not fair-use. The RIAA is going after the big offenders. It doesn't make sense for them to go after the little guys. If the big-offender happens to be a tenny-bopper so be it.
There is a legal recourse for copyright holders to pursue against infringers, this is it. I agree with you that that crippling devices is bad. It interferes with fair-use, just like Macrovision interferes with fair-use. But, if we close off prosecution what other path can copyright holders pursue? We need to prop up legal recourses. This needs to be the way the RIAA handles copyright infringers. This gives us leverage to save our devices.
Copyright law does need to be changed for the public's benefit, but that is a side issue. And civil damages are insane, but that is also a side-issue.
Look, the RIAA knows that their copyrights are being infringed in honest to goodness definitely not-fair-use ways. I believe them. I have every confidence that they can convice a congressmen. How much infringement actually takes place is up for debate. But, we need to support this legal action. They will not give up because they have money riding on this. And the alternatives are prevention and anti-circumvention. I'd rather deal with copyright in the courts than those other two (which I'm convinced are utterly evil).
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Yay! (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe we can SUE good taste into them...
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Funny)
I feel like Britney is stealing from me every time I hear her songs on the radio. It's like my soul is just a little smaller.
Then I see videos of her practicing in sweats. Alright, we're even.
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Re:Yay! (Score:5, Funny)
We call it stealing because the original owner no longer has it. No wait...
We call it stealing because.. umm.. they don't get money?
Oh right we call it stealing because the people who made it need money... no wait..
Oh I remember, we call it stealing because some CEO someplace needs to buy a yatched. Yeah, that sounds right.
Disclaimer: This is a joke. Taking this seriously offensively makes you look like an idiot. If you had a girlfriend she'd dump you.
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Overall total? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Overall total? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Overall total? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Overall total? (Score:5, Insightful)
And as for the number of good Artists, hundreds? Seriously, I am willing to bet that most people who have 50GB of mp3s have less than 1GB of music they really even remotely like. You have to sift through piles and piles of pure crap to find the gems.
So any figures I see about the amount of $$ someone has 'stolen' by downloading gigabytes of music I have to reject because they would never buy all that crap and if they had to, they would have given up long ago without finding anything they like. I for one have bought way too much music ever since I started downloading it. If its good I buy it. I have close to 1000 cds and over 100 vinyl.
Think about it, how much of your collection is something you'd buy or already own and how much is refuse you have collected and somehow can't delete? How many people have binders full of software they never use, music they don't like, and movies/tv shows they haven't watched or don't like? I know several.
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Poor John Doe (Score:5, Funny)
We always here about initiating the suits..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We always here about initiating the suits..... (Score:5, Informative)
You can probably infer from the fact that we've not heard much that 99.9% of the cases have been settled privately.
I'm not usually a guy to whine about spelling, but it's "hear", not "here". If you want people to take you seriously, spelling is important.
-Erwos
Parent
RIAA faq. (Score:5, Informative)
For those wanting to know more about 'John Doe' processes etc here is the RIAA's FAQ [riaa.com].
Sue Happy (Score:4, Insightful)
Uploading is the key issue... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder why more people don't realize this, the RIAA are actually balancing on the edge of a knife with this one: They want to stop copyright infringement, but they don't want to draw too much attention to the copyright infringement via P2P issue, because they realize that if too many people start paying attention to it, the masses will realize what the law actually says regarding this.
Downloading isn't the key issue, uploading is. Copyright infringement is traditionally defined by unauthorized distribution - so they really only have the right to go after those who are illegally distributing their content. This means the uploaders. Depending on your P2P client, it is possible to prevent uploading, or at least stop uploading by removing the file from the P2P system as soon as it's downloaded - of course, in some cases this will render individual P2P networks unusable if too many people do it, but some, like Emule/Edonkey, have the ability to upload while downloading... so unless they catch the culprits very quickly, removing the files from the shared directory and thus preventing further uploading will take all of a few minutes, and no charges can (theoretically) be pressed.Parent
Re:Uploading is the key issue... (Score:4, Informative)
You *might* be able to make a fair use case at a very long stretch if you didn't keep the music. Essentially what you are doing is emulating a radio broadcast. You are listening to music being "broadcast" to you, which your computer made an automatic buffering copy of to your harddrive so you could listen to it without significant degradation of quality. Of course, if the software didn't delete the buffered copy, you're not really responsible
Whether that would stand at all is yet to be tested. It would certainly have some weight if it really was a function of the sofware to do so from a legal internet radio stream, but P2P doesn't really work that way. Most people know they're keeping the music, and deleting it in under 24 hours isn't going to be a magic escape clause.
In some peoples eyes this is equivalent to "I stole the money, officer, but I threw it away a day later"
I can only hope its a matter of time before the electric lightbulb of electronic distribution puts the Gaslamps of the RIAA out of business.
Instead of legislating protections for gaslamps, they should be buying up electric lightbulb factories.
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Re:Sue Happy (Score:5, Insightful)
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And the RIAA's site... (Score:5, Funny)
And in lesser news, thank god for dynamic IP addresses...
I think they mean "alleged copyright infringement" (Score:4, Interesting)
Before anyone jumps on this and says it's stupid - I recently downloaded a whole bunch of songs to which I had the CDs. Why? Because my CD drive and my secondary hard drive (which housed all my MP3s) both recently went tits up. I blame a bad drive cable. Anyway, my gf was leaving town for a month and I was in the process of putting together a 'mix tape' on a portable mp3 player for her. Since she was leaving soon I didn't have time to run out to the store and buy and install a bunch of new equipment - but I could leave my p2p software running overnight.
Uncommon? Sure. But that alone doesn't make it illegal.
Re:I think they mean "alleged copyright infringeme (Score:5, Interesting)
Now it's still alleged if they didn't actually check every file to make sure that it's actually music instead of crap, viruses, etc. But I suspect that unless you re-shared those files that you downloaded, you won't have any need to fear getting sued over your download.
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As ALWAYS.....It's been said before..... (Score:5, Funny)
Damn I need a subject (Score:4, Interesting)
3 years ago CD sales went down....
Think that's a coincidence.
Also CD sales don't count as much since we got the legal downloading music DRM bullshit now... You have to count those eggs too....
Re:Damn I need a subject (Score:5, Funny)
3 years ago CD sales went down....
Think that's a coincidence.
Didn't we tell you that piracy would destroy the economy?
KFG
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More info, please (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More info, please (Score:4, Informative)
Once the lawsuit has been filed they can legally demand that the ISP connect the IP address and time of download to a name. Once they have a name and street address, they can send legal notice, and carry out their former scheme (settle for $3000, or be convicted and pay $MILLIONS later!). On their website, they bemoan this path in that they can no longer offer pre-lawsuit notification (less legal fees), so they are implying that with the court mandated extra steps, they have to spend more money to find the identity of the infringing party - which of course gets passed on to the infringing party as a higher settlement cost.
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Anonymous P2P (Score:5, Informative)
Anonymous P2P will likely 'solve' these lawsuits, the technology is coming along nicely.
I think that I2P [i2p.net] and Mute [sourceforge.net] need some developers though if you are interested.
Re:Anonymous P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
It will eventually become very decentralized, very efficient, probably encrypted, use really good hash file verification systems.
And it is going much faster than it probably would have if the RIAA didn't step in....
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Judgement in favour of the plaintiff. (Score:5, Funny)
Bailiff, remand Mr. Doe into custody. Mr. Doe, how do you plead?
Bailiff:
Judge, the defendant has failed to appear.
Judge:
Issue an arrest warrant in Mr. Doe's name.
Case dismissed.
RIAA:
Doh!
Future RIAA news (Score:4, Interesting)
That being the case, I'd like to see the post itself contain some distinguishing marks, like a mention of what round in the series this is, or a comment on overall trends. This is the 4th round of these suits, right? (or is it the 5th?)
I know, people should read the article, and google for basic questions, and all that. However, this subject is becoming almost like SCO. There are just so many repetitious elements that it is extra easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.
Also, we can't expect the other media to convert data to knowledge. I doubt most press releases on this are going to keep track of whether the numbers per round have increased, decreased, or fluctuated both ways, for example. As another example, would you want to rely on Wired to tell you whether these clusters of suits start comeing closer together? (That's not to criticise Wired in particular, but to say that the press tends to become complacent the umpty-umpth time they are covering what sounds like the same story.).
Read Closely (Score:4, Funny)
"ALL YOUR DRUM & BASS ARE BELONG TO US"
Don't call us pirates -- (Score:5, Funny)
About time (Score:4, Insightful)
To me finding that RIAA has to now get some aproval (form a court) before getting the infromation they are seeking is the true news worthy potion of this article. I think most people havn't really had problems with RIAA and the likes going after people breaking the copyright laws, thier problems was with the way they went about doing it. Some will always have issues with others trying to protect thier investments and there will be some that still don't like the lawsuite/extortion ways RIAA is doing it. As i see it now one down and more to go.
Thier extortion tactics, whiel can be viewed with good intentions leaves alot of problems open to come back and haunt people. Maybe there should be a test to what how they actually gather evidence and how that evidence is displayed.. also it would be nice if all the lawsuites could be lumped into some class action deal were people could share the cost of actually defending themselves from it.
googlebomb anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Put this on a webpage: what a <a href="http://www.riaa.com/">bunch of pricks</a>
Countermeasures (Score:5, Interesting)
When we come across a user who is distributing copyrighted music files, we download copyrighted music files (of our member companies) the user is offering, as well as document the date and time that we downloaded those files.
Do any P2P clients keep a log of files up/downloaded? If so, record your own song and give it a clever name like 'Timberlake's Justified'. Stick it up and wait for the RIAA to come along and snag it. Then sue/countersue them.
Lewis Carroll taught me how to do it:
my strategy (Score:4, Interesting)
while i'm downloading, some dude might start uploading from my temporary download folder
this is the point at which the riaa can sue you
however, i'm protected by the fact that i basically download european trance music for jogging purposes
only through kazaa am i allowed to sample artists i would never be able to explore in any other forum: cds, too expensive; radio, nonexistent play; legal paid downloads, too constrictive on my selection and the rights they grant me
and i believe that international issues, even if both nations involved have fierce copyright laws, leads me to feel comfortable and confident: i'm probably downloading from european kazaa users, and uploading to them too... the riaa does not involve itself in international transfer cases: too complicated
so since i avoid the pop shit, the odds of me getting sued enter the realm of me winning the lottery
the day i win the lottery is the day i'll begin to worry about the riaa
Harvard Business Review: Downloading Doesn't Hurt (Score:5, Informative)
Music Downloads: Pirates--or Customers? [hbs.edu]
Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee and co-author Koleman Strumpf floored the disbelieving music industry with their findings that illegal music downloads don't hurt CD sales. Oberholzer discusses what the industry should do next.
The Market Speaks, the RIAA ignores (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, all that I want is to be able to explore new music. I want to do it simply and easily. I don't want to dick around and spend my time searching for it. Nothing under the sun is going to make me buy a horde of CDs hoping that some of them don't suck. Nothing is going to make me go out and research which bands suck and don't suck before I buy them. I honestly don't care enough to waste my time doing this. I'll happily shell out my money for the right to explore someone's database of music. I'll shell it out every single month. Hell, I do it already for movies. I couldn't be happier with NetFlix.com - care free exploration of movies at a flat rate. They get my 20 a month instead of blockbuster now because they realized that I am a different type of shopper. I used to pirate movies all of the time, until I found NetFlix.
Until these idiots listen to the market, it will be NetFlix for movies and my P2P of choice for music. The first company to satisfy my music buying style gets my cash. NetFlix won my movie dollars, now hopefully some idiot will win my music dollars. They can sue their asses off. I break the law all the time; I speed, I smoke the evil herb occasionally, I drank under 21 (when I was still under 21), and I merrily pirate music. It is just another calculated risk. Most people violate the law reguarly knowing a potential risk involved with doing it. The RIAA will never win this game. Only growing the balls to compete in the market is going to win me back.
Re:This is old news. These people get what they ge (Score:4, Informative)
or, IHBT, IHL.
Parent
Re:Have they ALL settled? (Score:5, Insightful)
And would you stand up to them, knowing your guilt, knowing the court's award would be much higher than the $3000 settlement they offered you, just because you were an idealist?
Methinks you'd have to be a very rich, foolish idealist. And if you're a rich, foolish idealist, I'd rather see you devote your energies to promoting a more palatable green party in this country than waste it fighting a copyright infringement lawsuit with that group of assholes at the RIAA. We broke the law, we got caught. Pay the fine, get it over with.
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Re:Remember... (Score:4, Insightful)
2. 'Sharing' is a cutesy word for distributing. You are no different from the music store, except that the artist gets zero compensation from you.
3. The entire Internet is not your friend.
4. Just because the RIAA is wrong doesn't mean we have to be.
Parent