RIAA Warns Individual Swappers

Joey Patterson writes "CNET News.com reports that the RIAA has sent cease-and-desist letters to four individuals for allegedly pirating its music on P2P networks." They have yet to publicly release the names of who they have contacted, but 4 of the 5 were Verizon subscribers involved with their previous high profile case.

In other news... dead horse beating spreads

[youaredan]

News at 11 - The recent trend beating of dead horses not only continues but quickens.. is there hope for rationality?

That's the last straw. . .

[bplipschitz]

no more individual swapping for me--it's whole truckloads of illegal immigrants from now on!

I admit it

[Anonymous Coward]

I was one of them.

-Senator Orrin Hatch

Can you download me now?

[suso]

Good...

trading files

[Anonymous Coward]

File traders are felons. There is no excuse for their behavior. We, the RIAA, propose to extend the sentence to life in prison for heavy copying, or death in extreme circumstances. If you don't, criminals will fill the streets, the music industry will be over, and (shhhh) you won't be seeing those big bucks.

Re:What so special

[wille_faler]

Maybe they will raise the prices to fund the C&D letters..

Re:What so special

[Monoman]

"Just wouldn't think that it would be usefull for an organisation as the RIAA to send everybody C&D letters, costs a lot of money."

I think they plan to save a lot of money by using bulk mail and address everything to "Resident". :-)

Re:I admit it

[Justatad]

Remember kids - when you're sharing mp3s, you're spreading communism!

Note to self...

[derrickh]

-Cancel Verizon DSL Service.
-Check stash for those drunken nude Hilary Rosen pics...just in case.

D

Why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the RIAA's computer systems still exist? I would have think they would have angered the wrong group of hackers/cracker enough times by now to have only a smoking crater where their computers used to be...

Re:Verizon now hosts RIAA website

[Jugalator]

RIAA sure does everything in their power to annoy people... Windows 2003... *sigh* ;-)

Letter delivery? How?

[Kaz Riprock]

Thank goodness I never check my verizon.net e-mail address!

Re:I admit it

[wayward_son]

No, no, you have it all wrong.

When you're sharing mp3s, you're spreading terrorism!

Re:I don't buy CDs

[Jim_Hawkins]

Just my $0.02 .

Heh...at least you have $0.02 to spare. I did purchase some CDs from the major music labels...

...been living in a box ever since... :-(

It won't work

[fireboy1919]

The RIAA doesn't have that many illegal immigrants for you to steal. They only pretend to have that many so that they can tell the government how much they're losing in illegal immigrant sales. Plus, it's really hard to get a truckload of immigrants through p2p because the copy protection on illegal immigrants (DNA) is a lot more difficult to bypass than traditional forms of media.

You'll have to keep pirating songs instead.

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

We was transporting an illegal immigrant the other day, in this special crate. We gets to the destination, I opens the crate, and out pops Madona! She starts screaming at me "What the hell to you think you're doing?!"

It sure put me off my lunch.

Re:Cease and...

[fredrikj]

10,303,334mb file

What quality setting would that file've been encoded with?

Re:Cease and...

[Mr_Silver]

a jury could reasonably conclude that the log showing you downloaded a 10,303,334mb file named "Metallica_Enter_Sandman.mp3" on such and such day is evidence that you downloaded a copyrighted song

Assuming that a 5 meg file at 192 kbps is 3 minutes 30 seconds long then a 10,303,334 meg file is approximately 13.75 years worth of Metalica.

That shouldn't be a crime, but the punishment.

Ironic that this should happen today...

[LeoDV]

As my MP3 folder just passed the twenty gigs bar! Time to buy an iPod!

Re:Cease and...

[parkanoid]

bush_assassination_plan.doc
The Department Of Homeland Security is pleased to inform you that the enemy of freedom known as "Octagon Most" in online terrorist circles has been eliminated.

Re:Cease and...

[Octagon Most]

In my defense I would like to state unequivocally that I love bush.

Patriotically,
Octagonmost

Re:Thank God

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I don't blame you. I mean, these fly by night companies like Play have only been around what, 4 or 5 years? They've only processed a couple of millions transactions through their merchant account, resulting in hundreds of thousands of happy and satisfied customers. How could you possible trust that?! No no, much better to hand over your card to a pimply faced youth in a store who can walk over to the card machine and swip it with their back to you and you're looking at rack of accessories by the counter anyway. Thats far safer, I mean you never hear of cards being swiped or details being copied down do you? Oh, and remember that when you get home you should be sure to throw away the credit card recipt without tearing it up. Its safe because no one ever goes through your rubbish looking for them.

Next week we learn how to keep yourself safe from the billions of evil baby raping pedophiles who infest the internet.

Re:In other news... dead horse beating spreads

[KarmaPolice]

This story should scare and offend you
Your Jedi mind tricks will not work on me...

Re:Just Wondering...

[tuba_dude]

I love the irony of "artists' rights." It's perfect. I'd be willing to bet Rosen's got all the money-making 'artists' locked up in a dungeon/jail, only to be let out for PR, and they probably just ignore the other artists anyway.

I can see it now.

ARTIST: Er...can I talk to someone about my contract?
RIAA Front Desk: How much did you make for us on your last release? ARTIST: Uh...$500,000. ish. RIAA FD: In that case, no. But I feel sorry for you, so here's a buck for your next cardboard house.

Re:The usual scare tactics

[Anonymous Coward]

Xeroxing sheet music for the church choir may be illegal, but do you really think it's wrong?

Only if it's for a white church. Have you heard those people sing?

Re:Cease and...

[notque]

I find it inconceivable that the name of a file in a log is sufficient proof of criminal conduct. If I rename workout_log.xls to bush_assassination_plan.doc am I guilty of a criminal conspiracy to kill the President?

Yes. You are also guilty of posting the concept of renaming out files to "bush_assassination_plan.doc" on Slashdot to a large audience. You are a terrorist, and will be delt with accordingly.

(And it gets worse if you share mp3s.)

Re:Cease and...

[ktakki]

Assuming that a 5 meg file at 192 kbps is 3 minutes 30 seconds long then a 10,303,334 meg file is approximately 13.75 years worth of Metalica.

It's the Extended Dance Remix version.

k.

Re:In other news... dead horse beating spreads

[Honest Man]

Ohh, so in other words they will be up to a total 9 people(if found guilty) that they have gone after to get money out of millions upon millions of p2pâ(TM)ers..

Something tells me I'll be getting my letter when I'm in my 90's.

â¦Dear Honest Man, 60 plus years ago you transferred âoemetallica â" enter sandman.mp3â and we want an interest compounded amount of $45,161.448.15 for that single act of infringementâ¦â¦

Honestly though - after legal costs and the hundreds of man-hours spent on trying to get information on these few individuals, by the RIAA's part, I have a feeling they lost money on the 4 previous cases so if they keep this up they'll put themselves out of business just with their legal/investigation costs alone....I guess they could still blame p2p for that too... lol They might as well send out 'warning' letters to everyone in America.

This would be the same RIAA.....

[Newer Guy]

This would be the same RIAA that publically said less then a year ago they would NOT be targeting individual downloaders? You cannot believe a word they say, for they are a lying sack of runny shit...nothing more!