RIAA Prepares Legal Blitz Against Filesharers 1192
Sayonara writes "The RIAA are now well and truly gathering their forces for a financial onslaught on file sharers in the US, with a "fear and awe" campaign targetting college and high school students in particular. The strategy can be reduced to 'We should really charge you $150,000 per song you have downloaded. Pay us $50,000 now, and we'll say no more about it.' In a related article, the BBC describes how the netizen known as 'nycfashiongirl' is now attempting to delay the RIAA's case against her by claiming their investigation of her online activities was illegal. The RIAA has dismissed these arguments as 'shallow.'"
$50k? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:shallow? (Score:5, Informative)
They don't care. Unless I missed something big, they still aren't suing you for DOWNLOADING anything--I don't even think that they can track what you download. AFAIK, they're going after folk who SHARE the files--i.e., what they've got for upload.
You may very well have a perfectly legal reason to download that MP3--but you certainly don't have a justifiable reason to place it on a P2P network.
Re:Non-RIAA Music Reviews? (Score:5, Informative)
One already exists.
It's called CD-Baby [cdbaby.com].
Use RIAA Radar (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a free and easy tool that will let you know if a cd is from an RIAA affiliated company:
http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/ [magnetbox.com]
How to Not Get Sued By the RIAA (Score:5, Informative)
Read. Sign up. Send email to your representatives.
Re:*frowns* (Score:1, Informative)
No wonder I can't sleep at night
Re:RIAA and SCO (Score:5, Informative)
The reason why they said it was shallow (Score:5, Informative)
The defendent is claiming their 4th Admendment right was violated (unreasonable search etc...). RIAA is saying that they are not a goverment body so it does not apply to them.
Friday is D-Day (Score:2, Informative)
That is the day that the RIAA will be sueing some of the people they subpoena'd. According to this article [usatoday.com].
I can't *wait* to see what happens. Of course, this is only because I'm not on the list.
Re:Non-RIAA Music Reviews? (Score:2, Informative)
www.Furthurnet.org it is p2p and target only bands that allow free distribution of their work.
Re:shallow? (Score:5, Informative)
The RIAA is not going after downloaders, contrary to what they, and the media, would have you believe. The ONLY people they go after are those who OFFER tunes for OTHER PEOPLE to download, in other words, distributing.
I don't care what the headlines say, read between the lines for gods sake and check it out. In every case where someone has been threatened legal action by the RIAA, they were DISTRIBUTING, not just DOWNLOADING.
This played out in Denmark in 2002 (Score:2, Informative)
Here is what happened:
'Antipiratgruppen' (Danish RIAA organisation) scoured KaZaA for Danish users sharing files and took to court a database of IPs and the contents of shared directories.
Danish court granted them a per-case order forcing ISPs to resolve IPs into real names.
The ISPs coughed up, and the anti-piracy group sued 100 kids for their illegal MP3s.
Each sharer was offered a deal - pay a substantial fine, or be dragged through court and be hit with serious financial ruin.
A few people got nailed pretty hard, and the story got the large amount of press that had been planned. One college dorm settled at $15.000 per user on the network.
(...and one friend of mine stayed up one night, destroying 150 CD-Roms in his possession with a rotary sander *hehe*).
The Anti Piracy Group did NOT get what they have been campaigning for all along - vigilante powers: They still obviously have to go through court every single time they want ISPs to resolve an IP number into a user name.
This ruckus has just had the effect that people turn off sharing and turn to the encrypted P2P clients.
Re:shallow? (Score:2, Informative)
Furthermore, you DO NOT have a right to display copyrighted works on your front lawn or the internet. The right of public performance is limited to the copyright holder and its licensees.
In the case of the library, the person who actually makes the copy is not the library (and in any case, there are actually exceptions in Title 17 that allow libraries to make copies under certain circumstances). In your example, the person who takes the book home and copies it is at some point engaged in the act of copying. It does not matter where or how they obtained that book.
BOYCOTT MAJOR LABELS (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/artists/
PLEASE!
Re:Bill of rights - Amendment VIII (Score:4, Informative)
I could sue you for unlawful access to a website (slash). It's civil then, and bill of rights does not apply.
Free College Education (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Extortion (Score:2, Informative)
Seriously. I know a guy that was accused of a hacking type crime by a large company, he will be paying off that $2 million for the rest of his life most likely.
Re:not download, sharing (Score:3, Informative)
Direct profits are taken from the record label's hands because a downloader decides to NOT buy a item and INSTEAD snag it for free.
Don't believe that anyone who downloaded the album was too poor to buy it in the store.
Re:Sounds a lot like the SCO lawyers (Score:4, Informative)
Well, if you actually did it, and they sue you, you're pretty hosed. Your best bet is to settle. There's little chance that you'd win if you went to court, and the expenses of a court battle are significant anyway.
As for what they can do, they can sue you, civilly, for copyright infringement. And there might be some other possible causes of action related to what you're doing, but the copyright one is the biggie.
As for the $150,000 number, that's from 17 USC 504. Basically, copyright infringement causes some damage to the RIAA members in terms of their ability to commercially exploit the works they hold copyrights on. They can sue for either their actual damages, or since that can be difficult to compute, statutory damages. The maximum possible statutory damage amount is $150,000 per work infringed upon. Of course whether the maximum will be applied is largely up to the judge. In these sorts of cases, it could be as low as $750 per infringement. But you'd be taking a big risk if you were betting that you could get it to be that low.
If you go into a record store, steal the CD, go outside the store with your laptop, and start burning free copies for people walking in, would you fine be nearly as high?
Hm. Maybe.
Stealing the CD is a fairly minor act of conversion. I'd be more worried about criminal penalties for shoplifting than for a civil action.
Burning it though for others is certainly a copyright infringement again, however. Depending on the precise circumstances involved, there might be a defense based on 17 USC 1008 (but you HAVE to read 1001 for the definitions of the terms used in 1008) but I doubt that a court would accept that defense if it saw any way around it.
Anyway, the big difference between SCO and RIAA is that RIAA appears to have a legitimate complaint, and is not doing this to make money, but to discourage infringement. I suspect they're losing money doing this. SCO is less likely to have a legitimate complaint, and is really after money.
Re:What happens when we stop buying from the RIAA? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is that its hard, if not impossible, to stop your money from flowing to the RIAA, especially if you want to compete with them. Blank media taxes, recording device taxes, professional recording device taxes, and a few dozen other hidden fees go straight to their coffers.
Re:The reason why they said it was shallow (Score:2, Informative)
Doesn't she have a stronger claim under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2701-2711? (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2701.html)
If I'm not mistaken, under 2701(a)(1), unless a user gives the RIAA permission to snoop his/her computer, the RIAA's investigative actions constitutes a privacy violation. And since the RIAA is not a government agency (as they have pointed out), they are subject to civil action, per 2707(a) and have no applicable defense under 2707(e), nor exception under 2701(c) or 2702.
Re:Might work for governments (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to be totally unaware of the major labels' sales figures verses the sales of the Independent labels over the last year.
While the RIAA members are whining about poor sales the independents are having a banner year.
My daughter uses Kazaa to hunt down really strange stuff from individual artists, and has been doing this for years now. (Why not Kazaa Lite, I ask?) I'd guess that she has an occasional song the RIAA would have claim to, but the ratio is certainly less than 1 in 10.
Furthermore, how are you to tell if the author is asserting their free speech right to be heard or is asserting some obscure federal statute?
If Joe Filesharer needs a lawyer then the words "no law" have become meaningless.
How do I know? (Score:3, Informative)
You can't expect those who wish to use their free speech rights to put up notice. That would chill their rights to free expression in an intollarable way -- especially if what they wish to express is a political condemnation of the notion of IP.
I am put into a legal quandery. Even assuming I wish to do the right thing both morally and legally I cannot do it. Not only I, but the author have a constitutional right to free speech and assocation. The author also has a statutory right to copy. But there is no way I can distingush between the author who is asserting their constitional right and the author who is asserting their statutory right.
If Joe Filesharer needs a lawyer then the words "no law" have become meaningless.
Re:No, it won't... (Score:2, Informative)
Using the internet to hype musicians that haven't made it yet is a great thing too, but it has a problem. The RIAA's members spend unbelievable sums of money to promote the artists that they think they can make the most money off of. They're good at it, and they have managed to stack the deck pretty well in their favor (just investigate who controls the top-40 stations in any given city).
They promote the artists, advertise them, merchandise them, overplay their music until people get used to it and decide it's good, and then send them on tour so they can squeeze a bit more money out in ticket sales.
THAT is a pretty efficient money-making scheme, and it helps to keep most small labels and most talented but unknown artists (at least those that aren't a sure bet) off the air and away from the money.
Buying used CD's is a good step, albeit a small one in fighting this. Figure out how to battle the big Labels' advertising machines, and we might make some real headway.
Re:Joy (Score:3, Informative)
Even if the nature of the infringement does not merit an assessment of the full $150K statutory damages, please also keep in mind that the statutory damages are generally only the tip of the iceberg. Copyright holders who prevail in court will invariably have their attorneys fees awarded to them as well, which is often much more of a hammer to use against infringers than the potential for statutory damages.
So no matter how you look at it, being named as a defendant in a copyright claim really sucks.
Not true (Score:1, Informative)
All that happens in court is that a judge will enter a judgement against you. This just says that you do indeed owe the money. That's all. It is the debter's problem to collect, and they are fairly restricted under the law.
Re:What If I Just Don't Pay? (Score:1, Informative)
Step 6: It is illegal for them to call you at work. It is illegal for them to call abusively, i.e. multiple times a day. It is illegal for them to call before 9 am or after 9 pm. If you tell them to stop calling, they MUST stop. If they break any of these rules, you can sue them. Look at the fair credit collection act for details.
Step 7: more than 7 years go by, and the credit reporting agencies, by law, must delete those bad entries. Your credit is clean once again.
Step 8: last time I checked, you don't need credit to get married.
Step 9: If you have ignored it this long, they will be settling for 10% or less. Of course, at this point, I would simply ignore them completely.
Learn your rights, folks.
Re:Time for a Campaign of Shock and Awe Ourselves (Score:2, Informative)
What is needed is to direct the attention against the Senators, and Representative that have been drafting these Bills. Some names:
Senator Conyers (Michigan)
Senator Berman (California).
Senator Hatch (Utah)
Senator Biden (Delaware),
Senator Sensenbrenner (Wisconsin),
Senator Scott (Virginia),
Senator Coble (Nth Carolina),
Senator Feinstein (California)
Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas)
The proposed Conyers-Berman bill for example, would mean you could be put in jail for up to five years for sharing a single file or for giving false information in a domain name registration.
If the next time these wonderful fellows are up for election they face grass roots action over this there may be some hope to get the message across.
Maybe the first place to start would be a targetted publically announced campaign to ensure that John Conyers and Howard Berman never get elected to so much as a dog-catcher job ever again. That would get the attention of the others.
stogie urban legend (Score:3, Informative)
Snopes is your friend [snopes.com]
Re:Might work for governments (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Does no one have a concept for FAIR anymore? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's STEALING darn it (Score:2, Informative)
However, by downloading files from a file trading service you are no longer an "hapless bystander", you are part of a transaction. The transaction is between you and the person you are downloading from. Someone has to be responsible for that transaction as far as copyright issues are concerned.
Now is it you, or the person your downloading from? Honestly, I'm not sure. However, the reality is, the person providing the file can't possibly know if all the many downloaders actually own a license to the tracks they are providing. So practacly, it falls to you to make sure all is well.
How to help with Jane Doe's legal fees (Score:2, Informative)
For those interested, I contacted nycfashiongirl's attorney and asked how to help pay her legal fees. He sent this information. I'm going to send $50.
Please note that donations are not tax deductible.
McDonough Client Trust Acct. f/b/a Jane Doe
McDonough Holland PC
555 Capitol Mall
Sacramento, CA 95814.