RIAA Threatens 15-Year-Old 1016
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.'"
I'm not afraid of you! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Assassination? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Is it really legal? (Score:3, 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.
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.
Criminal copyright infringement (Score:2, Informative)
Theft is a Criminal act. Copyright infringement is a Civil act.
True, but copyright infringement is also a crime (17 USC 506 [cornell.edu]).
Her violation is not worth $165 million. Anyone who suggests that it is is a fucking idiot.
It took half of Congress to enact a law that provided for such damages. You just called at least half of Congress "fucking idiots." Not that I necessarily disagree *cough*Bono Act*cough*DMCA*cough*.
Re:I'm not afraid of you! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:End of an era...? (Score:2, Informative)
My question is was this a Kazaa P2P app ? If it was then whats all this talk from Kazaa about protecting peoples IP numbers. Doesn't sound like its working.
Maybe its time for earthstation5 filesharing program [es5.com]
Or how about freenet [slashdot.org] ? No. It's still too slow and only has one developer. maybe someday.
The P2P filesharing programs seem to be behind the curve in protecting identies.
Re:Wait a second (Score:3, Informative)
Then you would be wrong.
Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Svc., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).
In sum, authors do not have a right to the fruits of their labor; they have a right to whatever Congress, on behalf of the public, is able to give them and is in fact given to them.
Labor isn't enough to justify a copyright grant. There has to be more, and in fact we could always opt not to grant protection at all. Certainly we have a history of that -- it was a long time before art, music, performances, etc. could be copyrighted.
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.
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.
Stream Rippers (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Why these things get modded down (Score:3, Informative)
What exactly are the alternatives you propose if the current system is so bad? Should we just allow anyone to take the IP of anyone they want? Or just individuals can take the IP of corps and do what they want? Should copyright violation be a criminal charge to avoid the "errors" of civil court?
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.
Re:Why these things get modded down (Score:3, Informative)
So guilt or innocence has nothing to do with the outcome for most, they'll pay the fine because it's cheaper and the RIAA will rack up another notch in it's legal belt.
Re:You know what? (Score:3, Informative)
Because what you mentioned is not entrapment. Entrapment is the inducment of an innocent person to commit a crime that would otherwise not have committed the crime if not for the inducement. Suzy Downloader is still downloading stuff off kazaa regardless if the RIAA put it there or not. Entrapment isn't putting up bogus mp3s on Kazaa and suing people that download them. Entrapment would be putting links to download kazaa on the riaa website, endorsing kazaa publicly, and then suing people for using kazaa to download songs. By the way, I think, and I could be wrong, entrapment is a defense to criminal charges, not to civil suits, so I don't think it would apply here (there may be a tort equivalent of entrapment. I simply don't know). But IANAL, YMMV, YADDA YADDA YADDA
psxndc
Re:You know what? (Score:2, Informative)
Better link to find non-RIAA music (Score:3, Informative)