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.'"
End of an era...? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's stopping (Score:2, Interesting)
Extortion countersuit? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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.
Are the parents liable? (Score:3, Interesting)
Another legal question: Say I am about to be sued for everything I own. I liquidate all my assets, go to a casino, and bet the whole lot on a spin of the roulette wheel. If I loose, I'm no worse off (I was going to be bankrupt anyhow), if I win, the winnings pay off the judgement and I still have my money. Effectively I am gambling someone else's money, but I get the winnings. What legal sanctions are there to prevent this?
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.
Re:End of an era...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you think that by the time we were 15, any of our parents had a chance at supervising what we did online, nanny-software or not?
Re:You know what? (Score:1, Interesting)
Sharing seems more like setting up a place so people can join you fairly easily as long as they use their own means to get there.
-That may not have made as much sense as I thought it would, I'm going to bed.
Re:Assassination? (Score:1, Interesting)
If terrorists ever getting around to blowing up buildings that aren't military- or multinational-related, I might be against them too... but it's pretty clear that neither side has my best interests at heart.
Re:What? (Score:2, Interesting)
No I dont
Gee - imagine if you will a place where 15 year old girls are NOT as net savy as you or your friends. Imagine that, just for a sec, it is the same place where 15 year old girls think that Brittney Spears is great, and that parents (except Mom sometimes) suck, that thongs are underwear, and pregnancy happens to 'Bad Girls' still. Are you there yet? Imagine, just for a second being 15, when federal laws dont exist, and every program on your computer is fun, and helps you do what you want to do, and imagine for a moment why we dont procecute 15 year olds as adults.
Prettty blissful eh? - Now imagine why these SOB's would lock you down as an adult when no Crimianl Court would ever touch you.
This is her, and even in her parent's world - "What could my daughter be doing on the net that is illeagal? She is no hacker!"
And they are right - why watch your child do something most people feel is right up there with jay-walking? oh, and this assumes that the paremts are more net savvy than the child - NOT.
Sera
Re:Why these things get modded down (Score:3, Interesting)
"And no, it's not some black and white issue of "she shared music, therefore she must be guilty because the law says so". For one thing, she's a minor."
Not sure where you're going here... do you think minors are, or should be, exempt from copyright law?
"For another, there is the concept of evidence, due process, etc, which seems to be entirely missing from the RIAA's current tactics. Oh wait, that would assume they're a law enforcement agency, which they most certainly aren't, even if they act like one."
The RIAA is following the due process. One does not need to be law enforcement to follow a process set down by law.
Also, after that embarrassing "Usher" incident wherein a university professor was sent a nastygram for having an MP3 in his directory that appeared to be a copyrighted song, you can be sure that the companies the RIAA uses to track offenders are double and triple checking their evidence. It is in their best interest to.
Re:You know what? (Score:5, Interesting)
RIAA Only Setting Precedent (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Assassination? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's why emperors and kings of the past, people who had nearly unlimited power, used violence at their whim? Violence solves everything. Full, unrestricted violence. Violence is power. It's the two powerless pussies that sit around and "discuss" a "resolution".
copyright revolution: no work = no money (Score:2, Interesting)
The reason why the vast majority of people side with the filesharers instead of the mega-corporations like the RIAA is not because of some David-vs-Goliath underdog syndrome, it's because the RIAA and labels are making money from doing nothing.
Back in the analog days, actual physical copies of works had real value (each copy had real costs associated with it and took time to make), but in the digital world the copy has no value; anybody can make 100s of thousands of copies of a song per day using the most basic features of their computers. Aside from other factors such paying for convenience, supply and demand dictates that copies of works have zero value since the supply is effectively unlimited. Sure, creating the actual song itself required work, but they are trying to sell us the copy not the song itself.
People are simply rejecting the idea that they should pay for nothing, which is why we should change the copyright laws to recognize the basic principle of "no work, no money". People could download songs all they want completely legally as long as they don't make money off of it. If a company wants to use a song in their commercial then they pay the artist/authors for it because otherwise the company is making money from increased sales without doing the work of writing the song (this is the same principle the GPL is founded on). This preserves the author's incentive for creating a song in addition to concerts, selling the rights, fame, and other forms of compensation.
In other words, Digital Copyright should prevent others from making money off your work instead of preventing people from enjoying your work without paying for it.
There may be intermediate solutions (Score:3, Interesting)
Libraries buy books and other items for lending, why couldn't a respectable outfit try to do this digitally? Are libraries illegal now?
Certainly there are differences between books and digital media, but there still remains a lot of unexploited potential between Fair Use and the Tradition of Libraries. There are even things called interlibrary loans. And there is value in promoting research and telling people about relevant authors which librarians also do. I'm curious about whether there would be any problem with software client that would let a repository track files, and provide the services that libraries generally do. This service would cover print media, audio and video. It might be free, for profit, nonprofit, tax-supported, members only, a coop, or something else. Hopefully it would be international.
The library would certainly have to pay for its own copies, and it would have to handle only items for which electronic distribution is allowed. But it is also conceivable that through fair use people could register their own music with the library and sign something which says they will not play a given song when it is being played by someone else. Some cryptography may be appropriate, but this is not really so important (except for some signature to identify each file uniquely).
It may sound like there are lots of loopholes for copying but this is true in many other realms. The public does not bear the burden of inventing ways to enable corporations to infringe on their rights. I am not interested in promoting illegal copying but the kinds of money the RIAA talks about are not part of reality as we know it. I believe that if we want to own our own past and future, we must take steps to do so ourselves. This means discussing the subject with professional librarians, publishers, broadcasters, authors and artists. Then bring on the developers and lastly the business people. It doesn't have to make a billion dollars but it should be a useful service for people of all ages.
This is why... (Score:1, Interesting)
Pure blanket hatred of the RIAA and things like this, and a general desire for free psuedonymous speech, too, without the threats that go with it.
Anyone who's interested in actually helping out, and has experience with mixnets, distributed hash tables (especially Kademlia derivatives), trust metrics and routing algorithms, or is just a very good unit tester, drop by IIP #anonymous and ask around.
[Posted via a p2p anonymous proxy chain!]
Re:Good idea? (Score:1, Interesting)
I think the right solution is to ban/prohibit minors under the age of 21 from buying CD's, until the law is sorted out. While here, we also need to stop them hiring videos, because of entrapment concerns.
Lastly, someone needs to appraise the value of a crappy lossy MP3 done in a kids bedroom relative to a free FM radio broadcast, relative to the real mycoy on factory pressed blanks. Inferior formats are worth less.
virus writers please step up! (Score:4, Interesting)
Jury nullification? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You know what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Clearly some punishment is fair in this case.
3500 dollors may be steep (or not), but the legel alternative would have the price at 1100 dollors,
No one knows whether or not she bought the CDs. 100 CDs is not a huge amount (assuming 11 songs per CD, which is low), though it may be for a 15-year-old. On the other hand, there is no legal alternative. iTunes Music Service is not the same as Kazaa, you're not sharing music there, you can't listen to an album to decide whether or not you want to buy the CD.
I think it's bullshit that if I want to avoid having the RIAA offer me a 'settlement' of several thousand dollars I have to shut off P2P software and have to monitor all outside access to my computer very closely, just because they're afraid that someone else will download some of the several thousand songs on my hard drive. I bet the RIAA wouldn't even bother trying to figure out how many of the songs they actually own, but would just send a bill for the 8000+ songs that are there. Come to think of it, even RIAA artists don't often attribute their copyright to the RIAA or give the RIAA the right to enforce their copyrights.
Re:You know what? (Score:3, Interesting)
But you aren't paying some rediculous fee for "each program" you watched, or could have watched.
Nope, they slap you with a small fine (not sue you for a huge one and settle if they will look like ogres if they continue). Doesn't the cable industry lose as much money from people stealing cable?
The Problem is the the **AA has found a profitable business model (read SCO) by being the scum suckers we sometimes accuse all lawyers of being (I'm sorry, protector of the record label's right to use creative accounting to screw artists, yet make bank themselves) and until a Congressman's daughter or niece get sued, no one will change the way it works.
Want a creative cracker job that will do some good? Start making the **AA think that governemnt officials and their family are sharing music files. Then let the fun begin. Its like the tobacco industry - as long as government officials are uneffected, or worse profit from the problem, nothing will ever stop it.
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.
Statistical anomaly? (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, most sharers (as well as Internet users capable of installing and configuring P2P software) are males. I'd expect the most hit group to be 16-21 years old males.
Or just media are focusing on those few very young girls within 260 people (as stated in the article) sued by the RIAA.
Re:Be a hypocrite. Hippos need crits. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why these things get modded down (Score:2, Interesting)
If the **AA isn't careful, they might find themselves with the same business model SCO is using currently.
It's way to easy for someone to spoof an IP address. Make it look like someone else is using P2P software. You're two links are perfect examples of how the innocent are being falsely accused.
I'm still waiting for a Senators child to be accused of file sharing. The **AA will make a mistake and their scheme will crumble.