The RIAA Sues 482 More People 535
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).
How long will this go on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sue Happy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:1595 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Joe Doe process (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Overall total? (Score:5, Insightful)
More info, please (Score:5, 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.Re:And the RIAA's site... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:2, Insightful)
The parent shouldn't be modded insightful, just offtopic. I could see modding it funny maybe, but insightful? Not really.
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.
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.
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sue Happy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:2, Insightful)
I support this action. Some people are not going to stop infringing copyright until it actually affects their lives in a negative fashion.
ISP's are not just going to hand the information over to the RIAA. Which I agree, they shouldn't do. So the RIAA takes the case to court, a judge decides if their is reasonable evidence to proceed with the case, forces the ISP to hand over their records. RIAA finds out who they are actually suing. I think this exactly how it should work.
Look, the suing your customer's is a facade. You aren't bitching about Best Buy throwing your ass in jail because they caught you red-handed trying to lift a TV from them just because you bought some Mountain Dew when you were scoping out the joint. This is no different.
Copyright is copyright. Yes, it is f'd up right now. Yes, it lasts way too long. Yes, a lot of the music is crap. All this is beside the point. Illegally copying the newest Britney Spear's CD isn't justified. Even under the most progressive copyright schemes, that would still be illegal. This is the act that these people are accused of doing. This is what the RIAA is trying to nail these people to the wall for. And I hope that they are extremely successful, since this could make them lose steam over trying to shove some crippled devices and broken CD's down consumer throats. They should be doing this, I find the other bastard technologies way more intrusive, especially for those that respect the law.
...I don't understand.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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....
Re:Remember... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Prohibition (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yay! (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't see why people like either her music or her body. It's all hype. Do a image google search [google.com] on her. Sure she's above average. Her face is quite cute, but she's not even close to a "10".
I know people have different tastes in music and women, but not that different. Even her body is mostly hype.
The videos look great, because they use camera tricks and lots and lots of editing. Take a look at the photos on Google. The great looking ones are all selected out of hundreds of pictures. Hype.
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.
RIAA (Score:2, Insightful)
But for you unfortunate ones south of the border, the law is the law, and just because you don't agree with it, doesn't make it legal.
I know that here on
1) These artists signed the contracts, without a gun to their head
2) If the RIAA is "stealing" from the artists, how does stealing from the RIAA make it better? You're basically reducing the little amount of money that the artist should have gotten.
And yes, I personally think that the greatest form of advertisement is word of mouth, and what better way to do so than p2p and filesharing? But once again, for the time being, the law is the law
No, that wont stop them (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps a national 'pirate tax', beacuse you know, EVERYONE is doing it, right? Bah.
Re:Don't call us pirates -- (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:4, Insightful)
People will never stand up for their rights because a. people are friggin idiots and b. the sales increases are driven by P2P. The RIAA is having their cake and eating it too per say. Not only do they enjoy the benefits of P2P, they sue for damages on top of that.
Re:Anonymous P2P (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actual or proposed schemes? I've proposed for a while now that any noncommercial action by natural persons be considered noninfringing, even if it would otherwise have been.
So your hypo would be perfectly legal. (assuming that you meant something other than 'illegally [doing things is] illegal' which is technically what you've posted, but is kind of circular.
Re:RIAA hosting files (Score:3, Insightful)
All that's really moot anyway, because as you postulate, entrapment is only applicable to law enforcement agencies. The RIAA, being a private organization, isn't subject to the same laws. I think that the only argument you could make is that since the RIAA is offering the files, there is an implied license to download/play them. But since it's fairly unlikely that anyone using P2P networks thinks that the songs are actually being provided by the RIAA (regardless of whether or not they actually are being provided by the RIAA) then it's a safe assumption that this defense wouldn't fly.
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:3, Insightful)
I really don't think too many people are saying to themselves, "Gee, I don't want to get sued for downloading music, better do what I did 3 years ago and pay $20 at the mall for that new Britney Spears album." This business model will thrive for a little bit longer, but when (not if) an alternative comes along, people will abandon the RIAA artists and companies almost overnight. More importantly, aspiring artists will bypass the RIAA labels.
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.
Re:Overall total? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not just open the gates? (Score:1, Insightful)
Something like 24 bit, 12kHz mono. They could even put a filesize limit on the whole system of 1Mb, or whatever.
You could download, listen to and trade whatever you want, but it would sound like AM radio. If you like it, you'll have a reason to buy, and the whole 'I can't hear it anywhere else' argument disappears.
I'd be satisfied.
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:1, Insightful)
Anybody who takes property that doesn't belong to them should be thrown in jail, period.
And those of you who think stealing is protected under the First Amendment, need to reread the Constitution, specifically Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, which grants Congress the authority to protect intellectual property.
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:3, Insightful)
Once the RIAA has real competition, they won't be able to throw their weight around quite so easily. Heck, they might even be rendered irrelevant, which I'm sure would be a wet dream for everyone but a few dickhead billionaires.
Why not 'theater-sharing' too? (Score:4, Insightful)
arrested for sneaking into the movies without paying, aka
'theater-sharing'.
"But, but, I was just copying the movie onto my eyeballs.
I didn't
ticket anyway, so it's not like you lost a sale..."
"I was, uhhh,
wanted to see if it was worth it before I paid the
full ticket price."
"Yeah, and I already saw the movie yesterday, so I should
be allowed a couple of 'backup' viewings, in case maybe
I missed any good scenes when I ran to the john."
"And I snuck in for free because you're a big evil greedy
corporation that charge too much for popcorn and exploit
your minimum-wage help! Take that, Capitalist Pigs!"
[ Any other standard pro-theatersharing arguments
I've failed to satirize? ]
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as freeloaders are conserned, how about you shut your trap on that one. Go out and take a survey; what's music really worth to most people? $20 a CD, or $3? $50 a month for all you can handle? The RIAA is a cartel, and people have gotten used to cartel prices.
As far as "worldwide exposure, active promotion, industry contacts and that nice advance", what dream world are you living in? They get you to sign a contact giving them right to whatever you make, you then pay for your own studio time to record your songs (which can run $500-$600 or more an hour). You send it to them, they may or may not make a CD, atwhich point if they do you get a few pennies per sale, and the rest of the money you make are at conserts, and even then you get a cut of the ticket sales. Making music is more of a job than a creative work with the RIAA.
Re:Circularity to your argument (Score:2, Insightful)
Right and wrong have nothing to do with legal or illegal. You made the equivocation. Any reasonable concept of copyright would cover Britney and her most recent work. If you disagree then you disagree with copyright. I'm not going to argue with you, because I'm just wasting keystrokes.
No, this is all about copyright. Yes, distribution costs have gone down because of the Internet. Media conglomerations are a result of high costs of distribution, look at how much it costs to run a TV/Radio station. Although, I will admit there were also some illegal mergers and cartel behavior. But none of this changes the fact that the RIAA doesn't want their stuff on Kazaa. Copyright gives them the right to prosecute people that do that. This is what they are doing. Nothing says you have to listen to stuff from the RIAA. Make your own music and release it. Computers are making it easier to produce quality recordings and edit them than ever. The Internet gives you limitless distribution models. The RIAA is missing out on this. You understand technology; you can take advantage of it. Just don't take their stuff and act like you own it then pass it out like government cheese. You don't. And you hurt other people that want to do perfectly legal things with their music. If prosecution is shut-off, what alternatives are there? Prevention and anti-circumvention? I like them suing people for actually infringing copyright better than the alternatives.
I'm not wishing legal problems on anyone. But, I support RIAA in this action. Since, I can't think of a better way to do it. How about this: come up with a way that you can stop someone from infringing your copyright? Let's say you are a porn site serving up a bunch of pictures/videos of me deep-throating (as you alluded to earlier), but in general me getting things crammed down my throat. Selling access to your site is how you make your living. Some bastard is handing out copies of your copyrighted work. You don't know who, but you know their IP. It might or might not be affecting the money that you are taking in, but it probably is in a negative way. How do you take care of this problem?
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:1, Insightful)
As for the last paragraph: you are quoting the common complaints raised by independent artists, complaints which are based on very shitty experiences not shared by all artists, certainly not by the artists I know who would DIE for even a summarily shitty record contract. For one thing, anybody making less than $2 per CD is a moron who neglected to fight for a better contract. That was the standard a-way back in 1994; KRS-ONE wrote a song about it. You pay for your own studio time with the advance that they gave you on sales of the record, they release the CD when they want, it's true, but they do that to time it with promotion. Promotion doesn't mean POSTERS, by the way...it might be nothing more than sending out discs to review rags, but that's something you can't get as an independent. Self promotion is a rough racket, and if you want radio play these days you pretty much have to be an RIAA act. Nobody else has the sales to properly do promotions.
The RIAA is a cartel, I'll grant you that. I'm not against the independents and they make more and more economic sense each year, as the number of signing majors goes down. But my favorite record from my favorite Indie artist only sold 30,000 copies. I guarantee that, had they released that same record on a major with nationwide airplay and tightened production, they would have cleared at least 100,000 copies. The difference in pay percentage is pretty substantial, but it's not quite as big as the potential for becoming famous and paid, two things you have to be VERY lucky to get as an indie.
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, I love indie rock, but you have to be a realist I think and realize that just because they're indie, or small or whatever, that they are automatically good, and won't pull similar stunts if given the chance.
Re:Countermeasures (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, use any open source software?
Do you own it?
No? Go directly to jail.
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:How long will this go on? (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't think that's something you have to worry about. There is no way Bush is going to win. It's probably going to the biggest defeat an incumbent president has suffered in US history.
There's the anti-war people, pro-women's rights, pro-civil-liberties. Is there anyone left voting for him besides lunitics? That can't be more than 20% of the population.
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the sheeple will buy it and the original fans will now become sick of the music since they hear it everywhere...or worse, the bands will release a new more commercial album sanitized for the airwaves.
Re:Anonymous P2P (Score:3, Insightful)
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It's kinda like infections and penicilin. If you don't treat it, the infection spreads. But if you do medicate, they develop immunities. But what good is it if you can't use it? RIAA is trying to use the legal system in the same way.
Also, I found your statement a bit surrealistic, since P2P is the Internet. Just like mail, web, im, newsgroups, irc and a host of other things. Just one of my favorite nitpicks
Kjella
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only question I have is this: Isn't Netware a competing product to SCO's Unix product? Technically, I believe it is. When you think about it, it is really kind of funny. SCO could have sued Novell for having a competing product once they purchased UnixWare.
I have a feeling Novell thought of that when they sold the rights to SCO since they had NetWare long before they bought Unix. They probably have plenty of language in the agreement to protect their flagship product.
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How long will this go on? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bearing in mind that the "music" industry has only been running for around 60 years already, during which it has shifted from recordings of original artists performances, to mass production of copy cat artistes. I'm don't see why the music industry should be protected from natural evolution by the law. So what if they lose money and go broke ?
There was a thing called the dotcom boom a little while ago, lots of computer techs and businesses went under, but nobody passed a law demanding that we all had to buy their products to keep them afloat. Here in the UK, we used to have miners, and weavers and all sorts of other craftsmen. They are mostly gone now, and people have moved into other areas.
I respect musicians who get out on the road and entertain people, which is their primary function, not to spend 3 years in a studio on a piece of crap, then expect the world to pay for it for ever. How much is a recording artist worth in real terms anyway ? Certainly not the millions they currently end up with.
P2P is feeding on the still twitching carcass of a dying industry. The only people interested are the industry itself.
American Criminality (Score:2, Insightful)
"Eventually it was discovered that God did not want us to be all the same. This was bad news for the Government of the World as it seemed contrary to the doctrine of 'Portion Controlled Servings.'
Mankind must be made more uniformly if The Future was going to work.
Various ways were sought to bind us all together, but alas, sameness was unenforceable.
It was about this time that someone came up with the idea of Total Criminalization.
Based on the principle that if we were ALL crooks we could at least be uniform to some degree in the eyes of the law.
Shrewdly our legislators calculated that most people were too lazy to perform a real crime. So new laws were manufactured making it possible for anyone to violate them any time of the day or night, and once we had all broken some kind of law we'd all be in the same big happy club right up there with the President, the most exalted industrialists and the clerical big shots of your favorite religions.
Total Criminalization was the greatest idea of its time and was vastly popular except with those people who didn't want to be crooks or outlaws.
So, of course, they had to be tricked into it...which is one of the reasons why music was eventually made illegal."
It is wonderful that Frank continues to bother evil people from beyond the grave.