RIAA Grinds Down Individuals in the Courtroom 680
Iphtashu Fitz writes "The Associated Press recently reviewed many of the copyright infringement lawsuits that the RIAA filed against individuals charged with illegally sharing songs on P2P networks. According to the article over 800 of the targeted individuals have settled for approx. $3000 in fines. One man in California had to refinance his house to pay his $11,000 settlement. Many of the defendants are unwilling to face the possibility of even higher fines by fighting the suits in court despite the fact that it could resolve important questions about copyrights and the industry's methods for tracing illegal downloads. It seems that even some of the judges presiding over these cases question the RIAA's tactics. 'I've never had a situation like this before, where there are powerful plaintiffs and powerful lawyers on one side and then a whole slew of ordinary folks on the other side,' said U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner, who blocked the movement of a number of these cases in her courtroom for months. She wanted 'to make sure that no one, frankly, is being ground up.'"
dear plagiarising bastard. (Score:5, Informative)
Against Intellectual Property, Chapter 3 of Information Liberation by Brian Martin [uow.edu.au]
Re:Stop listening to music, addicts! (Score:3, Informative)
Legal defence insurance? (Score:5, Informative)
The Insurance might decline certain cases for example for gross misconduct but usually you've got some support when needed, typically for less than 50 Euros per year.
In cases like this it is not uncommon for such insurances to bundle their efforts, sometimes including consumer organisations, to get a more fundamental ruling.
Of course littigation on the scale we now see in the USofA is not (yet) as common/rampant in Europe.
Are CD Sales Really Down? Is P2P the Cause? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a report that says "Nielsen Rating System At Odds With RIAA's Claim Of Lost Sales" [kensei-news.com].
Here's a report that states "downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero" [unc.edu].
Re:This already has started... (Score:3, Informative)
Music Industry Their Own Worst Enemy (Score:5, Informative)
So at a time when they're suing thousands of their own customers...not a good business strategy IMHO...they're also cranking out really boring, insanely depressing music that all sounds like it was stamped out with an audio cookie cutter.
If this keeps up they'll have to give up the cocaine, private jets and porn star girlfriends! I'm having a hard time working up any sympathy for them.
So, yeah, hit them back in the wallet. Go out and sample free downloads, there are thousands of legal songs you can check out. Here are a couple links to get you started:
You can also shop at used CD stores. The only way you're going to get them to change is to stop buying their crap.
Re:Equal Protection under the Law (Score:3, Informative)
You have a right to legal council in a criminal trial. You are on your on own in a civil trial.
Adrian
When you can't fight RIAA... (Score:2, Informative)
If you can not pay for court expenses, at least make sure you install PeerGuardian [methlabs.org] or Protowall [bluetack.co.uk] or make sure that at least you have a firewall [openbsd.org] to drop the ip ranges of anti-p2p organization [bluetack.co.uk].
Re:Once again, protest with your money (Score:4, Informative)
1) There appears to be no main site where you can submit possible new download places, such as MachinaeSupremacy.com (hint hint)
2) There is no "more from this author" button, just a search that types the artist and title in Google. When I listened to Beth Quist I immediately wanted to buy her album, but couldn't, unless I did research.
3) Not really irate's fault, but I want the music on CD as well as a download. Fair enough, you can burn your own etc, but it would be nice if they could send you a CD for an extra GBP 5 (about $10) or something. Even if it is a CD-R with a printed cover and track list... Or have I missed the point?
So essentially, irate radio is a really good idea, needs a lot of work on the interface etc, preferably a Winamp plugin or something, and needs our support!
BTW, Beth Quist (one of the MP3's I downloaded was from her) is on Magnatune (the non-evil people). If we could only get message out to kids about Magnatune, as I think it's a good lesson to be learnt. The "Why I set up Magnatune" section made me not want to buy any more commercial CD's that have touched the hands of the RIAA ever again...
Re:Once again, protest with your money (Score:2, Informative)
True, but remember RIAA used to be able to use the DMCA's fast-track subpoena provision, until a couple of ISP's stood up to them and got that procedure blocked in court. We may be seeing the results of the cases from before that happened, when RIAA could get the names without ever having to file a suit (and thus decide whether to pursue it or quietly drop it if a high-profile name came up); the article doesn't say whether or not this is the case.
RIAA radar (Score:3, Informative)
Enjoy!
Re:Equal Protection under the Law (Score:2, Informative)
In California you are not entitled to a jury trial for any offence costing less then $1000 and requiring less then 1 year in jail. I imagine it is much the same in other states.
Re:What proof? (Re:Can I mod this +6?) (Score:3, Informative)
Accused, when found guilty, are responsible for what they did. Untill they are found guilty, they are accused of, suspected of, but NOT GUILTY.
This is fundamental to how law and justice work.
You still have to prove an accusation, AND IF IT IS TRUE, you can hold the person responsible for it.
Those are really 2 independant things.
> Or do you, in fact, sincerely believe, that some of the people RIAA, who has targeted so far, are innocent?
I do not know, nor do you.
That is exactly why it has to be brought to the proper court with the proper kind of proof.
There is a very serious chance that there are people among those accused that did not do wrong, but simply cannot afford to fight the situation, even less so in the face of civil court with its low standards for proof.
> Or are you, perhaps, afraid, that RIAA (or MPAA) will, in the future use the same tactics to go after the much wider group of people, and there will be innocents there?
There is no reason to assume that it did not happen already, neither is there a reason to assume that it did. This is exactly why stricter levels of proof are required.
> That would be a legitimate concern, of course, but as long as it still costs RIAA more (in absolute terms) to wage each of these little battles, than it gets from the "victims" in settlements, there is no need to worry -- they are not making money off these settlements. They just want to scare people enough for the illegal downloads to stop.
As long as people have a big chance on losing regardless of being right or wrong, people are not going to fight it if they have a cheaper way out. This is directly frustrating the legal system and because of that an absolutely unacceptable practise.
There are working ways to deal with criminals that do not involve bullying people, scare tactics, frustrating the legal system etc. They should use those instead.
> Whether this is a wise plan or not should not concern us...
Yes it should, it undermines the legal system.
A very serious problem resulting from the RIAA way of doign things is the loss of proportionality in punnishment. Prop[ortionality is what makes that shoplifting is not punnished the same way as murder. It is extremely important that crimes that are coinsidered more serious are punnished in a more heavy way. What happens here is circumventing that alltogether.
Re:Once again, protest with your money (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Equal Protection under the Law (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the nifty calculator that I used: http://eh.net/hmit/ppowerusd/ [eh.net]
Re:Once again, protest with your money (Score:3, Informative)
The MacOS GUI (at least, I don't have Windows or Linux) is abysmally terrible. All windows open in the upper left, ignoring the OSes location for new windows. The window contains terribly ugly icons, but no tooltips. The help item in the menu bar does jack crap... of course a confusing GUI wouldn't have any help! It doesn't work together with iTunes at all. It's not smart enough to figure out it's running on OS X and change its default web browser accordingly. Toolbar buttons have unexpected behavior. (The 'Info' button doesn't give info on the selected track, as you'd expect, but on the currently playing track.)
The program downloads and downloads and downloads and keeps all the files FOREVER and if you try to delete any, it'll just download them again. (The only way to delete a file is to declare that it sucks, which impacts your rankings and makes no sense.) It has only the most basic player controls (next track, last track, pause), lacking fast-forward, rewind, and stop. There's no way to tell it to just download tracks that match your preferences. There's no way to go back and see what ratings you assigned to tracks, much less change them. Once you've rated a track, there's no way to change your mind and set it back to unrated.
Anyway, the concept is good, but this program just isn't there. Please, PLEASE, recruit someone to at least fix your GUI before you promote it all over the place, and at least fix the glaring problems with the rest of the program. (i.e. let me manage my playlist.)
Re:RIAA targets... (Score:1, Informative)
That goes for foobar2000 as well - it uses the same decoding workaround if it sees a LAME header.
If you want to burn such a rip, use Burrrn [burrrn.net], which is incredibly simple to use - drag and drop the m3u. Again... gapless.
You should of course be using Exact Audio Copy to rip. I recommend 0.9b4, which is no longer available from the official site, because it's too good (Detect TOC Manually is useful for ripping copy-controlled discs).
And never, ever, make 2nd generation mp3s. They sound like poo.
If you want to consistently generate quality rips, I suggest using the Überstandard (google for it).
Re:Buy the CD's? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Once again, protest with your money (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, I have a thesis to write so my contributions have slowed down a lot recently, and I think similar real-life interferences have hit the other devs lately.
I suggest that you don't try the stable version, but get the CVS or unstable versions. A lot has happened since the last stable release. There is also a new server under development, which will allow a few things such as submissions. Hopefully also a search and queue for next downloading function eventually (that's something I'd like to see, and would consider adding myself if need be).
If you have ideas you'd like to see in it, hop on the devel list and suggest them (or email me and I'll forward them). Coders are also totally welcome!
Oh, and for the interested, someone has been working on a KDE client for it too.
Now I'll wander through this thread and reply to other meaningful comments on iRate