RIAA Sues More Music Lovers 626
DominoTree writes "The RIAA, a trade group representing the U.S. music industry has filed a new round of lawsuits against 744 people it alleges used online file-sharing networks to illegally trade in copyrighted songs, it said on Wednesday."
A chilling effect on sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) said the various suits, filed in courts across the country, cover "John Doe" defendants whose true identities are unknown to the group.
From the previous group of John Doe suits more folks have been identified:
Separately, suits covering 152 people who were previously sued anonymously but later identified and offered the chance to settle, were refiled with their true identities after they ignored or declined those offers, an RIAA (news - web sites) spokesman said.
I still maintain that suing your customers, whether your are the RIAA or SCO, can have a chilling effect on sales.
Cheers,
Erick
Has there ever been an actual court case (Score:5, Insightful)
This about sums up the story. (Score:2, Insightful)
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Is it really news that the RIAA is still filling lawsuits against grandmothers and 12 year olds?
Kudos. (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Please continue turning a blind eye to reality. Please continue to pulverize youngsters for sharing music, which youngsters have done since anyone could copy a tune on a banjo or flute. Please continue to support corporations with broken business models. Please continue to encourage businessmen to neglect the physical realities of their product in favor of government backed enforcement of arbitrary laws.
Some day, all of these evil p2p sharing kiddies will come visit you in the nursing home. Enjoy your power while you've got it. It'll never substitute for intelligence.
Steven
When will they learn? (Score:5, Insightful)
All the better reason for me not to buy another CD again. Last time I bought one was in '99.
Euphemisms (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess that sounds a little nicer than the truth. "RIAA Sues More People Who Habitually Break the Law"
Boycott? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, this would probably be trumpeted as "yet more evidence that piracy hurts CD sales".
I don't download music, and I haven't bought a CD in years.
BTW, an interesting alternative is to digitize analog from FM or digital cable, then rip to MP3. It's even legal (VCR law). ;-) You won't notice a quality difference in most situations.
Just don't share.
Misleading headline (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like if someone was getting mauled by a dog, and another person ran over and killed the dog to save the person, and the headline ran: Man Beats Puppy To Death
A bit misleading, no?
Not so innocent (Score:4, Insightful)
If some guy is selling ripped CDs on the side of the road that's illegal, just because you're doing it online for free doesn't make you any better.
If they were suing people for downloading a song we'd have something to be outraged about, but people serving the downloads have brought it on themselves.
Re:This about sums up the story. (Score:2, Insightful)
b) If your 12-year-old is pirating music, you aren't doing a good job as a parent and the lesson will be taught one way or another
c) I'm sure most of the people named in the lawsuits are neither grandmothers nor underage, and you are just blowing things out of proportion.
Re:what is the RIAA again? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Euphemisms (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking something offered for sale without rendering payment is UNJUST.
Re:This is why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummmm...can you say "Sting Operation" boys and girls? How the hell do you think they catch kiddie porn freaks who try to meet up with kids offline? Do you know you're not setting yourself up to illegally distribute songs offline with a cop of FBI agent?
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
You see where this is going.
Also, wouldn't suing your customers piss them off, making them switch to alternate providers, further lowering sales, prompting you to sue more people in a desperate attempt to preserve your business model, causing them to stop purchasing from you (resume loop)?
I'd love to be in the room when the "brains" behind the RIAA finally say "screw it - we lost."
Re:Euphemisms (Score:3, Insightful)
Breaking the law is never ok..
SBC (Score:1, Insightful)
Simple cure.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a simple cure AND they get money from selling thr advertising space. Why haven't they tried this yet? They can also track who downloads it, put upa mini survery, whatever is popular they can whore even more.
It's fucking common sense and costs alot less then repeatedly sueing people.. and makes you get a free fans.
Basic legal fact. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kjella
Re:Circumvent the RIAA (Score:2, Insightful)
By just selecting who you want to pay, you're denying someone their rights. That's against the law!
It's the same as copying an eBook and just paying the artist. What about the people who spent money and time on preparing, promoting and releasing the eBook?
How much do you pay the artist? Do you decide on what they should get? What if the artist wants more than you are prepared to pay? What if the artist wants you to pay all the other people entitled to their money?
You're living in a dream land where you make excuse after excuse as to why your own version of stealing is OK. Its not.
The only really effective form of protest is to not buy the music. Cannot live without your music? Then you just don't feel strongly enough about it, so just stump up the money and but the friggin CD.
Just what gives you the right to do what you please with someone elses property?
You are an arse.
Re:Dupe (Score:3, Insightful)
Sheeesh, this is pretty much a re-post of the same comment a few days ago. First the stories are duped, now comments are getting duped?
A few days ago? Several comments virtually identical to this one have been posted to every RIAA-related story for the last few years.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course. Numerous studies have shown that file sharing probably overall does more good for the RIAA than harm, and so they should embrace it, at least somewhat.
However, one point that is often overlooked here is that this is their decision to make, not ours.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
For starters the Internet is a global medium. I really don't see how picking on a handful of John Does in the United States will limit the availability of audio on P2P networks as a whole. Even if the RIAA managed to shutdown every computer sharing audio files in the United States people would still be downloading (from the rest of the world) and not buying.
The fact is it doesn't matter where the people sharing are
I think the more successful campaign revolved around flooding the networks with low quality audio files. This way they could market CD's as a big step up. In fact even today low quality audio files are a major drawback of using P2P for regular folk.
Furthermore I wonder why the RIAA hasn't gone after
The RIAA seems to be 2 steps behind what is going on in the real world.
More rationalizations for being cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
I know somebody who is not rich, not an evil RIAA executive, and hell, he doesn't even make music, but he has personally been hurt by P2P file traders who think it's their 'right' to get everything they want for free.
This guy does in depth analysis of political issues and publishes research online that are used by high school and college debate teams. He provides a very valuable service since there would not be enough time to stay abreast of current political issues and also be prepared to debate so his reports act as executive summaries to condense all the garbage floating around on Google.
So what happens to his stuff? Well there are a few people out there who will pay for it, but then P2P kicks in and for every 1 debate team that buys the report there are probably 10 that don't.
"Information wants to be free!" "It's evil to want to get money for your work!" (in which case why do you complain when your job is outsourced?)
This guy is providiing a valuable service, and he does it all on his own, but I'm sure there will be 10 posts rationalizing why stealing his work is OK and he is worse than Bush for daring to charge to make the lives of other people easier.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow, I don't think that will be any time soon...
Re:Fair Sentence (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Kudos. (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone supports copyrights because they believe it will benefit the artists. It doesn't. The companies own everything the artists produce as soon as a contract is signed.
Copyrights only benefit the corporate tag-alongs and, as such, need to be removed or revised.
"We need to enforce laws to protect the profit of CEOs, VPs, and executives who already have base salaries of multi-millions per year!" Who else agrees?
Re:Euphemisms (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm continually amazed how the average person's sphere of awareness drops off dramatically roughly where his nose ends.
Mod me down now, since I haven't defended stealing music. Where this topic is concerned, opposing thought at Slashdot is quickly quashed.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's one of the issues here that you won't find in other situations - there's no legal way to acquire this music without the RIAA getting a cut. The RIAA knows this and the organization plays that card with a bit of hostility.
Re:This about sums up the story. (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't mean they're _not_ laws.
Go ahead and practice civil disobediance if you wish, that's up to you, but don't pretend that copyright infringement is any less against the law than any other type of theft.
If obtaining something that is not rightfully yours (and no, it's NOT - a musicians music isn't yours to take any more than a sculptur's sculpture would be) is not stealing just because there isn't a tangible decrease in a inventory somewhere, then what is it?
The only English word that comes close to fitting is Steal. Which, being a word that comes from Old English originated in a time when the only method of stealing involved physically removing. The world has moved on now, and there are ways of illegally obtaining something from someone without physically removing it.
Also, it is quite acceptable to use steal in the sense where the owner is deprived of something, but you don't actually gain it yourself (stealing someone's life for example) so why not the other way round?
The "it's not stealing/piracy it's copyright infringement", is a straw man argument that misses the point that no matter what you call it it _is_ illegal whether you think it should be or not.
None of the examples you've given are the same... (Score:3, Insightful)
Blacksmiths are no longer in high demand because technology has left the blacksmiths products behind. Which is substantially different than people simply taking the fruits of the blacksmiths labour without paying for it.
In this guys example, his product is in high demand, (if 10 debate teams use the report for every 1 that actually buys it) people just refuse to pay for it.
Just as music is clearly in high demand if the volume of music trading that goes on on the various P2P networks is any indication, people are just taking the product without paying for it. That's not a change in business model, that's wholesale 'theft' of a product.
RIAA sues music THIEVES [headline correction] (Score:3, Insightful)
Talk about overly slanted editing! LMAO
Hey, I love $$ CASH $$, so if I get take to some whenever I want by circumventing laws and protections that are in place, thats cool right, since I just *luv* cash money?!
I think the RIAA is heavy handed, but jesus criminey that headline is piss-poor!
Re:Fair Sentence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This about sums up the story. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most crime is real. Intellectual property and copyright are intangible. Can you tell the difference between music which was purchased vs. music downloaded with only your ear? If someone tells you they have a "great idea" can you immediately swear that they didn't hear it from someone else two days earlier?
a musicians music isn't yours to take any more than a sculptur's sculpture would be
A musician's music isn't the musician's anymore. It belongs to some media conglomerate. You're attempting to arouse sympathy for a group of people who aren't even involved anymore.
not stealing just because there isn't a tangible decrease in a inventory somewhere
It's not stealing. The product was legally sold. Rights of ownership were transferred at the point of sale. Misrepresenting a rental as a sale is a poor way of defending business stupidity. If they feel they are losing profits they should reevaluate the worth of their product.
Take the agricultural industry. They produce genetically engineered crops. They only sell seed which produces sterile crops because they are intelligent and they know that otherwise the product would be EASILY COPIED. The agri industry could have lobbied for federal oversight and DNA testing of crops. They could have run down farmers for "stealing" their intellectual property. Instead they 1) subsidized, out of their own profit margin, engineered crops in order to put them in the marketplace and 2) invested in the research to produce seed which produced sterile crops.
The music industry should take a lesson. Making criminals out of customers is the wrong business model. Why not admit,"We're so stupid that we didn't realize our product was so easily copied."
The product was legally sold. The government is not their personal Guido.
Re:This about sums up the story. (Score:3, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Police are now arresting money lovers [pantagraph.com].
Re:When will they learn? AC9 (Score:1, Insightful)
They want the same as they have always listened to, the same chord sequences and arrangements, with slight changes. Do anything 'difficult' that stretches that, even harmonicly simple additions and time signatures beyond 4/4 that modern composers have been doing since the 20's, and it won't sell.
So, we have a catch 22.
People want new music, but they are not prepared to make the effort to listen to anything challenging, so pop music has stayed very similar since the 50's. The song lengths, chord structures and melodys remain almost identical, only the choice of timbres has changed.
The public is happy with it's old records, they fulfill the need for mindless pop, so why do they need any more to add to the pile?
Remember, it's not your fault there is no new 'good' music, you put the effort in to find and learn to appreciate music that you initially find hard or upsetting, don't you?
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, the RIAA is targeting distributors. The fact that some just happen to be users is coincidental.
Re:Fair Sentence (Score:1, Insightful)
issue them 10 million licenses at $1/license
pay off any fines from the RIAA with software licensing. This allows you to avoid costly physical media.
Re:More rationalizations for being cheap (Score:2, Insightful)
As a former High School and College debater I am well aware of the usefulness of the type of briefs your friend produces and I recognize that the market is very small. However, I am also well aware that the problems your friend faces existed well before P2P came on the scene. High School and college debate are relatively small communities. These people see each other every weekend and they probably go to camp together over the summer. One of the main activities at summer camps is photo copping useful information. That is the primary motivation for going to camp. We would make sure someone went to camp every summer from our HS team just to be sure we had a copy of all the latest briefs? Did we pay for them? Well the camps are not cheap, but I suppose not. On the other hand no one would go to camp if they didn't come back with two or three decent cases. So maybe it is the camps stealing from your friend rather than the individual debaters (some camps do work very hard to prevent the reproduction of copywriter works but it is very hard to do when you have kids up all night and day at the photocopier).
In short, the photocopier, the word wide web, and plain old sharing (not file sharing) are, in my experience, a greater threat to your friend's livelihood. And I know it to be a fact. Your friend chooses to blame P2P but how does he know?
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks like however that the RIAA will need to be taken, kicking and screaming into the new age of music. An age where hopefully more quality music will be produced and less populist blond breast augmented voice modified bimbo' won't be ruling the charts. Oh and a place where they might not be particularly relevant anymore.
I've been finding it harder to do the try before you buy thing as many stores I go to don't let you try before you buy for some bizarre reason. I find it bizarre because I would of thought that music stores would want to encourage people to buy music not make it harder for customers to pick something they would like. And the stores that do usually charge some quite unreasonable prices on their CD's for the priviledge, or simply don't have a good range of music to listen to.
But of course, its all the customers fault that they are demanding more than they are getting, and when they don't get it they then take it. Thats a rather naive however, there are people that will always steal music, software etc because they see it as better than paying. I don't but hey thats just me. Those people, I have no problem with them having to defend their actions in court. However this situation we are in is infact many shades of grey and not just black and white with such simple examples as those I have described. The RIAA members steal from artists too, that is documented in places that I can't be bothered finding.
Bah I can't be bothered wondering if what I've just written makes any sense. I'm going to bed! :)
Re:This is why... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm... so your theory is that by posting a public e-mail address unobfuscated, I'll lose yet another public account to spam, or idiots such as yourself, as if I haven't already gone through a dozen publics by now anyway? And, of course, you're forgetting that if I really want another gmail account, I can use one of my remaining invitations to reinvite myself.
Except, my private address, where anything of any concern goes, which you do not know, will continue to function as it always has...
You're a bit of a moron, aren't you? You must be a conservative. Nobody else could possibly be that stupid.
Re:Keep it coming (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to see real great musicians working go see a symphony orchestra or visit your local jazz club. Here are people who are working at making music.
The stuff being pushed by the RIAA members is mostly amateur crap that has been "productized" by the "music industry" and marketed to death.
Since when is production of music supposed to be an "industry" anyways? I thought music was art?
There was plenty of music before the record industry and there will be plenty of music after.
I think we need some clarification here... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are plenty of copyrighted songs floating around out there by people who are not RIAA members, or don't even care that it is happening, or in fact encourage it.
There are lots of taper-friendly bands who, while owning the copyright for their own songs, love it when fans trade recordings of live shows, etc...
I think it's time to start grouping these RIAA-member artists with the RIAA. I dislike the generalization that the RIAA somehow has legal authority over ALL copyrighted content, whether or not they represent the artist in questions, and whether or not the artist even cares.
Re:"RIAA Sues More Music Lovers" (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, the people who paid thousands to build a decent collection and, as part of a price fixing law suit, got less than the cost of a CD in return. That sounds pretty fair to me. Not to say that justifies piracy but I feel the public is more sympathetic towords Joe Sixpack than a multi-million (if not billion) dollar organization that produces nothing but lawsuits and sales charts. What a racket. The RIAA should have spent more time examining fair business practices and educating record labels to the dark side of price gouging. Anytime you make something so expensive you're going to create a black market.
Perhaps piracy wouldn't be such an issue if the music industry played on a level playing field all along. Too bad, the cat's out of the bag now and neither side is going to stop. If anything the RIAA has more of a chance of being taken down for shady practices. It's millions versus one.
Re:Suing over Bit Torrent... (Score:3, Insightful)
Disclaimer: IAABCA (I _AM_ A BitTorrent Client Author)
It is -trivially- easy for the *AA to get
a) your IP
b) what files you're downloading
c) how much you've downloaded
d) how much you've uploaded
And they can do all this without ever connecting to your computer
All the above information is gained from the tracker level. Many even have a nice web-based interface to this information. (See, for example, here [filelist.org], login may be required)
If you're in a country where P2P is illegal (I'm in Canada, all my development and downloading goes on here, and so far the consumer is winning the war here) then don't download illegal material with BT, they're watching, and there's nothing you can do.
Regarding the guy who said "just don't upload and they can't do anything".. BT works on tit-for-tat. You send a block, you get (usually) 3 back. Sometimes a client will take pity on you, and send you a free block (to test how fast it can send to you, and if you will send back or not). In other words.. no uploading == very, very slow downloading, if any at all, which negates the purpose of BT.
BitTorrent is NOT a protocl for spreading w4r3z. It is for spreading large legitimate files in a situation where the author doesn't have access to the resources to spread the files himself.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should read your own definition.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
But you will always share what you download... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just one prblem - while you download a song, you are also sharing it.Even if you download it and immediately remove it from your shared folder/directory, you're still sharng the thing while downloading, even if only from the temp directory where the file is being stored for assembly.
Some P2P systems, such as BitTorrent, in fact rely on this very thing to exist at all.
Excellent Post. (Score:3, Insightful)
"The government is not their personal Guido."
I also agree that copyright infrindgement is an artifical crime. Copyright property is a state-sponsored temporary monopoly which creates a scarcity which does not correspond to any state in reality. An *artifical* scarcity which does not exist or would exist except as created by law.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are the ones who have destroyed the copyright laws, not us. We are only protecting the public domain for future generations. It is right and proper that we do so.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
I may be mistaken, but I am under the impression that simply downloading is not illegal per se. Copyright covers distribution, and downloaders are not distributing the songs, people who share are the distributors here. Of course, with most modern P2P programs practically mandating uploading along with downloading, this distinction gets pretty blurry.
Also, I think that this is how things should work, at the very least. This way, compliance with the law is in the hands of the distributor, who is in the best position to make sure everything is in order. Imagine if everybody who downloaded from a shady but legitimate-looking music store could get hit with a copyright infringement suit!
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:2, Insightful)
How do you know they aren't buying it, too, you idiot?
I just downloaded "The Girl Next Door". I hadn't heard of the movie before but I saw it while browsing for torrents and decided, "What the hell." It rocked. So much so that the next time I'm at Costco I'm buying the DVD.
If someone hadn't illegally shared that with me, the studio would have sold one less copy.
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
A chilling effect on sales?-"Stick" mentality. (Score:1, Insightful)
Since you and your coherts have never actually produced any of this "property" . What else but arrogance makes you think it's yours. All you do is "consume" this property for your own enjoyment.
Quite frankly as mean as it may be to say. I do hope every artist on the planet stops producing "property" for your enjoyment. "Public Domain" exists in part because some of the "public" chooses to contribute. Instead of telling the other half that they better or "else". Oh no, wait. There's no "else". There's no "stick", but just "carrots" and rather withered looking ones at that. So tell me "music lovers", what are you going to do when no one wishes to create "property" under your terms? All you "book lovers", what are you going to do when no one wishes to create "property" under your terms?
Maybe the "imbalance" here is that one side feels they don't need the other. Anyone care to test the reality? Hey we're "starving artists" already. What do we have to loose?
Re:A chilling effect on sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
A person who is making hundreds of your songs available for download by anyone in the world is not your customer. He is your competitor.