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RIAA Threatens More Music-Lovers 636

Posted by michael from the thank-you-sir-may-i-have-another dept.
Xenographic writes "According to this article at SFGate, the RIAA has warned 204 more people that they are pursuing legal action against them. After the uproar over the last batch of lawsuits, however, they're not (yet) suing the people in question, but intend to allow them to settle out of court, first."
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RIAA Threatens More Music-Lovers More

RIAA Threatens More Music-Lovers

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  • Music Lovers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by peterprior ( 319967 ) on Saturday October 18, 2003 @07:00PM (#7250686)
    I love music, and I've not been threatened. Maybe they're going after people who violate copyright law. *shocker*

    • What he meant to say but didn't was, More music lovers who post a shitload amount of songs on p2p networks then state they aren't contributing to the once prosperous notion of file "SHARING" not file "DOWNLOADEVERYCATALOGFROMTHEWORLDANDWHOREITFORNORE ASON" are being sued. Hey I understand that's a hell of a long subject line.

      mode -1

    • Re:Music Lovers (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I know it's not a justification, but when I read this [mp3newswire.net], which was posted on slashdot on thursday [slashdot.org], I decided the RIAA can stuff themselves, everyone copy what (s)he wants. The RIAA members and their lawyers should all die a painful death. Only then will the world be ready for a fair trade.

      PS : I buy, on average, 1 CD/year, but I don't copy music. I just listen to the radio a lot (I live in a country where good and varied music can be heard on the radio). So don't go calling me a pirate ('cause my eyepatch

    • "Maybe they're going after people who violate copyright law. *shocker*"

      That would be coincidental. They're really going after the people that are threatening their lucrative business model thus insuring that you never have a fair digital music service.

      You should have more appreciation for what's really at stake here, especially if the RIAA comes after you in error [slashdot.org].

    • Re:Music Lovers (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nsingapu ( 658028 ) on Saturday October 18, 2003 @07:54PM (#7250980) Homepage
      Perhaps If you were to read the artical and familiarize yourself with the past behavior of the RIAA (instead of spouting as much rubbish as you can and still have a shot at first post), you might understand that the reason this so pisses alot of us off is exactly because we are music lovers. The issue is not necessarily one of piracy, nor lawsuits, but one of a blatent monopoly acting in their own interests and screwing their audence

      Case in point:
      "Our objective here is not to win lawsuits; it is to foster a business environment where legal online music services and bricks-and-mortar retail stores can flourish.''
      That might be true, but five years ago this was anything but the case. The RIAA in the past not only has done nothing to promote MP3s or any other "free" type of file (free as in containing no or few restrictions on use), but rather went out of their way to denounce the mp3 as a tool whose use was limited to piracy, and sunk money into proprietary, loosy formats which were time, play, or copy limited. They missed the uprising of online music by blatently persecuting those involved in it, legally or otherwise, and as such have had no monitary interest in it until Napster brought mp3s away from campuses and onto the computers of the common man...when they realized that it would not and could not be stopped.

      Additionally the RIAA has gone out of its way to manipulate both facts and figures. MP3s are a perfect digital copy they say, and therefore a much different beast then an analog VCR tape. Make sense to me, BUT, they use an argument that directly counters this at other times. Lets say one owns a CD and wants to make MP3's...its legal. Wants to find MP3's (corresponding to the CD in question) online...nope, the RIAA says that each CD pressed has minute flaws unique to a given CD and therefore the MP3's I create and those created by somone else are different entities, in effect that the MP3 is not so perfect a digital copy. Quite frankly I see little point in reporter even asking questions that demonstrate inconsistancies such as this (if you cannot afford a $15 cdrom drive or cannot figure out how to use one of the many available ripping tools then by definition your much too stupid to be finding music online). The point here is not that its a viable situation, rather that the RIAA tends to interpret law, or figures, in the way which is most convient at the time.
      Take this one:
      The lawsuits are the record industry's reaction to a 31 percent decline in CD sales in the United States in the past three years, a sharp drop that coincides with the rise of popular file-sharing networks like Kazaa and Gnutella, used by millions of people around the world to swap free copies of songs.
      What is ommited is this period also coincides with an economic slump and lossed by companies accross the board. It also coincides with the price of DVDs, a digital copy of a movie which took say $100 million to produce, falling below $10, and that of compact discs, which take perhaps $50,000 to master rising above $20. It also coincides with behaviors from the RIAA that have caused a handful, such as myself, to cease buying CD's. So while its nice to throw a big figure out there and omit all the other stuff, even nicer is to analize that figure in a historical perspective.

      To me a music lover is someone that buys a nice set of speakers, and listens to music. In contrast to this is those such as yourself who like to support the RIAA by giving the Spice Girls and N-Sync there day in the spotlight and dollar per disk, and could care less that the other $19 is used for suing 12 year olds and other worthless causes that do nothing to further music

      • Amusing thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)

        by werdna ( 39029 )
        The issue is not necessarily one of piracy, nor lawsuits, but one of a blatent monopoly acting in their own interests and screwing their audence

        In what way is suing someone for infringement "screwing their audience?" If they are using music they purchased, there is no risk whatsoever. If they are not using they purchased, how are they RIAA's audience?

        Oh, you mean the audience of persons who like the music but won't or can't pay for it? Tell you what, I agree with you. Tell you another thing, who car
    • Maybe they're going after people who violate copyright law. *shocker*

      You must be referring to the senior citizen who didn't even own a computer, and the 12 year old who only owned a Macintosh. I probably got those 2 mixed up, but you're right, taking legal action without proof did in fact shock me.
    • You're forgetting that this is Slashdot, where media pirates are brave freedom fighters trying to liberate music and movies from the hands of the wealthy and very wealthy and give it to the only moderately wealthy.

  • legal? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by drivelikejehu ( 601752 )
    "they're not (yet) suing the people in question, but intend to allow them to settle out of court, first."

    is that legal? can you say extortion?

    extortion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-storshn)
    n.

    1. The act or an instance of extorting.
    2. Illegal use of one's official position or powers to obtain property, funds, or patronage.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • You have to give people some notice of a lawsuit, even if it's right when you serve them with it. There's nothing wrong with settling out of court, either, so this is almost certainly legal in that regard, unless they find some way to accuse them of barratry [wikipedia.org] (disclaimer: IANAL).

      There are some interesting bits in this regard in the article (yeah, I know, no one reads those, so here are the best bits:)

      --
      "Our objective here is not to win lawsuits; it is to foster a business environment where legal online

  • Help out those who have been sued. (Score:5, Informative)

    by gricholson75 ( 563000 ) * on Saturday October 18, 2003 @07:04PM (#7250708) Homepage
    Downhillbattle.org, a music activism site, has set up a defense fund [downhillbattle.org] to help those who have been sued pay their legal bills. Slashdotters are always saying that more people should fight the suits, help out those who are.

  • So stop listening to their illegal tunes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MacDork ( 560499 ) on Saturday October 18, 2003 @07:05PM (#7250711) Journal
    iRate [sourceforge.net], not piRate :-)

    Cut off their revenue stream by listening to bands that they don't own! You know, bands that would love for you to download their music.

    • Like Century Media and Projekt which aren't members and have a lot of great bands.
    • and it's way too much trouble. The default servers (can you set up others?) are slow, there's no genres (yes, I know it's a feature, but I don't want to wade through 20 hip-hop and grunge songs to get to one decent power metal tune), and there didn't seem to be anyway to download one song while listening to another (although I only played with it a few minutes before dropping it). OK, to be fair I'm running it on linux. Maybe the windows client is easier to set up, more convient to use, etc. Plus, I know it
      • I've used iRATE [sourceforge.net] on both WinXP and linux, and can tell you that the Java client sucks equally on both platforms. Still, I use it, because the player is integrated, and the music is Free & free, but most importantly, because collaborative filtering is much more convenient than wading through piles of major-label crap in stores, or on kazaa, gnutella, or suprnova [suprnova.org], or on ShareReactor [slashdot.org], or eMule's Jigle [jigle.com], etc.

        This kind of "amazon-like" filtering will get a lot more popular in the future, IMO.

        --

  • I fail to see the difference between the old way ("We've filed a lawsuit against you. Either settle with us or we'll take you to court") and the new one ("Either settle with us or we'll file a lawsuit and take you to court")

    Is there some sort of long-term difference legally between a settlement reached before or after the lawsuit is filed?
    • In this case, the RIAA is saying "give us a small amount of money (like $2000) or we'll sue you for a lot (like $200 000), and even if you win the case, you'll still need to pay your lawyer $2000 anyways." If any innocents get sued, they'll get shafted no matter what they do. I don't mind the RIAA suing people who infringe copyright law, but I'm worried about the "innocent untill proven guilty" thing not occuring in this case.

  • Music lovers are getting shafted anyway. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sebi ( 152185 ) on Saturday October 18, 2003 @07:06PM (#7250727)

    There must be some other way to handle this situation. I know that I was one of those crying "foul play" when the RIAA started (or was rumoured to have started) sabotaging various peer-to-peer services with faked files. But looking back I must admit that that was a rather cool tactic to use. They entered the game and adapted to the existing rules and exploited them. The coolness stopped there, however.

    Lawsuits are, in circumstances like these and my opinion, the unfair way out. Using a measure that is not available to both sides. More or less exploiting the legal service because you cannot (or don't want to) compete in any other way. And don't let me get started on copy-protection. Hardly anything has pissed me off as much as when I bought a CD that I couldn't rip and put on my mp3 player. Incidentally that was the last CD I bough. I remember seeing a discussion featuring Chuck D. and Lars Ulrich at the height of the Metallica/Napster controversy. Ulrich's favourite word was "control". And that is the way it is, huh? It's all about control where it should be about respect.

    Fans don't agree with the way things are going anymore. Instead of adapting to their wishes you decide to sue them. That is what living in a free country with a free market is all about. The need to adapt is gone when you have the courts on your side.

    • Much as I agree with most of what you say, the RIAA does have one undeniable fact in their favour: they people they are suing did (in most cases) break the law.

      We can argue over whether it's a just law in today's circumstances, whether distributors should be providing legal alternatives, whether the RIAA's motives are selfish, and many other issues, but that doesn't change the fact. It may be immoral for the RIAA to sue, but legally speaking they are right to do so. What music sharers do (in general) is

  • IANAL but ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday October 18, 2003 @07:06PM (#7250728)
    wouldn't it be cheaper for them to threaten/subpoena/sue the whole US population as an entity (since everybody with a computer and a little experience does P2P)? who's the US people's representant again, isn't it the govern..... oops, nevermind.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday October 18, 2003 @07:09PM (#7250735)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • >When I was in college, I had literally nothing
      >they could take from me

      When I was in college, being called as a defendant in court would have caused me to fail a term for attendance reasons alone. That would have cost my financial support for the following term, which would have ruined my acadmeic career.

      When you're in college, there IS something that can EASILY be taken from you, and that is the opportunity to continue going to college.
    • Ever hear of having your wages garnered and attached?
    • I honestly think that the only one winning anymore is the lawyers. If there weren't so damn many of them, it'd be the perfect career. $2000 from that 12 year old girl probably covered the lawyer team costs and whoever is gathering the evidence.
      • "$2000 from that 12 year old girl probably covered the lawyer team costs and whoever is gathering the evidence" emphasis mine.

        You have absolutely no idea how much corporate lawyers make. None whatsoever.

    • Isn't there some sort of law against using the threat of expensive litigation to get people to just give you some sort of money?

      Not if those people you are threatening expensive litigation against are breaking the law!

  • After the uproar over the last batch of lawsuits, however, they're not (yet) suing the people in question, but intend to allow them to settle out of court, first.

    The intention was always to make people settle out of court. Even the RIAA knows people won't stand for hundreds of lives ruined finacially, so they just want to scare some into settling, and more into abandoning p2p.

    Oh, and here's [ucomics.com] a comic on the subject.

  • Seriously... they aren't gonna stop music pirates or people who share music.

    It is so obvious that music sharing has absolutely no impact on CD sales. If you want proof, look at Outkast who recently released their double CD. Sales SKYROCKETED. That CD was in circulation weeks before it was released.

    Look how long the industry's been trying to stop warez and how they claim it hurts the industry. Almost everyone I know has a pirated copy of Windows. Doesn't seem to hurt MS.

    Yeah yeah, the hardcore anti-pirat

  • The Law vs. The People (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Saturday October 18, 2003 @07:23PM (#7250822)

    Keep in mind that most laws were written hundreds of years ago. Back then, there was no feasible way to catch law-breakers, so the punishment was extreme in order to deter others from doing the same thing.

    Now it is becoming possible to track individuals via purchasing habits. Who thinks that terrorists and causers of violent chaos use valid credit cards and real ID?

    • Who thinks that terrorists and causers of violent chaos use valid credit cards and real ID?

      I guess I do

      Mohamed Atta
      Abdulaziz Alomari
      Wail M. al-Shehri
      Waleed M. al-Shehri
      Satam M. A. Al Suqami
      Fayez Rashid Ahmed Hassan Al Qadi Banihammad
      Ahmed Alghamdi
      Hamza Alghamdi
      Marwan Al-Shehhi
      Mohald al-Shehri
      Khalid Almihdhar
      Nawaf Alhazmi
      Salem Alhazmi
      Hani Hanjour
      Majed Moqed
      Saeed Alghamdi
      Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi
      Ahmed Alnami
      Ziad Samir Jarrah

    • What do you think the odds are you catch a criminal on the first time they commit a crime ?

      The laws are harsh to serve as deterrence. Take for example if the penalty for shoplifting was the value of the goods you got caught with. This would make shoplifting an attractive profession. The only way you could come out behind is if you got caught everytime.

      Harsh prison sentances are even more needed in the case of violent crime. There is no such thing as reforming criminals. In rare instances they will ref
  • For suing children, feeble little grandpas, etc.

    They'll screen these people they've threatened (giving "generous" out of court settlements to the bad PR cases,) and then sue whoever they think they can get away with - or, their target demographic.

    I'm no hypocrite, so I support unrestricted file sharing. However, even with my eyepatch on, I can see that the RIAA members are fighting for their economic survival. P2P may not have had a significant impact on CD sales *YET*, but it absolutely *WILL*. On top of that it will fragment the market and seriously weaken their distribution monopoly, etc. etc.

    These are all good things for our culture but bad for the livelihoods of the people in the biz.
  • I love it!

    "RIAA Threatens More Music-Lovers"

    And people say Fox news is biased...
    • "And people say Fox news is biased... "

      How would you write the unbiased headline? "The RIAA Politely Asks More People to Pay Several Thousand Dollars in Lieu of Being Sued for Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars"?

      • How would you write the unbiased headline? "The RIAA Politely Asks More People to Pay Several Thousand Dollars in Lieu of Being Sued for Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars"?

        E for Effort ;)

        If I had to write a headline, and my goal were to write it as unbiased as possible how about "RIAA Serves Up More Notices." "RIAA Seeks Further Litigation." "RIAA Seeks Pre-court Settlement in 204 More Cases" (if you want to summarize the whole story in the headline). So yes, it IS possible to do a better job than

        • Fair enough. Guess I'm just a little too close to the issue. Frankly, I wish the general media would do more to report the crappy side of what the RIAA's doing. For now, all you catch on CNN is that they are going after pirates, as opposed to overstepping their boundaries and busting innocent people.
  • ...but automatically labeling these newest caught music sharers "music lovers" when we know nothing about them is like calling anti-war demonstrators anti-troop or anti-american. Some of them may actually be music lovers, some casual listeners who downloaded from the worng place at bthe wrong time, but this is Slashdot, for god's sake, not Fox News. We have our biases, but assumptions like this make political propaganda out of what should, by definition, be news. If you want to state an opinion, come ou
    • You have a good point, but there really isn't anything negative about the term 'music-lover' like there is with 'anti-american.' Moreover 'lover' itself is such a broad term, the author's logic likely assumed that someone who takes the effort to download music will like have an affinity for it.

      Of course, this is neither here nor there.

      Hey look, free music! ...
  • Looking at this weeks Best Buy ad you can find the Matrix Reloaded movie on DVD for $14.99, or you can buy the soundtrack for $11.99. Anyone but me see a problem with this? The music, which probably costs less than 10% the cost of the movie to actually make, costs just $3 less in the stores. Also, most of the songs on the soundtrack were already released on the respective band's album.
  • Are they going after downloaders or just uploaders? They have no case against downloaders (show ne the copyright on my songs), but if they just go for downloaders, they'll just make is slower without seriously hurting the userbase. They'll just piss off the people who now have to wait 10x instead of x mins to download a song.
  • Every time these stories come up, people should focus on promoting sites and services that allow P2P and download of non-restricted material. Slowly-but-surely, we'll turn people towards artists that are grateful that their work is being heard instead of hoarded by the copyright mafia. Most artists don't make squat off of publishing royalties anyway, so 99% of most artists would actually benefit from more distribution of their material. We need to encourage artists to release material in an unrestricted

  • If things get crazy. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ratfynk ( 456467 ) on Saturday October 18, 2003 @08:28PM (#7251114) Journal
    I play classical guitar, I also write my own arrangements of various pieces. To copyright an arrangement of non PD music is a process that the RIAA to date has nothing to do with (thank God). The problem is that I can record myself, rip the recording to an inet friendly format and send my recording to who ever I chose.

    The process of getting permission to arrange a work by someone who might not be living, but is still not PD irks me. It is the reason why good arrangements are hard to come by. Piracy of music by musicians has always been a gray area and cannot be eliminated.

    If in future the DMCA makes the legal re-arrangement of music even more difficult than it already is then it spells the death nell to great music. Traditionally it was once a great honour for one musician to pay homage to anothers work! This must continue. The reality of today is that the business aspect of todays POP and SCHLOCK is killing great musicianship.

    If the RIAA and ASCAP, BMI etc, etc have their way it will not be too long before they are out in small clubs and concerts looking for people to sue. Here is an example; I take a great tune by the Duke and do a classical guitar arrangement then perform and sent it over the net as an MP3 or OGG or whatever. If this is one of his obscure non mainstream tunes, what is wrong with me popularising this tune?

    Obtaining permission to do an arrangement of tunes is so time consuming that it is not even worth trying anymore! It has become a royal pain in the ass. Why? The recent changes to copyright and the fear of God that has been put into orgs like ASCAP etc!

    Great music is dying and this is the reason, let us pray.

  • "After the uproar over the last batch of lawsuits, however, they're not (yet) suing the people in question, but intend to allow them to settle out of court, first."

    Wow, what an improvement!

    Now they aren't saying "we're going to sue your 12 year old for listening to Britney", but "we unfortunately have to take your daughter to court, since she's hurting our failing business model".

    How pathetic. I'm glad to see all those actions taken by RIAA and losses in income though. That's evidence they'll die a slow
  • [16:57:45] <hemos_> Alterslash is illegal.
    [16:57:52] <hemos_> And is violating copyright.
    [16:57:56] <CmdrTaco> Oh, this is a real site?
    [16:58:02] <hemos_> And unfortunately, under the way US copyright law works
    [16:58:11] <hemos_> they will probably get a cease and desist soon.
    [16:58:21] <hemos_> Becuase if we don't - then we give up the right to defend ourselves.
    [16:58:26] <hemos_> So, I don't want to be hostile
    [16:58:33] <CmdrTaco> oh geezus, yeah.
    [16:58:35]
  • I have a lengthy collection of "legal" mp3s. Living in a college town, I have a lot of access to bands who freely distribute music on their websites, plus a lot of other crap i've accumulated over the years. Right now, my "legal" collection is around 1000.

    Now if my memory serves me right, these RIAA guys are goingafter the people with the most mp3s. So the plan is simple. First of all, copy and paste all my "legal" mp3s so i have 2000. Then, run a quick renaming batch script to rename all the mp3s to son
    • That's intelligent. Up until a certain point there you were doing nothing wrong at all. Suddenly you've put your legal copies of the music you've bought out there for others to take freely. In case you hadn't noticed, the RIAA isn't making a point to go after people with the most MP3s, they're going after those with the most that are being shared.

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