RIAA Paid $16M+ In Legal Fees To Collect $391K 387
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a rare outburst of subjectivity, I commenced my blog post 'Ha ha ha ha ha' when reporting that, based upon the RIAA's disclosure form for 2008, it had paid its lawyers more than $16,000,000 to recover $391,000. If they were doing it to 'send a message,' the messages have been received loud & clear: (1) the big four record labels are managed by idiots; (2) the RIAA's law firms have as much compassion for their client as they do for the lawsuit victims; (3) suing end users, or alleged end users, is a losing game. I don't know why p2pnet.net begrudges the RIAA's boss his big compensation; he did a good job... for the lawyers."
shareholder lawsuit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps people who own shares in the RIAA's member companies should sue for misspending?
Not sure about that... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think in this case that means the value of the judgments themselves. What is actually collected from the victims, and what is actually delivered to the RIAA's clients may be another matter entirely.
Either way, bwahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!
Re:yes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Our household has been contacted a couple of times by our ISP for downloading shows through bittorrent. They said they were contacted by rightsholders. If we are "reported" again, we will lose our connection. As they are the only game in town (outside of satellite) we have stopped.
In other news (Score:1, Interesting)
Police spends more money protecting your home than the value of merchandise in it.
Irrespective of whether music pirating is theft or not, the observation is question is irrelevant, and the "we can get away with it since it's too expensive to stop us" does not help the argument that copying music without restrictions should be legal.
Yes! (Score:3, Interesting)
On a related note, am I the only one who won't buy Sony products due to their inability to work without layers and layers of draconian DRM? These corporations are so obsessed with jousting windmills that they are throwing millions of dollars away and losing millions of dollars of sales.
The MPAA/RIAA and all their constituents WILL go out of business eventually. They are clearly outdated, outmoded, and irrelevant in the internet age. Watching them choke to death on their own stupidity is both amusing and kind of fascinating.
If Sony is Japanese, does that make them ninjas? If so, THE PIRATES WIN!!!!
Re:To be fair, (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh, no. Since the music industry is too big to fail, the RIAA is too big to fail by extension
I find this unlikely. The RIAA does not employ as many people directly and indirectly as auto manufacturers, nor is as much money tied up with them as the banks. Since music artists have proven capable of existing outside the RIAA's structure, it cannot even be sold as necessary to the industry. Thus, they are incredibly unlikely to get bailout money.
No, the only thing they're likely to get is some laws, maybe, in their favour, and those laws aren't likely to be anything the RIAA actually likes, in the long term, since it'll probably come at the expense of their corporate structure.
Re:Good Heavens! (Score:5, Interesting)
So what do you suppose happens when there is a certain cost for the artist to deal with a major label, and the RIAA as a trade organization is making decisions that drive up costs for every major label that is a participating member?
They're "the little people" because they have no veto power, not because they don't bear the costs.
That's generally what happens when there is a significant increase in cost for a corporate entity: all of its clients and/or members experience an increased cost, either in terms of increased fees or in terms of fewer services for the same fee. The question is whether the increase is a legitimate cost of doing business or the direct result of mismanagement.
The bottom line is that this goes on because we (collectively) fund it.
the only people? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is almost true, but let us not forget the "snake oil salesmen" that sell the DRM that can never do what it is promised it will do. Anyone that invests big money on software to perform DRM is throwing money at a lost cause. Where else can you get millions for handing the end user the media, the algorithm, and the encryption key, and expect them not to be smart enough to put them together? Or better yet, to even use a felt tip marker to defeat it? Oh, their solution is to make doing that illegal. Yet again the lawyers can all have a field day, and not just the ones working directly for the RIAA.
They could cut the price of the CD's by 50%, not pay for the DRM'ed media/software cost, time to manage the high tech drm-keying process, and save the misery of user support/returns, and still stand to make more money by just selling more music. The problem with that volume-selling concept as the RIAA sees it is the artists would make more money because there would be lower overall overhead expenses to deduct out of the revenue stream before paying out the remaining fraction of profits to the artist. The RIAA depends on this contrived overhead to reduce what is actually paid to the artists. More overhead, more profit at the top! I would hope the artists catch on to this concept one day and actually ask for a 'reality check' (the paper kind preferably) from the RIAA management.
Re:Money well spent (Score:3, Interesting)
Now significantly fewer people download music.
Oh, you almost got me there! Someone mod this man +1 funny! XD
Re:yes... (Score:1, Interesting)
This happened to me too. I actually got cut off without warning, and was told I could only be turned back on if I wrote a letter of apology to the rightsholder. I wouldn't do that (primarily because I didn't download the offal they accused me of), and got a new ISP. Now I just keep a 2TB external hard drive on me, and pass out free music and movies to anyone who wants them. I'll often throw in free media with a computer repair, it's a great incentive, especially in these economic times.
I would actually feel bad about it if the people I were hurting were actually people. There is simply no humanity in those executives, and the artists that they feed off of don't suffer one bit from my actions. Hoist the sails landlubbers.
Re:Slashdot moderation abuse on apple related comm (Score:5, Interesting)
"...are using up their infinite mod points to protect some of the stories more than others."
Doesn't even have to be that.
One person with 15 mod points(for me, that is about 75-80% of the time) can go back in your post history (further they go back in time, the less likely you are to notice it) and mod down 15 "+0" posts, knocking them all into the -1 state. Two people? 30 posts in negative land. Really, it takes very few people to completely ruin your reputation here...except the smart ones on /. know better--they actually read your posts rather then the fucking mod points.
Let it go. Most of us don't need moderation to know intelligence and wisdom when we see it.
And yeah...I could see Apple shills working the forums. I could see that quite clearly.
Re:Timeline (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you for the good chuckle, NewYorkCountryLawyer. I'm curious: where on the timeline of events does this 2008 disclosure form fall? Is that before or after some of the atrocious monetary awards given out by the courts? In other words, will the RIAA see greater collection in the future, based on more recent court cases setting precedent for amounts to be awarded to the RIAA?
It doesn't matter since the RIAA won't see a red penny from any of those cases -- Jammie Thomas is unemployed and wouldn't be able to pay a 10k settlement let alone 220k or 1.92M. The same applies to Tenenbaum - they might be able to recover a couple of bucks, but he can still choose to go the path of personal bankruptcy.
Re:Good Heavens! (Score:3, Interesting)
The bottom line is that this goes on because we (collectively) fund it.
Right. So what does it cost us? (Any positive figure is unacceptable.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot moderation abuse on apple related comm (Score:2, Interesting)
Reminds me of a Bloom County strip (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good Heavens! (Score:3, Interesting)
You just made me feel better about our cops here in Springfield. I called them about a home invasion (journaled here) [slashdot.org], and they were at my house in less than five minutes. The invader tried to say that his wife (who was at my house) and I were "smoking drugs" and they ignored it.
As to the American taxpayer footing the bill for RIAA's legal fees, those fees will at least be deductable. What's even more disgusting is BP's cleanup costs are deductable, too.
Re:Good Heavens! (Score:4, Interesting)
The bottom line is that this goes on because we (collectively) fund it.
Untill fairly recently when the cost of recording and having records* pressed went down to the point where artists don't need the labels, the only way around it was to not buy records, because there is an illegal but unpunished cartel. Nowdays you can get out of funding it by listening to indie music.
* CDs are in fact "records"; they are as much records of performances as LPs were. I don't know why people stopped calling them records just because the media holding the records changed.