Ask Slashdot: Who Has Been Sued By the RIAA? 407
First time accepted submitter blackfrancis75 writes "We keep hearing different figures quoting the thousands of people who've been sued by RIAA for illegally downloading online music, but I don't know anyone personally to whom it's happened. In fact it seems no-one I know knows anyone to whom it happened. Do you know anyone who was sued for 'piracy', or were you sued yourself? What was your experience?"
Legal Threats (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Legal Threats (Score:5, Informative)
Same here. Tons of threats, no action.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not RIAA, but I know at least one guy that was hit with a huge fine ("settlement") over a movie download. A really shitty movie his son downloaded, at that.
I once got a call from my ISP about it, and even got notices at our workplace over it.
Always movie stuff though... never music.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
he shouldn't have settled. his son would've been liable only for shown damages(extremely hard to show).
settling is how you admit without a court, it's really skewed and pays only for the trolls salary.
Re:Legal Threats (Score:5, Insightful)
settling is what normal people do. The RIAA and the MPAA have people whose 8-5 job it is to rake you over the coals of the legal system. even if you win it will drain you emotionally, physically and financially to fight.
he could loose is job to to absence and poor performance, his family due to stress. then there's the legal bill. likely it would cost nearly as much to fight so why wait?
our current system favors the wealthy and large companies and corporations . your average man must sacrifice their lives to get any justice.
Not legal advice (Score:5, Insightful)
he shouldn't have settled. his son would've been liable only for shown damages(extremely hard to show).
When giving legal advice that is utterly, 100% incorrect [cornell.edu] and potentially harmful to the recipient, it's usually a good idea to include a disclaimer about how one is not a lawyer.
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. This is not legal advice, but is for [my own] amusement only.
Re:Not legal advice (Score:5, Funny)
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. This is not legal advice, but is for [my own] amusement only.
If I find this post amusing too, am I infringing on your intellectual property rights? Can you claim prior art to finding your post amusing?
;)
Any reply given will be taken as opinion only, will not construe legal advice, and will not be subject to attorney-client privilege
Re:Not legal advice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Legal Threats (Score:4, Informative)
Look, guys, you can't take someone else's work and put your name to it like you created it! You can't understand WHY what you did was way out of bounds? How could someone so dumbb ever pass a college entrance exam?
Actually, half the time that's plagiarism, which isn't the same thing as copyright violation. The other half it's not plagiarism because it's done with permission, which still isn't the same thing as copyright violation but is usually also not copyright violation. Plagiarism has to do with credit. Copyright has to do with the right to copy.
For example, judicial opinions are usually written by clerks, but the credit goes to the judges. If that were done without permission, it would be copyright violation. (At least in any other field in the world--judicial opinions may be a special case.) It would also be plagiarism.
One guy I know had his stuff used by a major network. They got his permission to use it, I'm sure he did a blanket rights agreement, and they pretended a bunch of stuff was their work. That was morally plagiarism but legally probably fine.
One article I know was submitted to an academic journal with the same material as another already published article--even the graph. That was plagiarism and copyright violation.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm generally ignorant to this issue, but I've always wondered how they would be persued...
I've had a few of those come to my household in the past, when I've been living in share houses. The notice would come to the person whos name was on the internet connection, but you might have 4 people using that internet connection, plus if its a wireless connection who is to say that those pesky neighbours haven't cracked your security?
What would the procedure be for them to actually follow up on an allegation of
Re:Legal Threats (Score:4, Insightful)
(Threaten to) sue you and force you to choose between a settlement or crushing legal fees.
They usually prefer the "threaten" route: less paperwork for them when they extort you. Really, of course, it is about creating fear in the hearts of people so they avoid anything the RIAA and kin dislike, so an actual suite is counter-productive and they usually avoid it unless they have a pretty solid case.
Of course, IANAL.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I like you. You can come over to my house and sue my sister.
Re:Legal Threats (Score:5, Informative)
More recently, I posted a video on Facebook to mock the Costa Concordia disaster: a photo of captain Schettino with "Alles im Griff auf dem sinkenden Schiff" ("everything under control on the sinking ship") by Udo Jürgens as the sound track. Predictably the automated system pulled the video, and sent me a take-down notice giving me the option to file a counter notice. Which I did: the video went back online, is still online, and this act never had any consequences.
But maybe it helps that I don't live in the US...
In general, if I get legal threats from abroad I ignore them. If I get legal threats from a local lawyer, I remove the offending item but never respond to or acknowledge the letter, nor pay any fines or whatever additional thing they ask for. So far, I've never got a problem from this approach.
Re:Legal Threats (Score:4, Interesting)
I was John Doe #34.
I was quite worried when we received the email [lemuria.org] from Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP [weil.com] but they had put all recipients in the CC field so someone quickly set up a mailing list.
I was in the UK and at that time, had never been to the US, so I figured the Californian court wouldn't have jurisdiction.
Re: (Score:3)
Ahh those were the days, when the little people could tell the big people to, basically, go "Shove it up their orifice-of-choice"... and get away with it. The big people didn't like that so much and bought themselves some laws that said being rude to them doesn't fly anymore. They also bought a nice Indoctrination Campaign that has turned "Sharing is Caring" to "Sharing is Thievery".
Sadly, I remember the days when the internet was everything it was everything it was promised to be; a great tool for the
well, if you want to be technical... (Score:5, Informative)
"We keep hearing different figures quoting the thousands of people who've been sued by RIAA "
The people actually sued by the RIAA for file sharing is actually zero.
nil.
Nobody.
Because they don't own the copyrights. It's the studios that do. These studios are members of the RIAA, but in the US, at least, to have standing to sue, you must have the actual copyright yourself. The press always confuses the RIAA with the studios, because the RIAA has the loudest mouth.
We saw lack of standing with SCO. They kept insisting that they owned the copyrights to SysV, but the plain language of the APA didn't say they do, and in order for copyright to change hands (in that case from Novell to SCO) there has to be a positive statement *in writing on paper* that the copyright is transfered.
The judge in the case and Novell eventually got SCO to fuck off, but it took 7 years.
Similarly in these cases, it's not "The RIAA vs Joe Blough," it's "IRS Records vs Jane Sawless" because the RIAA does not own the copyright to "I Stabbed A Monkey" but IRS Records does.
--
BMO
Re:well, if you want to be technical... (Score:5, Informative)
>No one has been sued for *downloading* music. You get sued for uploading/distributing/making available.
Please note the actual word I used.
Sharing, as in putting it in your share folder.
Thank you and have a nice day.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:2)
No one has been sued for *downloading* music. You get sued for uploading/distributing/making available.
I kind of wonder if there is any actual legal reason for that, or if it's just that the only way to catch a downloader is to be the uploader and the RIAA wouldn't be caught dead uploading "pirated" music.
Re:well, if you want to be technical... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's mainly because of the technical reason you identified: it's hard to catch people who only download, unless they download from you (or you obtain logs from someone who was uploading).
There is a bit of legal strategy as well, though; even the RIAA has finite legal resources, and it's not as though the few lawsuits (or even the more common settlements, probably) are a profit center for them. Given this, it's more efficient to go for the head of the snake, as it were. That's why they like to sue / pressure people who are behind entire file sharing networks (e.g. Napster, Grokster, MegaUpload) since that could (if it worked) cut off lots of file sharers in one stroke. Suing uploaders is less efficient, but still could prevent at least some downloading from occurring. Suing a downloader is the least efficient thing of all, since it only stops that one person with no beneficial side effects. That isn't to say that it would never happen, but it can't possibly be a high priority.
Re:well, if you want to be technical... (Score:4, Informative)
Both are illegal, as are a few other things besides. Well, actually, if one looks at the precise language of the statute, while distribution is illegal, uploading doesn't meet the definition of distribution, so it either has to be something else that is illegal (my money would be on some form of secondary liability, where in essence the assistance that the uploader provides the downloader for the downloader's offense makes the uploader liable too) or it is perfectly okay. There's a case underway where someone is finally making that argument, but I doubt that the courts looking at it are ever going to side with pirates merely because of the actual language of the law. Justice could stand to be blinder.
Anyway, you can see a list of the major types of copyright infringement at 17 USC 106 (definitions are helpfully provided at 17 USC 101 -- n.b. that definitions provided in the statute override ordinary dictionary definitions).
And, since all else being equal, they are just forms of the same offense -- infringement -- the remedies are the same for both: Actual damages and profits, and perhaps costs, fees, an injunction, even the destruction of copies and copying equipment (though I don't think I've heard of a court ordering the destruction of anyone's computer in this sort of case -- I wonder why the other side has neglected such a mean tactic). And, if the work is eligible (it usually will be for anything you'd get in copyright trouble for downloading), statutory damages, if the plaintiff so opts. Civil remedies for copyright infringement may be found at 17 USC 502-505. Section 504 is the major bit.
There's no real distinction for civil damages as to whether one acted in a saintly or fiendish fashion with regard to infringement. It won't matter for actual damages and profits. But statutory damages simply must fall within a particular range between a minimum and a maximum in the statute. In practice, if you've gotten to the point where you're being sued in a case like this, the minimum can't be lowered, and the maximum can be relied upon to be raised as high as it'll go. The actual number in that range is picked by the jury, who may do so for entirely inscrutable reasons, and may then be reduced by the judge to as low as the minimum, as the judge sees fit.
Re:well, if you want to be technical... (Score:4, Interesting)
Downloading is not Copyright Infringement. Downloading is simply downloading. There is no way to determine a priori whether any Internet file transfer has Copyright authorization.
Especially now that Copyright is automatically granted and registration is no longer required.
In order to make Downloading an offense, registration would need to be returned.
And, if (please argue the point) Downloading is indeed illegal, and everything (yes, EVERYTHING) has a Copyright, and the status of a "legal" Download cannot be a priori determined, then it would simply be insanity to use the "internet". Both from a content producer and a content consumer perspective.
There simply cannot be anonimity. Everyone would have to know that I wrote this post, before reading it, in order to determine the a priori Copyright status.
Your thoughts?
Re: (Score:3)
Anything you merely display is not a copyright violation, like me reading your copyrighted post in a web browser. Fixing it to a permanent medium like downloading is a violation of the reproduction right, assuming it's not covered by fair use AND the bits you're storing were legally distributed. This should be obvious, the same way you couldn't hook up a bunch of DVD recorders to a legal TV broadcast and sell your own DVDs. Also, all copies of an illegal copy are illegal no matter what. That so many armchai
Re: (Score:3)
ok, you want a more technically correct analogy?
What makes you think that you can take the book at the bookstore into the back room, xerox the book's pages, and take it home and read those pages for 24 hours before what you just did becomes illegal? why wouldn't it be illegal the second you did it, what does a 24 hour period have to do with it?
answer: nothing.
Re:well, if you want to be technical... (Score:4, Insightful)
hearsay and rumor, nothing else. it's the digital equivalent to "I hear you can't get pregnant the first time you have sex"
Re: (Score:3)
well there is this
http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/help/entry.html?cat=24 [gamefaqs.com]
and this
http://www.pro-music.org/Content/questions/DosAndDonts.php#Q13 [pro-music.org]
and this
http://www.uky.edu/UKIT/security/policy_riaa.htm [uky.edu]
and so on... but more over, why in the world would it make any sense to make copyright infringement only kick in after 24 hours? who would write a law like that? nobody would, because nobody has. it's an urban legend, continually circulated, just like all urban legends.
Re:well, if you want to be technical... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no way that simply removing the credits, and anything that identifies who the original producer of a movie was, is enough of a change to classify it as a derivative work. It's not the titles and the cover that are "the work." It's the movie itself.
Therefore the whole thing would just about have to be re-edited to show your friends vision of what could be made using the same bits of footage for it to be derivative of the original. Otherwise it's just the original without giving credit.
Re: (Score:2)
It is. Great ripping song, fun to drink and sing along to. It recounts the legend of "The Chalvey Stab Monkey".
I have to wonder if any non AC's will respond.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I have to wonder if any non AC's will respond.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That is exactly the issue. Happens all the time, especially in the medical field. You get a payout and are barred from saying anything to anyone. This leaves everyone else in the dark as to how bad things really are.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Why would one spend thousands in legal fees? I mean, if somebody is willing to pay somebody to keep their mouth shut about something, then they are already clearly at a disadvantaged point anyways. I mean, if you don't have any proof of what you're supposed to keep quite about, then there's not any sense in them offering you a payout anyways, since it would be your word against theirs. And as long as you had such proof, you could trivially present it in court yourself... no legal fees involved whatsoever.
If you think American courtrooms are a place where everyone is truly equal in the eyes of impartial law, honest guys always win, where you have nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong, and having the facts on your side means you will certainly prevail without tremendous cost and heartache to yourself ... well ... perhaps one day in a more enlightened future we'll have something like that, but we definitely don't have it now.
And the thing about having someone at a disadvantage is to understand it is
Post Anonymously (Score:4, Interesting)
Because I am not allowed to talk about it as part of the settlement.
Re:Post Anonymously (Score:5, Insightful)
But since you posted that as an AC, why are you still not talking about it?
Me (Score:5, Interesting)
Can they talk about it? (Score:5, Informative)
At one point, I thought that the settlement that the RIAA pushed people to accept included clauses that prevented people from talking about the settlement. The RIAA, however, had no such restrictions. This way, the RIAA could say all they want about the "dirty, rotten pirate" they stopped but the sued individual couldn't provide their side. I'm not sure if this is still true, but could be part of the reason why we don't hear of many people on Slashdot who were sued.
I was sued by the RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
It was during 2007 while I was just finishing up my PhD in the States. I got a court summons the same month I defended my thesis. My guess is that I got careless with my music downloads while I was getting lots of music to burn through the hours while working on my thesis. I just ignored it, defended my thesis, and went back home in Europe as I was planning to anyway. Got a few threatening letters forwarded to me for a while after... Ignored those, too, and never really heard anything else after a while.
Sued? No. Threatened? Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't get sued, but when I was in college I got an email from my university's IT department that if I didn't respond before 8:00 am the next day(which was about 16 hours away from when they sent the email) they would cut off my internet. Why? Because they received a letter from one of the MPAA members(I forget which one now, it's been a few years) saying that I was torrenting some random disc of a TV show off some Spanish torrent site. I basically responded to the IT department saying that I couldn't stop seeding the torrent file because I never had it in the first place and requested some more information on the actual complaint they had been sent, I'm not sure how they handled the complaint with the company but I never heard anything else after that.
Re: (Score:3)
Really? I would have demanded a little more information. That organization in fact slandered you with false accusations, and you could have a tort against them. It would hardly ever come to that, but you could have fun writing letters and disturbing their lawyers for a while.
The closest I've heard of this is (Score:3)
The closest I've heard of anything like this was a co-worker who received a letter from his ISP with a cease and desist. The letter listed the infringing files that he downloaded by name. It said something to the effect of "if you do this again you may be disconnected and/or sued". He still downloads things.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Got my cable cut off once over dling a movie still in the theaters.
Stupid public tracker.
One time I heard a fictional story about someone using a VPS in a foreign country, and transmission-daemon.
probability? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah I don't know anyone either, probably because thousands of people sued out of over three-hundred-million U.S. citizens doesn't make for a very high probability that you will personally meet someone who has been sued. The original submitter is a joke, and should never have been approved on this site.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
should never have been approved on this site.
The fact that dozens of people have responded with the information I was asking for is proof that it should.
Are you worried about your favourite site getting 'cluttered' with articles which you personally have no interest in?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Although the six degrees of separation doesn't work in the way that most people think. There is generally a couple of really well connected people in the network. I find this to be true with my friends where most people have a few other friends(less actual close friends) and one person who knows and keeps in contact with say 50ish. He collects friends.
This is what happened in the original experiment with the letters.
"In an experiment in which 160 letters were mailed out, 24 reached the target in his Sharon
I know someone who has (Score:5, Interesting)
I know of someone who was sued by the RIAA, the fines are on the order of the following
1. pay 5k through an automated settlement system
2. try to fight, and get offered a settlement where you pay 125k (this effectively happens the moment you force one of their lawyers to be on the phone for more than 5 minutes)
3. continue to fight and see them try to charge you with the full 250k per infringement that they're allowed to hit you with.
The person I knew had a good case to fight it with, but had no conceivable way of coping with a 125k settlement. (they actually hadn't downloaded any of the songs )
Non-RIAA cases (Score:5, Interesting)
Over the course of downloading several terabytes of materials in several thousand torrents, I've received 2 letters neither of which threatened legal action but were along the lines of, 'we caught you, it's illegal, stop doing it'. One was for a movie I had never downloaded, the other was for a tv series which is available freely on the Internet from their website that I had been downloading.
My response to both is the same. I've never seen the movie I was accused of torrenting and never will and I stopped watching the tv series.
I was (sorta) (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I am not in the AF... I do not represent the AF.... I may or may not have had a few drinks... and i "CBF"ed to capitalize my "i"s or even use correct grammar... Get over it...
Not a lot (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure how many people get sued, but I serviced several million customers and none ever got anything more than a meaningless email from their ISP that likely went to a mailbox they hadn't used in years. I've believed for a while now that the lawsuits you hear about are more likely just scare tactics and there's really not that much legal action taken.
I got warned. (Score:2, Interesting)
While I was living at Bruce Hall at ANU, I woke up one day to find my network connection didn't work. I phoned the campus IT support and they told me they'd disconnected my port for torrenting a crack for the Sims 2 that my partner wanted. Ironically, despite all the less-than-legit stuff I'd torrented in the past, this was for a game she legitimately owned but the CD drive in her machine was broken. Given that we were poor students and unable to afford a new one, I got her a crack for it.
I got it reconnect
Want to find people who have settled? Try dorms (Score:2, Interesting)
I've already noticed that most replies of being caught(or allegedly so) said they were in college, and having lived in a town with two universities while frequently going to college parties, I have met people(college students) who claim to have settled out of court with a representative of the music industry. It's difficult to discern truth from fiction story time, however, college campuses would be a good place to look for people who have settled out of court in a way that would have pushed their situation
I was sued! (Score:5, Funny)
I called the police when I was trying to download some porn and accidentally ended up with some pirated songs instead. It was Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, so they didn't punish me.
my bosses son (Score:3, Informative)
contacted by the MPAA (Score:2)
Back in 99/2000, the university at the time called me in to judicial affairs because the MPAA had sent a letter or other wise contacted them about a file that was available on my "personal page" hosted at the university. Now granted I hadn't had access to the page in over two years or so at the time as I was now out of school and no longer had access. Anyhow, the file was the source for DeCSS, which the MPAA contacted the school about because its "copyright violation", which the judicial affairs lady told m
Interesting.... (Score:5, Interesting)
All the posts that I've seen from people who said that they simply ignored threats from the RIAA are stating that nothing ever came of the threats.
Are there any accounts of somebody who tried to ignore it, and found that they could not?
Re: (Score:3)
*crickets*
It does indeed look like the vast majority of the people on Slashdot who've had these sorts of close calls ignored it and it went away.
I wonder if the pattern works like this:
- 90% of the accused ignore it and it goes away.
- 9% settle out of fear, not knowing they could probably just ignore it and it'll go away.
- 1% are too prideful and deny the accusation, thereby making it easy for the **AA to force a big, showboating trial (e.g. Joel Tenenbaum or Jamie Thomas).
The moral of the story:
1. Odds aga
University Letters (Score:3, Informative)
My students who live on campus will receive disciplinary action for downloading music via torrent or whatever program they are using. They are required to attend a couple sessions on the illegal nature of their activities. The sessions including watching a few videos & sign some papers saying their sorry or some such nonsense. I've had 3 or 4 claim this has happened.
Not RIAA but New Sensations (Score:5, Interesting)
Kind of funny this came up, I havent been sued by the RIIA but New Sensations inc has me in their sights.
I was contacted by my ISP that a company New Sensations representing copyright holders of about 7 adult movies I had allegedly downloaded. They listed the titles downloaded and the times. They also included a link for each case for a settlement I could just pay online. The settlement offered is 200$ per title and there are 7 which comes to 1400$.
The thing is I didnt actually download any of those files the internet while being in my name is used by a friend not even in the same house.
So I am wondering how I should handle this I could ignore it, but the email has language that seems to state if I dont take the settlements by april 5th they will proceed to sue. I contacted the eff about this but they just reffered me to some lawyers I could contact
Re:Not RIAA but New Sensations (Score:5, Interesting)
different company, but about the same run around here as well. claimed it was one file, which was freely available via streaming just by googling. i was contacted several months (4-6) after the alleged download, via suppoena to my web hosting isp. I could ether pay their settlement of $5000, or goto texas and fight it. lawyer fees plus travel would easily add up to $150K plus, with no real chance of winning. got a negoatiated settlemet for ~$2500, which included an NDA style agreement. Still had to pay lawyer fees of ~$1200 as well, so about 3700 total. the really shitty part? I scoured every hard drive i own for this alleged file, the drives in our hosting environment, and couldnt find it. i'm 110% sure i never downloaded it, but cant afford to prove my innocence. those of us who are wrongly accused have no recource but to pay, or pay big.
talk with a lawyer, it doesnt matter who actually downloaded the file, it doesnt matter if it even happened. your faced with ether paying them, or summary judgement for tons and tons more money. since your name is on the account attached to that IP, your the one on the kill list sadly. If it was your friend make him pay your legal fees and the settlement in your behalf.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Disclaimer - This post is made with the US centric viewpoint of the copyright shakedowns currently sweeping the country. For other countries the rules are different but the scam remains the same.
Copyright Trolls will almost NEVER take someone to court unless that person contacts them and admits fault or knowledge of the event and then refuses to pay the settlement.
AC #1 - You should have gotten a notice from your ISP prior to any contact from a troll that they were seeking your information. For the ISP to
Re: (Score:3)
This has been going on for a long time. I have a friend who had some nice three letter domains back in the late 1990s. A largish company decided that the Internet was cool and they wanted them. They had some trademarks that were remotely related to the domain names but my friend (and a simple whois check) had records indicating he had the domains well before they even existed as a company.
They made him a cash offer that was in the low five figures. He wanted to keep the domains. They said take the money or
A friend of mine was sued by the RIAA... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was named in a slander lawsuit... (Score:4, Interesting)
I ran a TOR exit node on my laptop at work (at a university laboratory). After only about two weeks, the IT guy came downstairs with an official looking letter saying that my IP address had been named in a slander lawsuit. Apparently some business guy was trying to tarnish the name of some other business guy, and he was using TOR to do it. He had written a bunch of nasty stuff to blogs and send some angry emails or something. Anyway, the letter insisted that I appear in court in Los Angeles (I lived in Boston), but we sorted it out by explaining how TOR works--lucky for me, too, because there allegations of CP in the lawsuit.
I'm being sued... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in the middle of a lawsuit now.
I received a letter from a scummy law firm in another city. They blitzed the city I live in... more than 10,000 letter sent out apparently. They had "proof" in the form of an IP address that was apparently assigned to my account at my ISP and a P2P log showing that someone at that IP apparently downloaded a movie made by the production company they were representing. I've never heard of the movie. I go look it up on IMDB... it appears to be some terrible low quality, low budget SciFi that no one watched... ever. I certainly had never heard of it, and I never downloaded it.
The law firm was demanding money. If I didn't pay up the "I'm guilty" fee, then they said I'd be taken to court and sued for 10's of thousands. I called a lawyer who is well known for defending this sort of crap. He looked at the letter I received, immediately recognized it, and said.. IU know these guys, let me add you to the big pile of people I'm representing on this same threat and I'll make it go away. That was over 2 years ago...
I have had two letters from him informing me what's going on. Basically he said that this rogue law firm was full of crap, that there was now a Class Action suit open against them and they had a fixed period to reply... the law firm never said a word, so now the second letter said that it's going to court with more than 1000 people being represented... but it could take years for it to reach an end. Basically he said.. don't worry about it, it'll be tied up in the courts for years and it's not cost me a cent.
They don't need to sue you ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... all they need to do is to claim everything, including birdsongs, belongs to them
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/26/2141246/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-copyrighted-music [slashdot.org]
Not sued, but "contacted. (Score:5, Informative)
I wasn't sued, but I was one of the first to receive a cease and desist letter from them back in 1998. I was a student at Indiana University and ran a server [suso.com] there in my dorm room which hosted one of my friend's website who had copyrighted "top 40" mp3s on it. Other than the university lightly punishing me, nothing really came of it.
Re:Not sued, but "contacted. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah. A couple years ago I got a cease and desist letter. It was hilarious. I lived in an apartment building and ran an intentionally open wireless network. (I had one private with password, one public with no password. I did this as an anonymous favor to my building mates.) One day I got a letter threatening action if I didn't stop downloading, or whatever, and the specific movie they were complaining about was "I Love You, Man".
Now listen to me. Listen carefully. I would never, ever, not in a million years, be interested in "I Love You, Man". I certainly was downloading other things, but there is no way that I would have ever searched for that movie, let alone spent any effort to pirate it. Never.
So, I just ignored the fucking letter. I didn't close my wireless, I didn't warn my neighbors, and I never got another letter. Fuck them. I wasn't very afraid of a lawsuit (because they are rare), and in the unlikely scenario of being sued, I could be another good example of why an IP address does not identify a human being. It would have been a ton of hassle, and I hate hassle, but I'm also just the right kind of asshole to push back against them, if it ever came to that.
However, if they caught me downloading stuff that I actually did download, well then I'd probably push back a little, and then settle. You do the crime, you pay the dime.
Re:Not sued, but "contacted. (Score:5, Funny)
I thought "I Love You, Man" was pretty good. Thanks for seeding.
Re:Not sued, but "contacted. (Score:5, Informative)
At most they can file a motion for discovery, and then a motion to compel. The rules vary by state, but you could be held in contempt: worse yet have a default judgement against you.
Source to back it up:
http://www.ohiolegalservices.org/public/legal_problem/courts-hearings/documents-and-papers-from-a-court/motion-to-compel-discovery-and-sanctions/qandact_view [ohiolegalservices.org]
*Disclaimer*
I'm not a lawyer (accounting students must take business law), and this is not legal advice, nor should this be construed as such.
Re:Not sued, but "contacted. (Score:4, Interesting)
I wasn't sued, but I was one of the first to receive a cease and desist letter from them back in 1998. I was a student at Indiana University...
Holy Shit! I was working for UITS then!
You never would have talked to me about this, and I would have had nothing to do with reporting you, but damn, that makes it feel like a small world.
I was never even lightly punished by the university, but occasionally my manager would tell us "would you stop screwing around on Napster and try to do some work? I'm sitting right next to you for chrissake!"
Re: (Score:3)
Every private site/tracker I've ever gone to the trouble of getting access to has so little content as to be pointless. They've got a few hundred torrents listed and they're all crap. every last one one of em. even if one of them were good, you've got like 5 people seeding anything. if you're lucky.
Perhaps I'm just not leet enough to get access to the super secret mega underground pirate bay equivalent.
Re:My Experience (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
It happened to The Offspring. They got in trouble for putting their music up for free.
(I still can't figure out why they chose to distribute their music in Quicktime format)
Re: (Score:3)
show me a non-iPod media player that plays Quicktime??
Epic fail.
Re:I sometimes wonder if I'll get a takedown notic (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting scenario. My mentor's friend was going to play a fundraiser at a bar or some other public venue. He's in a record contract and an ASCAP artist. Now this is a little different than posting your songs online for free, but he was told by ASCAP lawyers that the venue would have to pay $XXXX in order to pay for the ASCAP licensing as they would be performing ASCAP songs. Obviously they could not afford this fine, so he came up with the idea that he would only use his own original compositions. The ASCAP lawyers stated that, because he was an ASCAP artist, his songs cannot be performed either without violating their licensing agreements. I don't think he's with ASCAP anymore.
Long story short...probably. Furthermore, ASCAP can make the *AAs look good, but at least the majority of the money ends up in the hands of the artist with ASCAP (or so I've been told by many ASCAP artists).
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this really what Slashdot has devolved to? An AC posts such a statement, without any proof of veracity, and gets modded up to +5 Informative?
My attempts at sarcasm, to point out how ridiculous that is, are being modded down... WTF?
Regards
dj
Re:People really were sued (Score:5, Insightful)
Christ, dude, come off it. It was an answer to the question at hand. This isn't Wikipedia. There are no "citation needed" tags. The fact that the comment was anonymous has no bearing on its relevance and your attention to it is just bizarre. (I'm posting AC even though I have an account.) Modding up an answer to the titular question is in no way ridiculous.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention that someone potentially on the RIAA's legal radar may well have a good reason to remain anonymous.
Re:People really were sued (Score:5, Funny)
for a woman presumably born while Thomas Jefferson was president, her embrace of digital media is admirable.
Re:People really were sued (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People really were sued (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this really what Slashdot has devolved to? An AC posts such a statement, without any proof of veracity, and gets modded up to +5 Informative?
My attempts at sarcasm, to point out how ridiculous that is, are being modded down... WTF?
Regards
dj
It's *you* who devolved into crude sexual comments about AC's sister. All you are is some crude and disgusting idiot with an obviously strong bias for attention-seeking who goes by the pseudonymous handle "djlowe" and keeps posting repeatedly about the same thing. I'll trust the veracity of an AC's statement over anything you say any day of the week. That's the W behind your WTF. Happy to have helped.
Re:People really were sued (Score:5, Funny)
Well, in the first place: A claim by an AC, about a sister, has no veracity
Right, because if you're not posting as AC, it automatically means you're telling the truth. I'm sure nobody would ever lie when they are logged in. I say this as I sit here on my private jet filled with gorgeous naked women. And, since I have an IQ of 320, you must know that I'm telling the truth about that.
Re: (Score:3)
What evidence would you deem sufficient for claiming that one's sister had been sued by the RIAA?
Dude please (Score:5, Insightful)
I took offense at the fact that it was modded to +5 Informative,
Please get a life
Re:People really were sued (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd tend to think that that has more weight than all of you AC's :)
None of it has any weight. No-one cares. It's a message board on the internet. If you start demanding proof for everything people say you're going to be mightily disappointed.
Re:People really were sued (Score:4, Funny)
Disowning your sister will not make her change her slutty ways.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If I leave my MP3 collection on an unsecure FTP site - can I be sued for that? What specific law am I breaking?
What if I leave my car door unlocked so someone can steal my CDs?
Re:People really were sued (Score:5, Insightful)
it's always been uploading the file to others that they're pissed off about, not downloading it yourself.
sure they don't want you downloading music illegally, but what they tend to sue people for is offering the file out to others. Which of course just about every peer-to-peer file sharing system does by default. So people confuse one with the other.
I think there's a pretty big difference (at least legally speaking) between leaving your (legal-for-you-to-use) files on an insecure ftp site that somebody might find by accident, and putting your files on a public site and then advertising their existence to people looking to download them.
I'm not saying that they don't both have the potential to end you up in court, but one is going to be far far easier for the prosecution to proceed with than the other.
Re: (Score:3)
so the old school way of using hacked/insecure ftp's to download/share is actually _safer_? at most you're going to be hit with unauthorized use of computer systems and in many cases it was debatable if you knew it was unauthorized I guess. much smaller fines than what the RIAA mob is trying to extort from people!
anyone else remember downloading shit off from them? ftp://random.ip/../../../../etc/look/here/rzr/ [random.ip] ? that's how I found my first mp3, two princes by spin doctors, had to g.. more probably altavis
Re:Correction (Score:3)
They were pissed about the downloading, but all they could make stick legally was the uploading (you do not have the right to make copies if you were not granted that right).
I used to have a reference to a decision which explicitly said downloading is illegal, but I can't find it now to see if it has been overturned or the law updated to say that explicitly. A lot of people think only the uploading is illegal, but that is no longer the case (take with a grain of salt as I lost my citation). As Skarecrow77
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Must be a matter of taste, I'd ban any video with a Creed track on it in every country ;-)
Re:People really were sued (Score:5, Funny)
The RIAA once sued my sister...
Mynd you, RIAA lawsuites kan be pretti nasti...
Re:People really were sued (Score:5, Funny)
Re:People really were sued (Score:5, Funny)
We apologise for the epic failure of the parent post to understand the Python reference. Those responsible have had their Geek cards revoked.
Re:People really were sued (Score:4, Informative)
The credits were run in English with Swedish Translations. After a while the Swedish Translator got bored and starting writing various off-topic comments including "A Moose Once bit my sister"
Holy Grail Opening Sequence [youtube.com]
Re:People really were sued (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course I can't provide evidence and it would be absurd to take something written in a Slashdot comment on faith.
Re: (Score:3)
Sadly, no, it looks like the RIAA and other MAFIAA members still have an online presence.
Re: (Score:3)
They will take your wife and sell her into slavery. But you knew that, right?
I sold her already. You do know we are in a recession.