That's a fairly black and white way of looking at things.

4/28/2008 10:06:22 AM

i had to say this but philihp is right.

if you do not abide by the licensing agreement it's illegal. if you download music for free without paying for it, it's illegal, unless the licensing agreement says it's a free track.

socially acceptable? yes, but ethically and morally wrong. there are plenty of free (legal) alternatives out there that let you play the music for free (to preview it) before buying.

i think those people that download the music and then buy it, equal about 1 out of 10 people who pirate music.... seriously, who are you trying to kid... this is America, if someone can get it for free or has it for free, then why would they pay for it?

but I still think how the RIAA handles it is ludicrous

[Edited on April 28, 2008 at 10:43 AM. Reason : .]

4/28/2008 10:40:46 AM

STFU while it may be slightly unethical the RIAA has been relentless and predatory about targeting some of the weakest members of society with completely ABSURD settlements.

If i steal a CD, hurting the local music store, and get caught at most i'll pay a couple hundred dollors while end up doing community service or something. If i get caught downloading a few songs off the internet i get a friendly letter in the mail asking me to cough up $3000 in settlement or go to court.

I highly doubt Mic Jagger is leaving under a bridge eating dumpster scraps because some pimply faced freshman downloaded 3 songs off the internet. FUCK the RIAA.

This is pure exploitation.

4/28/2008 11:07:23 PM

-Driving 50 mph in the 45 mph speed zone is "wrong"...
-Sipping that busch light some frat dude hands you at the party when you are 18 is "wrong"
i-nhaling a joint is "wrong"
-Placing that $20 bet in the office pool for the NCAA tourney is "wrong"
-Selling your old mattress for $50 on craigslist is "wrong"
-When doing your taxes and trying to remember that donation you made but since you lost the receipt you guess $100 this is "wrong"

I put wrong in quotation marks b.c though is unlawful which some people interpret as equaling morality all the above does not directly effect anyone.

4/28/2008 11:12:31 PM

^
nicely put, sir

4/29/2008 12:49:24 AM

^^Hey there should be a $50000 fine for going 5 over the speed limit!

4/29/2008 8:54:15 AM

What I take away from all that is that either

1) Reaping the benefits of someone's labor without compensation is OK.

or

2) It doesn't matter because the RIAA is fucked up.

Which one is it?

4/29/2008 10:51:03 AM

BOTH.

While i agree it is "technically" unethical to share music that an artist created. The reality is the RIAA has used this in order to exploit and extort the american people out of ABSURD settlements. How much of the settlement money do you think actually gets back to the artists who are supposedly going in to destitute because of music piracy.


That is right i used the word EXTORTION.

[Edited on April 29, 2008 at 1:43 PM. Reason : a]

4/29/2008 1:42:00 PM

i don't know what warranted the "STFU"....

i said "but I still think how the RIAA handles it is ludicrous"... i'm not disagreeing with you... the RIAA is an evil entity and i totally disagree with everything the RIAA does... personally it's a bit disturbing that the courts allow the RIAA to go after people the way they do.

you just can't make the logical argument that because someone does something bad or wrong, that it's right to do something wrong back.

[Edited on April 29, 2008 at 2:49 PM. Reason : .]

4/29/2008 2:48:07 PM

^

Quote :

"Personally it's a bit disturbing that the courts allow the RIAA to go after people the way they do. "

Over the past 6 months the RIAA has been running into increasing numbers of judgues who can see through their BS. Just the other day, an Arizona judge rejected the "making availible" and "offer to distribute" arguments of the RIAA; what's more, he did it with a thorough case study and 17 page written opinion. That's a solid and well explained decision that will serve as precedent for most other defendants out there.

Article:
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2008/04/riaas-summary-judgment-motion-denied-in.html

Decision:
http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=atlantic_howell_080429Decision

[Edited on April 29, 2008 at 7:15 PM. Reason : ]

4/29/2008 7:14:59 PM

is the injuction still in effect against RIAA's invesitigative arm (media sentry I think)?

I know that the shit they found wasn't legal because they were acting as an investigative firm but not registered as so and must be for anything to be on the up and up.


I just think its great that people are fighting back, and that the courts are actually seeing thru RIAA's bullshit.

4/30/2008 3:00:24 AM

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2008/05/counterclaims-for-extortion-conspiracy.html

God damn, people are FINALLY countersuing claiming extortion AND the judge upholds 5/6 of the counterclaims. I guess it just took those one or two people last year kicking the RIAA's asses for others to start standing up like this.

[Edited on May 6, 2008 at 5:23 PM. Reason : ]

5/6/2008 5:21:17 PM

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Copyright-Cop-Position-Added-to-White-House-94310

5/11/2008 5:49:26 PM

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/mpaa-says-no-pr.html

Quote :

"The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement. "Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances," MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial."

WAT

6/22/2008 5:35:49 PM

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/95208;_ylt=AkvJFeORCNf7SWp70bVD0pAFLZA5

Now they are serving notice to printers . . . . .

6/24/2008 8:21:49 AM

RIAA's $222,000 verdict in Capitol v. Thomas set aside. Judge rejects 'making available'; attacks excessive damages.
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2008/09/riaas-222000-verdict-in-capitol-v.html

bump per request

9/25/2008 3:32:29 PM

Per Tiberius in another thread:

Quote :

"hate to cross-post SlashDot but I'm surprised this isn't here already: "The RIAA's 'Prince of Darkness,' Washington DC lawyer Matthew Jan Oppenheim of The Oppenheim Group, who controls and supervises all of the RIAA litigations against ordinary folks, has requested permission to intervene in the 'probable cause' hearing scheduled next week in Raleigh, North Carolina, against MediaSentry. The hearing was convened by North Carolina's Private Protective Services Board, after complaints were filed by a law firm representing a number of North Carolina State University students who had been targeted by the RIAA based on the unlicensed 'investigation' conducted by SafeNet (the new name for MediaSentry). I guess the RIAA is worried. They should be." http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/12/06/2019259.shtml http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2008/12/matthew-oppenheim-tries-to-intervene-in.html"

12/7/2008 4:10:44 PM

now they sue transplant patients...really, they didn't do anything "wrong," but this kind of crap makes them more and more hated

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/17765

Quote :

"RIAA targets transplant patient Ciara Sauro Could Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s sick sue ‘em all campaign get any worse? It could. And it has. Their RIAA is suing a young transplant patient in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Nineteen-year-old Ciara Sauro has pancreatitis and because she needs an islet cell transplant, she’s hospitalized every week, a situation resulting in a huge accumulation of medical bills. Now, “Because she didn’t defend herself against a copyright lawsuit, a federal judge in Pittsburgh ruled she’s a music pirate, and that could cost the Sauros almost $8,000 in fines,” says Pittsburg news channel WTAE.com. “I already have severe depression,” the story has her saying. “I mean, it’s so hard to sit there and think that I have to get in trouble for something that I didn’t do. It’s not fair.” It isn’t. But then, fairness isn’t a word the Big 4 or Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman, the two spinsters who run their RIAA, understand. Sauro is accused of of illegally sharing 10 songs online and, “You want to know the truth?” - the story has her mother, Lisa, saying. “I make $8.25 an hour. She can’t work. This child is very sick. I mean, what am I supposed to do? “I just want them to know that I have to go through enough stress in my life with my sickness and my family, and I don’t think that they should go after people just because they want money for something that’s not even fair to us.” Not surprisingly, a lawyer for the record companies failed to return phone calls, says WTAE.com."

12/10/2008 10:21:21 AM

Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits:

Quote :

"Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122966038836021137.html?mod=rss_whats_news_technology

12/19/2008 10:23:29 AM

Beat me to it.

This looks promising though. Wonder the university will do on it. All universities on that sense, as they are normally their own ISPs.

12/19/2008 1:06:21 PM

This is a mixed blessing from the RIAA. On the one hand, it makes sense from a business standpoint to stop suing their customers; it's a shame they didn't stop this a long time ago, but it's understandable that they would want to push the judicial system to figure out where their legal boundaries are around piracy. They're finding out that they have less legal standing than they thought they would, as a result of privacy laws and murky intellectual property and copyright laws that haven't translated so well into the digital era. The companies represented by the RIAA had too much at stake to back down from lawsuits purely because of all the bad press it's generated, but now that they're starting to lose some actual cases, they're cutting their losses before too many precedents are decided against their side.

The downside is dependent on how these agreements with ISPs are structured. If individuals are freed from the threat of litigation, then that's great; however, if they're now subject to being cut off from internet service, that's potentially quite bad because presumably the ISPs will be held to a lower standard of guilt before taking action against an individual. We've seen time and again that Big Content can press charges against innocent people (or threaten printers and wireless access points with DMCA takedown notices, a la http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/the-inexact-science-behind-dmca-takedown-notices/). What happens now if ISPs start reducing service speeds to customers as soon as they're accused of infractions? What appeal process will consumers have to fight this? Does this shift more of the legal liability to the ISP, since now they're the ones punishing their customers? Hopefully ISPs will have less of a taste for these kinds of tactics than Big Content, but the very fact that they're making agreements about this topic indicates that to some extent they're willing to play ball with the RIAA. It could have dire consequences for people living in areas with only one or two viable broadband options.

[Edited on December 19, 2008 at 5:40 PM. Reason : ]

12/19/2008 5:39:42 PM

"dire consequences"? Really? I'm a big fan of 1 or 2 strikes when it comes to victimless crimes like this. It's kinda shitty to get tagged with an 8k fine for 10 songs on your first "punishment". But if an ISP is going to warn you that you've been targeted and you don't clean your act up and the worst you get is a speed downgrade and then ultimately get cut off only to jump ship to a competing carrier....how can any consumer complain about that when the alternative is the very real possibility of getting tagged with a fine that would make certain life saving medical procedures look cheap in comparison.

12/19/2008 5:59:11 PM

I'm not claiming this is worse than the alternative, and maybe "dire" was a bit overboard. But when the industry has a history of targeting innocent people, combined with delayed or faulty notification systems, there's potential for Big Content to abuse these new agreements much more than the current system because there will be such a lower barrier to action on their part.

Is reduced internet service a better consequence of a false positive than threatened or actual legal action? Absolutely, for individual consumers. But it's still far from ideal in the aggregate, since the industry is sacrificing depth in their recourse for individual cases in order to gain breadth in the larger market--and now they're hiding behind ISPs and having them do the dirty work.

I'll be ok with a solution like this as long as there are sufficient safeguards for consumers, such as a great deal of transparency on what the RIAA is doing to monitor and detect (they've moved towards this a lot since the MediaDefender leaks, so hopefully they'll continue to do so going forward), recourse for individuals to appeal actions against them rather than just saying "oh, you've still got one more strike against you before the banhammer comes down, don't worry," and some defined level of accountability on the part of both the RIAA and ISPs.

12/19/2008 6:48:35 PM

so like the riaa is going to time warner cable and is like "hey tell this person to stop" and giving us a few warnings first? instead of the fine?

12/19/2008 7:07:42 PM

Quote :

"FUCK THE RIAA"

12/19/2008 9:10:37 PM

i actually was thinking about this a while ago, and it seems only fair to send out warnings first off, and not instantly suit. nothing they do is gonna stop internet piracy.

12/19/2008 9:17:53 PM

This sounds like a convoluted scheme to get ISPs to identify potential copyright infringes to the RIAA so that the RIAA legal team can avoid their ridiculous strategy of suing John Does in order to get the contact information of potential infringes via the discovery process. Since their ability to sue people in a fashion where they can't defend themselves is slowly being picked apart by judges that aren't push overs, it looks like the RIAA is looking for methods to identify potential lawsuit victims by avoiding going to court all together and thus trampling all over privacy laws, but without judicial interference. After all, if the RIAA can structure an agreement with the ISPs to identify infringers, they don't have to worry about their John Doe lawsuits being thrown out. I wager that if they are able to set up the agreements that they'd like to with ISPs, the RIAA will be able to sue more people with greater efficiency.

12/19/2008 10:11:40 PM

What niche of law is this? IP law? This is an area I would like to consult for, or even enter law for as I close in on retirement age.

12/20/2008 1:52:27 AM

look guys, its simple, take your laptop, sit in a hotel parking lot

snag some songs, i really really doubt they will catch that


although more and more hotels are getting passwords for wifi

i want to go to Metallica concert, and see if i can get Lars to autograph my home-made copy of Death Magnetic

12/20/2008 9:05:38 AM