Posted on 10/03/2008 12:27:29 PM PDT by Publius804
RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later
September, 2008
On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against the people that should be the recording industry’s best customers: music fans.1 Five years later, the recording industry has filed, settled, or threatened legal actions against at least 30,000 individuals.2 These individuals have included children, grandparents, unemployed single mothers, college professors—a random selection from the millions of Americans who have used P2P networks. And there’s no end in sight; new lawsuits are filed monthly, and now they are supplemented by a flood of "pre-litigation" settlement letters designed to extract settlements without any need to enter a courtroom.3
But suing music fans has proven to be an ineffective response to unauthorized P2P file-sharing. Downloading from P2P networks is more popular than ever, despite the widespread public awareness of lawsuits.4 And the lawsuit campaign has not resulted in any royalties to artists. One thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma.
(Excerpt) Read more at eff.org ...
/mark
Downloading music without paying is both illegal and immoral.
Why should we give any consideration to organizations whose membership represents and enriches the anti-USA Hollywood left?
As mentioned in the article - many of the students in public schools and at universities have cut the internet out of their file sharing. The RIAA has no way to fight this through the courts.
Maybe they should consider 10 cent song downloads.
Even us old folks buy used CDs from cheap amazon retailers - I have bought 4 CDs at music stores in the last three years.
Do you think it is okay to deliberately sit on songs known to exist but completely out of print, unavailable everywhere and in all formats, just for the sake of sitting on them?
I don't.
The problem with movie piracy is that certain theater chains (in the USA and other countries, especially Japan) is they are rather loose with restricting what can be brought into a theater, and this allows people to bring in video cameras.
And so, BOOM! You have films being recorded off the screen, being offered to people for profit at a poor quality and a loss for the studios.
BTW, I saw someone in Buffalo selling bootleg DVDs at the bus station in Buffalo, NY a couple years back. I had him arrested.
It depends. Not if on public domain.
I rest my case though it could be taken to further extremes.
Are you a cop or do you just like having people arrested?
In this case, the crime was federal.
Are you retired?
Because driving down the highway, calling in the license plates of all of those speeders seems like it would take up most of your day.
Thanks we all feel safer.
Were you born a jackass or did it just come over time?
I thought his post was amusing.
I know that it hurts when people point out obvious stupidity, and they happen to point at you, but rather than insult me, you could try and answer the question.
Unless, of course, the answer would just start more pointing and laughing.
Part of the problem is that copyright laws have become unreasonable to the point where contempt for the laws has been created.
I think there needs to be a reform of copyright, which keeps automatic copyright, but which expires after a reasonable amount of time, like 14 years + one 14 year extension, if applied for.
This 100 year copyright nonsense undermines the whole idea of drawing on the works of the past to create new works.
Ummm. OK. What did you think of the article?
Self-absorbed, holier-than-thou busybodies are born without humor glands.
As such they are protected under the American's With Disabilities Act.
That was YOU?
And lets be honest no one likes a stool pigeon. :-)
Oh dear. Is it fattening too?
I have called the police, too -- for something important -- like leaving a small child in a hot car.
Do you also call the police when you suspect someone is illegally downloading music on their laptop?
Technology allowed these minstrels and their handlers to make obscene amounts of money through mass media communications. Now new technology is going to bring their earnings back in line. No, they won’t make as much at 5 or 10 cents per song download or 75 cents to a dollar per movie download—but it’s going to be that or nothing. Movie tickets are still making money so the MPAA has that. Eventually they’ll all just have to go on the road more often entertaining in person to make the money. It wouldn’t be a first.
Were you the youngest in your family?
I am not, however, stupid. And your snarky response to my post makes me wonder why for some "conservatives" they can look the other way in the face of what is obviously morally and legally wrong.
In other words, selling illegally obtained material with the intent of achieving financial gain is, the last time I checked, a crime.
And being a jackass is not going to change it.
The current distribution model has been totally overwhelmed by the technology. Its time for a new model, one not dominated by the large companies and more artist to consumer direct. The EFF and many artists have been advocating this for some time. Maybe RIAA and MPAA should start to listen.
Those of us who understand the risks of overzealous but incompetent law enforcement and lawyers can take steps to make it hard if not impossible to track us. If most people understood how, they would too.
The threat of dark nets is much larger than just music. Think about what it could mean in other venues.
How much difference is there between downloading music and simply taping it off the air??
His brother was an only child.
Yes. Artists are beginning to change how they do business, too, as they should. An example is Radiohead distributing their CD online where the buyer sets their own price. Later, they released the CD in the usual way, but they were one step ahead because it included songs which weren't in the CD available online.
The RIAA fighting against song downloads seems quaint when entire discographies are available on torrent sites.
I can't say I disagree entirely with that statement. What I can say with certainty however is how morally and Constitutionally repugnant I find the behavior of content owners.
They have repeatedly paid crooked politicians in both parties to extend copyright. When they do so, they not only defy and defeat the original intent of copyright, but in effect they take something from the fans without compensation. Those fans had the legal expectation that a given work would fall into the public domain on such and such a date, then that's been taken from them without them getting anything in return.
How about the history of the industry arguing in court conflicting positions: that a buyer is purchasing a tangible good (record, tape, whatever) AND also arguing that he isn't buying a good but a license to use it, whichever position favors them in the case at hand?
How about the fact that they claim publicly that they're doing this out of concern for the artists, when no artist has received one cent from this campaign and when the same companies have a history of screwing artists at every turn?
How about the fact that every time a new technology becomes available to the public that could be used for dubbing copyrighted content (tapes, blank CD's and DVD's, etc), these companies demand that royalties be included in the price of blank media, arguing that copying will inevitably be done, forcing us in some cases to pay royalties on media used for other purposes? And THEN, after getting those royalties built in, they still think they have the right to sue you if you actually do so?
They've actually taken the position that if you have an unsecured Wifi access point and someone uses it to download protected content, you should have to pay as if you did it yourself.
Oh, and they’re also trying to deny us “fair use” rights for which there is a long historical precedent.
Great job Dwight.
Hey, someone just discovered a big Elephant over in that corner of the room.
Speaking of "fair use" my wife is trying now to jump through all the hoops of transferring her Ipod/Itunes music library from her work computer to her laptop. She has had her Ipod for almost 2 years now and is slightly miffed at how complicated the process is. I told her NOT to buy one and go with a good MP3 player instead.
I showed her the process of moving my Music library from one computer to another using my MP3 player and she is very upset now that she got sucked in to IPOD WORLD.
As far as I am concerned Ipod is an enabler of the ancient RIAA DRM model. They won't get my money.
stick it in your ear, pal
Specific covers and artistic interpretations can be copyrighted. The only public domain stuff is usually classical and very old, which is great for us poor artists who are studying (and then only for rhythm and score issues, not technique) and church choirs looking for good music on the cheap, but not a good prospect for staying "current."
read post #28, sit down and shut up
It depends. Not if on public domain.
Almost no recorded music is in the public domain.
Our system of copyright is what is immoral.
If copyright had the same duration as was the case at the beginning of the 20th century, the entire Beatles catalog would be in the public domain. We apparently have the best congress that money can buy.
Hey! Sen. Hollings (D-Disney) resembles that remark!
Firms have the right to set up their own terms of trade. If I want to put on an experimental play in my basement and require the audience to wear a red shirt then that is my right. If people don’t want to wear a red shirt just to watch a stupid play then that is their right. The same reasoning applies to making music.
Now, this is where the illegal downloaders say, “Hey, I never agreed to wear a red shirt, or to not download. So don’t force me to do something that I never agreed to.” But you also never agreed not to trespass on Bill Gates’ property. That doesn’t mean that you have the right to become his uninvited house guest, nor does it mean that the police are fascist thugs for removing you from the premises. Capitalism is based on property rights, both physical and intellectual. Illegal downloads are for college students and lefists.
Certainly they do. That's not the discussion. Copyright comes from the government and it has a specific purpose outlined in the Constitution. If you want to write and produce a song and never let the public hear it, then it's a trade secret and that's a different story. But to put it out in public and expect the government to enforce your copyright comes with certain expectations attached to it.
That doesn’t mean that you have the right to become his uninvited house guest, nor does it mean that the police are fascist thugs for removing you from the premises.
The objection is that the rules keep changing in favor of the media cartel, and that the rules start moving into behavior inside my home. The RIAA has used third party thugs to hack into home users machines to find out whether copyright is being infringed.
At what point do people stand up and say that the media cartels have been given too much leeway and they need to be restrained?
Illegal downloads are for college students and lefists.
And also for those tired of creeping incrementalism and abuse of the copyright system by the media cartels.
Capitalism is based on property rights, both physical and intellectual.
And copyright is based on the concept that works are more useful to society if they are widely available than if they are hoarded. As an incentive, a temporary, government-granted monopoly is given to the creator of the work in order that it get wide distribution. This is so that others can learn from and improve said work while the creator is allowed to make money off of it. Then the copyright expires and the work enters the public domain where others can improve upon it and release their versions under copyright.
When copyright has been extended to where the work will never enter the public domain, the copyright system is broken. The original purpose of copyright has been usurped.
If copyright holders expect the public to respect their copyrights, then the copyright holders have to accept the other side of the bargain. If the copyright holders are abusing the agreement by lobbying for effectively perpetual copyright periods then they shouldn't be surprised if the public abuses them right back.
In essence, copyright violators are simply enforcing the original intent of copyright. The cartels keep pushing for longer and longer lengths of copyright. They say, "14 years isn't long enough. Make it 75." Then they get 75 years and they say, "75 years isn't long enough. Make it life plus 100 years." This effectively makes it perpetual, to which the public has said, "You've abused it. So you get nothing."
When copyrights are allowed to return to a reasonable length then we can discuss the problem of violating them. But as long as copyright holders are using their government-granted monopoly forever, I don't have a lot of sympathy for them.
There is little question that selling bootleg DVDs is legally wrong. Whether it is morally wrong turns into a different discussion based on the current state of the copyright system.
However, I was facetious in my response to you because there are millions of laws on the books and for you to go all high and mighty about one particular thing you did and then self-righteously proclaimed that you did when there are millions and millions of violations of THE LAW every day comes off as rather moronic.
But as you are proud of your room temperature IQ let me clue you in as to WHY your holier-than-thou comment was especially moronic.
In other words, selling illegally obtained material with the intent of achieving financial gain is, the last time I checked, a crime.
And jaywalking is a crime.
And exceeding the posted speed limit is a crime.
In fact, in Illinois it is a crime to shave yourself unless you have a barber's license.
There are millions of crimes being committed RIGHT NOW.
So, if you are going to appoint yourself as the vigilante crime reporter, you've got a world of work ahead of you. So much so that I'm surprised you have time to post here.
And being a moron is not going to change that either.
Again, firms have the right to set up their own rules. If they are so onerous that customers don’t want to buy the product then that is their right and perogative. If firms want to release their products with a “life + one million years” then that is their right. If you don’t like it then don’t buy it.
Just like I have a “government-granted monopoly” over my house, firms deserve to have a “government-granted monopoly” over artistic works that they create. In fact, there is a much stronger argument in favor of intellectual property. The land on which my house sits would be there if I never existed. There is only some added value due to the improvements we made and the house we built. By contrast, artistic works are pure added value.
In your earlier analogy you mentioned a private performance where the requirement is that all attendees must wear a red shirt. And a person would certainly have that right. In fact, a lot of bars do something quite similar. For instance, around St. Patrick's day a lot of bars will give discounts to people that wear green. And no one has any problem with that. In your concept of a private performance, a person shows up, they are wearing a red shirt, they come in. No red shirt, no admittance.
But that's where physical presence is a factor. That's where the analogy breaks down. What you are suggesting is that the people that attend the performance have to wear red shirts and that any time they discuss the performance, or quote a line they have to put on a red shirt first.
And the performer has no way to enforce that. If that's something the performer wants enforced, he's going to have to get the government to do it. Once the product is out of the physical presence of the creator, the only control he has over it is the control that the government grants him.
Just like I have a “government-granted monopoly” over my house, firms deserve to have a “government-granted monopoly” over artistic works that they create.
No, you own your house. Let's say you paint it purple. Then you sell it. What right do you have to require the next owner to always keep it painted purple?
By contrast, artistic works are pure added value.
Or none. Some creations are crap. But a creation might give someone else an idea that isn't crap. Such is the purpose of copyright. By locking up the creation you stifle the creation of other works. Copyright is a compromise, allowing the creator to make some money off of the creation but then allowing it to move into the public domain where others can add value too.
By denying the movement into public domain, the copyright creators are breaking the compromise.
And the performer has no way to enforce that. If that's something the performer wants enforced, he's going to have to get the government to do it.
The government has to enforce physical property rights too. If someone trespasses onto my property I call the police. If someone watches a video recording of my play without wearing a red shirt then I may need to call the police on that too. Capitalism requires property rights, and those property rights need to be enforced by the government (bracketing the debate over anarcho-capitalism).
The closest you can offer to a principled defense is that we have a right to privacy. Assuming my play were a hit, the government shouldn't follow people around making sure that they were red shirts every time they talk about my play. And that's fair - I agree with that. But if there are criminal rings of people who deliberately don't wear red shirts and talk about my play, then the police have every right to investigate.
No, you own your house. Let's say you paint it purple. Then you sell it. What right do you have to require the next owner to always keep it painted purple?
That is what deed covenants are for - precisely that purpose. My dad's house is under a deed covenant that he won't divide it up into multiple lots. Now, I probably won't get as much money for my house if I put it under a covenant. But that is my right. I am the one paying for th inconvenience because it reduces the sale value of my home. That is why free markets are great; they promote freedom and responsibility.
There are moral reasons to get a judge to invalidate a deed covenant. The ones specifying that a house would only be sold to whites come to mind. But other than issues of morality, people should have that right.
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