RIAA settles with 12-year old girl [$2,000 payment to music cartel]

You can try to spin it whatever way you want. The fact is that the RIAA sued a 12 year old and created a public relations nightmare for themselves. Your spin or moralizing is irrelevant.

Dear Mr. Lamont Dozier,

You need to look first to the people who think it is a good idea to sell a crappy CD made for pennies for an outrageous $20, instead of complaining about the consumer, who, by the way, is your major source of income. It has been proven that groups can allow their music to be downloaded and still be successful, so your pathetic "we're the victims" excuses don't wash. Try reading about the Grateful Dead marketing model. Jerry Garcia died a multi millionaire, because he was smart and knew that sharing music would only promote his band.

Maybe the model of marketing you espouse was successful in the 50's and 60's, but this is the 21's century, and we don't use record players that much anymore. If your industry were to get with the times, they could benefit enormously from the Internet and new technologies, but they insist that people should buy music the same way they did 30 years ago.

Your excuses don't cut it. Get your head out of the sand and blame the orgnization that is singlehandedly killing music, instead of the consumers, who are the only thing that can save you from starvation and obscurity. Maybe then you'll realize that your suffering sales could be the result of representation by an organization that supports price fixing and suing 12 year old kids.

Have a nice day,

Flaming Death

You know damned well that they steal by passing around files of illegal copies of songs.

Stealing is taking something from someone and depriving them of it. When you copy a song, you are not depriving them of anything other than money they might have made in a past era when you couldn't copy the song at your own expense. Do I personally care for file trading? Not really. By the same token, I don't like people who attempt to redefine the English language to meet their agenda. Copyright infringement and theft are mutually exclusive. Theft applies to physical property, copyright infringement to copyrighted goods.

DSS will be using HDCP to encode premium programming once the whole HDTV thing gels. So you might be able to make a low grade analog tape of it, but digitally "recording" HDTV will not be possible if the sender decides to encode it. Its going to take many years to phase in, along with other parts of digital rights management from Microsoft and all the rest. For the consumer, its going to be a total mess, but so long as elected officials keep getting a steady stream of cash, the laws will keep on coming.

The industry believes we can't live without this stuff, so we will continue to pay for it no matter what they throw at us. The next 10 years are going to be real bad. At some point, we will all have to buy our last PC of our lifetimes (on the last of the non DRMed hardware) and hold onto your Windows 2000 CDs or whatever non DRMed OS you want to run on it.

No kidding. These morons are killing the internet and killing our future. Human beings want to exchange information. Only a moron would allow that to be stifled and controled by corporations (with no rights) over individuals (with God given rights).

Sir, among what you call the 'vile den of thieves', is this gentleman, who comprised one-third of the songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, composers of many Motown hits, including most of the Supremes songs in the 60's. This is a quote from the RIAA web site:

I'll let you skip on the murderer part as that was pure hyperbole. However their proposed laws are pure fascism straight out of the very basic definition: corporatism, or the merger of state and corporate power. The one protects the other in fascism against the rest of society.

The CBDTPA was the purest example of these cartels crying to their Big Brother for help against the evil IT industry that is providing the means for the public to copy their works. Congress has no authority to pass the CBDTPA, but hey that hasn't stopped them in the past.

I guess anyone who the media hates is a "cartel"

Are you implying that the RIAA is not a cartel, i.e. not "a combination of independent business organizations formed to regulate production, pricing, and marketing of goods by the members"?

Don't you think the law imposing a $150,000 fine per song file might be a little excessive? If this 12-year-old girl downloaded 100 songs, she could have been on the hook for $15,000,000. The penalty is irrationally disproportionate to the crime.

Hell, Charlie Trie donated grocery sacks full of illegal Chinese cash to the Clinton campaign, and he was only fined $5,000.

Can you play an MP3 for a friend? Or a group of friends?

The other problem that the RIAA would have with suing this 12-year old is when they get to damages. They would have to prove that this girls' actions cost them a certain amount of money. That would require demonstrating that someone would actually have paid the RIAA for the illegally downloaded music. A jury might find for the RIAA and award them $1 in damages in this and many other cases.

I sell used CDs for $3.00, and it's all I can do to get rid of them at that price....I'd sure like to find out who's paying $12.99-$20 for them new.

A real capitalist would figure out a way to package his product in a way that people wanted. Obviously people are frustrated with the distribution method. Why can't the record industry work the problem?

BINGO. This is the crux of the problem. Technology always supercedes the morals/ethics/mores of society. In this case, technology has brought us the power to redraw the distribution system for music. The industry could find a way to profit and embrace technology at the same time. Point: the old system is broken. We need a new one. And it's not gonna get any better till that new system is in place

How does that apply here?

Do I agree with property rights? Sure, I do. Here's where I have a problem:

Collusion and price fixing: It's no secret that the record industry is guilty of artificially inflating prices and keeping them high. They've even been convicted of the act and fined.

If you're at least thirtysomething like me, you should remember when CDs first came out. The virtues of stamped media were lauded as the panacea we all desired: high fidelity, no degradation, and most importantly, LOW COST. CDs were supposed to cost less than cassettes since they didn't have to be individually recorded.

What happened?

CDs have NEVER -- repeat after me, now -- N-E-V-E-R cost less than cassettes, despite the fact that their manufacturing costs are significantly lower. To h*ll with marketing costs: they're the same regardless of physical media. The record industry has blatantly profiteered from us since 1981.

They've done this several ways. How many bands have come and gone so fast you barely remember them? The "song of the month" comes out and is gone faster than you can blink. But, oh, we've just GOT TO HAVE that cool new tune, so there goes another $21.99 at the record store (yes, this was a common price five years ago, lest we forget). The more this happens, the more money to the cartel. DeBeers would be proud.

And yet, what happened to musical genres since 1990? It seems to me they've contracted. Everything today seems to be either country or urban manufactured garbage. No classic rock, precious little blues, etc. etc. These are all the choices we get, and that's all the radio stations will play, since they are PAID TO DO SO. Anything else is decades old. I desperately want to see a study done on what music is being downloaded. I'm willing to bet it ISN'T the newest stuff, but older music that's actually worth the bandwidth they consume.

Exclusive contracts: oh, these make me mad. Want to listen to Van Halen? What's their label? Because you can be sure that only one label will have them. A label with a contract over a popular group's music can charge WHATEVER THEY LIKE if the group is popular enough; there is no competition whatsoever. For this reason alone the RIAA should AT THE VERY LEAST be regulated like any local monopoly. If I had my way, exclusive distribution contracts would be outlawed as trusts. No economist worth his salt would ever suggest that trusts, even local ones, are anything but harmful toward a capitalistic economy.

Given all this, is stealing wrong? Sure it is, but it's a response to a far greater wrong: the existence of the situations I described above. Since our lawmakers seemingly aren't willing to do anything about it, people are taking matters into their own hands.

NOTA BENE, PEOPLE. I read Shashdot A LOT, and most people there are looking at this whole RIAA situation as being perpetuated mostly by REPUBLICANS. No BS, people; I'm totally serious. Hardly an RIAA story goes by without this being make abundantly clear. We are being perceived as promoting predatory business uber alles, regardless of the social or cultural costs. Don't think for a minute that this sentiment won't translate into votes next year.

I don't know what the law is regarding downloaded MP3's, but I do know that you are prohibited from playing ANY copyrighted music in a "public exhibition", where people other than friends or family are gathered.

So, if you pop a disc in your car's CD player and drive down the street, better keep the volume low, because if you don't, and the general public can hear it, you are technically in violation of the law.

Likewise, if you have your window open, and are playing copyrighted music on your home stereo, and passersby can hear it, this too is a violation of copyright law.

Or, if you are a teacher who likes to play music in the background as students work on an assignment, this is probably also a copyright infringement, even though there is an exception made for "educational purposes". I would assume that means if you are studying a particular song as part of a music appreciation class. But, outside of that, I would assume it to be a violation, because simply playing music would, in my opinion, constitute a public performance. I know that day care centers have gotten in trouble in the past for playing copyrighted VCR tapes for the children who were in attendance.

Or, if you play music at a party where a group is gathered, that is probably copyright infringement, especially if you don't know each and every person there.

So, it depends what your definition of "group of friends" is. If it doesn't match that of the RIAA's interpretation of copyright law, then you could possibly be sued if they find out about it. Not likely, I would say, but then I said that about filesharing a few months ago.

Of course, these are all my own opinions, and I arrived at them after reading and interpreting the law for myself. Of course, I am not a lawyer, so I am probably wrong.

Barely 24 hours after suing alleged file swappers around the United States, the recording industry has settled its first, agreeing to drop its case against a 12-year-old New York girl in exchange for US$2,000.

That does it. I'm no longer going to pay a thin dime for anything the RIAA produces. May the illegal downloaders drive it clean out of business and urinate on the ground it once stood on.

You can go here to learn about bands, albums, and labels that are 100% clean of the RIAA (seems to be slashdotted at the moment).

This "everybody does it" mentality must end.

Either the "sue the customer" mentality must end, or the industry will find it has no more customers. And if that were to happen, where would the Democrat Party get all those fat donations from greasy entertainment lawyers?