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RIAA Gets Nervous, Brings In Big Gun
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Aug 01, 2008 06:46 PM
from the headlines-that-would-be-better-if-they-were-literal dept.
from the headlines-that-would-be-better-if-they-were-literal dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "I guess the RIAA is getting nervous about the ability of its 'national law firm' (in charge of bringing 'ex parte' motions, securing default judgments, and beating up grandmothers and children) to handle the oral argument scheduled to be heard on Monday, August 4th in Duluth, in Capitol v. Thomas. So, at the eleventh hour, it has brought in one of its 'Big Guns' from Washington, D.C., a lawyer who argues United States Supreme Court cases like MGM v. Grokster to handle the argument. This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs, but the judge ultimately realized that he had been misled by the RIAA in issuing his jury instructions, and indicated he's probably going to order a new trial. But, not to worry. A group of 10 copyright law professors from 10 different law schools and several other amici curiae (friends of the court) have filed briefs now, so it is highly unlikely the judge will allow himself to be misled again, no matter who the RIAA brings in as cannon fodder on Monday."
Related Stories
[+]
Verdict Reached In RIAA Trial 1001 comments
jemtallon writes "The jury in the previously mentioned Captiol v Thomas story has reached a verdict. They have found in favor of the plaintiffs, Capitol, and ordered that she pay a $222,000 fine for 24 cases of copyright infringement."
[+]
Judge in Capitol v. Thomas Considers New Trial 234 comments
Jay Maynard writes "The judge in Capitol Records v. Thomas said today he's thinking about granting a new trial because he may have committed a 'manifest error of law' in his jury instructions. He says that his instruction that simply uploading music to a P2P network without any proof that anyone actually downloaded it may conflict with a case in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that said 'infringement of [the distribution right] requires an actual dissemination.' Briefs are due by May 29, with oral argument July 1. The judge invited friend of the court briefs by May 29, as well." NewYorkCountryLawyer links to the Judge's order itself (PDF), in which the Judge notes that he may (in NYCL's words) "have overlooked controlling Eighth Circuit authority, the case of National Car Rental v. Computer Associates, which held that you can't have a violation of the 'distribution right' without an 'actual dissemination of copies or phonorecords.'" Update: 05/15 18:54 GMT by T : Note that while the linked story as well as Jay Maynard's summary use the term "upload," Thomas wasn't uploading the files themselves, only making them available.
[+]
Your Rights Online: Law Profs File Friend-of-Court Brief Against RIAA 186 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A group of 10 copyright law professors has filed an amicus curiae ('friend of the court') brief on the side of the defendant in Capitol v. Thomas, agreeing with the judge's recent decision that the $222,000 verdict won by the RIAA appears to be tainted by a 'manifest error of law.' The clear and well-written 14-page brief (PDF) argues that the 'making available' jury instruction, which the RIAA had requested and the judge ultimately accepted, was in fact a 'manifest error of law,' making the point, among others, that an interpretation of a statute should begin with the words of the statute. My only criticism of the brief is that it overstates the authorities relied on by the RIAA, citing cases which never decided the 'making available' issue as cases which had decided it in the RIAA's favor."
As it turns out, the MPAA, close ally to the RIAA, has come forth with a more controversial view. They suggest that proof of actual distribution shouldn't be required. From their brief (PDF): "Mandating that proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances."
[+]
Your Rights Online: RIAA's $222k Verdict Is Likely To Be Set Aside 224 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Apparently the RIAA's 'big gun' didn't fare so well this morning in Duluth, when he tried to persuade the judge in Capitol v. Thomas that the part of the Copyright Act which says 'by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending', can be disregarded. According to an in-person account by Wired.com the Judge indicated that he is likely to grant a mistrial, setting aside the $222,000 jury verdict based upon his incorrect jury instruction, and that he will probably hand down his decision in September. Just yesterday some of the same lawyers got rebuffed by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in their attempt to argue that Cablevision's online storage for its customers constitutes a copyright infringement, in Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings. There, too, the content owners had argued that the wording of the Copyright Act did not mean what it said. There, too, the Court politely but firmly disagreed."
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Nervous? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they're just bringing in the best hired gun that they can. No different from any other company or organization in that respect. This case is absolutely huge to them. Of course they're going to get the best counsel they can. Wouldn't they be foolish if they didn't?
Re:Nervous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Washington DC lawyers are the best (Score:5, Funny)
1) Ban reporters from courtroom
2) Turn off the lights
3) Win!!!
Parent
Yes, Nervous. (Score:4, Interesting)
they're just bringing in the best hired gun that they can
OK, so then why didn't they bring this guy in for the other parts of the trial?
Of course they're nervous.
Parent
Re:Nervous? (Score:5, Funny)
Even MS would think twice before sueing a 2000 year old grandmother, on social security, who dont have a clue how to work a computer.
Whoa, slow down, if she's from a civilized part of the world, she probably speaks Latin or Chinese, but maybe not English (which didn't appear until she was at least 1000 years old, how many 1000-year-olds do you know who can learn a new language, so it's hard for her to defend herself in court). And I doubt that she's on social security, since her working years were well before the time that social security was invented. In her day, "social security" meant having a lot of male children. As for computers, she was probably pretty good in her day, but when your hands are gnarled with arthritis, it's difficult to slide the beads on the wires.
Parent
A battle of most epic proportions! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A battle of most epic proportions! (Score:5, Funny)
No, they'd make a movie out of it, and it would do brilliantly at the box office. Then they could sue people for copying it.
Ouroboros FTW!
Parent
The abuse of Copyright has gone far enough (Score:5, Insightful)
And, this seems like a good stopping point. As of 1976 we had 2 26 year terms for a copyright, the act was amended that year and has been amended so many times since that whole treatises exist just to explain the changes in the law over a 32 year period.
What is particularly outrageous is the Sonny Bono extension - or, Save Mickey from the Public Domain Act. That crazy amendment brought material that was in the public domain back into copyright!
The great argument was that the authors would be more motivated to create with longer royalty periods - the only problem: I haven't heard any new creations from George and Ira Gershwin - the lazy bastards (ok, they're dead). The real reason to extend and extend these terms is to allow the corporate assignees to continue to profit. Disney was a strong backer because Mickey was about to become public domain - and that mouse is worth millions to its corporate masters.
The RIAA has been raking in the loot for 10-15 years now - and it is about time to put a stop to this kind of bs. I think that Monday will be the beginning of the end of the RIAA's tactics.
Re:The abuse of Copyright has gone far enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that is what I call stealing.
Anyway, if people think the pace of progress is getting faster and faster (or want it to be so), and that marketing and distribution is better than years ago, then it makes no sense that copyright terms should be getting longer and longer.
Logically they should be getting shorter and shorter.
Parent
Re:The abuse of Copyright has gone far enough (Score:5, Insightful)
"That crazy amendment brought material that was in the public domain back into copyright!"
Now that is what I call stealing.
Hell, just extending the term of copyright is blatant theft from the public domain. The works were created under the terms of the social contract that existed at the time. The creators agreed to the terms, the public agreed to the terms when it paid the creators and their distributors. Then the lawyers yanked the rug out from underneath us, kept the money and kept the creations.
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Re:The abuse of Copyright has gone far enough (Score:4, Interesting)
"Hell, just extending the term of copyright is blatant theft from the public domain. The works were created under the terms of the social contract that existed at the time."
That's a very good point. How is this different from retroactive punishment for a crime that didn't exist when you committed the act? A: it's not -- the only difference here is that the PUBLIC, rather than an individual, is being "punished" by a retroactive penalty which did not exist at the time the "crime" (creation of copyrighted work) was "committed".
So -- extending copyright extends the "punishment" the public endures for allowing content owners their limited monopoly (ie. copyright).
(That didn't come out as clear as I'd hoped, but you get the idea...)
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Re:The abuse of Copyright has gone far enough (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:The abuse of Copyright has gone far enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't go so far as to end it. A reasonable time - say 30 years - ought to be enough. Romeo & Juliet became West Side Story. Now, Leonard Bernstein's music is still in copyright as is Arthur Laurents (book), and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics....
But, from 1957 when the play opened on Broadway, only Sondheim is still alive. That show is 51 years old and by our current copyright laws it could remain in copyright (for one or more of the three creations) for at least another 50 years. What makes a fine derivative work like West Side Story so special that another Bernstein or Laurents or Sondheim couldn't build onto West Side Story and create another masterpiece - but not for another 50 years?
As for that damned mouse and its creator - Disney needs less income - it owns so much now that it can't keep track of it all.
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Re:The abuse of Copyright has gone far enough (Score:5, Insightful)
No. A law that tries to control the right to copy makes no sense in a world where everyone has every day access to copying machines. The direct social benefits of copying cannot be denied by the naive backwards belief that restriction of that copying is the best way to encourage the creation of new works. We now know that is wrong. We now know that, in fact, the exact opposite is true - people create more new works when they have free access to the work of others. Some of us have known this for centuries, but we tolerated the nonsense of the singers and song-writers because there really wasn't much harm being done. Now this absurd conspiracy against the public interest must be stopped.
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Re:The abuse of Copyright has gone far enough (Score:4, Interesting)
1. That's irrelevant. You can't criminalize the population to keep some ancient business model.
2. Patents and Copyright are not the same thing.
3. The constitution enumerates the powers that the state has the option of using. By your logic the president is required to declare war because the constitution says has the power to.. actually, that might explain why there's some idiot declaring a war every freakin' year.
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Friend of the court? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I didn't know the phrase amicus curiae before, so I looked it up in Wikipedia and... I can't help it, it sounds a tad bit like "lobbying for courtrooms".
How do courts keep this from happening? Or do they, actually?
Re:Friend of the court? (Score:5, Informative)
The Court can decide what briefs it accepts or not.
Arguably, I think the briefs are misfiled and that the process of the amicus curiae is being abused; A good amicus brief should, in my opinion, not be filed in support of any particular side, but in defense if a particular argument of law or explanation of fact.
Parent
Re:Friend of the court? (Score:5, Insightful)
This means that they are not really a problem the way lobbying Congress is a problem, because amicus briefs contain nothing to influence a judge other than the merit of their arguments (and maybe a bit of the perceived prestige of whoever wrote them.)
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Re:Friend of the court? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I didn't know the phrase amicus curiae before, so I looked it up in Wikipedia and... I can't help it, it sounds a tad bit like "lobbying for courtrooms". How do courts keep this from happening? Or do they, actually?
For the most part, amicus curiae briefs are encouraged, much like pro bono work. Anyone with enough money can hire lawyers to exhaustively research legally grey areas looking for precedents. Friend of the court briefs are generally used to help even the odds for people without those kind of resources. In this case, for example, an important precedent being discussed and high priced lawyers funded by a huge cartel (convicted of criminal actions) is suing an individual with no real resources. When concerned experts volunteer their time to help the court have all the information from the other side, well I think that is a good thing.
Parent
And this is surprising because? (Score:5, Insightful)
Having good lawyers on both sides can really cut through a lot of the fluff and the misery in a case like this. Of course, if the lawyers deliberately want to exacerbate the problem and the judge isn't on the ball, they can make things worse. But otherwise, why would the RIAA not want the best lawyer it can get?
They've already had their expert "ambushed" with Daubert in the previous UMG vs. Lindor deposition that Ray Beckerman posted. This is 100% a rookie mistake. A competent firm would have briefed the expert and all related parties extensively on Daubert to ensure this doesn't happen. The downside for the opposition is that a better lawyer has a better chance of avoiding these rookie mistakes, so you have to actually argue facts rather than procedure.
Do all of you who rail against the RIAA really want them defeated because they hired crappy lawyers, or do you want them defeated on the merits? I fear that the answer from the Slashdot crowd at large is "either way, doesn't matter" but I think that's a little intellectually dishonest.
In P2P file sharing, copyright infringement is taking place. It is almost certainly NOT fair use. If you don't like it, you really need to be writing your members of Congress to change Copyright law. An issue like Capitol v. Thomas, where the issue seems to have shifted toward the magnitude of damages, is something that can be fought in the courts. And if it is to be fought in the courts, let it be fought on the essence of the issues and not on accidental factors such as the quality of the attorneys involved.
Re:And this is surprising because? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do all of you who rail against the RIAA really want them defeated because they hired crappy lawyers, or do you want them defeated on the merits? I fear that the answer from the Slashdot crowd at large is "either way, doesn't matter" but I think that's a little intellectually dishonest.
Personally (and I don't think I'm alone in this) I want to see them defeated because of the tactics they are using. It's not so much that they have crappy lawyers (I couldn't say one way or the other), but that they are using crappy evidence in order to intimidate people into coughing up money. I couldn't say how many people who get hit with these lawsuits are *actually* infringing copyright. But what I can say with some conviction is that the evidence the RIAA is presenting should not be enough to decide the case. Couple that with the shotgun approach to selecting defendants (targets), and it really makes me want them shut down.
Many people on Slashdot (possibly even most) make their living from creating copyrighted works. The people here are in an interesting position of being creators *and* users. Many of us would prefer to see different business models emerge that make life better for users. This, despite the fact that we are creators (imagine that!). Given our position, I don't think it's terribly unusual that we have a bias against distributors, who are neither creators nor users. We would prefer that the link between creator and user be shortened -- to 0 if possible.
So while I understand your point, I think it's quite reasonable for many of us to despise the RIAAs tactics, fear their use of shoddy evidence *and* wish that they (and their ilk) disappear for good. From our perspective, life only gets better without the distribution cartels.
Parent
Re:And this is surprising because? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do all of you who rail against the RIAA really want them defeated because they hired crappy lawyers, or do you want them defeated on the merits?
I realize that the case law precedent would be stronger if they were defeated on a thorough review of their arguments, but if a loss by a technicality grants an injunction against their driftnet attack on their own customers, I for one am all for it.
And, aside from the idiots who screwed up in UMG vs. Lindor, they're not crappy lawyers, IMO. They are lawyers who know the law and procedures enough to avoid following the intended purpose. That's not easy to do, unless you divest yourself of your conscience and common sense. After reading NYCL's article summarizing their tactics, I am sure many here would agree that they should at least be investigated and sanctioned, if not disbarred.
That said, if this big-shot lawyer plays by the rules and if he's defeated by reason in the Capitol hearing, this will effectively ice the RIAA's campaign and crush any hope of the same tactic by the MPAA and BSA. I'm thinking NYCL's excited about this, as the RIAA has spent time and resources to try to keep the courts from seeing that they are acting much like the stereotypical mafia boys roughing up innocent people for payment. I'm sure you'll agree that while there are legions of downloaders grabbing infringing content, there are far more people who only use the Web and email without any clue what a P2P application is.
Parent
Re:And this is surprising because? (Score:4, Insightful)
Responding to the above (and not your post in general), it's worth noting that:
Victims? If these people had owned the telegraph companies 120 years ago, they would have sued Bell out of existence. If they had been a blacksmith cartel, cars would have been outlawed because auto owners hadn't purchased a license to use the roads, which were clearly designed for horse-drawn buggies.
Piracy? As in rapine and murder? Really? Sounds like guilt bubbling to the surface to me. Deep down, these people know they are thieves. You can't be a middleman and take 70%+ of the profit without stealing from someone.
Back the "good old days" of Napster, I discovered Garrison Starr, David Shutrick, and got hold of the remaining episodes of "The Goon Show". If Napster had been legalized in the same way that cable television was in the early 80's, I would have paid a subscription fee to stay on it. I would certainly pay one now. Why? Because I never would have come across these musicians and comedians otherwise. But the content providers shot themselves in the foot not because of their fear of piracy but because of their desire to control the entire entertainment market from top to bottom. That is what they held out for, that is what they still hold out for, and that is why they want to sue P2P users, censor Usenet, eliminate the public domain, and move to a model where all entertainment is leased on a per-use basis.
In actual fact, downloading is a lot like speeding; nearly everyone is a little guilty, and a few are extremely guilty. But no one in America would claim that a $200,000 speeding ticket is justified. And in the case downloading, it's only the international cartel, clinging to it's outdated business model, that's holding us back from finding a revenue model that will allow legitimate transactions. We would not be having this discussion today if this cartel wasn't using its full force to stop the inevitable: a change in business model which they will not profit from.
Parent
Precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
.
Money is strictly short-term, precedents affect the long-term.
The RIAA want precedents to be set such that they can continue to harass innocent people without regard for the consequences of their mistakes.
THIS IS AWESOME!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Now we know they're almost done!
From video game experience, we all know that the boss brings out his most dangerous and powerful weapon right before you win.
Dont get your hopes up; D.C. loves RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)
The republican party is prioritizing business interests over consumers any time the have a chance.
And the democrats are all cozy and in bed with the Hollywood elite.
Expect RIAA, Viacom, Hollywood and all other companiers with IP content to consistently get everything they want from Wahington. As a consumer, dont even try to get your hopes up. You will continue to get screwed.
Just as a reminder: After entertainment became a big business with lobbyists around 1920, *no* new copyrighted work have expired. Every 10 years or so, it has been extended by at least 10 years, and is now about two lifetimes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They'd sue the hell out of McDonalds if McDonalds offered Starbucks coffee without a license.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)
but it could be argued that the torrents on the site because they are MP3s and not the original CDs, are different.
No, it couldn't. Regardless of the format, be it MP3, CD, cassette, 8 track cartridge, vinyl LP or Edison phonograph, if the order of notes and chords, lyrics, style, and performance are the same, it's the same as far as copyright is concerned.
Or, to put it another way, if the listener can identify it as the same song, it's the same song. The actual order of 1s and 0s is irrelevant, because they're only a storage medium that has to be translated back to something you can hear. CD and MP3 differ only in the accuracy of reproduction; if encoding to MP3 changed the fundamental nature of the music it would be an utterly useless format.
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Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, no. In order to qualify as a "derivative work" according to the accepted definition it must be significantly different from the original, but still contain recognisable elements.
Example: the theme for Men In Black is a derivative work because it used a portion of K.C & the Sunshine Band's "Forget Me Nots". An MP3 of "Forget Me Nots" is still "Forget Me Nots", it just sounds a little worse than an uncompressed PCM file.
Parent
Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please. I challenge you to come up with a string of 1000 bits that has 3 different (meaningful!) meanings, let alone a string of 4 million bits, which is much more representative of mp3 compressed audio. If you manage to accomplish that, I challenge you to find 9 more.
(Note that there are [301 digit number starting with 1 that the lameness filter will not accept] different 1000 bit numbers...)
Copyright terms and so forth do not fit current technology, but the digital/analog divergence that you are arguing is the worst kind of logical contortion (the kind where you simply ignore inconvenient facts and information).
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Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why 1000 bits? I wasn't aware copyright has any restrictions on length. Why does it have to be "meaningful" in any human context? In the digital world, every single bit is "meaningful."
I hereby copyright "1110100100101000." In the music word, even a sample of a work is considered infringement so any file that has that binary sequence in it is infringing.
I can guarantee it appears in every single GIF image ever made.
Therefore, all GIF images - or at the very least all images created or copied after this moment - are violating my copyright. Pay me.
=Smidge=
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Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't be an idiot. Copyright holds the concept of a derived work, and you cannot distribute a work that is derived from a copyrighted work without permission from the copyright holder. An encoded version of a music track is clearly derived from the original music track, and as such distributing it without permission is against the law.
Programmers tend to think that any law which can't be expressed in Perl (or Python or whatever) is too ambiguous to be useful. This is, however, not how things actually work.
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Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)
And if this was about people actually selling pirated DVDs, it'd be a different story.
This is closer to suing one person for over $10k per cup of coffee they stole.
I'm going to stick with that for the moment, as it's equally unfair to both sides -- stealing a cup of coffee actually deprives someone of potential revenue, whereas stealing a song is just a copy. But stealing a cup of coffee only feeds you (or your caffeine addiction) for a day -- you'll be back later, either to steal or to buy -- whereas stealing a song means you can listen to that same song again, as many times as you like.
But no matter how you want to spin it, stealing a cup of coffee does not carry a $10k fine. Stealing a song shouldn't, either.
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Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually stealing a CD doesn't get you into that, it's copying that does.
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Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought about that as I was walking out of a store last night, past a rack of CDs and DVDs for sale. If I were to swipe a DVD on my way past, and got caught, the consequences for shoplifting would be absolutely trivial, compared to getting caught downloading the same movie over the Internet, which takes longer, doesn't include the bonus features, and would probably require me to burn it to a DVD-R to free up space on my file server. And yet, stealing a DVD actually deprives the store of physical property that they paid for, while downloading via BitTorrent doesn't harm anyone.
How many people are going to switch from downloading to shoplifting because they're concerned about the possible repercussions?
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Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Their main revenue stream is out-of court.
Really? Is that true anymore? I haven't bought a single RIAA CD in 10 years and I don't think anyone I know has either.
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Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Back before the Internet, copying a song from a record onto a cassette might deprive the RIAA member of a single sale. If that was what we were talking about, you would be correct.
This is not suing someone for downloading a song. This is about putting the song up for everyone on the Internet to download - potentially at least thousands or tens of thousands of people. So comparing it to stealing a single cup of coffee isn't quite correct. It is a lot closer to stealing hundreds of cups of coffee, maybe more.
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out. According to some, this means her liability should be ... nothing. I'm not sure that makes sense either.
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Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not suing someone for downloading a song. This is about putting the song up for everyone on the Internet to download
I was going by TFS, which says, and I quote:
This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs
Furthermore, "making available" has, in fact, failed in court, at least once -- which means that they would have to show that he was actually distributing it.
The problem is, nobody knows how many people downloaded from Ms. Thomas. Nobody. Not even Ms. Thomas. Could be nobody. Could be the entire Internet-using population of the world. Nobody can find out.
Not strictly true. Depends what kind of logs the filesharing program kept, or her ISP.
According to some, this means her liability should be ... nothing.
I like to call it "innocent until proven guilty", but apparently, this doesn't apply to civil cases.
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Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Informative)
This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs
RTFA. RIAA downloaded 24 songs from her.
And they were authorized by the copyright holders to download them.
Falcon
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Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Only on Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, that Ray Beckerman, what a poser. *facepalm*
Mod parent down pls, kthx.
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Re:Only on Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually... he's an incredibly respectable lawyer who is incredibly knowledgeable on the subject, and writes the entire story based off good, solid facts. His only fault is for using a good lead-in sentence to get you hooked.
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Re:Only on Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
I think we should all aspire to be someone who's only fault in a summary is using a good lead-in sentence. Thanks Ray!
I wish that were my only fault, but I have many others. Actually, I'm not even that good with lead-in sentences; I think I just got lucky on this one.
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Re:It proves how stupid they were to begin with (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you miss the point with #4. There is no revenue in recorded music anymore. I know I'm not buying any, and nobody I know is buying any. Anyone that knows how to is downloading it for free. Some folks think they are clever by saying they will eventually buy something when it is the right price and right quality. In the meantime, they are downloading as well and not paying.
I'd like to hear about a business model whereby the artists produce the music and put it out on the Internet for free. Where is the "business" here? If I download and never, ever even think about going to a concert or buying an overpriced T-shirt, where exactly is the "business"? I surely do not see one.
I think the "business" of music is pretty much over. There are the people that know the world owes them an audience because they are so great, and there are the people that love the idea of singing or playing and will do it no matter if anyone pays them or not. We don't need more of the first sort - watch the beginning of the American Idol season for some examples. We may benefit in the end from the latter sort, but they gotta eat too. So there will be very few of them. Too bad, really.
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Re:It proves how stupid they were to begin with (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to hear about a business model whereby the artists produce the music and put it out on the Internet for free. Where is the "business" here?
Patronage. Mass patronage.
Where anybody who would like the artist to produce another creation (album/song/book/poem/architectural design/movie/etc) for whatever reason can put money into a group escrow account. When the escrow account balance reaches the creator's asking price, the money is pocketed and the artist puts the work out on the internet for free.
As for how the artist gets started? Gives it away for free, just like they do today. The only difference is that instead of giving away their first four albums to the MAFIAA for free, they give one (or more if the first one sucks too much to generate an audience) directly to the public.
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Re:It proves how stupid they were to begin with (Score:5, Interesting)
I know I'm not buying any, and nobody I know is buying any. Anyone that knows how to is downloading it for free.
I buy plenty of music. On CD if I care about the quality (maybe 4-5 CD's a year). On Amazon if I don't (maybe an mp3 a week, though Pepsi has been upping that a bit for me). On P2P if it's otherwise unavailable (out of print, not digitized).
What possible reason could there be for not spending 89 cents for a song you want that's easy to find, of good quality, and immediately available? I mean, unless you're morally opposed or a hoarder.
I'd like to hear about a business model whereby the artists produce the music and put it out on the Internet for free. Where is the "business" here? If I download and never, ever even think about going to a concert or buying an overpriced T-shirt, where exactly is the "business"? I surely do not see one.
I wrote this [slashdot.org] here about 8 years ago. It mostly still applies. Concert tickets are too expensive - that means there's more demand than supply. So even if you don't go to concerts and buy $40 T-shirts, that has no bearing on the music economy in general. Seriously, if a band you liked was in town playing the local theatre for $10 a seat you wouldn't go?
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Re:It proves how stupid they were to begin with (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate the RIAA as much as the next /.er, but let's not forget - that business model fucking rocked. Not for the artists, but for them. And they're not the artists, they're themselves. I know if my seven-figure paycheck depended on screwing everyone else, I'd just ask where the condoms were!
To quote Upton Sinclair,
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
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