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BusinessWeek Takes On the RIAA
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Apr 27, 2008 08:05 AM
from the palpable-hit dept.
from the palpable-hit dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "BusinessWeek magazine has gone medieval on the RIAA, recounting in grisly detail the cruel ordeal to which the RIAA has subjected a completely innocent defendant, Tanya Andersen of Oregon. Nobody can read the story and come to any other conclusion than that the RIAA and its lawyers are total jerks. Of course we've been reading about Atlantic v. Andersen on p2pnet.net and on my blog, and discussing it here, but there's something extra special about a mainstream publication like Business Week really letting them have it."
Related Stories
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Your Rights Online: Mothers Taking the Fight to the RIAA 635 comments
An anonymous reader writes "p2pnet is reporting that two more single mothers are refusing to be victimized by the RIAA. Patricia Santagelo was one of the first to stand up and fight the lawsuits, which some say resemble protection racket schemes. Now Dawnell Leadbetter of Seattle and Tanya Andersen of Oregon have decided to follow suit and stand up against the recording industry behemoth. From the article: 'Don't let your fear of these massive companies allow you to deny your belief in your own innocence. Paying these settlements is an admission of guilt. If you're not guilty of violating the law, don't pay.'"
[+]
New Attorneys Fee Decision Against RIAA 144 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has gotten slammed again, this time in Oregon, as the Magistrate Judge in Atlantic v. Andersen has ruled that Tanya Andersen's motion for attorneys fees should be granted. The Magistrate, in his 15-page decision, noted that, despite extensive pretrial discovery proceedings, 'when plaintiffs dismissed their claims in June 2007, they apparently had no more material evidence to support their claims than they did when they first contacted defendant in February 2005.....' and concluded that 'Copyright holders generally, and these plaintiffs specifically, should be deterred from prosecuting infringement claims as plaintiffs did in this case.' This is the same case in which (a) the RIAA insisted on interrogating Ms. Andersen's 10-year-old girl at a face-to-face deposition, (b) the defendant filed RICO counterclaims against the record companies, and (c) the defendant recently converted her RICO case into a class action"
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Your Rights Online: RIAA Drops Case, Should Have Sued Someone Else 195 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Once again the RIAA has dropped a case with prejudice, this time after concluding
it was the defendant's daughter it should have sued
in the first place. In the case of Lava v. Amurao, mindful that in similar scenarios it has been held liable for the
defendant's attorney fees (Capitol v. Foster and Atlantic v. Andersen), the RIAA went on the offensive. In this case there was actually no attorney fee motion pending, making their motion all the more intriguing. The organization argued that it was the defendant's
fault that the record companies sued the wrong person, because the defendant didn't tell them that his daughter was the file sharer they were looking for."
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Your Rights Online: NewYorkCountryLawyer Debates RIAA VP 291 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "At Fordham Law School's annual IP Law Conference this year, Slashdot member NewYorkCountryLawyer had a chance to square off with Kenneth Doroshow, a Senior Vice President of the RIAA, over the subject of copyright statutory damages. Doroshow thought the Jammie Thomas verdict of $222,000 was okay, he said, since Ms. Thomas might have distributed 10 million unauthorized copies. NYCL, on the other hand, who has previously derided the $9,250-per-song file verdict as 'one of the most irrational things [he has] ever seen in [his] life in the law', stated at the Fordham conference that the verdict had made the United States 'a laughingstock throughout the world.' An Australian professor on the panel said, 'The comment has been made a few times that America is out of whack and you are a laughingstock in the rest of the world. As the only non-American on the panel, that's true. We do see the cases like Thomas in our newspapers, and we think: "Wow, those crazy Americans, what are they up to now?"
This whole notion of statutory damages is not something that we have within our Copyright Act. You actually have to be able to prove damage for you to be able to be compensated for that.' NYCL also got to debate the 'making available' issue, saying that there was no 'making available' right in US copyright law, despite the insistence of the program's moderator, the 'keynote' speaker, and a 'majority vote' of the audience that there was such a right. The next day, two decisions came down, and a month later yet another decision came down, all rejecting the 'making available' theory."
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It would be a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It would be a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It would be a good thing... (Score:5, Funny)
They could use something like this...
What does RIAA remind you of? Pigs, right?
And what does the RIAA love to do? SUE, right?
And what do you say to call in the pigs?
SUE-W.... SU-EW...
Sony-Universal-EMI-Warner...
Here piggie...
Parent
Re:It would be a good thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:It would be a good thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:It would be a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't just the media industry that has a choke hold on Congress. Yes, it is our fault but not for the reason you give. It is our fault because we give corporations, an immortal entity, the rights of a mortal man. Worse, because those corporations have no motivation beyond greed, they wield their power to feed that greed even to the detriment of real people.
For the specific case of copyright, it is the only business model on the face of the planet where employees (read: distributors+"Artists") are expecting to be paid decades or even centuries after they are finished the job. Where this idea that a person can make a one-hit-wonder and be paid perpetually for it is so wrong it is laughable. In no other industry do you find employees being paid beyond what they actually worked much less having that paycheck go to their heirs well after their death. Imagine if every business had to continue to pay all their employees+heirs for 90+ years after they quit. Business would come to a screeching halt then. But yet we are OK with it when it comes to copyright....Go figure.
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Re:It would be a good thing... (Score:4, Informative)
The movie/book might not be entirely objective, or cover all bases as well as it should, but I thought it would be relevant in reference to the debate about giving corporations "the rights of a mortal man" as the previous poster wrote.
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Re:It would be a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
I just returned from the bathroom. Should I send a check to whoever put the pipes in place ten years ago ?
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Re:It would be a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
-a creation with a perpetual life,
-whose primary function is to serve its shareholders' financial interests.
I.e, it is an immortal sociopath.
While consumer disinterest, etc., can have an effect, it is important in our society that the government -- which creates such 'immortals' -- regulate them quite carefully. To assume that market forces are alone sufficient to deter their excesses is just wrong.
If doing harm is profitable, corporations are programmed to do harm. They are programmed to do anything they can get away with. It is up to the government which created these extraordinary creatures to limit what they can get away with.
Regrettably, our courts have not yet shut down the RIAA's excesses, and our Congress -- far from shutting them down -- has shown itself to be quite deferential to the recording companies' wish to steal the internet from those who made it what it is.
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Re:It would be a good thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
What id quite like is somebody to produce a scanner that lists all non-RIAA music in my collection so i can go and buy the albums the RIAA doesn't "protect".
The problem is when you start trying to apply ethics to buying your snacks & drinks. Think Ms has a monopoly, look at coke. Snacks while not bieng as owned by 1 company are instead owned by 2/3 companies, but atleast they make it obvious so its easier to avoid say nestle than coke (coke, fanta, oasis, powerade, etc)
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Good on you (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing legal about Extortion. (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing legal about any of this is abuse of process. What you are looking at is mass produced fraud that should result in disbarment of everyone involved and jail time for the ring leaders. They knew what they were going to do to "dolphins" like Anderson with their "drift net" tactics. They also thought they were aiming for a less sympathetic but more pliable target when they targeted "rich" college kids. In all cases, the victims were stripped of their life savings if they caved in and of everything now and forever if they fought. The RIAA music sharing cases are one of the most degraded abuse of the legal system by the rich and powerful ever.
It's time for a backlash. The emails and reports behind this fraud should be ripped open to expose the guilty at the big music publishers.
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Contradictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny thing is, that I think their first statement is actually right. The damages are "incalculable" since they quite often used flawed studies, doctored data, fallacious logic, etc. to come up with that "3.7 billion" number in the first place.
Of course at the rate they are going it won't be long before they claim that every single TCP session established with the defendant is an instance of possible copyright infringement, or theft, and that it would just be easier to calculate damages based upon some one's bandwidth
Ridiculous lawyers. (Score:5, Funny)
If you take a far enough stretch, you can 'prove' anything.
Hey, anyone here ever heard of Bon Jovi? THERE! PROOF YOU'RE A THIEF!
Hey, is your kid a fan of a wildly popular TV show? THERE! THE COMPLETELY UNRELATED GUY'S USERNAME WAS VAGUELY JAPANESE! PROOF POSITIVE YOU'RE A THIEF!
Hey, RIAA member companies brought Rammstein, a german band, to prominence. Hitler was German. THERE! PROOF POSITIVE THAT THE RIAA HELPED RUN NAZI DEATH CAMPS!
It's worrying actually (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets take the best case scenario and say this class action lawsuit ends up being 100% successful and destroys the RIAA. The record labels behind the organization will simply dissolve it, like a snake shedding old skin. The next day a new association will spring up, using new devious tactics for the next 10 years before they too are finally ousted, and so on. Until Sony, Universal, EMI and Warner are held accountable for the actions of the RIAA this won't change.
They've done it at least once already, "The Settlement Support Center was a less public part of the initiative. Its name may suggest a neutral organization set up to resolve disputes with evenhanded objectivity. In fact, it was financed by the record industry and operated like a cross between a call center and a debt collection firm. The SSC has since been dissolved."
Re:It's worrying actually (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is, of course, that we're on to them now. Although the scenario you describe may have used to work, the 'net is putting a crimp in such plans. The web allows "regular people" to interact and organize at almost no cost. We can share information via blogs like Slashdot, p2pnet and Recording Industry vs. the People. The article says that Anderson "searched the Net for a case like hers." Her lawyer can use the 'net to find and communicate with other lawyers who are fighting the same fight to share advice and strategy.
The 'net helps even the playing field. Think about Sony, still recovering from getting their asses handed to them over the rootkit debacle, backing off on their plan to charge extra for a crapware-free PC http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/03/sony-pay-an-ext.html [wired.com] within a day of the news hitting the intertubes.
Go read the stories on the Consumerist http://consumerist.com/ [consumerist.com] about customers using the 'net to get refunds on bad deals and real service from fake "service departments" from the likes of Sears, Citibank, and Comcast. (Well, maybe not Comcast.)
The Internet, like the printing press, is a transformative technology. That means nothing is ever going to be the same. You and I already know it and sooner or later Big Business will, too. For an excellent book on the power that the 'net brings us, check out Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.
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Re:It's worrying actually (Score:4, Insightful)
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Q's and A's (Score:5, Insightful)
About time. The more "mainstream" pub on this whole debacle, the better. I think, if you were to lay out all the facts and history in front of the American people (well, those with brains, anyhoo), they would feel this way:
Is piracy wrong? Yes.
Does much P2P activity infringe on copyrights? Yes.
Do copyright holders have the right to defend and protect those copyrights? Yes.
Do the "yes" answers above justify bullying, intimidation, and harassment; spurious, questionable, and sometimes downright wrong technical claims; spying by 3rd parties; end runs around the legal system; or a general reluctance to allow accused file sharers to defend themselves, or take their case to a court of law? NO.
The last question is where the RIAA loses whatever moral high ground they may have.
Let's Stand Up - A Call to Action (mildly O/T) (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading through this story, it continues to shock me -- not what asshats the RIAA etc are -- but that we here, at the collective hive-mind that is Slashdot, haven't already come up with a way to help people wrongly being prosecuted by them and their sleazy lawyers.
There seems to be a clear pattern to their targets - people who know relatively little about technology and who are more likely to settle than battle it out in courts. I'd argue that we need to help these people out.
About halfway down the story, the defendant, Tanya Andersen is said to have looked up information online, hoping to find information on similiar cases.
Why don't we, through /., set up a site, aggregate information about similiar cases and build up a body of evidence to "[...] show that the RIAA engaged in serial bad-faith lawsuits [...]". In the long run, the space could serve as a place for debate on the current copyright regime, the inflated monetary value assigned to the songs/movies downloaded, etc.
I'm sure that some of us here are lawyers as well - maybe some time could be spent decoding the various court documents/legal stuff that the RIAA sends out - a distributed legal advice centre (cue Beowulf joke)...
This is just an idea, of course - but I'd be happy to get involved in whatever way I can. I have some small amount of expertise in building websites - perhaps that's the first place to start...
Re:Let's Stand Up - A Call to Action (mildly O/T) (Score:5, Interesting)
Why don't we, through /., set up a site, aggregate information about similiar cases and build up a body of evidence to "[...] show that the RIAA engaged in serial bad-faith lawsuits [...]".
Because that would take away from precious time ogling the latest Star Trek film or signing petitions to stop Uwe Boll from making movies. d:
All jokes aside, if you are serious about such a project, then figure out what you need to do it technologically - is the site going to use PHP? Would you just do it easy and go with Wikimedia? etc.
Once you have a rough plan, you would have to find people with the talents you need who are willing to help on their free time. Projects like this (ones where people don't get paid) often have staff members that abandon ship faster than a rowboat full of Cuban refugees at the Florida coast. Anyone working on it would have to document/comment everything appropriately so their inevitable successor can continue their work.
What can you do? Well, if you wanted to fill the ambiguous position of "Project Lead", you can start by registering a .com and getting some decent hosting for the site. Again, you'll need a plan ahead of time aside from a few paragraphs in a /. comment to get some people to get on board with the project.
Is theriaaareabunchofthievingbastards.com taken? It might be too long, but it makes the point...
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Re:Let's Stand Up - A Call to Action (mildly O/T) (Score:4, Informative)
Why don't we, through /., set up a site, aggregate information about similiar cases and build up a body of evidence to "[...] show that the RIAA engaged in serial bad-faith lawsuits [...]". In the long run, the space could serve as a place for debate on the current copyright regime, the inflated monetary value assigned to the songs/movies downloaded, etc.
Parent
Saw the future last night (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting choice of words (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting choice of words (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Interesting quote (Score:4, Insightful)
They count every download as a lost sale.
This is an obviously specious metric. Everyone has downloaded music for perusal, found out that it sucked ass, and deleted it. And pretty much everyone with bandwidth and friends without it has downloaded music for someone else and either deleted it or has it lying around, never listened to once. These are of course not necessarily lost sales, because these days you can go to a record store and listen before you buy.
The law takes the attitude that duplication and distribution are themselves illegal acts. However, if they do not result in a lost sale, who is being harmed? This is the basic problem with copyright law as it is today written.
I think it's pretty clear that if you can't demonstrate a simply provable loss of revenue, that no one has been significantly hurt. An argument that someone is giving away an endless supply of what you're selling and therefore harming your profits looks reasonable on its face, but if you are selling squid-flavored apple-rutabaga smoothies, then most of the people who get one are just going to pour them out anyway. THIS is what the music industry is upset about today. They want to control the previews of the music. With mp3 downloads people do not need to buy music without knowing if it's good or not, so they can't just make a SUPERSHIT album with one hot single and then sell it to you on that basis any more; practically no one listens to music in the store before they buy it unless it's in the little kiosk, although you can do this in many stores. This is also why the MPAA is so upset about bittorrent downloads. The Movie Theater experience is getting worse all the time and if you know the movie sucks, you aren't going to go see it.
The solution is to make movies and music that aren't shit, and sell them on their merit, but most of these guys wouldn't recognize talent if it ran a train on their ass, so that's pretty much a non-starter business model for the major labels.
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