RIAA Calls Settlements Proof that Education is Working 425
MattW writes "AP reports that the RIAA has filed the next 80 lawsuits. The article contains a dumbfounding quote from Cary Sherman, President of the RIAA: 'The fact that the overwhelming majority of those who received the notification letter contacted us and were eager to resolve the claims is another clear signal that the music community's education and enforcement campaign is getting the message out.' Just for clarification, Cary, all it proves is that monopolistic giants can, in fact, afford to pay lawyers more than average people, and so said people are easily bullied. But nice try." It warms my heart to know that artists will be getting all the money that's due to them. Musicians always look so poor when I see them on television. Finally, they can afford the lifestyle they deserve.
Where's the Government? Our elected officials? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it just as obvious that 20 corporate lawyers against a single public defender simply ISN'T fair?
Hello? President Bush? Senate? Congress? Can you hear us?
Justice != According to law (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why some people refer to the US "Legal system" instead of "Justice System".
I'm not claiming that you have the right to make copies of things you buy, or listen to your music where you want, or go to the toilet during commercials ... Uhh, wait a minute, there is something clearly wrong here ..
Has anyone else noticed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Follow the money (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have a lot less problem paying for music and even paying in these settlements, but you know damn well that the artists aren't even going to see 1 cent on the dollar... This is just going to pay record companies.
More likely right into Cary Sherman's pocket...
The "message" (Score:5, Insightful)
Music - like technology, writing, science - represents human heritage and human culture and the era where small groups control access to this for commercial gain is over, finished, and now it's just time to bury the stinking corpse and go for a real party.
There are so many good ways of rewarding creative effort, it's a pollution of the concept of "art" to pretend that money is all that matters. Luckily, almost no-one is fooled.
Re:Where's the Government? Our elected officials? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't cry to the polititions, they are mere puppets for the corporations.
Old School (Score:2, Insightful)
Comments like this really get my goat.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Musicians that you get to see on TV that is.
Many musicians struggle on in obscurity, the cost of equipment and getting publicity taking everything they make out of music. Others, like myself just walk away from it all and get an office job.
Even those that you see on TV aren't really benefitting, with the exception of the few real superstars (Eminem, Madonna etc). The record companies like their charted artists to look rich, so they dress them up in expensive clothes and send them to flashy parties in fancy cars -- then send them the bill for it.
The average artist incurs more costs over the term of his contract than his earnings. As a result of "being in debt" to his record company, the company can then demand that the artist does not record for anyone else, even though they don't want to record him themselves. The artist then cannot record and loses his chosen way of earning a living.
Don't blame the artists for the work of the RIAA: we're as much victims of the music industry cartels as the consumer.
Re:Settlements = Sheep (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mafia says the same thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice server you've got here, shame if anything happened to it...
Re:Musicians and Musicians (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's worth remembering that there is a difference between sharing a clip and wholesale downloading. At some point in scale it stops being reasonable at starts being serious theft. When you've got people out there sharing tens of thousands of songs it's hard for me to see that as anything but a big rip-off and very hard for me to see why the RIAA should leave them alone.
I don't envy the RIAA their position, because this technology is going to be very hard for them to stop. And I agree with people who think that if they'd taken a softer stance on internet distribution earlier that they might have been able to leverage the technology rather than fighting it.
As for the musician's compensation, I think it would be very interesting to see if any of the money from these settlements actually made it to a musician. I know which way I would bet. If the musicians benefit from this at all, it's going to be from reduced wholesale copying, and really that's likely to benefit only the most popular musicians.
What the hell? (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not what this is about. It's not about the musicians at all you dim wit. It about the corporations that are hiding behind the musicians and art in general with regard to this issues. Get educated before making comments like this because you are not helping if you are as ignorant as the RIAA.
Flamebait that must be reiterated... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mainstream music sucks anyway. Get over it and stop downloading it for the simple fact that it sucks.
That said, if you actually want to support an artist, don't ever buy their albums. Instead, go to their shows and buy their merchandise. Most of the time, this money goes directly to them. This is almost always true for small bands on small labels. I haven't bought a record in 6 years because I know not a single cent is going to the artist unless I buy that album straight from them or it was DIY released. Instead, all the money I would have spent on records, I use to buy shirts, stickers, posters, pins, and what the hell ever straight from the band when I go to see them.
Pah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Musicians and Musicians (Score:4, Insightful)
Just curious, how much money have you received from these settlements? How much money have you received from the royalties imposed on blank music CDs (or all CDs in Canada)?
I'm guessing zero.
Have any artists received any payments from these settlements?
your loosing me, try squelching out the noise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, the RIAA and the MPAA are a bunch of bloated, jack-booted thugs that I would dearly love to see eradicated from the face fo the Earth. However, I just don't understand why the justification/sentiment is still so popular that when stealing music and movies it is somehow in response to the decadence of the RIAA, MPAA, and its "members" of actors and musicians.
Just steal the stuff and be done with it. If you feel the need to justify your actions when there is no real judgement (as in no judgement that matters, like in a court of law) levied against you than clearly you have internal guilt issues and should sit down and think things over. Stop being pathetic losers. Stop trying to justify your choices. Stop confusing entertainment with life and liberty. If you don't like their tactics then don't support them. Refuse to see the Matrix and Return of the King. Refuse to buy the next 1337 music album from "Cool Seattle Rip Off Band #39371." I can't remember the last time I went to a movie or obtained a music CD (bought, had a buddy burn it, etc). Have some balls, and stop being little whining bitches. Do something about the problem, don't make the problem worse. (No, war of attrition is not part of the solution and YES, your dollar is your vote of approval when you give it out)
Stop being whining bitches
Re:Old School (Score:2, Insightful)
emagating to the USA in the future. (Score:1, Insightful)
In order to facilite your integration in to the USA we ask you sign this document donating you soul to the capitalistic corporations of the United States.
Please also give up all inclinations of justice and freedom. Due to, thoughts no longer exist in the USA, the corporation and capitalist found them too much of a nuisance to there way of life.
oh yes and over here is were you will receive your daily treatment of propaganda, we will continue to monitor you till you fully believe anything the Cooperation's say including the puppet run government. Please be warned if you do not assilmate correctly we will brand you as a terrorist and dispose of you in any way we see fit. we recommend you stay in the north west of the Empire until you grow accustom to your life. have a nice day
_________
Well if the RIAA and MPAA as well as other corperations get there way, it will be like this or likly worse.
if you slowly raise the temprature you can boil a Frog alive. but you can deep fry a Yank if you just buy Governent officals..
Re:Nice objective piece (Score:2, Insightful)
Odd, you're description sounds alot like slashdot. So I'd guess he does think it's a worthwile endeavour indeed.
Re:Musicians and Musicians (Score:3, Insightful)
WHAT????
have you Even seen these "rock stars"?
Let's start from the beginning...
Rolling stones- horribly ugly.
Aerosmith - Uglier than the Rolling Stones!
now let's fast foreward....
Guns and Roses- Cousin IT and the uglies on tour!
Blues Travveler- Oh gawd, dont look at them!
Motorhead - Beat with the ugly stick..
Nickleback - Lead signer has a face only a pitbull could love.
I can go on and on and on....
Bands are NOT chosen for their "looks" and "appeal" rock and roll will get you laid even if you are as ugly as sin.
it's based on marketability and ONLY marketability.
Oh and getting your music out ot the public? Release mp3's and pu them everywhere for people to download for free... That is what John Mayer did, and now he has 3 albums out, is touring and is the sleeper hit of the year, doing very VERY well.
how about bands doing what proved to work.. Give your music away... Grateful-dead started it, Metallica was built on it, and the sucessful musicians of the next 50 years will be using it.
I always buy the CD's of the indie bands that give me their music for free online... Why? first I want to have pristene good rips of the music at higher bitrates, I want the CD backup, and finally I want to support the band.
The best thing you can do as an artist is release at least 5 of your songs as free mp3's and ask whoever that downloads them to please give them away to friends, and give permission for broadcast right there on the site.
Oh come ON guys (Score:3, Insightful)
The situation is complex and this will work to simplify it. Eventually some of the defendants will choose to go to trial and make the Giants prove their case, which should expose some real data (as opposed to FUD^Wspeculation) about the nature and magnitude of the problem. There will be some chain-reaction suits when consumers stung because they had not bought what they thought they had, turn around and sue third parties for deceiving them and thus exposing them to legal liability. Some genuine thieves will be punished and that should decrease the incidence of such theft somewhat. Then maybe we'll be able to judge just how much of the music industry's current situation is actually due to theft and how much to making products that no longer appeal.
I'd very much like to see some of these cases go to trial. I think we'd learn a lot. But we'd all have to give up some of our prejudices. Wouldn't that be a shame.
Education? Education?!! (Score:3, Insightful)
"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)"
Education Ed`u*ca"tion (?; 135), n. L. educatio; cf. F.
'education.
The act or process of educating; the result of educating, as determined by the knowledge skill, or discipline of character, acquired; also, the act or process of training by a prescribed or customary course of study or discipline; as, an education for the bar or the pulpit; he has finished his education.
When the result of your 'education' is a small decrease in the 60 million criminals, you are not educating. What the RIAA is preaching, not teaching, is no longer prescribed or customary.
The RIAA has outlived its usefulness and its arguments are taking on a more and more dangerous tone. They should be working on servers and other electronic music delivery systems.
Re:Where's the Government? Our elected officials? (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe the white house is thinking of new ways to award Haliburton contracts that nobody else happened to bid on because they weren't quite public.
They CAN hear, they just don't WANT to. All they want is is swag and to be re-elected, and quite frankly, if you're on
Give yourself 10 minutes without google and see if you can come up with a list of 20 names.
Oh, yeah, no public defender in civil cases. Basically by the time you step into the courtroom, you've already spent more than you would if you had settled unless you choose to "represent yourself". I somehow doubt pre-paid legal will win your case if they are against lawyers who get paid a lot more.
Re:The "message" (Score:5, Insightful)
I see this argument time and time again and I'd like to put this forth for the sake of being the devils advocate:
When has the RIAA clamped down on the distribution of independent music? All of these lawsuits have to do with the unauthorized copying of their works. To my knowledge, no one has been sued for sharing their local garage band demo.
The word "monopoly" is floated around here a lot in regard to the RIAA, but their monopoly is only on popular music. There are tons of music, free for the taking (in fact, being encouraged to be downloaded and shared) without having to pay into their game.
Results=$$$ (Score:2, Insightful)
Has that happened yet?
Artists' Rights! (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, the artists get nothing, squat, fuck-all from this process. If the point of the RIAA is to protect the copyrights of and benefit the artists they sure have a funny way of seeing that they're compensated properly-if at all. None of the previous settlements (Napster, MP3.com, etc.) have benefitted the artists whatsoever - only some nebulous cooalition of businessmen practicing a racketeering protection scheme with a difficult to prounounce acronym.
Re:Stealing music is still stealing (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, 'theft' is a very specific action by which you deprive the origonal owner of the use an object. If I take your book (or digital camera, or actually break into your house and steal your computer) you can no longer use it. I've taken something specific from you and the only way you can recover the object is to get it back from me.
On the other hand, with copyright infringment, my downloading an MP3 or movie or piece of software does not deprive anyone else of its use. By saying 'theft,' the movie industry, record industry, and software companies are trying to convince you that downloading a piece of software, say Windows XP, that costs $200 at Best Buy is the same as breaking into Microsofts vault and physically stealing $200.
But it's not.
That isn't to say it's not morally wrong. You need to decide that for yourself. And it's undeniably illegal. No one is trying to argue that. (Although you could make an argument that the punishment the RIAA is attempting to extract is grossly out of proportion to the crime. And many people _are_ arguing that.)
But by downloading software or MP3s or movies or whatever, you're not depriving anyone else from the ability to watch that movie, play that song, or use that software. That's why digital information is so complicated. Because you can copy it, with very little difficulty, and without depriving anyone else of its use. By downloading "American Beauty" to my computer, I haven't prevented anyone else from watching it.
And, arguably, I haven't cost the movie industry anything.
See, the argument they ("they" being the movie industry, MPAA, record industry, RIAA, and various software companies like Microsoft) are trying to put forth is that for every piece of software or music or movie downloaded, that's a literal sale that they have lost. But I was never going to buy "American Beauty." If I hadn't been able to download it, I would have just settled for not having it. They've lost exactly no money by me downloading it.
Yes, there are people who WOULD have gone to buy the movie if they had no other option, and would have gone to buy the CD if they had no other option, and are now happily downloading stuff from KaZaA. They constitute the "lost sales" the RIAA keeps whining about.
But maybe the RIAA/MPAA/software company/etc/etc should be doing a little more to keep their customers (better products? lower prices? But that would be UNAMERICAN!!) rather than attempting to sue them into oblivion.
This is my personal justification, and you're welcome to agree with it or not. But the numbers simply don't support what "They" are saying: that "piracy" is costing the RIAA/MPAA/software industry billions of dollars a year.
For example, record sales are down. You can look at the many stats the RIAA releases and see this.
The RIAA would have you beleive it's because of the "horrors of piracy." But might it be because the economy as a whole is doing poorly? So people are less likely to buy entertainment? Or maybe CD prices (on average, as there are some exceptions) went up again? Or maybe it's just because the RIAA keeps putting out crappy music that no one wants to listen to?
No. It's obviously "piracy."
So copyright infringment is still illegal. I've broken the law by downloading "American Beauty." But whether or not it's morally wrong is for the downloader to decide for themself.
Forgive me for ranting, and feel free to post a response in which you disagree. I know I'm taking a radical position here, and one a lot of people in "the real world" (i.e. outside of slashdot) don't agree with. But by calling copyright infrigment 'piracy' or 'theft,' you're buying into the idea that downloading an MP3 is worse than it really is. Th
Re:copyright infringement is still illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately they have the high moral ground, so you can't really descend to their level. Somewhere along the line Corporations became more important than people, and given that a Corporation can't be jailed, can get protection against poverty, and appears to have no moral obligations to society beyond enforcing a collective opinion of right through the courts...
I'd seriously consider the anti-capitalists if I didn't fundamentally disagree with their central tenet, but they are providing quite an interesting point.
One thing that's becoming increasingly worrying is that Corporations are relying on 'the other guy' defense; their profits fall, and rather than act on the recommendations of everyone that their products are overpriced, they simply choose to believe that their customers are thieves.
Dunno about you, but if I accused my customers of being thieves, they'd find somewhere else to go pretty damn quickly, but in terms of the RIAA, they _are_ the industry.
F*ck you RIAA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You have no idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
This doesn't even touch on legal costs. If the RIAA sends me a letter demanding $2000 in settlement, I have the choice to pay it or hire a lawyer to go to court and represent me. Even if I am innocent, I must hire a competent lawyer and I can expect to pay around $400 per hour for his services. Assuming the case is an "average" civil case and takes 10 hours of the lawyer's time, I'm looking at $4000 in billable hours alone, before filing fees and other costs (the lawyer will charge you for his transit costs and other expenses while defending you). If I try to recover my expenses with a counter-suit, I can expect a lengthy process fueled by a behemoth organization that can afford to put high-priced lawyers on autopilot and forget about them. Innocent people may not like to settle, but sometimes they may take the cheaper way out.
These are the things that make people really angry about what the RIAA is doing. Not that they're defending their properties or business, but that they're doing so in an egregiously "predatory" manner, seemingly outside the conventional channels of the law and with the threatening club of unreasonable penalties to back them up.