RIAA Sues Nearly 500 New Swappers

Digitus1337 writes "Wired has the story. " U.S. music industry group says it has sued 493 more people for copyright infringement as part of its campaign to stop consumers from copying music over the Internet. The Recording Industry Association of America has now sued nearly 3,000 individuals since last September in an attempt to discourage people from copying songs through peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa and LimeWire." "

Whew! Still safe!

[crashnbur]

I think 95% of us are wondering, day and night, when the RIAA is going to come after me next. But I'll breathe a small sigh of relief for now, and single a little diddy to the tune of "Another One Bites the Dust." It's called, "Another One Makes the Cut".

Incidentally, if I worked for the RIAA, the original song would suffice.

3000 down....

[southpolesammy]

5,997,000 to go. Or thereabouts....

Quick math tells us that the last user will be sued in January 3335.

Copying Music in new formats

[(Maly)]

So neurologists often compare the brain to a hard disk, storing data, etc. So how long until you think we get sued for listening to music and remembering it (illegal copying to another media). God forbid we try and hum a bit of it to a friend, or playing a song for a friend, because then we're guilty of transferring an unlicensed copy to another party. "Dude, you gotta listen to this song." "Sorry, my brain uses Media Player 9... damn DRM!"

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess so, but surely you have a constitutional right to be left with you PC and your DSL line?

And the hits just keep on coming!

[sciop101]

Lose money thru file-swapping and spend money on law suits. LOSE-LOSE!

The problem with lawyers is..

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with lawyers is that 99% of them give the rest a bad name.

My T-Shirt sez:

[Anonymous Coward]

"I got sued by RIAA, and all I got was some low-quality NSync tunes."

Re:What about CD owners?

[hackstraw]

In your sig:

$ echo "deltree /y c:\windows\" > /mnt/windows/autoexec.bat

It would be a little funnier if the command would work. It should be either for double quotes:

$ echo "deltree /y c:\\windows\\"

As you have it now the shell would wait for a terminating " . Or simpler with single quotes:

$ echo 'deltree /y c:\windows\'

Re:I wonder...

[Himring]

These corporations have deep pockets, and they could threaten to sue the crap out of you for looking at them cock-eyed, to which many people would have to settle out of court (I'm not being literal). If you can't afford a lawyer then what do you do? 'Admit' to wrong-doing you didn't committ? Again, I realize that a lot of file sharing IS illegal, but the whole blanket lawsuit thing does raise some interesting (or scary?) questions.

Which is why the root, the thesis, of our government is based on the legislature. No matter what laws, no matter how rich and powerful the person or the company, in the end, the founders wanted the people to have the ultimate say -- the vote -- in order to change corruption at the "top...."

Re:how long

[Anonymous Coward]

Halleluia!

'Bout time some of you commie pinko traitors figure out that the good ol' US of A has a LEGAL SYSTEM. That legal system protects EVERYONE. Stealin' those songs is just plain WRONG! The record companies have paid lots of money to someone for those things. It's not like they have ever failed to pay a a singer or musician every dime owed. Its not like they have made buckets of money by ripping off musicians and the public every chance they got.

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

[*sigh* in case it's not obvious, IANAL and this is not legal advice.]

I am a lawyer, so it is obvious.

I'm safe

[k4_pacific]

In order to protect myself from the lawsuits, I have deleted my swap partit [CARRIER LOST]

Re:I wonder...

[clem9796]

With all the money i'm saving by downloading music i can finally afford a lawyer to defend against the RIAA.. Ahh, capitalism in motion.

"500 people" sued...

[Demon of the fall]

Does that mean that they actually sued 50 people with high-speed CD burners?

Re:"John Doe" lawsuits

[cosmo7]

Isn't it possible to EULA out the RIAA from these networks?

Sounds like a server on Hotline or Carracho:

"By clicking on teh buton yuo have agreed that yuo are not connected to teh gouvernment or any law-enforsement agency or teh riaa. This server is for LEAGAL BACK-UPS ONLEY!!!!!!!!!!"

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Bah!

[jcuervo]

You missed again, motherfsckers!

Re:I wonder...

[Txiasaeia]

"[The ACLU are] only for criminal cases, these are civil."

Am I the only one that finds it ironic that the American Civil Liberties Union only helps out in criminal cases?