RIAA File-Sharing Lawsuits Top 10,000 People Sued 490
An anonymous reader writes "While Firefox broke the 50,000,000 barrier today, the RIAA broke a more
dubious barrier this week: It has now sued over
10,000 file sharers for copyright infringement, making it a good time to ask
if the RIAA will ever throw in the towel. Taking an academic look at
what's best for the industry, this
economics article shows the financial upside to P2P file sharing. And
on the flip side, this
legal article argues that file swappers have a constitutional right to pay
much smaller penalties than the millions of dollars they can be liable for under
copyright law, making the RIAA's lawsuits much less profitable."
Networks? (Score:2, Funny)
New business plan... (Score:5, Funny)
2) Release some songs on p2p networks
3) Wait for it...
4) Wait for it...
5) Sue 10,037 people for a profit. ("...the RIAA's probably collected over $30 million from individual file sharers.")
Absolutely perfect. I see no flaws.
Re:Doesn't really matter... (Score:3, Funny)
In honor of a certain recent movie release (Score:3, Funny)
Shoot! It's hard enough to fight a behemoth conglomerate like the RIAA without it having the most useful thing in the universe on hand.
Re:Average Joe doesnt care (Score:5, Funny)
Bright Side. (Score:5, Funny)
Project Mayhem (Score:1, Funny)
Re:OK (Score:4, Funny)
It's easy. Since we've already eliminated buying the disc, there are two possibilities:
Now the basis of any sane moral calculus is this: Do the most good for the most people. Since the RIAA doesn't profit in either case, you can disregard them. Since downloading the disc is going to make you happy and nobody sad you are morally justified in downloading music. QED
Exactly! (Score:3, Funny)
How right you are! I have been advocating borrowing mp3 collections from friends borrowing cd's from the library and ripping them yourself. Much more reliable and the risk of a lawsuit is almost nil.
RIAA Insurance Co. Business Model ;) (Score:3, Funny)
1. Get the millions of people pirating music to each pay $5 a month for RIAA Insurance.
2. Use that pot of money to pay the $3000.00 out-of-court settlement for each of your members that gets caught.
3. Get rich.
4. Sell your company to the RIAA to eliminate the middle man.
5. Your members pay $5 a month to the RIAA directly and they make a killing.
Re:Home Recording Act (Score:3, Funny)
"Your honor, there was no way I could share anything; at that adress was only a smoking ruin of what was an email server."
Re:throw in the towel? (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, copyright infringement has been civil far longer than criminal. In fact, I don't see why it should be criminalized at all. It's easy for copyright holders to sue themselves, receive damages which help cure whatever harm they've suffered, and stop infringers, in a purely civil system.
Also, it's a federal crime, a felony, so you end up seeing federal law enforcement, often, but not always, the FBI. Criminal copyright suits must be brought by the US Dept. of Justice.
And sharing them can easily be a criminal matter, especially with the new law passed just recently that expands criminal liability.
It seems to be the new legal `thing' -- when criminal charges fail, go with civil charges. OJ was found innocent of murder (I certainly agree that he seemed guilty, but `beyond a reasonable doubt' ? Probably not
Not really. Civil plaintiffs aren't really helped at all by criminal prosecution. Hence the separate courses of action. In fact, you usually want to have the civil suit first so that the defendant has money to pay damages -- otherwise he'll spend it all on his criminal defense, or won't care since he's already in jail, and you can't make his life significantly worse.
It doesn't prove it. It makes me perhaps 70% sure you're a lawyer.
Well, that's good enough in most civil suits!
I imagine there's some paperwork that goes along with passing the bar
When I was sworn in, I got a wall certificate. When I paid my dues, I got a little card that I keep in my wallet, and it has my ID number on it. Gotta have that in order to submit paperwork to court.
The MA wall certificate isn't very fancy looking though, given how much I paid for taking the bar and in dues. Thus I will plan to become a member of the US Supreme Court bar, which has a much more impressive looking piece of paper.
Re:throw in the towel? (Score:5, Funny)
I love the ambiguity in this statement.
wow and on the same day (Score:3, Funny)