RIAA Says "Wanna Fight? It'll Cost You!" 367
jeiler writes "Ars has the details on an RIAA strategy to double the cost of settling copyright infringement suits for students who try to quash the group's subpoenas in court. In a nutshell: settle early, pay $3,000; try to quash the subpoena and the settlement cost rises to $8,000."
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:1, Informative)
e.g. IMO, it's not wrong to share music data (or other data) freely, just don't plagiarise (claim you wrote it or performed it). However, sharing it is often illegal under copyright law. Shrug.
Re:Really... Really? (Score:5, Informative)
My girlfriend IAL; she says this particular practice of the RIAA is perfectly legal. A party to a civil litigation can alter the settlement terms basically however they want, whenever they want (subject to public policy, of course: RIAA can't alter the terms to include the forfeit of your firstborn child or whatever). A settlement is just a contract, after all.
This makes sense, so the argument goes, because a party's costs for litigating a particular case become higher and higher as the case progresses. So, the settlement costs must increase concordantly.
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And remember (Score:2, Informative)
It's complicated (Score:5, Informative)
Now also many crimes can have a civil component as well. Take a hypothetical situation: Suppose you are the owner of Evil Corp, and my wife works for you. Because you are evil, you don't give two shits about your employees and knowingly put my wife in a very dangerous situation. This causes her death. You end up getting charged with reckless endangerment and plead to manslaughter. Ok, great, however I'm still now a single parent trying to raise kids. Something that might help is some of the vast amount of money Evil Corp has made. So I file a civil suit against you for wrongfully causing her death. I win this, and thus get a large portion of your money.
OJ Simpson had something similar happen. He was acquitted of first degree murder charges. However he lost a civil suit charging him with causing wrongful death.
There's good reason for the system to work like it does, and to have civil and criminal components to a given case. However the RIAA is abusing it. They are trying to use civil suits to be able to go after people on extremely shaky, and often outright incorrect, evidence.
It is certainly a loophole that needs closing, but you have to be careful. While the civil system does allow for things like this, it also gives you the ability to go after people like the hypothetical Evil Corp, and does so even if the DA refuses to bring criminal charges.
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:2, Informative)
No, it was to do with safety. The 70mph limit was introduced in to 60's after whole string of accidents.
It was briefly dropped to 50mph during the oil crisis.
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:3, Informative)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org] for more info.
Re:Keeping up with the times (Score:3, Informative)
That is not a very reasonable reason for illegal downloads.
If you know that existing media will be incompatible with new players, and there is no legal way to move purchased content to new media, you are somewhat right.
But that is not the case in your example. You can play a DVD movie in a Blu-ray player. You might even get better quality out of your old DVD since a lot of new players can upscale the picture resolution so it fits your new HD TV.
So if you buy a DVD now, you will not lose the content (at least not this time - we can't know if the next movie media will be incompatible with both Blu-ray and DVD). You will of course not get Blu-ray quality from your DVDs, but it wouldn't be reasonable anyway to expect better quality than you bought originally.
Re:Move your assets offshore (Score:3, Informative)
PS Going bankrupt is almost never a good idea. Hiding assets offshore isn't either.
Re:RIAA! (Score:4, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7029892.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Re:It's complicated (Score:5, Informative)
Uhhh, this is completely wrong.
Civil cases are about injury, where one party injures another and the injured party sues for relief. Copyright law is mostly a civil issue (e.g. you created illegal copies of my recording, and damaged my ability to make money with it), though the legislature has recently added some criminal provisions in the last few decades.
Crimes are about protecting public interests. All moving violations are part of the criminal code of your state; they're laws passed to restrict certain driving behaviors in the interest of highway safety. Traffic court is generally a little different from other criminal court, in the interest of efficiency, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a criminal court.
The difference between traffic violations and most other crimes is that most traffic violations are treated as minor crimes. Crimes fall into one of three categories: infractions, misdemeanors and felonies. Most states also define various grades within those categories. Most traffic violations are infractions, which means that you cannot go to jail for them. However, there are some more serious traffic crimes which are misdemeanors, which can carry jail time, and even felonies, which can carry a lot of jail time and remove other privileges. Reckless driving is a misdemeanor, for example.
Re:It's complicated (Score:4, Informative)
Of course it's gotten much easier to catch infringers and the damages haven't been revised downwards, so the damages being awarded are nonsensical.
Punitive damages are generally used to punish defendants who knowingly choose to act negligently/wrongfully. For example, punitive damages would be applied when a defendant knowingly poisons some town's water supply because the cost of dealing with the lawsuits will be less than the cost of proper disposal of the poison. Most punitive damages awards are dramatically reduced or eliminated on appeal and in many jurisdictions the nominal plaintiff only gets a small cut (the rest going to the state). They are a trivial part of our civil litigation system that gets a lot of press because the press doesn't understand their function and ignores what happens on appeal.
Re:And remember (Score:3, Informative)
Copyright infringement is both a civil and a criminal offense, and you can certainly get a criminal record for violating copyright law. There are plenty of laws the create both criminal and civil penalties for the same action; copyright law is one, RICO is another.
No, it's not wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Or if you don't believe me, here's a Justice Court page about "Civil Traffic Violations": http://www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/justiceCourts/CourtsAndSections/trafficviolations/civiltrafficviolations.asp [maricopa.gov]
Please don't shoot off your mouth and call someone wrong if you haven't researched the background. Law is a complex field.