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."
No way! (Score:0, Insightful)
But... (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this different from any other type of corporate lawsuit? Raising settlement costs if the other party prolongs the case is hardly new.
Really... Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:4, Insightful)
Move your assets offshore (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, if they go to court, and win, they have no reason to settle. If they go to court and lose, then they probably have to pay an excessively larger amount.
So who is this for anyways? People who go halfway through and quit? They're (obviously) just trying to discourage people from fighting it.
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:3, Insightful)
Odd. Of the court cases that actually go to court, I've noticed it's usually the RIAA that try to quit half way through.
I'd have thought it would be more... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping up with the times (Score:5, Insightful)
Excluding the illegal downloads arena (which I know is what they're suing over), I think half the problem is the *AA not keeping up with technology.
At home I have a sizeable DVD collection (around 230 at last count), but with the release of Blu-Ray I'm starting to realize that my collection will eventually be obsolete (such as when DVD first came out, and people with a reasonable VCR collection realized that their collection would eventually be worth squat).
I think this is one of the reasons people download (the other reasons being ridiculous prices, etc). People realize that technology changes - CD collections have been superseeded by portable MP3 players (ipod and the likes), VCR's replaced with DVD's which will eventually lose out to blu-ray (once the prices down).
And people realize this - why should you pay for a CD/DVD, which will eventually become obsolete, when you can get what you want in a digital format (for a cheaper price)?
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it much more likely that the whole thing is an expense for the record companies, but that it is worth it to save their dying business model.
But I also have no real numbers on how many cases actually settle, lose, win, etc., much less the cost of filing the suits in the first place.
And remember (Score:5, Insightful)
A civil case has a much lower standard, the preponderance of the evidence. More or less that means whoever has the more convincing argument. There can still be reasonable doubt, so long as one side seems to present better evidence, then they win. Also, you aren't given a lawyer, you have to pay for one yourself.
So even if you are innocent, paying the extortion money can be the easy out to take. It'd be real hard to mount a defense for $30,000, much less $3,000. Even if you do, they could still win.
That's the problem here. It isn't one of these "Oh you are innocent so you have nothing to worry about." No, you have a lot to worry about. Either you pay a ton of money to hire a lawyer to try to defend yourself, or you do it all by yourself and almost certainly lose just because you don't understand the legal system.
Re:That's a RICO predicate. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And remember (Score:5, Insightful)
This thread is going to be full of people saying "When you win in court..."
Assuming no special legal knowledge, the average person with no lawyer will lose to the RIAA in court. And as for hiring a lawyer,
Re:How is this not extortion? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's shitty, but not illegal.
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's a RICO predicate. (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon, people. Stop making arguments based on emotion instead of logic and facts. The RIAA and their army of lawyers are fucking scumbags, no doubt. And we have kind of a screwed up system here (yes, that was an understatement) which isn't making matters any easier. But spewing nonsense like this will get us nowhere.
Re:And remember (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, it is fully possible to bully people into admitting a crime they haven't committed. In my view, what the RIAA does is quite clearly criminal, at least in spirit, if not in letter - they know perfectly well that their demands have no merit. If criminal law doesn't already cover this, then it should be changed. It sholdn't be possible for this to happen in a civilized society that claims we all are born equal under the law.
Re:That's a RICO predicate. (Score:4, Insightful)
People like you make the RIAA look like the smart, honest ones.
That is not a good thing.
Re:RIAA on a suicide path with colletaral damage (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really... Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:3, Insightful)
1) Not all speed limits are put there because it's dangerous to exceed them, so breaking a speed limit is not in and of itself an immoral act.
2) How is recklessly endangering one's self immoral?
Re:And remember (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with just condemning civil cases outright is that without civil courts, corporations would be subject to no law whatsoever. If I neglect basic responsibility and allow someone to be killed, I'm a manslaughterer, and my freedom (and ability to do business) is halted for decades. When a corporate legal person does the same thing, all they have to fear is fine by court. Take that away or cap the fine, and they are not just inhuman market entities, but also without law.
Speed Limit (Score:3, Insightful)
This pushes the emphasis back onto social contract: because it is hard to detect a driver's skill, a single standard is set for all, which better drivers are expected to buy into since they believe in society.
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
*sigh* (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And remember (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Really... Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand what you're saying here, and there is a point to it.
That being said however, giving government power to control behavior and write laws based on this principal can be a very dangerous thing to do. I believe that any costs to be assessed against an individual on these grounds should only be a result of a civil action between citizens.
Once you've opened the door to government control of, and given it the ability to pass legislation concerning, ones' own personal behaviors and activities as it affects ones' own health and safety and/or costs to society, such laws, regulations, and legislation are subject to subsequent interpretation and re-interpretations later that tend to unnecessarily restrict peoples' normal activities and behaviors far beyond the intentions of the original framers of said laws/regulations/legislation.
Every human activity engenders some form of risk and cost to society. Parachuting, gun ownership, exploration (terrestrial and space), swimming, and riding a motorcycle to name but a few examples, all engender personal risk that will add costs to society if one is hurt or killed.
Giving government the ability to restrict behavior financially and/or imprison people for taking risks gives the government the power to restrict or forbid practically any activity it chooses, and veto power over any proposed action or endeavor. All government needs, once the door to control these activities and behaviors is legally opened, is to find a friendly court to interpret the legislation how they wish.
As the saying goes, any power given to the government will at some point be abused by those in power for their own ends. Our only defense as citizens is to grant the government as few powers as possible, and to keep the government weak enough to not be a danger.
One need look no further for proof of this concept than the US government (and most other 1st-world governments) in its'/their current state(s), and changing the figureheads or the legislative puppets for a 'D' or 'R' (or whatever the mainstream political parties' initial or insignia happens to be) by their names will not change this once a certain threshold of government size and power has been passed.
This characteristic of human governments, I believe, is where Thomas Jeffersons' concept of the Tree of Liberty needing to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants comes from.
Cheers!
Strat
Re:Keeping up with the times (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's not even touch the subject of copy protection mechanisms that may or may not work on future generations of players, which you will certainly get no update for. Which manufacturer will bother writing a driver for some obscure DRM crap that was used in maybe 10 discs? That it just happens to be your favorite movie doesn't matter.
There's one simple way to stop the silliness (Score:5, Insightful)
There's one simple way to stop the RIAA, MPAA, BSA silliness...make the member companies jointly liable for the excesses of the enforcement organization. Apply the same regulations for bill collectors. As long as they're playing by the rules and obeying the law, no problem. But if you're responsible for the actions of a collection agency you hire, you might be a little more selective about who you pick. Likewise if Sony, BMG and the others found themselves exposed to liability, they might lean on RIAA to play by the rules. In fact, I'd be willing to bet RIAA membership would drop significantly overnight.
I had a dispute with Dish Network a couple years ago, they tried to blame an advertising partner for the problem.
It would change the entire outsourcing landscape. If the local hospital is responsible for the actions of outsource contractors, they might think twice before hiring medical transcription services from Abduls Discount Transcription in downtown Pakistan. As long as companies can insulate themselves from liability when trying to cut corners the silliness is going to continue.
Re:And remember (Score:1, Insightful)
It is a business model, but not like you think (Score:5, Insightful)
They've convinced their Clients this legal service and the lawyers are rackin' up the billable hours.
Realize that an organization (any organization) becomes less self-aware (right hand knows what left hand is doing) as it becomes larger. Once it gets to a certain size, behaviour becomes fragmented--you'll often see one department working at cross purposes to another in the same company.
Ask anybody who's ever worked for the government (even a city government), or a Fortune 100 company.
The answer to the question "Why do they do something that is clearly self destructive?" is that there is no "they", and the folks that are doing the suing know *exactly* what they're doing.
Re:And remember (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not double jeopardy, but retrying civil cases can be barred by res judicata [wikipedia.org].
Re:And remember (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it's time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, now I'm pissed!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:3, Insightful)
So I'm curious. If you don't believe in intellectual property, then I guess you don't believe in the GPL either?
If music and software producers have no right to prevent large scale copying of their work, then it would seem it's also okay to say that when an individual produces some software and gives it away for free that it's okay for a corporation to incorporate it into a for sale product and neither compensate you for writing the software in the first place nor make the source code available.
Do I have that correct?
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
The canonical example is the federally mandated 55mph speed limit put in force in the early 70's. It was initially instituted as a fuel saving measure, but dogmatic "safety nazis" pointed to a correlated reduction in accidents and it became "common wisdom" that a lower limit is safer. When the federal 55 limit was eased in 88 and repealed in the 90's, there were all kinds of dire predictions of increased mayhem on the highways. In reality, accidents went down! The problem is that elected officials and bureaucrats don't actually understand the 85th percentile rule. The safest limit is one where 85% of drivers naturally obey the limit. The 55 limit saw compliance rates under 20%! Studies (see pg 88) [trb.org] show that nearly all posted limits are 8 to 12 mph below the 85th percentile.
So what about the reduction in accidents in 1974? Well, it's a classic case of "correlation is not necessarily causation". The late 1960's saw a dramatic improvement in the safety of automobiles. Everything from increased use of radial instead of bias ply tires to mandatory seat belts came into play in the late 60's. The biggest improvement, however, was the 1968 mandate of front wheel disc brakes. If you've never driven a car with 4 wheel drum brakes, it's easy to miss the importance of this. So starting in '68 you have all new cars being equipped with disc brakes. The "replacement point" on cars of that vintage was around 5 years, meaning that the majority of driving miles were logged in cars 5 or fewer years old. Older cars were still driven, but were largely relegated to secondary status (e.g. wife's car, kid's car, etc). So around 1973 the tide turns from drum brakes to disc brakes... and accidents went down. It was pure chance that the 55 limit coincided with that. Really, the 55 limit was more dangerous, but the increase in vehicle safety hid that. Sadly, we still have morons like you who blindly belive the mythology. Perhaps that can be changed by people like me handing out education and insults, but I'm not optimistic.
RIAA == organized crime (Score:3, Insightful)
Utter and complete bullshit, and what's really sad is that I'm not surprised. Being sued, right or wrong, shouldn't be about how much money you have to defend yourself, damnit, especially when you're faced with a terrorist organization like the RIAA. Fucking bastards!
Re:And remember (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, the corporation is an artificial construct created by the government specifically to shield everyone involved from the law, so the government should take away that privilege when it is abused.
Re:Really... Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree wholeheartedly with every single one of your points. However, the poster you're responding to stated his opinions without any personal attacks. You really had no reason to call him a "moron" and a "shithead".
Your arguments really were strong enough that you didn't need to stoop down to that level in order to be heard. In the future, I'd urge you to keep that in mind.
Re:And remember (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't this just encourage the RIAA to prioritise going after people without the insurance? My understanding has been that much of the criticism against them has been that they're often picking unsuspecting people who never would have considered themselves as copyright pirates anyway, and would never have considered some kind of insurance against the possibility of a corporate dinosaur they'd never heard of randomly deciding to prosecute them for it.
It'd be unlikely for any more than a small minority of people to pay for that kind of insurance, and it wouldn't seem too surprising if those who did were people who maybe are being quite malicious about their copyright infringement. If I considered myself a likely target for a big lawsuit then I'd think it'd be great to be able to pay a few $$ to the EFF and have them defend me through a long and difficult case that I'm unlikely to ever have a chance of winning.
Re:Shouldn't matter... (Score:3, Insightful)
Your argument would only hold water if any action with negative consequences for others is immoral, including things such as buying a product from one vendor instead of another (which deprives the other vendor of income from me), or choosing to walk a couple of miles to a destination instead of paying a taxi driver to take me there, which has a negative effect on the taxi driver's income.
Modern society is such a complex web of interdependencies that it's absolutely impossible to live in it without negatively affecting somebody in ways that are completely predictable if we take the time to think about them. So by your definition of morality, it's impossible for us to avoid being immoral, which means that recklessly endangering one's self is merely one of the several immoral acts that we're all guilty of on a daily basis.