RIAA Says "Wanna Fight? It'll Cost You!"

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."

What if...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you ignore their notices and force *them* to bring *you* to court? You can claim you never got the notices. Not showing up at court at all is harder, because (I'm pretty sure) you can get arrested.

In the make-it-while-you-can dept.

[T3Tech]

The RIAA is a sinking ship and they're trying to make as much as they can as long as there are judges and courts that are still sympathetic to their rhetoric.

The four major record corporations fund the RIAA. These companies are rich and obviously well-represented. Recording artists and musicians don't really have the money to compete. The 273,000 working musicians in America make about $30,000 a year. Only 15 percent of American Federation of Musicians members work steadily in music. But the music industry is a $40 billion-a-year business. One-third of that revenue comes from the United States. The annual sales of cassettes, CDs and video are larger than the gross national product of 80 countries. Americans have more CD players, radios and VCRs than we have bathtubs. Story after story gets told about artists -- some of them in their 60s and 70s, some of them authors of huge successful songs that we all enjoy, use and sing -- living in total poverty, never having been paid anything. Not even having access to a union or to basic health care. Artists who have generated billions of dollars for an industry die broke and un-cared for. And they're not actors or participators. They're the rightful owners, originators and performers of original compositions. This is piracy." - Courtney Love [salon.com]

RIAA on a suicide path with colletaral damage

[Christian Linhart]

With the RIAA acting like a bull in a china shop, they will not only destroy the loyality of their own customer base ( which will cause the RIAA members to go out of business in the end ),
but they will also cause a lot of collateral damage:

They will, in the long run, cause a lot of political pressure for abolishing copyright law from a large portion of the population, so politicans will eventually abolish copyright in order to be able to win elections.

Now, a complete abolishment of copyright will cause damage because many people who currently use copyright in a reasonable way will not be able to create their products anymore.

Which means that the creation of information-products will be mostly in the hands of the government and to a lesser extent in the hands of hobbyists.

Creation of information-products like books, software etc mostly in the hands of the government is IMHO a dangerous thing because it gives a lot of influential (propagandistic) power to the government. (most politicians will like this, BTW)

ARAG

[PhearoX]

Two words: Legal Insurance.

It costs about $17 a month, and I get hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal cost coverage for most situations. Basically, as long as the case does not involve a vehicle moving violation or is a conflict of interest with my employer (a major grocery chain), I am smilin' all the way to the court house.

I've had the insurance for almost a year now, and I've actually been kind of hoping for an opportunity to sue/counter sue someone... God bless America.

Re:And remember

[Anonymous Coward]

Or ask the EFF.

I'm not sure how it work, wether they just defend you for free (if they think your case is relevant to their fight), or if they just get paid low rate, but either way you'll probably get the most competent people for that precise matter, for far less than a top lawyer's fee.

Plus, you might get NYCL's autograph :)

Re:Shouldn't matter...

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends mostly on different big corps, actually. The media big corps are actually much smaller than the banking/defence/fucking-everyone-else big corps that the internet actually depends on. It's a classic case of tail-wagging-dog, or little yappy dog, or some other dog analogy: What the media corps are are noisy propagandists.

The USA is a little worse off because they allowed actual media companies to purchase more of their internet infrastructure than the rest of the world, granted, but even in the USA, the media corps aren't as important as they like to paint themselves.

Re:Shouldn't matter...

[Idiomatick]

terrible example. Breaking the speed limit is immoral since you are needlessly endangering yourself and others. breaking the law jaywalking in an empty street might be illegal but its not generally immoral.... Though i do agree with your concept, legal and moral are widely unrelated.

Re:Really... Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you say, it is legal to ask money from you or your house is burnt. You get 10 days to decide, and each day, the cost raises. You know, we have to store the flammables, and storage costs us money.

Re:Shouldn't matter...

[Nossie]

using that logic you'd have ran out of original ideas YEARS ago...

Society advances by copying and improvising. Maybe that's why its restricted to governments and corporations? (takes conspiracy hat off)

Disney would be fuck all if it wasn't for copying..

Look at steamboat willie as a FANTASTIC example..

The music was a concept from something else
The setting was taken from something else
The fucking mouse was taken from something else

getting the picture yet?

The very thing that made Walt Disney who he is would be illegal now due to laws that his legacy have helped to enforce.

Fuck copyrights and patents. The internet has taken a SERIOUS turn for the worst since big media corps have gotten their mits on it and if they get their way within 10 years it wont be any better than fricking television.

Re:ARAG

[Anonymous Coward]

ARAG?

I am not quite sure, but most "$17 a month" class legal insurance contracts explicitly state that they do not cover intellectual property and copyright disputes.

Check for yourself!

Re:It's complicated

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL and not even an American, but I think I have a decent tourist's grasp of your law system.

Isn't the whole problem that the damages sought in the civil suit are 'punitive', ie they are meant to punish the accused rather than to seek just compensation for the damage done by the infringement (which is minimal for any "non-career pirate")? And isn't it really strange that anything beyond just compensation is tried under civil suit rules?

I would expect that the criminal system is for punishing people, and civil suits are for redressing actual harm done by the accused party...?

Re:That's a RICO predicate.

[the grace of R'hllor]

Well, I'd say it depends on how standard practice this is. Right now, they offer to settle for $3000, and if you go to court they will raise that to cover the expenses they've made. So far, so sort-of reasonable.

But if the story becomes "Settle for $3000 now, or we'll force you to pay $8000 later", that's approaching extortion. Especially when they've proven they'll cheat the justice system if they can to get the judgement they want.

Re:And remember

[Opportunist]

So? I'll be broke after the lawsuit anyway. And before my money goes to the RIAA, I'd prefer it to be in the hands of a lawyer with the chuzpah to fight them.

Don't forget what amounts of money we're talking here, and what people. We're not talking about the average 50ish person building a nestegg. The average defendant is someone who is in or just out of college, deeply enough in debt that they have to work their way out for 20 or so years anyway and for whom it doesn't really matter if you stack 8k or 80k on top of that. He is in bankrupcy after that.

So why not fight it? Any good reasons?

What you need is P2P insurance

[transporter_ii]

Did a little research and did fine a company in Sweden that offered it:

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/28/p2p-insurer-will-pay.html [boingboing.net]

Don't know how valid that is, but it would also work if a large percentage of downloaders kicked just a few bucks into a slush fund to help people fight if sued.

The above article stated the odds of getting sued at: 1:1840

Re:Move your assets offshore

[Anonymous Coward]

Create an offshore company, transfer ownership of your house to it, and from then on rent your house from yourself through a legally distinct entity that you control.

Doesn't work so well. To start with, you're not likely to get a mortgage.

You now have to hide the creation of your offshore company, and hide your ownership of it. Then you have to transfer a lot of money to your offshore company without leaving a paper trail (so it can pay you for your house).

Further, in many jurisdictions (such as Florida or France), you pay a much higher property tax rate unless the property owner is a local resident.

Smartest Idea Ever!

[Overzeetop]

Think about it from a lawyer's standpoint. You get a constant stream of income to support a group of very good IP defense lawyers. It's the typical reverse-ambulance-chaser play. You get money in the form of premiums, and then if you can prove bad faith on the part of the RIAA/MPAA you can attempt to recover your fees from a deep pocketed organization. Sounds like a good double-dip option. Somebody contact NYCL and a couple of startup investors. In fact, if you can get a few universities to add $19/student/year to their fees (it's a drop in the bucket when tuition is topping $30-40k), you might be able get startup funds from just a proposed team of lawyers, especially if you can kick in support for the Uni against subpoenas if they cover all their students with a policy. As long is you incorporate, if for some reason you lose miserably, you just shut down the company and let the losses die with the corporation.

I want in on this at the ground floor.

Re:And remember

[mobydobius]

perhaps the EFF should start a legal insurance service.

"worried you could be the target of an RIAA lawsuit? pay $X a month and the EFF will come to your rescue if and when they come to get ya"