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Comments: 141 +- News: RIAA Claim of Stopping Suits "Months" Ago Is False on Saturday December 20 2008, @09:33AM
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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to a report on Wired.com, the RIAA spokesman claimed that the RIAA has not filed any new lawsuits 'for months,' and according to the Wall Street Journal report discussed here yesterday, the RIAA stopped filing mass lawsuits 'early this fall.' Knowing that the RIAA has a problem with telling the truth, I did a little investigating, and found out that the RIAA had, in fact, commenced a wave of lawsuits just last week. Why would anyone believe anything their spokesperson says? This is an organization that has a tendency to misspeak a lot, if you know what I mean, even when under oath."
CNet has a copy of the RIAA's new form letter that it will ask ISPs to pass on to alleged copyright-infringing users. It says, in part, "This letter does not constitute a waiver of our members' rights to recover or claim relief for damages incurred by this illegal activity, nor does it waive the right to bring legal action against the user at issue for engaging in music theft."
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Hold the phones! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hold the phones! (Score:4, Funny)
10 cents virtually? That's stealing from the government! /riaa logic
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hold the phones! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Hold the phones! (Score:5, Insightful)
Which just so happen to be part of conglomerates (News Corp, Time Warner, Disney, and Sony) that also own our television networks, movie studios, book publishers, and (wait for it) the Wall Street Journal.
Which of course has absolutely nothing to do with why a story like this might be put out there.
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Re:Hold the phones! (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like the current members are EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group. That is not a long list. I wonder why news sources can't list them. It would seriously help put responsibility where it should be.
My references was wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
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It looks like the current members are EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group. That is not a long list. I wonder why news sources can't list them. It would seriously help put responsibility where it should be.
They can't list them because that's not the whole story. Sony BMG is the parent company of dozens of labels, including Columbia Records, Loud, Epic, Ruthless, RCA Music Group, Arista Records, J Records, and many more, not to mention that they act as distributor for 18 "independent" labels.
Re:Hold the phones! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Hold the phones! (Score:4, Informative)
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They have published a member list.
http://www.riaa.com/aboutus.php?content_selector=aboutus_members [riaa.com]
Re:Hold the phones! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll give you ten cents if you can tell me what companies the RIAA represents.
Why is that a troll? The majority of people I know seem to think that it's the RIAA doing all of this on their own. They're just paid to do a job, after all. We should be looking past the public face of the music industry, and start paying attention to the corporations who are truly responsible.
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Re:Hold the phones! (Score:4, Insightful)
The majority of people I know seem to think that it's the RIAA doing all of this on their own.
In my opinion, the RIAA has nothing to do with it at all, except that it's allowed itself to be used as a front by 4 of its members: SONY BMG, EMI, Vivendi/Universal, and Warner Bros., and their affiliates. When I use the term "RIAA" I'm just using it as shorthand for the Big 4 record companies (I use the term "Big 4" advisedly, because they're getting smaller every day).
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(I use the term "Big 4" advisedly, because they're getting smaller every day).
I'm sure that disturbs them greatly. I also note that there were some thousands of blacksmiths who once felt the same way.
Re:Hold the phones! (Score:4, Informative)
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The Reason for Lying is... (Score:4, Insightful)
As has become painfully obvious in the political sphere over the past eight years, lying is not done for the sake of lying, nor is it done for the thrill of fooling one's fellow citizens. It is done to promote an agenda that would otherwise be difficult to advance without widespread belief in the false statements of the liars. In the case of the euphemistic "recording industry assoc" the lies are aimed at mitigating the negative publicity that is cutting into the very profits they are trying to protect. In short, this is one of those lose/lose situations to which unrestrained greed invariably leads.
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Re:Hold the phones! (Score:5, Informative)
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So their real statement is... (Score:5, Insightful)
We will ask the ISPs to cooperate in sending C&D letters to people we identify with our proven-poor methods, THEN, after having said we won't sue* we'll use the C&D letters from the ISP to target lawsuits.
I really have to wonder how their lawyers sleep at night (on beds of $100 bills, I'm sure). The people employing the lawyers I have no doubt sleep peacefully, dreaming of other ways to game the system.
Is this "takedown" even relevant to the ISP? (Score:5, Informative)
Reminder: I am not a lawyer in the US. This is a discussion forum, not legal advice.
I question whether an ISP receiving this form letter would necessarily be compelled to act.
It is apparently a 17 USC ss. 512(c)(3) notification; however from a careful reading of the letter and from my own understanding, the relevant part of the DMCA to an ISP providing access to one of their residential users using a peer-to-peer service to host and/or transmit copyrighted music files without the relevant permission of the rights holder(s) would appear instead to be 17 USC ss. 512 (a):--
I note that subsection (a) does not contain any provision for "expeditiously disabling access" (i.e., takedowns), and would appear to intend to apply to internet routing in the normal form except where caching or content modification takes place (though ISPs do not have a so-called "common carrier" status, this is the relevant section that provides them with a disclaimer of liability for their downstream customers infringing copyright).
I would appreciate comments on the same. Nowhere in the form letter do I see the RIAA making a threat against the internet service provider, any form of subpoena or open request to identify the user in question, or retain any identifying records for later subpoena. I surmise that this might be because their counsel are aware of the contents of 17 USC ss. 512 (a) and do not wish to appear too hostile to the ISP, as, at least by my reading, the ISP could quite happily junk this, or pass on a friendly warning to the user in question that they've been flagged, and take no further action on the matter.
I would further surmise that they are insinuating that should the ISPs not cooperate willingly, they will push for legislation to compel the ISPs to submit, although this might necessitate an effective repeal of the DMCA, as in letter the DMCA acts as a conditional limitation of liability rather than a prohibition. It remains to be seen if the current legislature in the US in fact will be receptive to this idea.
Reminder: This is not legal advice, merely my own ideas and observations on a discussion forum. Always consult counsel qualified in your jurisdiction before taking action. Doubly so if you're an ISP tech looking at these as they come in and wanting to know if you can killfile them; definitely contact your legal department and seek specialist advice regarding your individual situation.
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This really seems more like a way for them to perform discovery without all that mucking about with the courts. Get the ISP to respond with "Yes, we've identified Mr. Smith of 123 Main Street based on the information you provided..." I'm curious to see their strategy here--do they try to bury the ISP's in this letter to get them to decide to take their own action against file sharing to get the RIAA off their backs?
To be blunt, this new "strategy" has to benefit them somehow. And there's only one benefit
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As an ISP, under the DMCA, we receive notices all the time and we call the "offender" and ask them to stop doing whatever. It's just extra work and expense for us that we don't appreciate. The only difference between the letters we had been receiving and this one is that this one is talking to the offender rather than us. I suspect the RIAA hopes it will be scarier than one telling us someone on our network is violating their copyright. I have no problem with forwarding it to the offender as we really h
Who sucks more? RIAA or Courts? (Score:5, Insightful)
We will ask the ISPs to cooperate in sending C&D letters to people we identify...
ISPs are well know to *fold* at the slightest sign of a lawsuite, I expect the RIAA to have much better luck with this approach.
As to why the RIAA *has no shame* at all *and keeps on doing* things like this? No court has seriously slapped their hand, and it doesn't look like any will in the near future. So much for our court system protecting the innocent and keeping an eye on things.
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Actually, there are multiple instances of courts telling the RIAA to stop certain practices of theirs and the RIAA simply ignoring the judge's orders in another court.
Two examples that come to mind are filing multiple unrelated John Doe lawsuits as one (cuts down on filing time for the RIAA, but is an abuse of the court process) and being told that "making available" isn't a valid argument then telling another judge that "making available" *is* a valid argument.
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But until a judge decides to "throw the book at them" why should they stop?
it's a trick (Score:5, Insightful)
it's probably a ploy to get more people to download pirated music, as lawsuits seem to be their main source of income these days.
Re:it's a trick (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't help but wonder how much their actions are being guided by the big recording corporations vs. the lawyers running the organization. Their actions are all over the map - they can't seem to decide whether to keep mugging downloaders for the cash or to run a PR campaign against file sharing.
For years, existing technology dictated a particular business model that made them all a lot of money. Now, technology has changed, but they see the old business model as their birthright. What the record companies have to do is abandon the media sales paradigm - which is apparently a tough pill to swallow for them - and start offering ad-supported "free" downloading of low bitrate mp3's. Selling vinyl records or cd's or preloaded chips or whatever is going to be a sideshow from now on. The availability of free, legal downloads will basically undercut the file sharers if they actually provide consumers with better value than the torrents, e.g., wallpapers, videos and other content.
Their insistence on charging 99 cents per track for downloads reflects their continued greed and cluelessness. Downloading a given CD @ $0.99/track as MP3s is a far worse deal for the consumer than a CD purchase when you factor out the cost of production and distribution costs associated with CDs. Additionally, the CD is a relatively permanent offline master copy - I've lost track (no pun intended) of how many times I've lost music due to hard drive crashes, data corruption, etc.. If they charged 10 cents a track for high-quality downloads it becomes an impulse buy - I'd gladly buy tons of high quality tracks at that price provided at least some of the revenue went to the artists. I'm not blind to the fact that record companies give value back to the artists in terms of management expertise and promotion but their cut is inevitably going to be a lot smaller - something they refuse to accept.
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Re:it's a trick (Score:4, Insightful)
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lawsuits seem to be their main source of income these days
Only they know for sure, of course... but Ray's best estimate is that they are losing money overall [slashdot.org]: they may make money off settlements (or maybe just break even?), but the legal and investigative costs that go into all those dropped or default judgment cases destroys all that profit, and then some.
I don't think it's actually profitable for them. I think it was always intended as some kind of "campaign of fear" to make people too afraid to file-share... which seems not to have worked.
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They probably weren't expecting that any of the defendants would have any significant defense. They seem to have cherry picked cases where defense was unlikely. They got surprised there. As a business model, it's a failure, but it's entirely possible that it's an unanticipated failure.
It's also possible that they cherry picked the cases they did hoping for a fast series of wind to maximize the terror factor. In the end, we don't know enough to reliably deduce if they expected to profit from the lawsuits dir
Fixed. (Score:4, Informative)
>>> This is an organization that has a tendency to mispeak
"RIAA is an organization that has a tendency to [lie, intimidate citizens, and extort money] a lot, even when under oath." There. Fixed that for ya. ;-)
WSJ... (Score:4, Insightful)
And the WSJ is checking facts like SNL's Weekend Update apparently.
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Better title for this story... (Score:4, Insightful)
RIAA Caught Lying About Stopping Prosecution Tactic
Otherwise, when people see "RIAA Claim..." people stop reading. "RIAA Caught Lying..." gets people's attention.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
NYCL submitted the story. He's a practicing lawyer. Lawyers tend to choose their words carefully, so as to avoid getting sued for defamation. I reckon that's about as strong a statement as he could make without the RIAA suing him.
I don't worry about the RIAA suing me. Were they to attempt that, they would be making a grave mistake, and I would probably have more fun than I've ever had in my professional life.
I do, however, take great pains to be accurate. Unlike the RIAA's lawyers, being truthful is important to me.
"music theft" ? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no such thing as "music theft". It is settled law in the US that copyright infringement is not theft, and calling an infringer a thief can constitute libel.
BOHICA (Score:3)
Every time you think the RIAA has gone as low as it can, it finds yet another way to open up a whole new universe of douchebaggery.
Please, God, let them say something like this under oath, and let it be in front of a judge who takes a dim view of perjury (and prefers jail time to fines as a method of educating people on the workings of the US legal system).
These are just mis-directed DMCA notifications (Score:4, Interesting)
While they don't explicitly identify them as such, the content of the e-mail is essentially a DMCA notification. Since the content is not stored on the ISP's systems, and is just a transitory communication over the ISP's network, the ISP is not obligated to perform any action whatsoever. They could >/dev/null 2>&1 them and there's nothing the RIAA could do about it.
To be valid, the DMCA notification needs to be directed to the party hosting the content, in this case the end-user. The ISP for that user is not obligated to 'pass on' the notification to the end user any more than they would be to 'pass on' a notification meant for another ISP. It is the complainants responsibility to identify the correct destination for the DMCA notification, not anyone else's.
Even _if_ the ISP were hosting the content on systems they own, the only obligation they would have would be to remove the specifically identified offending content from their systems. Per the DMCA, the alleged offender would have 10 days to contest the validity of the DMCA notification at which point the ISP would be required to re-post the content if they did so. The claimant would then need to begin legal proceedings to obtain further relief.
Seems to me to be a re-hash of a previously failed tactic. Once the RIAA found this was a dead-end, they began their DOE lawsuits.
Simple solution: quit being a customer (Score:5, Informative)
The simple solution to this is to bankrupt the RIAA members. It worked for the big three - they've been producing crap cars for decades now, while the Japanese took our advice that our own people would not receive, and have been producing fantastic, high-quality cars.
That's not to say that the the big three produce all crap - but the high-quality reliable vehicles they do produce (the 'Vette, a few caddies and other luxury cars) are vehicles that Joe Sixpack can't afford. On top of that, the reliable vehicles they DO have and are utilitarian and comfortable (such as Pontiac Vibe, the Saturn Astra) are made by Japanese or European manufacturers (OK the Astra is a rebadged Opel, but it's still not what I'd consider part of the big three).
The RIAA, truthfully, is producing mostly crap nowadays. If an artist can't produce a mega-hit or won't sell out to do so, then they won't get air play. Oh, they'll get signed, but that's only for the label to bind them so they can't go elsewhere to an indie label who will make that long-term investment.
Just say no. Don't listen top top 40 radio, don't buy their crap, and don't download their crap either, because you're only fueling their argument. Just stop being a customer. Buy used records/CDs. Sure, it'll drive the price of used media up a little, but guess what? The labels won't live through a year or two of an outright boycott. They'll try to legislate a used media tax, but there is no way that would fly (right of first sale: when you buy a CD or DVD, you OWN it. They know this and cop to it in their own adverts. Britney spears, own it today on CD! Narnia/Prince Caspian, own it today on DVD! They KNOW you own that copy, not just license it).
Don't even do Rhapsody, because the labels are using them to try to get you to embrace DRM, because then you WON'T own the music, it will be licensed under that model - under contract law, because it's a rental.
Just say no. Spend your money on DVDs - better value. You get an entire movie for less than the cost of a DVD. Check out hulu.com - free movies and TV series archives.
Break the record companies. It can be done. Don't download their crap and they won't have any basis to sue, and don't buy their crap because it will bankrupt them. Just say no. It didn't work for drugs, but it did work for the auto industry and it can work in the music industry.
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The simple solution to this is to bankrupt the RIAA members. It worked for the big three - they've been producing crap cars for decades now, while the Japanese took our advice that our own people would not receive, and have been producing fantastic, high-quality cars.
In other words, give them a bailout once they ask for it?
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Might I add: Get your music fix from Indie artists. Buy from eMusic.com or AmieStreet.com. You'll spend less money, get music from great artists, won't get DRM, and the artists will actually see much of the money you're spending. I'd love to see the day when an eMusic/Amie Street artist got so popular that they broke into the Top 10 list. (If that's even possible.)
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Do you wear tinfoil on your head, or am I missing something? I skimmed the entirety of the linked pages on recordingindustryvspeople and saw lots of documentation and commentary related to exactly what I expected. I saw nothing that made me feel any urge to grab an e-meter and get my thetans excised.
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Re:What is your agenda? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What is your agenda? (Score:4, Funny)
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Whoa, time out! NYCL is the local Slashdot guru on all things RIAA and IIRC, been personally involved in the good fight for quite some time. I don't recall him ever advocating Scientology in the past. Several thousand knowledgable and well-researched posts to Slashdot on RIAA matters over a period of many years just to trick people into clicking on a Scientology ad today would have to constitute the most over-engineered setup of all time.
Remember... never attribute to bad Thetans that which can be adequatel
Re:What is your agenda? (Score:5, Informative)
Whoa, time out! NYCL is the local Slashdot guru on all things RIAA and IIRC, been personally involved in the good fight for quite some time. I don't recall him ever advocating Scientology in the past. Several thousand knowledgable and well-researched posts to Slashdot on RIAA matters over a period of many years just to trick people into clicking on a Scientology ad today would have to constitute the most over-engineered setup of all time.
Not only have I never promoted Scientology, I wouldn't promote any religion, ever. I hate the whole concept of trying to sell one's own religion to others. Just as much as I hate the whole concept of trying to disparage someone else's religion.
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Re:To Quote Captain Kirk: (Score:4, Interesting)
Your wallet is a tool for change.
Sure is. ;)
Joking aside, I have to agree. I haven't yet taken it to the extent you have. I still have my old music and movies but I don't buy anything new. It was never really a conscious decision against the RIAA or MPAA for me, but a result of a growing dislike towards money-grabbing/useless corporations generally. (For me this not only includes companies that don't provide value for money, but also those that treat me as a stupid consumer.)
I'd like to send these associations and the companies they represent the way of the Big Three, which would hopefully knock some much needed sense into them. The problem as I see it is that media is seen as a disposable asset by many people; something to just waste money on regardless of the low quality and unoriginality. Vehicle purchases are quite different: most people want to get value for money and have a vehicle that will last them years.
Part of me - the slightly sinister part - secretly hopes the economy will worsen more and the general populace will be forced to tighten their belts even more. With luck, it would be enough to seriously disable these media cartels. However, even then I doubt it would work. More people would just clue onto downloading tracks and the RIAA would go back to their old method of suing every last one of them. Other people would continue to purchase their shiny CDs even in the face of bankruptcy (the world has no shortage of idiots).
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