RIAA Claim of Stopping Suits "Months" Ago Is False 141
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."
Libel (Score:1, Interesting)
Accusing someone, falsely, of an illegal act is libel per se. There is immunity for doing it in a lawusit. But sending their C&D letter to the ISP, well there is no immunity for that.
If my ISP gets one of those, I will file a libel action against then, and I'll bet $$$ that their illegal investigators Media Sentry are involved, which will give me yet another lawsuit to file.
To Quote Captain Kirk: (Score:1, Interesting)
"LET them die!"
Seriously. How long do we need to put up with this kind of abuse from corporate America? They used to welcome customers with open arms, happy that their families could eat that night because we were all happy to consume and be treated like human beings. I'm not sure where that train derailed but it was a bloody mess.
About a year ago I began a very small social experiement. I simply got tired of seeing what the music, movie, and videogame industries were doing to their customers. Sure, they caught a few pirates here and there, but how many innocents got entangled in that mess? In any event, I no longer own any CDs, movies, or video games. Not even books. Sorry publishing industry but I'm too afraid you're going to be next on the list of up and coming assholes.
Everything I have is free. I get my music from places like Jamendo. I watch the myriad of web based shows that people create independently for our viewing pleasure. I play only games that cost no money...did I mention I installed Linux? I even am to the point where I only read public domain literature.
Why all this? For the same reason I bought a cheap, fuel-efficient Toyota. I'm voting with my wallet. And don't get me wrong, if I like something one of the above groups writes and publishes to the web, I donate money to their cause. Again...I'm voting with my wallet.
People. Wake the hell up. Your wallet is a tool for change. You wallet means more in this country than any tick mark you make next to some politician's name on a little paper ballot. Use it. Use it well. Use it wisely. Apparently it already worked on the "Big Three." Surely, we can make it work on the MPAA and RIAA.
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.
Re:it's a trick (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:So their real statement is... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 I can think of that they'd be after $$$$. So how does sending letters to the ISP's benefit them monetarily?
Re:Hold the phones! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Better title for this story... (Score:1, 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.
Re:So their real statement is... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 hate arguing with them about whether P2P is legal and how did we know what they were doing (violating their privacy, I guess).
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.
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).
Re:What is your agenda? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Better title for this story... (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.
Re:it's a trick (Score:2, Interesting)
I disagree that 99 cents a track is a bad deal.
I mean, let's face it... how many albums have you heard recently that had maybe one or two good/catchy tracks, and the rest of the album was pure crapola? I'd much rather pay a couple of bucks for the relatively few songs I tend to like off of an album rather then pay $15-$20 for the entire CD and only ever listen to the same few tracks.
Re:Who sucks more? RIAA or Courts? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Who sucks more? RIAA or Courts? (Score:3, Interesting)
But until a judge decides to "throw the book at them" why should they stop?