RIAA Backs Down In Austin, Texas 230
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In November, 2004, several judges in the federal court in Austin, Texas, got together and ordered the RIAA to cease and desist from its practice of joining multiple 'John Does' in a single case. The RIAA blithely ignored the order, and continued the illegal practice for the next four years, but steering clear of Austin. In 2008, however, circumstances conspired to force the record companies back to that venue. In Arista v. Does 1-22, in Providence, Rhode Island, they were hoping to get the student identities from Rhode Island College. After the first round, however, they learned that the College was not the ISP; rather, the ISP was an Austin-based company, Apogee Telecom Inc., meaning the RIAA would have to serve its subpoena in Austin. The RIAA did just that, but Apogee — unlike so many other ISP's — did not turn over its subscribers' identities in response to the subpoena, instead filing objections. This meant the RIAA would have to go to court, to try to get the Court to overrule Apogee's objections. Instead, it opted to withdraw the subpoena and drop its case."
Rinse and Repeat (Score:5, Insightful)
Ooohhh...karma's a bitch ain't it? (Score:2, Insightful)
I wish we could just take all the lawyers that flagrantly violate court orders like that and put them in jail for contempt. Alas, our judicial system is such that these violations either go unnoticed or at least barely noticed by the district attorneys. They've got bigger fish to fry. But, man, once just once, one of them should teach these guys a lesson.
Re:Rinse and Repeat (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point, they're going to get slapped down hard for these tactics and on that day, there will be much cheering from Slashdot.
I think it will come in the form of a rush to get ISP's headquartered in Austin. Many shools looking to avoid the legal problems would change ISP's as a risk avoidance move. Does anyone know if any Portland area ISP's are based in Austin?
Will it make a bit of difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably not. I expect they'll continue with their bullshit in other states while lawyers who haven't done their homework will not be able to help their clients.
That's just what I expect, though, because I know that it's better to expect the worst and hope for the best.
Re:No wonder they failed... (Score:5, Insightful)
No problem.
Hey, Ray, by the way, I think I speak for lots of people when I say thank you for what you're doing in this area.
Re:Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Pity nothing's going to happen to them over this.
It doesn't seem to matter if they drop every case that's going badly for them, it has no real effect on the other half.
ISP Safe Haven (Score:2, Insightful)
It all blows (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry. Just had to say it.
Accountants? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously...where the hell are their accountants at? Anyone who actually has gone through the required business classes would be well aware of how insane their imaginary losses are. Now, that is not the same as using those insane numbers to further a media blitz, but internally that nonsense does not stand up to any kind of sanity test. So...with a more realistic number on "lost sales" I can't imagine that there is a terribly high real return on their lawsuit happy nonsense. I imagine the costs of these constant legal battles take a pretty huge chunk of change.
Business is looking up (Score:3, Insightful)
I see a very bright outlook for Apogee Telecom's ISP business this year.
Re:It all blows (Score:3, Insightful)
Better : Stop buying music from RIAA member but continue to buy music from the truly independents, or from the artists themselves
Re:No wonder they failed... (Score:3, Insightful)
You think that is amazing. You should see how many Corporations are based in Rhode Island.
Granted RI is a small state, roughly 40 miles square. But if you look at your own (or closest) city there are probably 3 or 4 colleges within 10 miles square of it.
Lets use the Little City of Troy, NY
RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Hudson Vally Community College, and Russel Sage All within 5 miles of each other.
Re:It all blows (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Accountants? (Score:4, Insightful)
as far as I'm concerned the only people they should be going after are those who sell bootleg copies, as they are actually making money off of it.
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:5, Insightful)
Stealing means what was taken was against the owner's consent, and that the owner is now deprived of that good. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, means that you have made an unauthorized copy of a work and are selling it/giving it away/making more copys, which is the case here.
Re:Accountants? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's worse than that.... before legal downloads P2P file sharing of music caused their sales to go .... UP!
The only thing that seems to have made the sales go down is *legal* downloads ....
No need to RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, even though the comparison with stealing is a poor one it's good enough to draw some paralells.
Shoplifting happens. bad thing, yada yada.
Now to combat that walmart pushes through some ridiculous legislation and then hires companies to spy on shoplifters,people who might be shoplifters and people who live near possible shoplifters.
Normal customers who pay for their goods start getting patted down regularly, denied entry or exit from the store and called criminals and threatened with legal action if they tried to sell things second hand.
When they catch some 13year old stuffing a 5 dollar item into his coat they take him to court and sue him and his family for $100,000 .
In their crusade to catch the shoplifters they extort records out of local organisaitons with threats of legal action and generally abuse the legal system to find the home addresses of people who might be shoplifters.
They threaten tens of thousands of families with similar suits and offer a shoplifter settlement where you can pay a few thousand in exchange for a promise of not being sued.
Some of the people who get accused of being shoplifters are of course innocent and were simply falsely identified as shoplifters but since there's still a chance of losing absolutely everything and the weight of evidence is not the same as a criminal case those families can't take the chance of losing all their worldly goods and have to pay out of fear.
Imagine a world where walmart acted like that.
Now imagine where the public sympathy would lie, with the kids who are shoplifting or with walmart?
Sure violating copyright is wrong but violating privacy laws and generally abusing the legal system is much much worse.
Re:Business is looking up (Score:3, Insightful)
I see a very bright outlook for Apogee Telecom's ISP business this year.
Yes, I think their willingness to stand up for the rule of law is something to be proud of. And I think people will respect that.
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:2, Insightful)
I am superman (Yes I am) (Yes, I tell you, I am) (I am superman) (Yes, I am) ...
No, doesn't seem to become true even after saying it many times. Does it work for you?
Re:Accountants? (Score:5, Insightful)
this is what kills me, and why their business is such a damned train wreck. They are letting people with no [expleteive deleted] business sense make the decisions (namely the legal teams)...
Exactly. The lawyers have been running this operation for their own benefit.
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of us have no problem with WHY the RIAA is doing the things it does -- our problem is the 'how'.
Then why do a lof of /.'ers justify their reasoning for d/ling stuff without paying for it? Why do a lot of /.'ers talk about it is not wrong to take music without paying for it because it doesn't deprive the creator (or ip owners) with a "physical" copy?
/. crew has as much problem with the WHY and the HOW. BTW, if the RIAA was that flagrant about judges rulings then more judges would be throwing down the gauntlet...they aren't though. So while we may get up in arms apparantly those judges are not...and judges tend to get really annoyed when people do not obey their decrees.
No the
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:5, Insightful)
the /. crew
So you are attempting to lump together everybody on Slashdot who is not you as "the /. crew"? Strange.
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:3, Insightful)
Pirating is not stealing because stealing has it's own definition.
Such definitions are relevant and important and have real moral consequences.
I'm always amused how the morally pompous have no problem being LIARS in order to make their point.
Also, "before the internet" is a weak metric for ethics. Human society is far older than that.
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:5, Insightful)
...this is another example of the moral bankruptcy of the self-righteous.
Not all of us are "justifying personal acts of piracy". Some of us just
realize that there is more to this issue than the plush lifestyles of
A&R men or their victims.
A lot of work is still subject to "ownership" that should no longer be.
Some works are no longer even available and may be lost permanently.
Creativity is threatened by effectively perpetual copyright and the social
costs of allowing publishers to lock away works that are older than any
participant of this forum are absurd. The consequences are rediculous
when compared to genuine acts of theft that would have been
acknowledged as such by Hammurabi himself.
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:4, Insightful)
You should read some of my posts, because I actually have said it. Here's the executive summary:
(Please try to consider the following from a layperson's or "common-sense" perspective, rather than a lawyer's one.)
Because of this, I have to conclude that copyright is not, in fact, a property right. Therefore, I take issue with your use of "owner" and "property" in the quotation above.
Now, if you rephrased that to say "I have not seen any one saying there is something 'wrong with a copyright music holder protecting their government-granted monopoly'" then that would be different.
Re:No wonder they failed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm. He said 40 miles square. That would be about 1600 square miles, so he thinks it's bigger than you do. :)
Re:Analogy (Score:2, Insightful)
So RIAA come on and bring some more of those Yankee subpeeners, we got more bullets than you've got paper.
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:1, Insightful)
It's funny how you selectively pick the easy part to reply to, even conceded by me: the section you quoted is followed by "I'm being pedantic". The original point of contention still stands:
the definition you provided clearly states "taking [..] from someone"
Repeating your exact statement without even acknowledging the real point of my rebuttal does not make it more true.
And before you try to twist this sentence construct by using creative grammar, "from someone" can only be interpreted as a specification of "taking". If it was meant as a qualification of "something" instead, the preposition "from" would have to be replaced by "of" or even "belonging to".
Corporate espionage is, indeed, commonly referred to a "stealing secrets", phishing is known as "theft of private data"
Amazing, ins't it, how many redundant words exist in the English language. But even this similarity will not help your argument about distributing music online: "private data" and "secrets" share a minor commonality that separates them from the arts: they are not meant to be published. Besides, have you ever heard of an employee that published internal memos being prosecuted for larceny? Can you name one single case where a user was tried for larceny committed through P2P software?
murder - the premeditated taking of life - can be viewed as a (particularly disgusting and reprehensible) form of stealing too
Lol. If we go on like this, I bet I can get you to admit that the act of telling a bedtime story to a child is stealing too.