RIAA Walks Away From Another "Discovery" Case 164
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "You may recall that the RIAA walked away last week from one of their 'discovery' cases seeking the identities of 'John Does' who attended Rhode Island College. We have just learned that they walked away from another one, BMG Music v. Does 1-14, in Greensboro, North Carolina. 2 of the 14 John Does had settled, but the other 12 — who hung tough — will never be identified to the RIAA lawyers and will not have to pay any 'settlement.' This adds fuel to the debate over whether the RIAA has finally seen the light or is still sneaking around in the dark."
Re:Pity the (2) fools. (Score:5, Interesting)
I second that statement.
I actually got a letter a little over a year ago which was one of these you are in deep s$%t for downloading music. Only issue it was addressed to "Occupant". I almost wet myself laughing. In my over exuberance I tore up the letter. I will probably regret that move for many years. It is something to be framed.
The best part is. I have never ever downloaded music from the net illegally. I still like that physical quality of a CD.
Oh Nothing happened. There was ZERO follow up on the letter by the sender.
Re:Do not steal (Score:1, Interesting)
No, no you don't. But you aren't hurting anybody, so you may as well do it anyway.
Question (Score:1, Interesting)
How is it, with these "voluntary" dissimissals, the RIAA gets to walk away without paying the other side's legal fees? Where does this leave the defendants? Are they still out several thousand dollars from paying their lawyer, the same as if they had "settled" with the RIAA?
(Although, in this case, the costs might be relatively low, seeing as they would possibly be split amongst several does ...)
A bailout would be better for the RIAA (Score:3, Interesting)
If, instead of claiming that people are stealing their music, the RIAA would accept the simple fact that their product sucks, their marketing strategy sucks, their whole business plan sucks, then they could claim their problems are the result of the economic meltdown and get a few billion $$$ from Washington. [wikipedia.org]
The calm before the storm (Score:5, Interesting)
My piratey sense is tingling
Re:Pity the (2) fools. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish you would have saved it as well. It seems to be a well kept secret of how often this type of intimidation is used under the guise of 'legal threats'.
A year ago, I received a Cease and Desist letter about some domains that I owned. The level of accuracy was similar, as it was addressed to my name but a different address, apparently pulled from the phone book. The letter was threatening all sorts of off the wall things; civil charges, punitive damages, and CRIMINAL charges among others. You can read the letter here sent by
Caton Commercial [demystify.info]
Sure, I could have played along and used the same legal system to smack down the lawyer for making such unfounded threats(it would fall under ethical rules of the bar assn), but instead I decided to post it for all to read.
In that period of time, when searching for the name of the company who sent it, the letter comes up in the top 4 results, along with a link to all the court cases the company is involved in in the local county courthouses publishing of cases. According to my logs, almost 10,000 people have read the letter since its posting.
oops...
Re:Do not steal (Score:3, Interesting)
Appropriate (or "take") is still implying the same thing -- the taking of a physical object. It has nothing to do with creating a copy.
In fact, here's a dictionary, to back me up:
Appropriate \Ap*pro"pri*ate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p.
Appropriated; p. pr. & vb. n. Appropriating.]
1. To take to one's self in exclusion of others; to claim or
use as by an exclusive right; as, let no man appropriate
the use of a common benefit.
Creating a copy does not exclude others from creating a copy, so no.
Re:The calm before the storm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The calm before the storm (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that can be safely assumed. Nobody put a gun to his head and forced him to represent the RIAA. Lawyers are free to refuse cases if they can't reconcile the need for zealous representation with their own personal code of ethics. (Except public defenders, but that's a whole different ball game, and beside the point here.)
So yes, Mr. Ogden probably does support the position of the RIAA.
Re:Pity the (2) fools. (Score:4, Interesting)
Is iit over yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Any chance they could sue to get their money back? If the settlement letter they paid off is bogus (and it demonstrably is in this case since the RIAA dropped the discovery and walked away from it, which says they had no intention of following through with prosecution) it seems to me that the RIAA gained the money through something resembling fraud.
I'm not sure if it would be fraud, or extortion, or whatever - but it just seems to me that the RIAA doesn't have a legal claim on the money. "Pay us and we won't take you to court." So someone pays. But they didn't take the non-paying people to court and dropped the case. So the settlement letter is absolutely bogus. Shouldn't be too difficult a point to make in front of a judge. IANAL though, so I might be very wrong, but it seems that way.
Re:Thanks for stealing! (Score:1, Interesting)
I agree completely! I'm a musician too and I've been telling my girl that the music industry has their collective heads up their ass considering a business plan. Thank GOD they do video too!
IMO, music will return to being regional like way back in the day when there were traveling minstrels and such. Record companies should adapt to serve locals, like all the people (myself included) that put out music for free on myspace and the internets in general.
The days of the all-powerful giant record companies are surely over. They just don't want to accept it.
Re:The calm before the storm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Do not steal (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not just continue conventional copyright protection for commercial use -- restaurants, television commercials, and so on -- while allowing unlimited personal use? Even without non-commercial use, there's still a revenue stream, albeit a smaller one, and still an incentive for artists to create popular music.
Plus, artists will always have live events and merchandise.
Re:Do not steal (Score:2, Interesting)
Musician and sound tech chiming in here, I smell a troll mod coming, but here goes anyway.
Copying music without authorization from the copyright holders is theft, no doubt about it. This notion that the copyright holder is in no way deprived of property is simplistic and misguided. Music is marketed in so many different ways and none of them are benefited by illegal file sharing.
If you think managers, agents, and labels do not investigate how much a band's music has been pirated before agreeing to promote them (or continue to promote them) you're dead wrong. If you think a band has never been deprived of market positioning because of illegal file sharing you're dead wrong. There are so many aspects that have to be in good order before anyone spends the $6-digit amount it takes to get a band the necessary attention in the mainstream, and that is exactly the market that is hit hardest by piracy.
I do not defend the RIAA's draconian tactics and failure to adapt to the market, in fact I detest what they're doing to my industry with such counter-productive campaigns. But theft is still theft.
Wanna really fight back at the RIAA? Don't buy their catalog, instead get out and see some live music and buy the albums of bands that deserve to make a living off music. Unsigned bands generally get 70-85% of album sales as profit, where signed bands are lucky to see 15%. Where would you like your money to go?
NO, it is not. (Score:3, Interesting)
Theft deprives a property owner of the use of something they already own, whether that something is goods or money. Copyright infringement does not deprive the owner of his/her property, therefore it is not theft.
Copyright infringement, in some circumstances but by no means all, merely deprives the work's creator of theoretical profits that could be made from the work. In the vast majority of cases involving downloads or copying of CDs and DVDs, even that is not strictly true according to studies... most of the time there would not have been a sale anyway, so there were no profits "stolen", even theoretically.
Further, even when there is a lost sale in the case of music or movies, the studio and artists are not being deprived of anywhere near the retail price of the product! Usually all they would have gotten anyway is a small fee or royalty which represents only a small fraction of the retail price.
As an ethical analogy, consider the case of a "mountain man" in the days of westward exploration of the United States. If you were to steal his horse, you would deprive him of the use of that horse, which he may well rely on for his very survival. Therefore horse theft (rustling) was a capital crime: you could be (and many people were) hung until dead for that offense.
On the other hand, if you could somehow clone that horse from some "borrowed" cells, the only thing you would be depriving the owner of would be a theoretical stud fee, assuming the owner put the horse out for stud in the first place.
Obviously, the nature and severity of these "crimes" are vastly different, and there is no rational basis for treating them the same way.
Re:Pity the (2) fools. (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess you are not counting all those millions killed under the State as a "bad" thing.
Re:Do not steal (Score:1, Interesting)
A lot of time and effort go into creating mathematics also. Yet, it is not copyrighted.
A lot of time and effort go into designing and building a house. Yet the bricklayers, plumbers, electricians, etc. don't keep receiving payments for a hundred years after their work has been completed.
Flimsy stuff.