RIAA Sued For Fraud, Abuse, & "Sham Litigation" 187
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "It's been a rough week for the RIAA as massive layoffs are about to cost many employees their job. On top of that, the anti-piracy outfit is being sued in North Carolina for abusing the legal system in its war on piracy, particularly for civil conspiracy, deceptive trade practices, trespassing and computer fraud in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Moursy. Named along with the record companies as defendants on the counterclaims are Safenet (formerly known as MediaSentry) and the RIAA. This case first started out as 'LaFace Records v. Does 1-38' until the court required the RIAA to break it up into 38 separate cases, at which point it morphed into 'SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Doe.' Only after the RIAA finally got its 'expedited' discovery did it become SONY v. Moursy. And from the looks of things, it has a long, long way to go. The RIAA hasn't even filed its answer to the counterclaims yet, but is making a motion to dismiss them on the grounds of legal insufficiency. Sound like a good investment of record company resources, anyone?"
To quote NOFX... (Score:5, Insightful)
And I do believe no one will cry
I'm just fucking glad I'm gonna be
There to watch the fall
Prehistoric music industry
Three feet in la brea tar
Extinction never felt so good
Re:W/Regards to layoffs: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FUCK ARTISTS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:W/Regards to layoffs: - Godwin's Law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:RIAA guilty of promoting copyright infringment? (Score:5, Insightful)
No that is not correct. You buy a CD like you buy a book. You only need a "license" if the copyright holder has to give you a limited subset of his or her limited monopoly on copying/distribution. You buy the CD, you do not need any of the copying/distribution rights that are reserved to the copyright holder.
I don't know where this idea that music is "licensed" comes from. Sometimes I think the RIAA is spreading this to make us believe we don't really own the CD's we bought.
Re:Couldn't have happened to nicer people (Score:4, Insightful)
You took the words right out of my mouth, with that subject line. Seriously. The RIAA has been swaggering around like they're Jack Bauer [wikimedia.org] for years now, with all the self-justification that goes along with the reference, but instead of chasing terrorists, or even true "criminals" (copyright violation is really a civil law matter, not a criminal law matter), they're chasing down little kids, moms or grandmas who don't even know what BitTorrent or P2P is, let alone consciously making a decision to use it (kids or grandkids in this case), etc.; if they were chasing down Russian mobsters selling knock-off CDs to fund their other illegal activities then I can see some of it, but they're NOT. Even most of the artists they're claiming to protect don't want much of anything to do with them! It's about time the RIAA legal machine was dismantled, and the pieces destroyed, preferably with fire. They're a relic of a time and a business model whose usefulness and relevance has long since past; it's time for the music industry to stop being in denial about it, embrace the fact that downloading of music is a reality, a genie that can't be put back into it's bottle, and stop beating a dead horse. Oh, and memo to the music industry: Please start backing and producing music that doesn't suck, k? We're sick to death of the crap you've been turning out lately.
Yep, in all 40,000 cases I've never once seen one that involved actual copyright 'piracy' (the term they are so fond of throwing around). The only real pirates, other than the ones from Somalia, are the RIAA lawyers, who are engaged in a racket akin to extortion.
Re:W/Regards to layoffs: (Score:5, Insightful)
No, wait. The Nuremberg defense is "I was under orders" - it's used when you actually DID something bad YOURSELF. Merely working for someone who also does bad things is not bad in itself unless and until you yourself do bad things.
Take Osama's chauffeur, for example, who was kept for years (and probably still is) in our lovely concentration camp at Gitmo. What did he actually do, other than being connected to/working for a genuine bad guy?
Of course, working for a bad guy isn't really something you SHOULD do, but if you do it anyway, it's not something that should be legally actionable. You are responsible for your OWN actions, not anyone else's. (And in fact, the fact that you ARE responsible for your own actions is precisely why the Nuremberg defense is not considered valid by most.)
Re:Couldn't have happened to nicer people (Score:4, Insightful)
if they were chasing down Russian mobsters selling knock-off CDs to fund their other illegal activities then I can see some of it
In Putin's Russia the complaints of an American business organization, and especially one concerned with copyright, are going to be ignored and probably not even politely ignored. I doubt the Russian mafia is heavily involved in software piracy, there simply isn't a lot of money in knockoff CDs compared to what their other more lucrative criminal enterprises, such as drugs, extortion/protection, and guns, bring in. If the are involved then it is probably lower level functionaries and associates. Either way, those people are effectively beyond the reach of US laws and they could give a crap about copyright infringement. Those ex-KGB/FSB and their former Spetsnaz [wikipedia.org] enforcers make American organized criminals look like boyscouts. If you cross the Russian mafia or get in their way then they just kill you plain and simple (i.e. they "settle out of court"). The only people on the planet more violent than the Russian mob are probably Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The RIAA wouldn't dare go after such people, even if they could, because if they did and caused trouble then their executives and attorneys would become marked men when traveling abroad.
Re:W/Regards to layoffs: (Score:5, Insightful)
Before anybody starts in on the "Yay, less employees!" style rant, please remember that there are GOOD people who work at bad companies... not everyone is an evil backstabbing conniving shrew with the goal of proving that everyone is evil and owes them billions of dollars.
Of course, I have no proof of this "decent people" there, but one can only assume there would be.
This is why many religions have an idea called "right livelihood". The Buddhists are very good at using sensible terms with simple descriptions and so I borrow their term here, but it's a recurring theme appearing in many belief systems. It goes by different names but the concept is that part of having integrity involves earning your living in an honest way that causes as little harm as possible, whether that harm is intentional on your part or incidental.
I know I could not in good conscience work for the RIAA. I could not see the harm and the human suffering and persecution that they perpetrate and join up with them without having a lot of inner conflict. Most of that conflict wouldn't even be a conscious thing. It would manifest in terms of a general dissatisfaction, of the vacuous sort that "you need more stuff, latest fastest greatest" rampant consumerism is designed to fill. It would be the opposite of being strong and needing very little and having a joyous satisfaction with life that comes from trying as much as possible to live in harmony with other beings. It would cost me my principles and therefore my well-being, not in a catastrophic sense but in a subtle corrupting double-minded sense. When I say double-minded, I mean that sensation that one part of you is for something while another part of you is against that something. It's become common, but that is not at all normal and is properly regarded as a disease (or "dis-ease") state.
I'm not advocating a religion or a religious belief. I'm saying that sometimes concepts become incorporated into these beliefs for what you might call practical reasons. It's unfortunate that religion has become such a divisive tool for control but I think that for most of them, this was later added onto the original beliefs and observations to make them into "systems". Most of them started out as sincere efforts to experience true health and joy on the physical, mental, and spiritual levels. You can see that if you can perform the not-so-easy task of unravelling and getting past the practitioners who know little about their own beliefs, the needlessly complex religious language, and the institutionalization and systematization of what are supposed to be personal beliefs. For most religions, I think the early founders would be quite horrified to see what their ideas have become, not unlike how the Founding Fathers would feel about the monstrosity that our federal government has become. In both cases, that does not mean that the original ideas were unsound, it means that the ideas become monsters when they turn into systems and demand that people conform to and become subservient to those systems. This process is in direct opposition to the idea that a belief is a tool or a helper that is there to give you ideas to consider, test, and accept or reject as part of your own personal quest to decide for yourself what you believe. The idea of "right livelihood" is one that I was thankfully able to test by observing other people instead of having to make my own mistakes and I have found it to be a sound idea.
Re:To quote NOFX... (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely. How are large record companies even useful nowadays? It used to be that it was expensive to record and reproduce music, and distribution involved getting physical product out on shelves. Since shelves = floor space = rent, stores had to move as much product as possible, so there was value in having the music they were selling promoted by big companies with a lot of advertising money and a stranglehold on commercial radio.
The landscape has changed dramatically over the last decade. Recording is so cheap that it can be done reasonably well with equipment costing a few thousand dollars or less. That means it's pretty much accessible to everyone. For $10/month you can sign up with a digital music distributor who will put your mp3s on Amazon.com, itunes, etc. Set up a myspace page for your band or register a domain and get an inexpensive web host and you've got a web presence. It's up to you to get your music heard and purchased, but when you do you'll get most or all of the proceeds.
Seriously, what has the music industry given us lately except bland, pretty pop stars with little musical talent?
Re:W/Regards to layoffs: (Score:5, Insightful)
After I got laid off the last time, I got a VERY lucrative offer from an extremely scummy company that did data mining and direct marketing. After a long discussion with my wife, I turned it down, even though there was a very real chance that doing so would have meant losing my house. Fortunately something else came along, but it was scary there for a while.
Re:Couldn't have happened to nicer people (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd really like seeing them push the angle about their corporate attempts at controlling world art and culture, turning it into the bland, government approved, Pepsi and MTV generation and focus group designed, placid american/teen idol bands, and flooding us with that insipid product over controlled media.
Yeah, um...good luck with that one.
That's really what the RIAA's fight is about, controlling the media, itself, and thereby the content on it, which is used to market false images and idols rather than any real talent that could inspire, consol or rally.
Is that a bible-thump I hear, way in the background? False idols?
Here's another angle to consider: the companies that comprise the RIAA do not care about the content. They would just as soon sell you backwards recordings of Niels Bohr lectures as they would a solid hour of Robin Williams going "durrrr" if it made money. What the RIAA is concerned with is distribution and licensing of whatever it is that is being produced. That's it, the content is entirely secondary and merely a vehicle for acquiring dollars.
News for Nerds (Score:3, Insightful)
It has been tough week all around.
You could preface every Slashdot story with this line and only the cast of characters would change: Novell lays off openSUSE Linux developers [betanews.com]
Re:Couldn't have happened to nicer people (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what the GP intended by that concept, but I can tell you what it means to me. "Idolatry", when separated from all of the religious language (not such an easy task...) has a very simple meaning. It just means giving undue importance to something, or making a big deal out of nothing. To make up an example that I hope illustrates the point, consider a completely obsessed sports fan who knows the entire lineup of every football team by heart and watches every single game while his wife is neglected and starved for attention. Now, in the proper "order of things", his wife should be more important to him than the antics of professional athletes, for one represents love and commitment while the other represents entertainment. In this case, the man has made an idol out of football, even though he's not bowing down and worshipping anyone or anything.
Now consider the way marketing is done. There always has to be a big deal made of something that, most of the time, is really not very important or significant. It's always LATEST, FASTEST, GREATEST and there always has to be some kind of excitement attached to it. It's seldom "hey, maybe people will like this" and instead it's BEST THING EVER, BUY RIGHT NOW!!!! Few things that are marketed this way are essential to life and few of them would naturally inspire this sort of passion or enthusiasm; thus it is entirely artificial. There are only so many hours in a day, so someone who buys into the artificial hype would have to do so at the expense of something else that could have been given emphasis instead.
True, except that there is one concern about content that impacts the RIAAs of the world, which is the lowering of standards of excellence. If the public thinks something is crap, then it won't sell. Get the public conditioned to accept mostly crap and you can then sell more and more of your products without concern about the relative rarity of true excellence or the higher production costs that it might demand (due to taking more time to produce, if nothing else). Think of most of the popular music that is promoted by the RIAA, how little of it has any lasting or enduring value, how much of it does not require a ton of musical talent to write or to perform, and how the lyrical content is mostly immature prattle with no deep spiritual meanings and no ability to challenge its audience to think in new ways.
The advantages for the RIAA are that such musicians are plentiful. When a one-hit wonder or a mediocre band gets old and stops selling very well, there are thousands more ready and eager to take its place, waiting for their turn in the spotlight. The perceived advantge for the public is an inexhaustible supply of "new" music (though much of it is formulaic) so they can quickly move on to something else when they have depleted the entertainment value of their current favorites, which won't take long. From a commercial perspective, superficial entertainment with little or no lasting value is quite desirable. It moves product. All of this depends on a general public that, as a whole, is not too discerning and doesn't have specific, refined, individual tastes. If the RIAA knows anything, they know their market. What they choose to promote and not promote is no accident. So in that manner, they do care about content and from their perspective, they'd be crazy not to.
RIAA Abuse of Tax Payer Money (Score:3, Insightful)
While I would love to see this be the beginning of the end to the abuse of tax payer money for the services of the RIAA, I expect they will be around for a while.
I really do think the thousands of lawsuits they have brought are an unfair burden to the governments that support the courts these suits clog up. We have more important things to do with money in times like these. The RIAA needs to get with the program and give the people what they want, in the format they want it in. If they don't then ultimately they will be pushed aside no matter how ugly or bloody (hopefully figuratively) the battle becomes.
Re:This just in! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if this lawsuit is successful, it could help to end a long series of persecution and, in my personal opinion, abuse of the legal system (IANAL). This is a good thing. There are solid principles involved here that have nothing to do with personal feelings of "approval".
It's simple. There are times when wrong things go on. There are times when the legal system has a good chance of correcting those wrong things. This is one of those times.
If that bore any resemblance to "ending persecution and abuse" then I would see your point. It doesn't, so I don't. Frivolous lawsuits do happen. All frivolous lawsuits are lawsuits; this does not mean that all lawsuits are frivolous. I mean no offense, but please tell me that I have misunderstood what you were getting at, that you in fact are not advocating a position with such a glaring and easily addressed flaw. It's quite easy and tempting to feel "jaded" about our legal system and this will cloud your reasoning if you allow it, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Re:Couldn't have happened to nicer people (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that in the past, skilled craft was essential because there was no other way to produce durable, useful goods. Now we have factories and mass production and economies of scale to take care of our material needs. The mistake we have made is that we act now like everything is a product and that craftsmanship or artistry have become more obsolete.
What we could do instead is decide that we have raised our material standard of living to where we can now apply craftsmanship and art to higher expressions of our humanity rather than mundane material survival. An economy based on scarcity (as opposed to what is called a resource economy) and a monetary system based entirely on debt (fiat currency, the Federal Reserve and similar systems that the same international bankers have implemented in every industrialized country) and therefore unsustainable are the main reasons why this has been held back. If we can overcome these things, we would find that we stand at the brink of a new Renaissance far greater than anything that has been imagined before. That is our current challenge.
I agree very much with Bill Hicks when he said that the reason why things are so fucked up right now is that we are undergoing evolution. Hicks went on to say that our institutions are crumbling because they are no longer relevant. Much of the abuses (in my opinion) perpetrated by the RIAA and others have been about these institutions trying to use force, typically the force of law, to remain relevant. I think they are merely prolonging the inevitable. This is a tough time because the old control-and-manipulation-and-coercion based ways of keeping order have to give way first before something new and better can replace them. The unrest and dissatisfaction that is so prevalent right now is part of this process. The one thing that is certain is that our current system is not sustainable. It absolutely must and will either radically change or cause its own collapse. I think something much better is coming that will be based on true love and respect and appreciation for ourselves and each other, for the simple reason that we've tried almost everything else and everything else doesn't work.
Not all artists record in Internet-popular genres (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, what has the music industry given us lately except bland, pretty pop stars with little musical talent?
I imagine that some genres are far more popular among people without high-speed Internet access than among people with it, such as vocal jazz or country music. For artists who record in such genres, the record industry gives them distribution and promotion.
Re:Couldn't have happened to nicer people (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly. Russian mobsters have money to defend themselves in court, maybe even hire their own experts and private dicks who can prove that the RIAA's "evidence" is crap (even to technophobic judges).
So instead they go after easy targets such as seven-year-olds who's out-of-work parents can't afford a court trial. They just suck it down, take out a third mortgage, and pay off the extortion letter without ever going to trial. Figure for every court case that made the media there was probably a hundred that didn't, and for each one of those there was probably a thousand that quietly paid the blackmail "settlement letter". That's "free profit" to the RIAA so there is no incentive for them to be ethical (or reasonable).
Remember the RIAA's sole purpose is to shield the true litigants (such as SONY BMG) in these cases from the public eye. Otherwise the bad PR might have these individual publishers deal with product boycotts and such. But the RIAA is like a patent troll, they produce nothing, do NOTHING (except sue people), so there is nothing to be boycotted.
No layoffs for lawyers (Score:3, Insightful)
Until, that is, I turned 50.
All of a sudden, I couldn't buy a job. Worse, I had to endure being interviewed by 20-something project leads who thought hexadecimal was "some sort of weird religion" (hey, maybe they were right at that). Adding insult to injury, I later heard in one case that they decided not to offer me the position because they didn't think I was "technical enough."
But, with douche bag outfits like the RIAA, SCO and Microsoft around, it looks like the lawyers are (as usual) going to do just fine. No layoffs in that "profession" (except maybe for a lowly paralegal here and there).
Does anybody else here now wish they'd become a lawyer? Naw!
Re:W/Regards to layoffs: (Score:2, Insightful)
Second: if there are good people working there, then good for them, the layoff is an opportunity and incentive for each and every one of them to go find a morally acceptable job which won't ruin their health with buried guilt.
Re:W/Regards to layoffs: (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that even the slightest hint of authority can, in fact, drive people to kill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment [wikipedia.org]
Yeah, that's because almost no one seems to understand the difference between service and subservience. One is mindful and willing cooperation because you believe in a purpose, the other is mindless submission that robs you of human dignity. Holding people personally responsible for any atrocities they commit is one way to remind them of the difference. It's probably not the best way because it emphasizes punishment as deterrant and not wisdom as prevention.
In a way we're between a rock and a hard place when it comes to this issue. The "powers that be" would like to preserve the centralized authority structures and the ready obedience of mindless myrmidons who execute their wishes and form the basis of their power. At the same time, they want to say that you will be punished for following certain orders, which implies that at least sometimes you are expected to think for yourself enough to question their authority. So we get these solutions that are based on prosecution and punishment for these thankfully rare events because the enlightened understanding that would represent true prevention also happens to dissolve the social machinery through which it moves (to borrow a phrase from McKenna), an option that is thoroughly distasteful to the statists.
Once you get an idea of the forces at work, the flawed ideas that compromise human beings, none of this is difficult to understand.
Re:Couldn't have happened to nicer people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Couldn't have happened to nicer people (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Couldn't have happened to nicer people (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by small scale, but go to any country where the retail price of a CD is more than a day's wage and you'll find unauthorized copies for sale on seemingly every street corner.
Re:W/Regards to layoffs: (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I applaud you turning down the "scummy company" at risk to yourself and family. I don't agree with your logic. Following the same line of thought leads to;
"No good Americans" because of the Iraq war.
"No good Israeli's" because of the attacks on Gaza.
"No good Palestinians" because of the attacks on Israel.
Often the people at these companies have never been exposed to any point of view from outside the company. Most citizens of a country are the same.......indoctrinated.
Re:Couldn't have happened to nicer people (Score:3, Insightful)