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."
Analogy (Score:5, Funny)
Kid: "Mommy, can I go to the store by myself?"
Mom: "No, son."
5 minutes later
Kid: "Daddy, can I go to the store by myself?"
Dad: "Sure, son. Here's a dollar. Get a candy bar".
1 minute later
Mom: "SO I HEARD YOU WENT BEHIND MY BACK AND ASKED YOUR FATHER TO GO TO THE STORE"
Kid: "I just mentioned it to him. I don't want to go anymore. Thanks, bye!"
Mom: *Result Pending*
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.
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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.
salad bar justice. pick some from here- don't like that thing? - go pick some others over there.
when you do wrong things, you get fined or punished. RIAA is doing (repeatedly) wrong things. so where is THEIR punishment?
kids, STEAL music all you frickin want. the laws are still not working (yet) and so I give you free permission and free reign to do whatever the hell you want with cd's,
Re:Analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
While the Ignore-any-law-you-don't-like thing doesn't appeal to me I'd instead sugest creating some decently effecient darknets to make this "Lets sue everyone and drop the case against anyone who looks like they have the means to actually defend themselves" utterly impotent.
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.
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Nothing wrong with a copyright music owner protecting their property.
I have not seen any one saying there is something "wrong with a copyright music owner protecting their property".
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:Thou shall not steal! (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of us have no problem with WHY the RIAA is doing the things it does -- our problem is the 'how'.
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: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: (Score:3, Informative)
Here's why I download all the hell I want:
If the RIAA were to obtain my hard drive, they'd find that I have HUNDREDS of full albums that they gave away FOR FREE.
I can point out EVERY site that I downloaded a song from, and most of them just happen to be directly from the artist's site.
So tell me, how the fuck can they justify suing for shit they're giving out for FREE? I've got 80+ gigs of 192-320kbit MP3s, EVERY LAST ONE LEGIT.
What we need to do to put a stop to this is file a collective lawsuit, millions
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright infringement is copyright infringement. I am not aware of a synonym for it.
The RIAA uses the terms "piracy" and "stealing" in referring to copyright infringement, but do so inaccurately, as part of their propaganda.
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, would you condemn copyright infringement -- for the record?
Yes I am opposed to copyright infringement.
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The term is defined as: larceny, theft, thievery, thieving, stealing -- the act of taking something from someone unlawfully . A song copied unlawfully is certainly stolen.
Herein lies the rub: You define stealing as the act of taking something from someone unlawfully, then you indicate that copying is stealing.
Copying and taking are not synonymous. I'm either making a copy of something, or I am taking something.
Stealing is the act of unlawfully taking property from someone else, from which if I take the prop
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As long as it is above zero — and you don't dispute that — the actual figure is irrelevant to our determination.
"Impossible to quantify" does not rule out the quantity "zero", so your claim is false. Alternate universes where certain things may or may not have happened cannot be used as evidence of loss. Copyright infringement is no more "stealing" based on loss of potential sales than is using deceptive advertising to pull in more sales at a store. Deceptive advertising is illegal, but a competing store has no claim on the profit made via that deception.
Seriously, it's no more difficult than looking at the relevan
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I am opposed to copyright infringement.
And with that, a million voices on Slashdot suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
The only voices that would be silenced would be those of the very few who might think that a man who's devoted the past 34 years of his life to the rule of law would be in favor of infringing upon someone's legal rights. In fact, it is hard for me to imagine anyone on Slashdot who would sincerely have believed anything else.
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Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:5, Interesting)
Stealing of information by copying has been punishable by law for many years - way before the Internet.
No, infringing copyright by copying is punishable by law. Stealing by copying isn't, because you can't steal something by copying it.
It is a flawed argument to think stealing information is not a bad thing.
No one said that is wasn't a bad thing. The point was that is isn't stealing. An action isn't automatically stealing just because it is bad - if I beat you up, I won't get convicted for stealing, but I will get convicted for assault.
Many companies have their entire business model setup on proprietary information - the people here a /. may not like this - but guess what - the people here at /. were not the ones investing tons of money/time into those soft-products.
There is nothing wrong with having your business model set up on proprietary information. What _is_ wrong is abusing the legal system to catch people who may or may not be breaking the law at the expense of a large number of innocent people.
Also, that nice new fancy drug that you or your family/loved ones are taking to save their lives...that formula is most likely (for new drugs) a closely held secret by a company that spent many millions in R&D. Without these copyright protections said companies would have no reason to create life-saving medicines.
You seem to be confused. You can't copyright a physical object such as a drug - you have to patent it. You can't keep patented IP a secret, since the whole point of a patent is that it is published.
The patent system has a lot of problems, but it has nothing to do with copyright, is not the matter under discussion and last I heard the drug industry didn't go around suing random people without any credible evidence that those people have done anything wrong.
Just like drug makers have to protect their recipies from international infringements so do people who want to profit from their music.
Nothing wrong with a copyright music owner protecting their property.
So what has this got to do with stealing?
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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:Choose your words more carefully (Score:5, Informative)
You're trying to make a point, and I understand what you mean, but you're really arguing something that's irrelevant. You are also making people focus on the wrong thing, dragging what point you were trying to make off into the weeds. When someone says "pirating is not stealing", they are not talking about what you're talking about when you say "pirating is stealing".
If you would drop the semantics and make your point without using the words "pirate" or "steal" and instead use "copyright infringement" you would start to see how your arguments actually aren't that different from the ones you're arguing against.
Also, note that US copyright law considers the financial impact of any potential infringement, among other things.
"Piracy" has generally been when someone copies something and sells it, like the Chinese DVDs or Windows for a dollar. Clearly you are reducing the market value, if people no longer have to pay full price. More recently, "piracy" is being used in the sense of simple copying for personal use, for situations like downloading music that you already own so you don't have to convert it to FLAC/MP3/AAC. This could be considered fair use because there is no financial benefit to you and no financial loss to the vendor (ignoring the uploading part, since those parts would be available regardless of whether you were uploading them because you got them from somewhere, so your actions are not materially contributing). So even talking about "piracy" is a muddy conversation if you don't clearly define what you're talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Comparison_to_theft [wikipedia.org]
http://www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/basics/fairuse_rules.html [copyright.com]
And if anyone wants to copy this the next time someone like this pops up, i release any copyright claim on this comment and it is public domain. Copy, paste, improve.
Re:Thou shall not steal! (Score:4, Interesting)
Stealing of information by copying has been punishable by law for many years - way before the Internet.
Yes, it has. Do you know why these laws were established? (Hint: The reason had nothing to do with compensating creators for their efforts). That's a prerequisite for understanding how they should be applied with the existence of a world-changing technology like the Internet?
It is a flawed argument to think stealing information is not a bad thing.
You're the one arguing that information, which by it's very nature is infinitely reproducible and has no inherent scarcity, unlike physical objects, should be arbitrarily restricted, at great expense to society. The burden is on you to show why it is bad to copy information.
Many companies have their entire business model setup on proprietary information
True, and in fact I make my living that way. But irrelevant. Buggy whip makers had their entire business model set up on producing implements for controlling horses. Times change, businesses must change with them.
Without these copyright protections said companies would have no reason to create life-saving medicines.
Copyrights have nothing to do with medicines. You're thinking of patents. They're different, and have a completely different purpose.
BTW, I'm a big fan of copyright law, done right. Our copyright law is screwed up, and what the record labels have been trying to do is even more screwed up than the law, but it's still a very good idea if done correctly.
Oh, and I don't infringe on copyrights per the law, even though I think the law is wrong to the point of evil.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I debated modding you up instead of posting since i think your downmod was unfair.
But I wanted to address your points more, and folks can see your post by looking at the reply posts parent.
1) Stealing is not Piracy is not Copyright Infringement.
2) The laws surrounding stealing (or many other crimes) have not been adjusted for inflation resulting in "felonies" for what should be misdemeanors. When the laws were passed, you would have to steal half a year's earnings to qualify for a felony-- now I earn more
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: (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?
Rinse and Repeat (Score:5, Insightful)
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They're paying back less than 25 cents on the dollar - a nice legal scam^Wsettlement. Why aren't they being forced into bankruptcy and everything sold off?
How much you want to be they now ask for bailout money [youtube.com]?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
RIAA: Haha, just kidding, can't you take a joke?
Judge Roy Bean: BANG!... ermmm NO
I posit that if the RIAA had to hire bullet proof lawyers there would be very little litigation on their behalf.
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?
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It doesn't matter. Any area of the country will be looking at ways to avoid online pitfalls and legal action will be interested in this.
Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine?
I have been to both, but now reside in neither. They both have schools.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
My experience has been that Portland (at least in the US) means Portland, Oregon. And no, I do not live on the west coast. It just seems to be a more widely-known city than Portland, Maine is, at least in my circles.
Re:Rinse and Repeat (Score:5, Funny)
Portland (at least in the US) means Portland, Oregon.
That is probably true - unless you live in Portland, Arkansas or Portland, Connecticut or Portland, Indiana or Portland, Maine or Portland, Michigan or Portland, Missouri or Portland, North Dakota or Portland, New York or Portland, Ohio or Portland, Pennsylvania or Portland, Tennessee or Portland, Texas. Other than that, Portland means Portland, Oregon
Apologies to any Portlands I missed
A Question for Ray (Score:2, Interesting)
How can they keep doing this? I'm amazed that nobody from the RIAA has been slapped with contempt of court or some other law.
Re:A Question for Ray (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I'm concerned, you're asking half of the Great Imponderable Question. I'll add the other half:
1) They can't be making any money off this. The kinds of people they sue aren't among the wealthier members of society. There's a big difference between getting a judgment and actually collecting the money.
2) It's not acting as a deterrent. People are still out there doing what they do as recording sales continue to fall.
So the other half of the question is: Why do they keep doing this?
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They can testify before congress that they are spending money trying to pursue it in civil court but that doesn't work so they need stricter laws use of the national guard.
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Why do they keep doing this?
FUD, if they don't do it, no one will, so they press on to create fear on the part of potential file sharers and uncertainty in the general population as to what is and isn't legal.
I doubt it's working out to the ultimate benefit of the record companies, but there's probably an exec or two that feels vindicated about not being able to buy that G5 outright and having to continue to lease it because of diminishing revenue, at least he made some people miserable in return.
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Re:A Question for Ray (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I'm concerned, you're asking half of the Great Imponderable Question. I'll add the other half: 1) They can't be making any money off this.
Losing money hand over fist.
The kinds of people they sue aren't among the wealthier members of society.
Usually.
There's a big difference between getting a judgment and actually collecting the money.
That's right. And each default judgment cost them plenty.
2) It's not acting as a deterrent. People are still out there doing what they do as recording sales continue to fall.
So I'm told. So the other half of the question is: Why do they keep doing this?
My theory is that (1) a corporation is managed by its management, (2) the management in the case of the big 4 record companies are total failures, and (3) this campaign was based on a premise that they fabricated to deflect attention from their own failure: that the existence of p2p file sharing software is the sole reason for their failure. They had to push the campaign to try to pretend they believed in the premise.
Re:A Question for Ray (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you ever read Barbara Tuchman's book "The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam"? She defines folly as an organization or government's deliberate pursuit of policies that are against their own best interests, often despite ample evidence and warnings. Aside from the semi-mythic Troy and the very real United States, she also looks at the Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation, England at the time of the American Revolution, and a couple of others. It's a fascinating book, even twenty-odd years after its first publication. Every time I read one of these RIAA posts, I'm reminded of it. Their actions seem to me to meet all her criteria for folly.
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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.
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No wonder they failed... (Score:5, Informative)
As a RI resident, I can pretty confidently say that there no "College of Rhode Island".
Re:No wonder they failed... (Score:4, Informative)
The colleges with the closest names to "College of Rhode Island" are:
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
How can they fit that many colleges in Rhode Island? ;)
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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: (Score:3, Funny)
really you think RI is only 40 square miles? Please stop talking as you know absolutely nothing about my state. It is a small state but it is actually about 1500 square miles.
Come on slashdot how long do I have to wait between posts now
It's been 6 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
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. :)
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Almost any City College isn't safe.
I visited Drexel in Philly, It was like being in a prison.
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Well you see, RIC is down the street, on the left.
CCRI is down the street and on he right.
URI is right here.
Seriously.
My friends and I and I were on a road trip in RI, to see Ms Teen RI, who they'd met on a cruise (before being awarded the title, before college). My friend and I went to pick up the other friend from Worcester P.I., and decided to stop by her place and hang out. We got lost, and asked come cop for directions. It turned out we were in the exact opposite corner of the state. Three turns and 2
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Wait. A slashdotter and a bunch of his friends asked a cop for directions t
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Or that they were lying, and no way a pre-beauty queen would invite them. Cop probably thought "these kids, it's not april fools".
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I wonder if the University of Rhode Island (URI.EDU) has a good class on Internet Protocols. Those are one of those good domain names to have a proxy server in.
gotomy.uri.edu
Re:No wonder they failed... (Score:5, Informative)
As a RI resident, I can pretty confidently say that there no "College of Rhode Island".
Sorry about that. You are of course correct. It's "Rhode Island College". My apologies.
A person my age should no longer work from memory.
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.
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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.
You defiantly speak for me. Thanks a million for everything you do!
Re:No wonder they failed... (Score:4, Funny)
I'd rather have NYCL speak defiantly for me. He at least has some experience doing that sort of thing against the RIAA.
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Brother, welcome to the fold.
Re:No wonder they failed... (Score:5, Funny)
A person my age should no longer work from memory.
Don't say that! I think I'm older than you and I assure you that...
Um, what was I talking about again?
Could have been comical... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Could have been comical... (Score:5, Funny)
it could have been rather comical to see RIAA go up before a judge that had told them to stop the bundling
.Yes. It would have been priceless.
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.
ISP Safe Haven (Score:2, Insightful)
You can laugh at this, but... (Score:2)
They do this because they're all cases that would work so poorly in a court for them.
And still get away with it, despite consistent abuse of the legal system like this.
No longer a laughing matter... :-(
It all blows (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry. Just had to say it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Better : Stop buying music from RIAA member but continue to buy music from the truly independents, or from the artists themselves
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Re:It all blows (Score:4, Interesting)
But it drives me nuts the people that still continue to grab their music illegally which just helps prolong and reinforce the idea that the RIAA is needed (to record companies).
You buy into the myths that 1) piracy hurts copyright holders 2) the RIAA is afraid of pirates 3) The RIAA is the only (or best) place to get music.
For the first, see lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons and the introduction to Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. Both are posted in full on the internet, and both are selling well; I read Doctorow's book on the internet, and then bought a hardcover copy that sits on by bookshelf like CDs ought to.
If you want to hear the latest RIAA top 40 dreck, turn on the radio. It's free and it's legal, and if you want a digital copy of that single you can sample the radio. Legal? I don't know, but back in the cassette days they specifically made recording off the air legal.
I would urge everyone to NOT download, buy, or listen to RIAA music, even though any lost sales due to the boycott that has been going on for years is attributed to piracy. You have internet radio with thousands of stations with tons of indie music. You have local bands, all of whom record these days. Buy from them and you will get higher quality and a far lower price.
I know people who can absolutely afford to purchase their music legally, but don't. Not because of any stance against record companies or compensation for artists. They just do it, 'because'. It's free after all.
Odd, I don't know a single one. I hear it from the RIAA all the time, but have never met this mythical pirate. Why would one steal bottled water when you have a filtered tap on your sink and money in your pocket? Almost every non-RIAA band WANTS you to download their music, and to do it for free. They know that nobody ever lost money from "piracy" but most suffer from obscurity, including RIAA bands; they can't get everyone on the radio.
BTW, iTunes doesn't sell music, they rent it. If you want to "buy music" you need to buy a CD, as you have resale and lending rights with it. It is a physical object. When you rent from the internet, you own nothing. P2P and digital downloads should be what the indies use it for -- promotion. The RIAA is trying to kill P2P not because "piracy" hurts sales, but because your hearing indie music hurts RIAA sales.
Stop doing business with sociopaths.
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Simpler still, I think it is just more convenient to pirate today than it is to purchase. On the pirate networks, you can download and sample thousands of tracks, decide what you like, delete the rest. Who is going to pay thousands of dollars up front for that kind of selection just to throw most of it away? The sampling features available on Amazon, etc. are a joke compared to the convenience of getting a batch and listening when you feel like it. Some of the subscription services may come close to co
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The sampling features available on Amazon, etc. are a joke compared to the convenience of getting a batch and listening when you feel like it.
A real life illustration of that is how Samtanna's label almost lost a sale due to the 30 second samples. This was back when Supernatural first came out, before I was boycotting. I'd always liked that band, but hadn't listened to anything after about their third album.
I fired up CD-NOW, with the 30 second samples, and thought "holy sheep shorts, they're REALLY gone do
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If you want to hear the latest RIAA top 40 dreck, turn on the radio. It's free and it's legal, and if you want a digital copy of that single you can sample the radio. Legal? I don't know, but back in the cassette days they specifically made recording off the air legal.
Well that's just silly. People want to take their music with them, and whether or not you listen to Top 40 songs/classical music/country/whatever doesn't matter. If you are a fan of independent artists, that's great, but most of what people are exposed to comes from record companies with ties to the RIAA. If my favorite artist sold their music directly to me, that would be great, but at least if I'm buying it in some format I know that at least some amount is in fact going to them.
Odd, I don't know a single one. I hear it from the RIAA all the time, but have never met this mythical pirate. Why would one steal bottled water when you have a filtered tap on your sink and money in your pocket?
That's great. Now we h
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It's not a myth. If I want music X and I can get it for free w/o recourse I will take it for free. If, however, there is recourse (going to jail, paying fines, etc) then I will think "hmm maybe I should go spend the 1.5 on iTunes, or record it from the radio". So it is a deterrent. Maybe not to some people who firmly believe they are safe on the anonymous internet...but some people are not willing to take that chance. It works, maybe not on the standard
I love how this is tagged with.... (Score:2)
I love how this is tagged with 'hahahahaha' 'riaasucks' and 'bastards'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Content
Down with all of these cartels.
Forum-shopping (Score:2)
That's a pretty egregious example of forum-shopping.
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.
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.
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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 ....
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U
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.
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It's all about the pirates (Score:3, Funny)
It's not the lawsuits that cost the RIAA a ton of money. It's all because of pirates. Y'see, if it weren't for pirates, then they wouldn't have to spend all this money on lawyers in the first place! So there ya have it... even the legal costs are a direct result of piracy. It makes PERFECT sense!
Oh hey, and on a random note, I've got this really awesome bridge for sale out in London, if you're looking to buy.
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Anyone who actually has gone through the required business classes would be well aware of how insane their imaginary losses are.
Unfortunately, insanity has a cushy home among lobbyists and congress.
Business is looking up (Score:3, Insightful)
I see a very bright outlook for Apogee Telecom's ISP business this year.
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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.
No need to RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
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That has to be one of the best summaries I've ever read on slashdot. I didn't even have to RTFA and I am up to speed on the story.
Interesting you should say that, because I was agonizing over it. I felt maybe I put in too much stuff. But I didn't know how to convey the import of their running away with their tail between their legs, without explaining the background. Glad you feel that I'd done it right.
Send congrats to Apogee here... (Score:2)
http://www.apogeenet.net/contact/ [apogeenet.net]
I did!
Illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Am I missing something? So what made this illegal? If they didn't do the act in Austin then they didn't do anything illegal. I am no fan of RIAA but to call something illegal when it is not is wrong. They complied with the judges wishes and stopped doing what they were doing in the Judge's jurisdiction.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
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Granted, but then why are they only avoiding Austin? Why have there been no repurcussions over the past four years. Does the federal court's rulings have no teeth if the bailiff can't physically reach out and grab the guys?
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
Granted, but then why are they only avoiding Austin?
Why they would violate the order, and flagrantly violate the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, on a daily basis, for 4 years... is a question I can't answer. You would have to ask them.
The reason they were avoiding Austin is no doubt that the judges who issued they order that's been violated would probably hold them in contempt and might even put them in jail.
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>> I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I feel sure you mean "you're welcome"
Yes, I was known as the grammar Nazi in a previous life. Well I wasn't actually, but DID go to a grammar school. In England. So there.
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Honestly, I wish a large "sit-out" could be organized among all file-sharers. I would love to see a majority of those who do download music without consent from the copyright owner put a hault to it for say a month or two. Then I would like to see the rationalization for why album sales are still down.
Again, pipe dream. No way to organize something
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Honestly, I wish a large "sit-out" could be organized among all file-sharers. I would love to see a majority of those who do download music without consent from the copyright owner put a hault to it for say a month or two. Then I would like to see the rationalization for why album sales are still down.
Taking into account they create the data from thin air, after such a sitout they could perfectly say: "Sales have improved 154% that month. Which finally proves that we were right".
Re: (Score:2)
I feel very sad today.
For trolling that badly you should feel terrible. Go back under your bridge.