p2pnet - rss feed: RIAA blows Wilke case
p2pnet.net News:- The Big Four Organized Music cartel’s attempt to railroad Paul Wilke, a 52-year-old Illinois man it claims was illicitly distributing copyrighted music online, has now fallen completely flat on its face, reports Recording Industry vs The People.
The cartel, comprising EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), with Warner Music as the only US record label, has been using its so-called Recording Industry Association of America to pillory Wilke.
Had they succeeded, he would have joined the almost 20,000 innocent men, women and even young children who are currently being victimized under the bizarre music industry sue ‘em all marketing scheme.
“With the plaintiffs bringing hundreds upon hundreds of cases through the courts each month, they’re bound to mistakenly bring cases against innocent individuals with their drift net litigation tactics,” his lawyer, Daliah Saper, told p2pnet in August.
Holme Roberts & Owen, the ‘trade’ organization’s lawyers, also spelled Wilke’s name incorrectly. But Wilke’s young law team, Saper Law Offices based in Chicago, got everything right and now the RIAA is being forced to eat humble pie. Once again.
When the RIAA laid the allegations, Willkes told the organization’s lawyers he had no idea what they were talking about.
None of the songs named were on his computer ‘illegally,’ in any way ‘illegal’, he said, repeatedly insisting they’d been ripped from CDs he’d bought and paid for.
Wilke even hired a systems expert to help him.
Meanwhile, the Big Four enforcer could easily have avoided ending up with egg on its face had it performed its due dilgence properly, says Saper.
“Everything in the motion for summary judgment was presented to them before we filed it, and I was very clear to the RIAA attorneys that this case was an exception,” she says. “If they’d needed further information, Paul Wilke would have gladly cooperated.
“But they didn’t ask.”
Also See:
railroad Paul Wilke - New RIAA p2p blunder, October 3, 2006
Recording Industry vs The People - RIAA Drops Wilke Case in Chicago, October 13, 2006
young law team - The RIAA vs The ‘A’ Team, September 12, 2006
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October 15th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
“Everything in the motion for summary judgment was presented to them before we filed it, and I was very clear to the RIAA attorneys that this case was an exception,”
This case is not the exception, it’s the rule.
The problem for most is not enough cash to fight back,
so they settle, even though they are not guilty of
anything.
I believe you can walk into ANY home into america, and
find mp3’s on the computer that are perfectly legal, and yet
the computer owner would find it difficult to prove. So expensive
to prove, in fact, that they would have to settle.
The law must be fixed.
October 15th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Certainly you can find them on any computer running windows XP. I mean they come with the program in the form of wma’s to demonstrate the media player. Windows also comes with a “shared folder” whether you are sharing or not.
I believe that sharing music is a cultural thing and that it has been going on since the dawn of time. Certainly far longer than the cartels have been in existence. Putting the cartels into the grave will no more end music than it did before they came on the scene to take up the role of business vampire. It is a fallacy that has been pushed to further their own agenda.
So is the push of how large a percentage of music they “own”. Without them, national anthems would belong to the country that claims them as their anthem. The only difference here is that the cartels have a legal method to steal while denying the public the same.
The cartels have hit the digital era with a well designed effort to sew up fair use rights when the political atmosphere was conducive to their plot. Where it was too much of a problem to end it through political law changing they have used technological methods as an end run around the issue. The right of copyright also means the demise of the privilege as it ceeds into public domain. Public domain is a no-money maker for the cartels. While they haven’t ended it yet legally they have certainly extended the timeline to milk it and have put the eternal guard dog on the product so that it never ever reaches public domain in its original fashion and has been arranged to be illegal to change its form when it does reach public domain.
What’s wrong with this picture?
October 16th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
Interesting. It seems they were going after him as a DOWNloader; if they thought he was committing the appalling crime of offering music to others - which is what I thought the RIAA were about - it would be irrelevant how the MP3s got onto his computer.