RIAA sues another 532 people
p2pnet.net News:- In another phase of their on-going attempts to control how people upload, download and share music files online, the Big Five record labels have unleashed their RIAA enforcement unit on a further 532 unidentified men, women and children they accuse of file sharing and copyright infringement.
File sharing is not, of course, an infringement of anything. Millions of people around the world share files of all kinds, including music and movies, every day.
Only if the files are unauthorised does an infringement occur – and even then there’s a question as to whether or not copyright owners can continue to ‘own’ once their creations have been legitimately bought and paid for; and, whether or not people are legally entitled to ‘copy’ the ‘product’ they now own.
Nor is ‘infringement’ a criminal activity.
However, through their ongoing multi-million-dollar disinformation campaign, of which the court cases are a major component, the Big Five record labels have been able to foster the belief that anyone sharing an unauthorised digital file is a criminal.
The RIAA, their US ‘trade’ organization, has filed close to 1,600 suits since the beginning of the year and as is now trying to force Canadian ISPs to hand over the names of 29 people they claim are sharing unauthorised files.
In the US, having come unstuck with the instant ‘rubber stamp’ subpoenas‘ they were able to get from court clerks, the labels now have to follow due process with the "John Doe" litigation method.
"From September to mid-December, the RIAA issued more than 3,000 DMCA subpoenas to obtain names for copyright infringement suits," says an internetnews.coms story here.
"The DMCA subpoenas were filed prior to any charges of infringement and were not subject to a review by a judge, and required no notice to, or opportunity to be heard by, the alleged infringer. The status of those lawsuits has not been determined."
Mixed in with the latest US batch are 82 students the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) claims have been using college and university networks to share unauthorised music files.
The students are in Arizona, California, Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, DC, and Wisconsin.
The RIAA has used the lawsuits to insinuate the Napster II commercial online music service (which its owners, the major record labels, supply) into Penn State and the University of Rochester.
Use a company approved by us to sell our ‘product’ to students, the Big Five say, and the students will be safe from the RIAA’s attentions.
Senior staff from both educational institutions serve on a committee created by the RIAA and its movie studio owned counterpart, the MPAA (Motion Picture Associaton of America).
The other 443 suits were filed against customers of ISPs in California, Colorado, Missouri, Texas and Virginia, say reports.
March 24th, 2004 at 12:37 am
Not again! Somebody ought to go and shoot whoever is in charge of the RIAA’s campaign. Get lost RIAA, we neither want, nor need you. Pay back double the money you took from those poor families and fire ALL your staff. Die, die,die.