Another RIAA victim says No!
p2pnet.net News:- The RIAA’s bizarre sue ‘em all sales campaign is looking increasingly shaky with news of yet another victim fighting back, and this time with what are certainly among the most compelling arguments yet against the RIAA’s tired, over-used allegations.
From Pensacola, Florida, Shaneasia Morgan says she is not, and never has been, a criminal or a thief, as the RIAA, owned by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, routinely calls people who download music.
Yesterday p2pnet reported on Rhonda Crain, an elderly survivor of Hurricane Rita who’s demanding a trial by jury saying, among other things, the RIAA’s actions “amount to extortion”.
Now Morgan, the mother of two children, says she’s an honest person whose actions were no more than examples of acceptable fair use and didn’t in any way deprive the Big Four of any of their rights.
In fact, any downloading which may have occurred would have been solely been for “private curiosity and research” and not for commercial use, says her lawyer, George Little, in a court document Ray Beckerman links to on Recording Industry vs The People.
Morgan is technically naive, Little says, and doesn’t know what file sharing is about.
Any downloading that may have occurred was, ” done without awareness or reason to believe that her acts constituted an infringement of copyright,” he goes on.
“Her understanding is that website owners and operators are responsible for determining the intellectual property rights of the content they make available and that she is not required to become a technical expert nor an expert in intellectual property rights in order to browse the Internet without fear of financial disaster from copyright infringement liability,” he states.
“If a service browsed on the Internet has caused her computer to download software and thereby created a shared folder on her computer, it was without her informed knowledge or understanding.” The Kazaa p2p application, owned by Australia’s Sharman Networks, automatically posts a directory onto users’ hard drives when it’s installed.
Morgan is asking for an award of attorneys’ fees and in addition, says the statutory damages of $750 per song should be reduced to $200 under copyright Act Section 504(c)(2), says Beckerman.
She’s also raising what’s becoming a common response from victims: that in paying a reported $115 million ’settlement,’ Sharman Networks also paid in full for “injuries allegedly caused” by users.
Also See:
elderly survivor – Hurricane Rita survivor RIAA victim, November 29, 2006
Recording Industry vs The People – Shaneasia Morgan Fights Back in the Florida Panhandle, November 30, 2006
also paid – Kazaa deal paid for RIAA victim?, November 18, 2006
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November 30th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
although ignorance is no excuse when it comes to most of our laws. Copyright infringement, inclucing criminal copyright infringement has already had cases that fell through because the defendant had no knowledge of copyright infringement. Hence in copyright cases, ignorance is bliss but there has to be a bottom line of course. If you are profitting from selling another persons product I don’t think this should excuse you. To what extent ignorance extends would be the case to argue.
November 30th, 2006 at 9:03 pm
Although ignorance is no excuse, she is arguing that she didn’t understand that people were uploading from her, which I believe to be why the RIAA is suing her.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:19 am
Well, this is extortion. Extortion because they have sued an individual not knowing if it was that individual actually did something wrong. They are suing and getting settlements from many people who did nothing wrong. Because someone is the registered used of an IP address, it does not mean that that person registered did anything. All kinds of people drive our cars but it doesn’t mean the owner committed bank robbery because a car was used. Directv, the genius of all of these hypothetical suits, sued a great many American’s destroying the finances of families across the country with out any evidence any one did anything wrong. This is a new way to rob people by use of the Court system. The court system has become in grave doubt because of this. When someone uses the court to file a claim which is fraudulent, and the court assists in this, the court has then lost all of it’s credibility to practice equality and fairness. This because the individual will never have enough money to actually go to trial up against corporations. So let the divisions of power begin between the average citizen and the rich who so desperately wants the average person’s money. History has seen this before and it is likely to end in the same way.
December 2nd, 2006 at 10:49 am
so the tooth fairy can still give alibis? or did i misunderstand the defence here?
December 2nd, 2006 at 4:37 pm
“ignorance is no excuse when it comes to most of our laws”
The application of obscue laws against individuals is basically unfair and a violation of the “due process” ammendment (14th.) of the American constitution.
For the sake of argument, and assuming that the contitution did not protect the ignorant, there is then the problem of interpreting the law and why so many lawyers and judges who have misintepreted (causing great damage and costs along the way) the law are allowed to hold on to their job?
Why not apply “ignorance is no excuse” to lawyers who fail on appeals so that their customers do not have to pay for their lawyer costs and the lawyer’s “ignorance”. Or to judges that are overturned on appeal (always due to a form of ignorance – how a higher court will see things).
Then there is the question of why laws are obscure, either because they are not accesible or because they were written in a confussing manner.
It is absurd that we have the expectancy that everyone should know all laws. To illustrate… A very smart person judges goes to India as a tourist with his family. His teenage son feeds a fruit to one of the many monkeys in the streets, in front of a policemen. Is that legal? If it is not, should Indians destroy their tourism industry by arresting the tourist or his son? Will the tourist judge say that ignorance is no excude this time around so that his son is jailed and he (the judge) burns in hell?
After all, sadism has its limits.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 3rd, 2006 at 5:45 am
Hmmm, I – formerly blonde so type slowly – didn’t understand your comment.
As far as I can tell, the RIAA cases are ibased on ncidents that took place years ago. I personally didn’t get the memo that we may or may not have downloaded and inadvertantly shared some material that the RIAA can cry “foul” over years later. How the hell do they get off on suing for &750/song on a CD that typically consists of maybe 10 songs and sells for $18? Why are we required to be techical and legal experts as well as psychics?
If he IRS and certain legal cases have a Statute of Limitations, why doesn’t the RIAA/Crapolas have one?
What’s next? Suing me for everytime I think of or hum a song?