p2pnet - rss feed: The RIAA, you and I
p2pnet.net News:- 2006 has been a year of shame and ignomy for the members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel. The writing is on the wall, bright and clear. Their time as the vampires of both the on- and offline worlds of music is almost done.
Their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) accused DeMark Liggins, representing himself, of copyright ‘violation,” trying to have him found ‘guilty’ of the non-existent crime of file sharing.
But it failed. As Recording Industry vs The People explains, the court ruled, “In his [Liggins’] responses to the requests for admissions, Plaintiff did not admit that he copied or distributed any of Plaintiffs’ recordings. Plaintiffs have not demonstrated the absence of a genuine issue of material fact, and their motion is therefore due to be denied.”
This doesn’t mean the case is over. But Liggins can demand a jury trial and to date, the RIAA hasn’t risked letting things go that far. It prefers to keep things running up to, but not including, trial. When the time approaches for RIAA lawyers to actually stand in front of 12 Americans, ordinary people just like their victims, they cut and run in the manner of all bullies.
Blustered and blundered
Almost exactly a year ago last Christmas, Patti Santangelo, the single mother of five children, decided she wouldn’t be beaten down by the multi-billion-dollar Big 4’s RIAA. When it tried to extort $7,500 in ’settlement’ money to leave her alone after falsely accusing her of being an illegal distributor of copyrighted music, she refused to pay.
Instead, she elected to force it and its team of expensive lawyers into a New York court room where they’d be compelled to try to prove their case in front of a jury of her peers —— and their customers.
RIAA is short for Recording Industry Association of America, but it couldn’t be less American. To all intents and purposes, it’s owned and operated by EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), with Warner Music as the only US component. And even that’s run by a Canadian.
Warner, et al, blustered and blundered but finally had to abandon their specious claim against Patti, although not before they’d put her and her family through a long year of grief and misery. And having lost their bid to blackmail her into handing over $7,500, they’re now suing Michelle and Bobby, two of her children.
However, neither Patti nor Michelle or Bobby are giving up and new chapters in their story, starting with an online petition which’ll be launched just after Christmas, will open in the New Year.
The Big 4 believe they can drop out when cases reach the point where they have to be proven. The media is exposure already gained is enough, their strategy says, and indeed, it used to be like that. The carefully crafted flim-flam press releases implied thousands of Americans had been found ‘guilty’ copyright infringement when in fact, not one person has yet gone to trial.
But the bizarre sue ‘em all marketing scheme dreamed up by the major record labels, and now aso employed by companies in other corporate sectors, is causing a massive paradigm shift.
We hold the whip hand
The Big 4 have, individually and together, splashed hundreds of of millions of dollars which, not at all incidentally, would have been better spent wooing instead of suing their customers, to re-define the people upon whom they depend, characterizing them through the mainstream media as unprincipled thieves out to rob the innocent and hard-working labels and their contracted artists.
That isn’t true. Their customers aren’t thieves. They are, all of them, intelligent men, women and children who expect to be treated fairly, not like brainless idiots who have to be sued to into behaving reasonably.
The labels are coming face-to-face with a double-headed horror they’ve never had to confront before: competition and an informed customer base. Because for the first time in history, thanks to the internet, men, women and children everywhere can, and do, communicate person-to-person, p2p, through blogs, web sites, irc, charts, IM, texting and so on, 24/7, 12/12.
They’re all ‘customers’ with free will instead of ‘consumers’ with none and they’re asking themselves (and each other) if they really want cartel ‘product’.
And they’re finding that with the wealth of free and reasonably priced music made available through the p2p networks and growing numbers of indpendent artist and download sites, the answer is a resounding No!
Marshal McLuhan’s global village is becoming a global universe. The Powers that Used to Be are doing everything they can to convince us we depend on them, but that’s nonsense. It’s the other way around.
We hold the whip hand, and we’ve only just begin to use it.
They’d better stay tuned because 2007 could be a watershed year not for them, but for us.
Cheers! And all the best for the New Year …
Jon Newton - p2pnet
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
Recording Industry vs The People - Pro Se Litigant Defeats RIAA’s Summary Judgment Motion, December 23, 2006
specious claim - RIAA drops Santangelo p2p case, March 4, 2006
suing Michelle and Bobby - Michelle Santangelo: I’m no thief, December 8, 2006
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