Robert Santangelo bites back
p2pnet.net News:- “The record industry has suffered enormously due to piracy. That includes thousands of layoffs. We must protect our rights. Nothing in a filing full of recycled charges that have gone nowhere in the past changes that fact.”
That’s what the Big 4 Organized Music cartel’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) had to say following what The Journal News calls Bobby Santangelo’s, “blistering response to the companies’ lawsuit” against him.
Originally reported by p2pnet yesterday, his detailed answer to Big 4 allegations has now been picked up around the world, to the intense embarrassment of Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), the multi-billion-dollar record labels who are trying to claim they’re being “devastated” by file sharers, a claim flatly put down by major mainstream musicians including Canada’s Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Bare Naked Ladies and BTO’s Randy Bachman.
And contrary to the RIAA’s “recycled charges” assertion, recycling worn-out claims being something it does well and often, the submission raises a number of entirely fresh points, for example the staggering blunder made by Edgar Bronfman, the Canadian who heads cartel member Warner Music, just before Christmas last year.
During an interview, “We asked Edgar Bronfman (right), the head of the world’s fourth largest music company, at the Reuters Summit whether any of his seven kids stole music,” said Reuters, and, “I`m fairly certain that they have, and I`m fairly certain that they’ve suffered the consequences,” Bronfman stated, going on:
“I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.”
What did he do to them? – asked Reuters. “I think I`ll keep that within the family.”
Why, ask Santangelo’s lawyers, Sharon Thompson and Jordan Glass, wasn’t the same remedy, a stern lecture about right and wrong and the “bright line around moral responsibility,” offered to Bobby, who was only 12 when the attack started?
Instead, he and his sister, Michelle, who’s been ordered to pay $30,750 in a default judgment, are being publicly humiliated.
Santangelo also says Warner, et al, “promoted downloading free music, and then … once having already enticed and encouraged children and teenagers to download music for free, turned on their audience and sued them for the same behavior they had previously encouraged”.
Meanwhile, Bobby is the son of Patti Santangelo, 42, who was sued by the Big 4, but steadfastly refused to give in to extortionate ‘pay up or else’ demands. Instead, she, “took her case public and became a heroine to supporters of Internet freedom,” says The Journal News.
The RIAA backed out in December, turning on Bobby and Michelle, now 20.
The supporters mentioned in The Journal News and other stories on- and offline were, and still are, p2pnet readers who by 11:50 PST had donated $14,643.87.
Yesterday, “We finally got to say the things in a legal document that we’ve been trying to say all along,” Patti told p2pnet. “I hope this gets the message across on behalf of everyone who has been supportive of what we’ve been trying to do. In particular, I hope the RIAA gets the message that we are not going away: we are in this for the duration.”
And, “I want to thank everyone for sticking by me and my family. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without them,” said Bobby, adding, “now it’s my turn to fight and, with my mom’s help to stick up for teenagers everywhere, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Please click the button below if you’d like to donate a dollar or two to help the Santangelos continue their battle against Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG. And go here to see the latest contribution amounts, all of which are going towards costs, not lawyer fees.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
Also See:
The Journal News – Soccer mom’s son fires back against record companies, January 31, 2007
detailed answer – Bobby Santangelo to the RIAA, January 30, 2007
flatly put down – Canada music download record, January 31, 2007
staggering blunder – WMG boss’ kids ‘stole music’, December 4, 2007
backed out – RIAA drops Santangelo p2p case, December 19, 2006
Want to subscribe to p2pnet by email with Feedburner? Just click here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use our own p2pnet newsfeeds for your site
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.
February 1st, 2007 at 5:17 pm
When you talk about “stealing”, keep in mind that there are times when stealing is quite legal.
You can steal an idea.
You can steal a peek.
You can steal the show.
None of these kinds of stealing leave anybody out money.
The type of stealing that leaves people short is when the stealing results in the initial owner no longer having that item.
Such as stealing a bicycle.
So,
stealing in one sense of the word does not mean stealing in every other sense.
“Stealing is not always stealing”
February 1st, 2007 at 6:12 pm
That’s why the RIAA lawyers aren’t allowed to call it ‘stealing’ or ‘theft’ in court.
It isn’t.
February 1st, 2007 at 8:39 pm
‘Stealing’ and ‘theft’ are left to the media campaign (and to sway politicians), as they invoke a response that is more favorable to big media.
You know just as they do not refering to themselves as the media cartel, or big media. They’d prefere we thought of them as a warm loving bunch of knuckleheads, as opposed to the heartless money grubbin corporations they are. That they think they should control the means of distribution so they can make money for nothing, is beside the point.
February 3rd, 2007 at 3:27 pm
you hear more often now the term “copyright theft”.
this is funny too; does anyone take away their right to make a copy?
I thought the market just refuses to take advantage of those guys rights at the terms they try to dictate (with DRM CRAP and unreasonable prised for example), and not that the market disallowes them to make those copies!
__
Alter_Fritz
February 8th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Good points. They may, however be meaningless in a court system that plainly overlooks and even justifies real stealing.
Two music publisher stole our songs, to the point of even copyright registering them as if they were the owners. We sued them and what did the judge decide? He made hundreds of errors in his “opinion” facts to justify the thefts. Essentially he decided that theft was not copyright infringement, therefore there were no damages to be paid to the rightful owners.
And the media (including the Internet) doesn’t want to investigate or even mention the case.
The facts are here:
http://rafa_venegas.web.prdigital.com/peer-acemla.htm