RIAA v The People – four years on
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- “As college students across the country head back to class this fall, they need to worry about more than keeping up on their schoolwork,” says the EFF.
Like what?
Like the fact Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) continues to target college campuses for hundreds of new lawsuits everymonth.
“Meanwhile, under pressure from the recording industry, universities are instituting draconian punishments for students suspected of sharing music files. At the same time, the RIAA continues to sue file sharers off campus,” says the EFF.
But, “Despite the RIAA’s legal campaign, file-sharing is more popular than ever,” states EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann.
“History will treat this as a shameful chapter in the history of the music industry, when record companies singled out random music fans for disproportionate penalties. Artists must be compensated, but these lawsuits aren’t putting money in any creator’s pocket.”
The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has just released RIAA v The People: Four Years Later” tracing the vicious sue ‘em all campaign from its beginnings in 2003 against a handful of students at Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic, and Michigan Tech, “to the current spate of ‘pre-litigation settlement’ letters being sent to universities nationwide”.
“The crackdown on Internet file-sharing has already driven music fans to technologies that are harder to monitor – for example, burning and exchanging CDs among friends and sharing on members-only ‘darknets’,” says the EFF, adding:
“Universities should insist on a blanket license for their students, collecting a reasonable regular payment – for example, $5 a month – in exchange for the right to keep sharing music with their classmates.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
EFF – Back to School for Reading, Writing, and RIAA Lawsuits?, August 29, 2007
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August 29th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
“Universities should insist on a blanket license for their students, collecting a reasonable regular payment – for example, $5 a month – in exchange for the right to keep sharing music with their classmates.”
Subsidies are not the answer and never will be. The music industry needs to change and become competitive or die. Why should students be forced to support anti-competitive, price fixing monopolistic conglomerates?
If you intend to blanket license music, then what about other media? ebooks, videos, picture art, et cetera. Why should only the music industry be compensated for infringements of their copyrights? After all anything can be copyrighted, ergo, payments need to be made to everyone or no one. Otherwise it is prejudice.
I’m quite disappointed the EFF issued this remark.
August 29th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Right. The EFF has gone from being a genuine public-interest organization which would take anything on if it thought the cause was just to an dependent organism which only fights battles it is 99.9 percent sure of winning.
August 29th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
” “Universities should insist on a blanket license for their students, collecting a reasonable regular payment – for example, $5 a month – in exchange for the right to keep sharing music with their classmates.”
And how precisely would an artist not affiliated with the RIAA get compensated ?
A LOT of unaffiliated music ( and other files ) get shared as well. There are many who DON’T
share RIAA material at all .. why should THEY pay ?
That’s why a blanket license is no help, and not necessarily the answer.
” Right. The EFF has gone from being a genuine public-interest organization which would take anything on if it thought the cause was just to an dependent organism which only fights battles it is 99.9 percent sure of winning. ”
blaaah blaaah troll troll gurgle gurgle woof.