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p2pnet news | RIAA News:- The email below arrived this morning. Here is it, untouched >>>
You may republish far and wide include sending it to the RIAA…
Open Letter to RIAA
To Whom It May Concern in the Recording Industry Association of America
I have been an avid music collector for most of my life and have purchased several hundreds, thousands, and millions of CDs. This does not even count the millions and millions of vinyl albums and cassette tapes that I got before that. So as you easily can see, I have spent billions of dollars in my lifetime buying your music. I have contributed great financial value to you, and the member organizations you represent. Up until today I have continued to purchase millions of new CDs and legal downloads per year; however, that day has ended and I am now starting to boycott the purchase of any and all music from the record labels you represent.
As a moral obligation I cannot continue to support a dysfunctional corporate music industry that is abusing their power and the legal system to sue customers in a grossly unjust and unfair manner. I will not spend one more penny from myself or my family to purchase music from any of your member organizations until you stop suing your customers and start providing us with reasonable ways to purchase the music we want, when we want it, and without restrictions on how we can play it.
In the recent Federal trial where you sued a struggling single mother, Jammie Thomas, for sharing songs on a P2P network, you may have won the legal battle, but you lost the moral ground and public relations war. Please take a second and step back to look at what you have done. Don’t you just feel great making a single mother pay $220,000 for sharing only $24.17 worth of music? Do you really feel proud of yourself? No, you should not. Shame on you, what you have done is clearly not right.
You have now caused millions of music customers to no longer feel much sympathy for your cause, your organization, and the record labels you represent. Mrs. Thomas is clearly not a pirate who is copying your music by the thousands of units and selling it for profit on the street corner. It is clear she was just simply an enthusiastic music lover who wanted to share her love of music with others. When a penalty becomes this unjust relative to what many view as such a minor crime, most reasonable people view it as being grossly unfair. Two wrongs do not equal a right.
Instead of looking down upon Mrs. Thomas and condemning her for sharing music, people like myself now feel sympathy for her because the $220,000 penalty is clearly unfair and unjust under the circumstances. It is quite clear that you and your organization have abused your power. Someone has to take a stand and demand you stop your unproductive campaign to keep suing your customers. Today I take that stand. By suing a former customer who you have now financially destroyed, it is likely that she will never spend another penny to buy music from you ever again. Well today myself and thousand and thousands more like me have decided to join her and boycott spending any more money on your music also.
We look forward to seeing value of your stocks and stockholders continue to erode until you stop your unproductive and unjust campaign and start treating your customers with respect again.
Sincerely,
Your Customers
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October 6th, 2007 at 10:50 am
I live in Canada where file sharing is not as complicated as in the US. This judgment was totally unfair. There is no way in my opinion that making available constitutes a 222,000 dollar loss for anyone in the music industry. I know many file share with the intent only to steal as much as they can. File sharing should be used for not getting screwed by companies. I have purchased music, games,movies where they have not been fully used and not used more than once. I recently purchased MOH-Airborne and spent 3 days trying to get it to play on line due to DRM and not being able to create a user name. This is wrong! Charging people who try to buy a product and screw them because they paid for it. File sharing enables people to get entertainment that is not corrupted. If I pay for something I should have an easier time using it than if I downloaded it but this is not the case. Companies are screwing themselves by pushing customers to downloading because of the restrictions they place on paying customers. Purchasing movies is horrible, If I buy a movie why do I have to endure advertisements and the skip button is locked out by the DVD. Companies should be sued for charging customers for grief and unnecessary hardship when trying to use any entertainment product.
As for music, bands are trying to help people without getting screwed themselves. Radiohead has said you can pay what you want for their newest album. I am not a fan of this band but I did pre order the download at 12.50 US. They are trying to prove to the world that they can still make money without record companies. If you are a FAN and you cannot pay even a dollar for this, and file share it then I would have to say record companies win.
Seriously everyone no matter where you live should stop buying music if a record company is involved. If not we will never get anything to change.
The wolves are out there, share safe and protect yourself.
October 6th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Closed my BMG and Time Life music clubs yesterday and I really feel good about it. I’ve been a member since the mid 80’s and seen a drastic change in music style, it’s become either too vulgar or targeted towards younger teens. I’m not surprised music sales have dropped.
Another reason is that I feel I was ripped off by the music industry. When Sony introduced the Mega Storage CD changer with CD Text, I was excited, purchased the player but never seen any commercial CD’s with text, would have been nice to see the song titles displayed. Turns out, according to Sony, that you have to burn your own CD’s with text.
Again, in 2002, I purchased the Memorex Mini Compact Disc MP3 player. I thought it was cool to see the artist and song title displayed, but you still had to burn your own CD’s. Listening to MP3’s was like listening to FM radio quality music but the fact was you were able to put more songs on a single disc. At the time, Memorex, along with many other MP3 player manufacturers, encouraged sharing this low quality music with your friends over the internet. It says so, right in the user’s manual.
And now the music industry is on a witch hunt sueing everybody, and worst of all, we hear Sony/BMG’s Jennifer Pariser telling us it’s illegal to make a copy of our own purchased CD’s, even if it’s for our MP3 players. What would be the purpose of buying CD’s when down the road, the CD players will become obsolete and the threat of being sued for transferring your purchased CD music to another format exists. The Jammie Thomas case opened my eyes to show how bad the RIAA really is and my view of Sony has been tarnished. I read somewhere others are closing their music clubs as well. Maybe a nicer music industry will emerge and the RIAA and it’s majors will simply “go out of business”.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
I too have been this route of early adopter for some new product or idea only to be stung with it not being supported. The cd+G where you could play your cd, have images as well as music in the same disc play through your stereo and tv was one I hooked into. An idea that never became a reality. Instead I got stung for a special player with no support and it was dropped instead. So no more discs for the player.
Now I tend not to buy just because it is new. Just like being stung too many times for new albums that had only one or two songs of any note on them and the rest filled with filler. That’s just too expensive to me for the total price of the album. Forgotten are the days when you bought an album and found not one or two songs but the whole work was good. To me, The Beatles were among the best for doing that. More than once I bought an album on faith and was pleasently pleased to find it jam packed with songs that I actually loved.
That isn’t industry practice though. Industry practice is to milk it for all it is worth. The statutory damages they are applying to file sharers were made for commercial pirates making money off their works. No p2per makes any money whatever and therefore isn’t commercial pirating. It’s an outrage to charge this sort of “fine” for sharing music.
When The RIAA started their sue’em all, I ceased to by any music. If I buy something at all it will be used before I get it. But I refuse to support the music industry and their acts. It is in protest of those acts that I went on boycott and will remain on boycott the rest of my life if necessary. There are enough forms of entertainment that it doesn’t pinch my style at all to drop them; and I have. At one time I had hundreds of albums, all purchased for listening too. But I don’t much care anymore to support those that will treat their customers this way and attempt to make using the “product” so difficult.
I don’t see any advantage at all to pay for music anymore. Between DRM, the rental mentality now supported by the music industry, and the outrageous viewpoint that supposedly you can’t back up your purchased music is ridiculous. I’m waiting for the day they can figure out how to get you to pay for remembing a song at this rate.
To say the least, it has been a total turn-off to see the actions The RIAA and the music mega-corps have taken. I hope they really enjoy their lack of profits from me and the others that no longer will buy their products. In the end, it’s not just a money pit as it was described in the trial but also it’s a money looser to the stockholders. If the stockholders ever figure out what that is doing to them, the music labels will have far less stockholders as people with investment money go elsewhere to invest.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Sony sold me a Video Recorder so that I could copy TV and Movies.
Sony sold me the tape to use to copy TV and movies onto.
Sony sold me a Cassette Recorder and told me I could use it to record Music from the Radio.
Sony sold me a Radio with built in Cassette Recorder to make copying Music easier.
Sony sold me the Cassettes and told me they could be used to record music off the Radio or from my Record Player.
Sony sold me a CD-DVD Burner and told me it could be used in my computer to make copy’s of Music and Movies.
Sony sold me the disks to copy the Music and Movies to.
Sony sold me an MP3 player and told me it was to put music onto so I could listen whenever I wanted.
Sony sold me a Playstation3 and told me I could put Music and Video onto the Hard drive, they even built into it the ability to rip Music from CD’s onto the Hard drive.
So…now I’ve done as Sony suggested, they accuse me of thievery!!!!
I wasnt a thief all those years when they were taking my money!!!
So when is the hearing date for Sony’s court appearance….. for aiding and abetting my crimes??
October 6th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Ridiculous the industry is trying to make an example out of people. They’re muscling individuals who do not have money into settling out of court for a few thousand dollars. If this is left unchecked the industry can go after a huge number of potential offenders. The music need to advertise and send a message to teach people of the potential harm they are doing to artist and themselves. Get clean is the message. Do you believe the music industry should go after the distributors or the users of file sharing? —–> http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=648
October 6th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Bluetacky: You have a Point!
If these corporations didn’t want you to copy then why sell the accessories that we use to copy.
I got my MEGA-100 count blank DVD package, why did they sell me all these Blanks?
what did they think I was going to use them for “Drink Coasters”
And Im suprised people are “JUST NOW” starting to boycott them, I guess better late than never.
Ive been boycotting them since 2002.
not that I have a Hate for them, No it’s all about the dollars.
why should I fork over my dollars to them, when the pirates offer up the “Booty” for free
Free Booty!!! Woo-Hoo
and this whole sue em all shit is lame.
first you have to have and keep a job to be sued.
if I got sued I would move around and change jobs so many times they would tire of it.
Hey! Kinda like I did with my apartment leases and cell phone contracts
Hey ALLTELL you still have not got your money ~ HEY ALLTELL Baby I got your money~
hahahahahaha
Screw all these capitalist bastards!
it’s all about the dollar dollar and all about them going into my pocket not there’s.
THIS IS LIKE A WAR!
And it’s FUN!
Hell use the banks money every month, then when the bill comes “PAY IT IN FULL”
Don’t let nobody make interest off of you.
DOn’t let nobody make money off of you, unless your a whore that wants to be pimped out.
and last but not least, NO Allegiance to any nation.
world without borders, its good enough for the corporations so its good enough for me.
I get sued Im outta here baby, canada looks nice even if I have to live on the street, i do what I have to do.
October 6th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
The noose is tightening around the RIAA’s neck.
October 6th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
And……..
Sony sold me a Dual Cassette Deck with “high-speed dubbing”
And let’s not overlook the Sony MHC-LX10000 - Mini system that:
allows MP3 playback with an MP3 booster that maximizes the sound quality of compressed MP3 files and conveniently Plays Back CD-R/RW
October 6th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Mrs. Thomas + others like her, was condemned for advertising the RIAA’s Tunes.
She also gave publicity, in a very real way.
Does this ever occur to you RIAA?
Or are you just plain greedy?
October 7th, 2007 at 12:50 am
Jammie Thomas agreed to let me help her set up this website to let her accept paypal donations: freejammie.com
Now you can send donations directly to Jammie Thomas, sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for alleged music pirating and illegal sharing of songs. She was fined $220,000. She is a 30-year-old single mom from Brainerd, MN with an annual income of $36,000.
The internet got her into this, the internet can get her out!
October 7th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Would it be better to send her a 150MW infrared laser pointer? This is an instrument that can be used to permanently blind a record company executives, their lawyers or even the judge from a distance without them knowing who did it. The retina damaging light is invisible and therefore is hard to trace back to the user. Parts to build one can be had for less than $50. A prebuilt one with a power supply can be had for less than $200. Even the laser diode out of an obsolete (and newer) DVD BURNER is strong enough to burn retinas. The best part is that a new DVD. BURNER can be bough very cheaply, for cash, and in person. Yes, this would be a very nasty thing to do, but it would give RIAA and other victims of big business and big government a more level playing field.
But seriously folk, I will be glad to help Jammie feed her kids. If I lived by myself, I would even give her and her boys a place to live. However, I WILL NOT GIVE HER ONE SINGLE CENT IF I KNOW THAT THAT MONEY WAS GOING TO GO TO THE RIAA OR RECORD COMPANIES. I bought my last music recording in 2005. The RIAA already owes me over $200,000,000 in fines for violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. This amount is from a schedule of fines that was posted in the do it yourself lawsuit proposed by a reader 2 years ago.
October 7th, 2007 at 11:11 am
And anyone who has a web site should think about linking to Jon’s story here Hit Big Music Where It Hurts http://www.p2pnet.net/story/13570
I’m going to email him and ask him to break the list up. Someone said they were going to do that but I haven’t seen it yet.
October 7th, 2007 at 11:12 am
@ Elizabeth J.
I won’t help anybody with money so that they can pay this RIAA extortion. I would gladly encourage her to leave the country and start over away from US’s jurisdiction, until this stupidity gets overturned, but money so that she can give money to the RIAA, hell NO! This country is really fucked up, corporations lobby law makers, and screw the consumers. I thank for the opportunity to make a better living, but as soon as I have enough saved, I’m fuckin’ out of here; since I don’t worship money, I don’t fit here anyway.
October 7th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
These cases and the actions of RIAA and these Judges without a clue or who must be geting perks from RIAA amaze me. People seem to forget or not understand that in fact, there are other Copyright holders of these songs. The absolute 1st Copyright holder to the actuall song is.. the song writer. The record company does indeed hold copyright to the “Recording” but NOT the song. What amazes me is that no one other than the “Music Maffia” seems to ever see money from these actions.
I also cant recall the last time I heard of an Arrest or legal action against those real Pirates that make copies of CDs and DVDs that are sold on the street corner and other places. Its much easier to “Prove” those cases since you can have a physical item of proof and regardless of what these Corrupt Judges seem to think, an IP address is far from any such proof.
Not only do we need to Boycott the Record Companies related to RIAA we need to Boycott these Corrupt Judges and the actions they take. Being in the industry I have many times told management at record companies to “Fuck Off” and in non related issues actually told 2 Judges to “Fuck Off” (without being arrested) and will continue to do so when I feel my rights have been violated.
I agree with the above posters statement “This country is really fucked up” but I think untill we all start telling people to “Fuck Off” regardless who they are and realy stand up and FIGHT against these Greedy Record Companies and corrupt judges.
October 7th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
I will not buy cds from any store. I purchase nonlabel band cds right from the band themselves. Being in Canada I will download the songs I want from the labels FOR FREE!!!! If you want my 2cents or whatever you can get it from the tariffs on cds, dvds, and other blank media or mp3 players.
One day the artists will revolt against the labels. Now Adays you dont need a big name label behind you.
October 7th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
too add to my above post. I do infact purchase cds from cdbaby. If you dont like the cd you can return it. That site also helps hundreds and hundreds of indie bands sell there cds to the world. The people that run that place are great and I dont mind supporting them and the artists they help out.
October 8th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
From the Open Letter:
“When a penalty becomes this unjust relative to what many view as such a minor crime…”
She was sued for copyright infringement in civil court, not criminal court. No “crime” was committed.
March 17th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
riaa are all jerks. face it. don’t just complain, though; do something: download as much FREE music as you can. let those losers (riaa) know they’re not wanted. kick em out to fry and die.