p2pnet news | RIAA News:- The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) says it’ll file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Jammie Thomas, hung out to dry by the cartel’s RIAA to the tune of almost $250,000.

Before the results of Minnesota mum Jammie Thomas’ P2P file sharing trial came down, p2pnet predicted a win, if there was one, was more likely to be a disaster than a triumph for the members of the Big 4 organised music cartel who’d brought the case against her.

There have been plenty of other victims before her —- Brianna LaHara, the 12-year-old New York girl and one of the RIAA’s first, but certainly not the last, child victims, Tanya Andersen and her daughter, Kylee, aged 10, Patti Santangelo and two of her five kids, Michelle and Bobby, Candy and Britanny Chan, Rae-Jay Schwartz, suffering from muscular sclerosis, the awful disease of the central nervous system that’s exacerbated by pressure, Larry Scantlebury, a combat helicopter pilot who flew for America in Vietnam and who died of a brain aneurysm before the RIAA could finish with him, Kimberly Arellanes, the wife of Frank Arellanes, a serving American soldier.

And so on and so on.

What distinguishes Jammie Thomas from other victims is: her case was the first to reach a civil court jury, which found her guilty of copyright infringements.

But the case also stands out because of the amount of attention it’s getting on- and offline and, given it stands a better than even chance of reaching America’s senior appeals court, is likely to continue generating.

‘Greedily slurping up profit’

“Here’s an industry so bloated with executives and middlemen, all of them greedily slurping up profit like bluepoint oysters, that the people who actually write the songs and play the music - the ‘talent’ - are getting royally screwed in the royalty department. It’s been like that for years. The Dylans and the Stones of the world might be able to rise above it and name their price, but for the rank and file it’s “Dance to our tune, or go back and rot in that crummy little club.”

That’s Tony Long in Wired, the subject being Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s relentless vendetta against their own customers, Minnesota mum Jammie Thomas being the case in point.

Said The Huffington Post:

It is widely expected that Madonna will bypass traditional record labels and sign a $120 million deal with Beverly Hills based Live Nation, to coordinate her recorded music, merchandising, and (the real cash cow) her live concerts. This comes in the wake of Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails and other artists abandoning record labels and selling their music themselves, primarily online.

Meanwhile, the labels fritter away their time and energy filing 26,000 lawsuits against their customers, and have financially ruined Jammie Thomas, an American-Indian single mother of two who the labels (the RIAA) sued and won a judgment of $220,000 for copyright infringement, which is effectively 10 times her annual after-tax salary. The irony is Ms. Thomas has a very large, paid-for CD library, and was still targeted and ruined by a cabal who refuse to adapt to changes in their industry.

“The major labels - companies like Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Bertelsmann’s Sony BMG, Vivendi’s Universal, and Warner Music Group - are apparently pouring millions into pursuing music fans. Judging from comments at the trial, they have nary a clue how much they’re losing from illegal downloading, among other details that point to utter cluelessness. Those who own these companies’ shares should think long and hard about this crusade - spending millions to gain a couple of hundred thousand here and there (or settlements in the couple of thousand-dollar range) doesn’t sound like the smartest use of cash, does it?” Alyce Lomax in The Motley Fool.

Jack Kapica in the Globe and Mail —– “… working for the RIAA and riding Big Music’s gravy train must be nice for the lawyers charged with making people like Jammie Thomas miserable, but at some point surely they have an obligation to recommend their bosses back off. Or is this expecting too much of the legal profession? Or will the record companies’ investors get wise and start applying pressure to the most vulnerable part of the corporate empire: Shareholder value?”

The not-so-bright line

Meanwhile, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s message to anyone they can identify who’s shared their music online without permission is:

You’re in for a lot of trouble …

… unless, of course, you happen to be one of Big 4 cartel executive Edgar Bronfman jr’s kids.

Here’s a clip from a p2pnet post on the subject:

During an interview, “We asked Edgar Bronfman, 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 the “bright line” involve?

Whatever that was, it certainly had nothing to do with moral responsibility and, “I think I’ll keep that within the family,” evaded Bronfman, the Canadian who heads cartel member Warner Music.

The clip at the top right is from the Reuters story and it shows Bronfman (left) confessing all to Adam Pasick.

Was there outrage and a huge mainstream media outcry for justice?

Was there hell.

The story barely merited a line then and as far as I know, p2pnet is the only publication which has mentioned it since.

Don’t trouble to stay tuned.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 3:20 pm and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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