Carolina grandmother to the RIAA
p2pnet.net News:- Will a Carolina grandmother be the first person to stand up against the corporate entertainment industry in its attacks against innocent file sharers?
Thousands of men, women and children have been accused of causing desperate hardship to the multi-billion dollar industry by sharing music online.
However, no one has yet been found guilty of any wrong-doing because none of its victims can afford to go up against it and risk enormous financial penalties if they lose. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), owned by the Big Five record labels, in effect makes them an offer they can’t refuse and its victims settle out of court.
In other words, they pay to make the RIAA go away.
No one knows exactly how much money the Big Five labels have collected in this way, and no one knows what they do with the money.
One of the most recent victims is, however, a Fayetteville grandmother whom the RIAA claims downloaded and shared copyrighted songs.
“About a month ago, Barbara Johnson tried to log onto AOL and found she was cut off,” says a News 14 Carolina story here, going on:
“She called the company. ‘They told me they did it because of the downloading and sharing the files with everyone else,’ Johnson said. Then she received a letter from AOL. It said the Recording Industry Association of America plans to subpoena her account.”
News 14 has Johnson saying her grandson downloaded the songs, but, “My grandma told me to stop so I stopped. I stopped downloading but I didn’t delete my programs.”
The report goes on that the RIAA phoned Johnson and said 520 songs had been downloaded and, “Those 520 songs will cost you $750 and I said, ‘What?’ That’s $750 for each song’.”
However, the RIAA told her it would settle for $3,500, she’s quoted as saying.
According to News 14, the grandmother’s reply was – “You know what? You won’t get it because I don’t have it.”
It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
May 6th, 2004 at 6:30 pm
I can’t speak for the rest of you out there but I would send this nice old granny $10 or $20 for her legal defense fund. If all of us out here sent a few dollars we could bankroll counterattack on those RIAA bastards. On that same note, what ever happened to the woman in New Jersey who was planning on bringing a suit charging that the RIAA uses methods of collection and extortion forbidden by the RICO act?
May 7th, 2004 at 12:48 am
I agree. It is great to see someone tell the terror merchants from the RIAAA where to get off. Altho, in all liklihood, she will eventually settle like all the rest. I don’t blame her if she goes that route….we would all most likely do the same thing.
But it is only a matter of time before they pick on the wrong person….be it a wealthy individual or someone with nothing to lose.
I would imagine that the RIAAA wouldn’t want to see one of these cases end up in court. They would probably rather spend money and get their mates in congress to change the laws.
This deabte goes far beyond copyright, it also brings in the wider issue of whether we have a govt run by the people for the people.
May 7th, 2004 at 5:46 pm
Actually read between the lines, if you look at the number, I know that not 100% of the people are paying it, look for some qoutes on where it says X number of issues brought forth and X many people agreed to pay. I wish I could remember the numbers but i wanna say a good 10-20% didnt agree, something like 500 lawsuits at the time and 400 agreed…. I noticed the media is not saying ANYTHING about those who agree to fight this…interesting little censorship going on… dont you think?
May 7th, 2004 at 8:54 pm
Me back again.
Wow, THAT is very interesting. I wasn’t aware that some folks had decided to not give in to the bully boys from the RIAAA.
Yes, it tells us all we need to know, when that type of thing is getting little airplay.
There is a massive conflict of interest….the entertainment industry is a mix of same firms with their hands in all the various pies.
They can easily supress information that would hinder their sister organisation.
May 8th, 2004 at 10:32 pm
What I don’t understand is how they selectively pick her IP address to charge. So what her grandson downloaded 520 songs…he downloaded them from someone and more than likely quite a few someones.
As far as RIAA goes they can kiss my @$$, I’m out there working my self to death, for $40,000 a year and they are pissed off because their earnings have dropped from 6 billion to 5.9 billion.
The RIAA is as useless as the war on drugs. It’s an unwinable battle, they would be better off to figure out how to regulate it. The sharing of music is just more frequent over the internet, it’s not like it hasn’t been going on for quite sometime. It’s unwinable because much like everything else in the world of reality, throwing money at it won’t solve it. You are dealing with very smart people…smarter than who you have protecting your material…they will break your protections based on general principle or boredom or just for the challenge…maybe you should try working smarter and not harder.
The problem is that they spend so much money trying to prevent illegal duplication and the protections they come up with are great…but their will always be someone somewhere smart enough to figure it out, to break it or get around it, write a program and it will post on the internet less than 2 weeks after the new protection is released.
Seems to me that the entertainment industry is a victim of it’s own greed. You see back in 1960 there wasn’t a music pirating issue…not many people had the ability to duplicate a vinyl LP record. But those cost more to produce, so they went with 8 track tapes, then cassettes and now CDs. CD’s cost next to nothing to produce, I read somewhere that the actual cost of an individual CD is less than 3 cents. Movies are the same way. They are released in a theatre, you pay $9.00 to go see it…3 months later it’s out on DVD and you can buy it for $20-$25. Seems to me that before movies were in a take home digital format, movie piracy was not a big issue for the industry. Oh sure, you could tape them once they were shown on HBO or network TV, but those were edited, they were censored in some cases…VCR’s even have programming capability so you can record something when you are not home.?! On one hand you are saying it is OK to record a movie which is a duplicate of it, but on the other you are saying it is not OK to duplicate it….Which is it? I can record music straight off the radio, but I cannot download it from someone else? I can buy a CD, rip it onto my computer and load it into my MP3 player but if my friend wants one of the songs I can’t load it into his MP3 player? How are you going to regulate that? I bought a CD and I listen to it, but my son has it in his truck and now he is listening to it, shouldn’t he have to buy his own copy? I bought it, it is mine…he is not the rightful owner of it and it should be illegal for him to listen to it. This arguement is just as rediculous as what you are trying to do.
Why not sue RCA, Pioneer, Sony, or Panasonic…how about sueing Microsoft…it is their technology that has enabled you to increase your profit margin but is also the same technology that is allowing people copy your material.
Congratulations RIAA, you saved money on one end and are losing it on the other…you can’t have your cake and eat it too…everyone else already knew that.
I don’t download music or movies, I just don’t have that desire but if I happen to and I happen to get caught and I see you at my front door, be prepared, I’m not paying you a cent and I will see you in court.
NC_8
May 9th, 2004 at 1:35 am
That other poster made an interesting point.
I want to give this poor old soul some money for her defence fund too.
How can we do that?
May 9th, 2004 at 4:39 am
Go grandma! That’s right, you don’t want to mess with grandmas! They seem all nice and innocent until you piss them off…then you’ve gone and just slit your own throat. Stupid RIAA!