p2pnet - rss feed: Caught by the RIAA: the odds
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- Christmas is the time of giving and a lot of people received music players as prezzies.
That, of course, means many will be looking for downloads with the P2P networks as primary sources
But for Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA, CRIA, ARIA, BPI, IFPI, and their other consumer attack outfits lurking in the dark reaches, Christmas is the time for bullying as they strive desperately to drive music lovers away from the independent music sites and P2P networks into corporate rip-off areas.
Back in October, “Using the corporate press corps as their willing, and unpaid, BS propagators, the Big 4 copyright cartel has been able to create the entirely false impression that people who share music with each other are in clear and imminent danger of being identified and busted,” p2pnet posted, going on:
However, in the US alone, where most of the attention is focused, it’s been estimated that a minimum of sixty million people regularly and routinely share online.
But only 30,000 also men, women and children have been subpoenaed by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), another of the Big 4’s so-called ‘trade’ organisations.
Figure it out.
Said Weegie in a Reader’s Write to the same story:
“For those of you who like numbers, 30,000 out of 60,000,000 is the same as 0.003333%. In comparrison, the chance of being struck by lightning is estimated to 0.000143% in the US.”
To help put the chances of getting an RIAA subpoena —- which, we hasten to point out, is very far removed from any kind of actual court case —- into perspective for Americans, at least, “how afraid should Americans be of terrorist attacks?” wondered Reason Magazine, answering:
“Not very.”
Your odds of dying of a specific cause in any year are calculated by dividing that year’s population by the number of deaths by that cause in that year, it explains, continuing:
Your lifetime odds of dying of a particular cause are calculated by dividing the one-year odds by the life expectancy of a person born in that year. For example, in 2003 about 45,000 Americans died in motor accidents out of population of 291,000,000. So, according to the National Safety Council this means your one-year odds of dying in a car accident is about one out of 6500. Therefore your lifetime probability (6500 ÷ 78 years life expectancy) of dying in a motor accident are about one in 83.
What about your chances of dying in an airplane crash? A one-year risk of one in 400,000 and one in 5,000 lifetime risk. What about walking across the street? A one-year risk of one in 48,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 625. Drowning? A one-year risk of one in 88,000 and a one in 1100 lifetime risk. In a fire? About the same risk as drowning. Murder? A one-year risk of one in 16,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 210. What about falling? Essentially the same as being murdered. And the proverbial being struck by lightning? A one-year risk of one in 6.2 million and a lifetime risk of one in 80,000. And what is the risk that you will die of a catastrophic asteroid strike? In 1994, astronomers calculated that the chance was one in 20,000. However, as they’ve gathered more data on the orbits of near earth objects, the lifetime risk has been reduced to one in 200,000 or more.
So, if you’re in the US, how afraid should you be of joining the 30,000 or so people who’ve been deemed RIAA-worthy targets, although only one person has actually seen the inside of a court-room?
Not very.
You know what they say about statistics and in the meanwhile, common sense is enough to suggest the chances of the Big 4 winkling a particular individual out of sixty million are pretty low indeed, especially when you remember file sharing is a global, not local, event.
Jon Newton - p2pnet
Also See:
p2pnet - Record label corporate lies, October 26, 2007
Reason Magazine - Don’t Be Terrorized, August 11, 2006
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December 28th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Well, while this statistics stuff might be funny; Lets hope the next guy that see a courtroum from the inside in a RIAA case will not wish that RIAA-Richard gets hit be a comet on the courtroum steps.
You know..
The ods and that…
It might actually happen and this time it would not only be the Corporate music dinosaurs that would vanish (while that might be a desireable effect after all)
December 28th, 2007 at 11:48 am
I am not afraid and I would not be afraid even if the odd were high. This is the parasites at The RIAA that should be afraid that sooner rather than latter they are going to bother the wrong guy equiped with pest killer and that will be the end.
December 28th, 2007 at 11:55 am
“Lets hope the next guy that see a courtroum from the inside in a RIAA case will not wish that RIAA-Richard gets hit be a comet on the courtroum steps.”
Or by a small silvery meteorite you know the one that look like a rocket.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
“0.003333% chance to be caught!
My high end amp THD is 0.009% THD (@8 Homs) 150W RMS/ chanel 10Hz-45kHz+/- 3db and I though it was very low. needless to say that I am not listening to MP3 file with this stuff.
Yet I am running a computer days and night sharing over 20k RIAA members music crapy tracks of the britney slutt and so on and around 3k movies for now more than two years and on various p2p network just to bother you RIAA/MPAA and so far nothing! I have spent 2k$ just for this. Where is my lawsuit RIAA/MPAA? Are you afraid of me? I am ready for it and I demand it so that I can kick you dirty liar’s ass full of shit.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
And since they can not say for sure who is sharing and who is not the chance to be sued even if you don’t download or share is probably about the same as if you do.
By the way they can not tell who is downloading and they can not tell for sure who is sharing beyong the reasonable doubt Still they keep lying and lying and lying under oath and I though that was a crime in itself. Isn’t it?
December 28th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Since the same message can be delivered several different ways, let me offer an alternative to your RIAA Christmas reporting. You said:
“Christmas is the time for bullying as they strive desperately to drive music lovers away from the independent music sites and P2P networks into corporate rip-off areas.”
Well. That’s not very evenhanded, now is it?
“Bullying” is in the eye of the beholder. From where I stand, the millions and millions of of dollars invested in education all in the good faith that we’ll SIMPLY OBEY EXISTING LAWS when we finally understand them isn’t bullying at all. Following due process and a century of legal precedent with court-decision support every step of the way isn’t bullying, either. And offering a chance to pay a fine or take your chances in court, (at the discretion of the infringer), that’s not bullying either. You break the law and get caught? You still get a choice. You broke the law, remember? Are they supposed to give you a free pass?
You make this sound as if the infringer is not the one infringing, not the one creating this issue in the first place. Surveillance, law enforcement, subpeona’s, fines, and court cases all go away when people who take a product properly intended for sale actually return to paying for it. Since when in our system of justice is the lawbreaker the aggrieved party?
To refer to P2P networks as “independent music sites” is like referring to counterfeiting rings as “independent currency producers.” I suspect you are joking. I certainly hope so. It brings a satisfying ring of faux legitimacy to a very clearly defined illegal activity but at the end of the day, that is just shameful bs. No wonder you get no respect.
And the term “corporate rip-off area” is simply a misnomer. Don’t like a price? Don’t buy it. Whether it is Amazon, iTunes or Walmart, product is product and they can offer it for sale as they see fit and let the market sort itself out. Some might find the Beemer 7 series a rip-off, too, or the cost of a loaf of bread. But does that justify taking it without paying? This is not a rhetorical question. This is a founding principle of civilization.
At base, you are fomenting a kind of anarchy, a “we’ll do whatever it takes legal-or-not to get this product for free” and that is where you lose me. You routinely decry the legal steps taken to stop this crime while ignoring entirely that we have a legal system, a legislature, a judicial system and a capitalistic model all to be taken into consideration and utilized properly to change things to the way we’d like to see them. Supporting anarchy wastes time, money and damages people’s lives.
What if the FBI played by the same rules of anarchy that you do and simply took your site down? That would be illegal too, right? And I’d imagine you’d have a small problem with that. (Just as you should.) But you appear to have no problem as long as it is somebody else getting screwed.
I think P2P is genius when used for legal purposes. I have no respect for the illegal use of anything, frankly, digital or not. And I am SO NOT a mouthpiece for the RIAA; they’ve leveraged their dominance within our capitalist system for years and distribution models change and markets adapt. But if you keep espousing flat out illegal behavior and copyright infringement as if they were legitimate market forces, remember that when you give no justice, you get no justice. I’d have a LOT MORE RESPECT for the p2p community if they stopped buying, stopped infringing, stopped taking and began a legal class action across the board, a full court press of our legislature and judiciary demanding a change in copyright, if that is what you ultimately seek. And living with the results, whatever they are. That’s our system.
But instead, everyone just sneaks around. YOU are actually the “lurkers”. It is YOU who use the cloak of technology and the lead time of the justice system to take something you know you are supposed to pay for. You are facilitating a daily crime that is damaging musicians and the future of new music far more than it ever damaged a record exec. So until you abandon this self-entitled anarchy–which makes you look like spoiled children, frankly– and find the integrity and the courage to do this correctly within the system we all live in and benefit from, you’ll not have my support. I’d LOVE to see the industry brought to its knees and artists like me find a way to be paid better and more directly. But the way something is achieved is as important as what is being achieved itself, and nothing good nor lasting will be built upon the anarchic foundations of illegal p2p.
December 28th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Hey Sam:
‘Free’ as in free ‘freedom’, not free beer, and the independent music sites and P2P networks are separate entities, not one and the same, as you suggest.
“I’d LOVE to see the industry brought to its knees and artists like me find a way to be paid better and more directly.”
In that case, launch your own site (I bet you’d be pleasurably surprised at the result). And join us and the millions and millions of other people around the world who are giving the Big 4 the bird while they wait for them to open their catalogues and bring their wholesale prices down to reasonable levels to allow a competitive market to emerge.
Cheers!
December 28th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
quote: Don’t like a price? Don’t buy it.
And there you have exactly what drives P2p among many other reasons. Could not agree more with that part of your post and I do follow that creedence.
December 28th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Don’t feed the trolls.
December 29th, 2007 at 2:11 am
once a music cd or movie dvd has been ripped and repackaged to another format like mp3, xvid, flac and so on , amount to really nothing more then a bunch of digits?
if that is true then how could anyone suggest that downloading any of these digits would constitute ip infringement of any kind ,
the reall culprits would be the media player manufacturer
who convert those digits back to there origanel form and then allow the user unlimteted access without first obtaining prior permision or paying proper fees etc?
digits can not be owned by anyone can they?
flame away all , was hoping this would be a start in the right direction when or if santa brings me a subpoenae
December 30th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
When the US slumps into a recession,talk to me then.
I blame the PC’s for all the evils everywhere. Ppl like sam apparently like Windows palladium to arrive and be the ultimate policing OS where you can’t do anything,the same ppl that WANT trusted computing in EVERY PC.
Sorry but i don’t want big brother and the CRIA and MAFIAA in my PC.
December 30th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Junji, We’ve been MAC wall to wall since our first modern computers in 1992. You couldn’t give me a Windows PC. Really. I’d just give it away.
As for “quote: Don’t like a price? Don’t buy it.” I’m glad you agree. But music and movie product is for sale and you understand this, so stop taking it p2p at no payment, too. That’s why there are laws against this. It’s cheap and small minded. There’s not much integrity using technology to cover taking without paying. A true boycott would be legal and impressive, but you don’t care. You still want it all, you just won’t pay for it, so now we don’t get paid either. Since when did pirates have integrity?
December 31st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Sam I Am Says:”…And I am SO NOT a mouthpiece for the RIAA;…”. Liar Liar!!!
July 16th, 2008 at 10:10 am
You know the rules, if you don’t share, technically your not stealing, but if you do share, its breaking the law, you should keep your files to yourself, and not share them with somebody else. DUH!!!!!
Don’t Share any movies or music or games etc.. Only download them for yourself, thats not breaking the law.