RIAA sues more file sharers
p2pnet.net News:- The RIAA wants to sue another 493 innocent people for sharing music online: ‘innocent’ because not one of the people pilloried has so far been found guilty of anything because not one of them has ever appeared before a judge.
As a Reuters story states it here, “The trade group [the RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America], which represents the five largest recording companies, has settled more than 400 of those cases for around $3,000 each.”
The last ‘A’ in RIAA stands for America, and yet only Warner Music, one of the five firms which keep the RIAA in business, is actually American. The others are: Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group (France), Bertelsmann AG’s BMG (Germany), EMI Group Plc’s EMI (UK) and Sony Corps’ Sony Music (Japan)
In the meanwhile, $3,000 settlements are at the low end. Some ‘payments’ have been for considerably more than $10,000 and ’settled’ means the RIAA in effect makes victims an offer they can’t refuse.
And its victims always pay.
They’re ordinary men, women and children and rather than chance the huge financial penalties losing to Organized Music’s limitless resources and expert legal teams inevitably would entail, they always settle out of court.
“The RIAA does not yet know the identities of those it targeted in its latest round of lawsuits but plans to discover them through court-issued subpoenas,” says Reuters.
Until fairly recently, the RIAA used what amounted to a loophole in the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act – which it had inspired in the first place) to force ISPs into revealing client names.
Then the DC Court of Appeals decided file sharing wasn’t an issue when the 1998 DMCA came into force and that the RIAA’s efforts to subpoena the names and addresses of ISP Verizon’s customers were therefore unlawful.
Consequently, these days, the RIAA has to follow due process. Like everyone else.
Twenty-four of the latest victims are being sued by name after the RIAA discovered their identities through John Doe suits but, “had declined offers to settle out of court, the RIAA said,” according to Reuters.
In any case, it would seem, the lawsuits aren’t having much of an effect in real terms.
While the music industry claims its sue-’em-all campaign is dramatically reducing the number of file sharers, and while Apple boasts people downloaded 70 million files from its iTunes Music Store in its first year, at a conservative estimate, four million people are online at any given moment uploading, downloading and/or sharing one billion files every month.
Nor is the music industry’s contention that file sharing is “devastating” the multibillion-dollar music industry, as the Canadian Recording Industry Association states, accurate.
The music industry’s statistical analysis techniques seem to vary, depending on the state of the moon. Be that as it may, in March, in their celebrated The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales An Empirical Analysis, Felix Oberholzer and Koleman Strumpf revealed:
“Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.
This could be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
May 25th, 2004 at 3:49 pm
I stopped purchasing music CDs several years ago in response to the Napster dispute. I don’t understand why more people don’t vote with their feet when RIAA is targeting individual users for persecution.
People, you have a choice! Stop patronizing these brutal pigs until they stop this travesty!
brave coward
May 25th, 2004 at 3:54 pm
Although I share the article’s viewpoint, it is not true that nobody have ever appeared before a judge for downloading music.
See <url: http://tinyurl.com/2cv7f>.
“A federal judge has ordered a Bristol man to pay more than $4,000 for downloading five songs from the Internet”
- Alf P. Steinbach, Oslo, Norway
May 25th, 2004 at 3:58 pm
Where the fuck (holy or not) do I state my name instead of getting “Anonymous Coward”?
That is, without “logging in” or otherwise navigating away.
You folks are incompetents regarding UI design.
Alf P. Steinbach, Oslo, Norway.
May 25th, 2004 at 4:47 pm
Good point.
However, Martinez didn’t appear in court. As it says in the story, “The judge ruled because Martinez failed to answer a civil complaint brought against him or appear in court for the hearing.”
May 25th, 2004 at 7:31 pm
I dont understand how the RIAA is tracking people down in the first place. How do they know who downloaded what? Are they sharing files on the P2P networks like honeypots to attract people who are looking for music?
If so, they are breaking the law too. And if they download from the network, they are breaking the law too, arent they?
Also, if you already have purchased the music on CD, then how is it copyright infringement if you already own the work?
Lastly, how can they prove you downloaded it instead of some hacker using your system?
May 26th, 2004 at 3:08 am
i believe they have the right to share the content for which they hold copyrights. im curious of the leagality of using the “honeypot” as you say. i do believe it is a violation of most end user agreements for law enforcement or other agency(corperations) to utilize the network in any way. however, it is also a violation of most end user agreements to share copyrighted material. i believe that may be the truest violation of the agreement. you would have to subpeona records from the enforcment agency to see what client they used to get your information from any particular network. they may have indeed made thier own reverse engineered software to connect to networks like fast track. i highly doubt they would disclose anything about it because most likely it would also be a violation to reverse engineer software under the DMCA. if they say we use kazaa they are in violation, but that is a separate lawsuit for sharman. i wonder if you could make that an issue for the prosecution not to use any evidence gathered “illegally”. that would blow their entire case. i doubt its that easy. i simply cant wait to see what defenses sre used in these cases that refuse to settle. one winner is all it takes to set a president. fight! fight! fight! tell us who you are and and fund should be started to help them fight. or dontate to the EFF – our freinds.
May 26th, 2004 at 3:13 pm
I found a cheap replacement to downloading via another anonymous coward. $0.01 per MegaByte. You choose the format and quality. It’s based out of Russia and I’m happy so far with $6.37 spent for 4 albums.
http://www.allofmp3.com
Good luck,
phatpapa
May 26th, 2004 at 3:15 pm
And the site is down.
Hopefully not for long.
June 5th, 2004 at 3:11 am
It’s going to get much worse for American file sharers if the PIRATE Act passes.
I can’t figure out why American file sharers don’t use the political clout that their sheer numbers could give them if they’d just get politically involved?
Try checking out this link and USING it!
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2906
(Make sure you choose “Send a FAX” at the bottom BEFORE sending it!). Pete
June 5th, 2004 at 4:17 am
It’s going to get much worse for American file sharers if the PIRATE Act passes.
I can’t figure out why American file sharers don’t use the political clout that their sheer numbers could give them if they’d just get politically involved?
Try checking out this link and USING it!
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2906
(Make sure you choose “Send a FAX” at the bottom BEFORE sending it!). Pete