Single Mum vs Big Music
p2pnet.net News:- About a week ago an RIAA attorney contacted Tammy Lafky, a single mother, and told her that although she could owe the Big Five record labels more than half a million dollars, they’d settle for $4,000.
She told the Organized Music lawyer who approached her that she didn’t have any money. But, continues a Pioneer Press story here, “She told me to go talk to a lawyer and I told her I don’t have no money to talk to a lawyer.”
Lafky clears $21,000 a year from her job and gets no child support, says Leslie Brooks Suzukamo in her story.
Now Lafky, 41, has the distinction of being the first person to be named in the music industry’s latest sue ‘em all dragnet, although she doesn’t even know how to use the computer that’s in her home.
However, her 15-year-old daughter, Cassandra, does, says Suzukamo. Cassandra did some downloading last year when she was 14, “but neither of them knew it was illegal because all of Cassandra’s friends at school were doing it,” says the Pioneer Press report.
“She says she can’t believe she’s the only one being sued.”
The chances of Lafky being able to take Big Music on are zip to zero. There’s a possibility that someone whose pockets are as deep as Big Music’s may come along, but that’s not likely to happen either.
The most likely scenario is: music lovers from around the world will bail Lafky out, adding her to the other 486 people who have so far paid Organized Music to go away.
The assumption, carefully developed by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and faithfully repeated in the highly cooperative mainstream print and electronic media, is that the 2,947 men, women and children lined up against the legal wall since last September are criminals.
They’re not. Nor are these criminal cases.
Nor has a single person so far been found guilty of anything – because not one of the 2,947 people ’sued’ by the RIAA has had the resources to take Big Music and its teams of lawyers on. RIAA victims always ’settle’ rather than risk a huge debt.
The Big Five labels, who own the RIAA, say Lafky is into them for $540,000 and of course, there’s no way on earth a single woman earning $21,000 a year could pay that kind of money.
How could she? Indeed, how could any of the ordinary men, women and children victimized by the Big Five (Universal Music Group – France, BMG – Germany, EMI – UK, Sony Music – Japan, and Warner Music, the only US label) stand up against a multi-billion-dollar industry?
In other words, there’s not a hope in Hell that justice will be served.
And the music industry knows it.
That’s why its victims always pay.
“I’d like to resist the RIAA and the recording industry,” Lorraine Sullivan, one of the first people whose name was made public told p2pnet last year. “I wish I could. I wish I didn’t have to worry about my future. “But I’m terrified of bankruptcy.
“How could I, an already in debt college student, possibly go up against a multi-billion-dollar international industry and survive?”
Stanley Pierre-Louis, senior RIAA vp for legal affairs, is quoted in the Pioneer Press story as saying, “Our goal in these cases and in this program (of lawsuits) that we’re trying to achieve is to deliver the message that it’s illegal and wrong.”
He also claims that the music industry sue ‘em all campaign is producing results, a claim that has been disputed over and over in studies such as the now-famous The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis research paper.
In it, the authors, Koleman S. Strumpf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, say, “Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates.”
And UK student Andy Laycock’s The Future of Online Music paper says, “Using the law to curb the file-sharing has seen some short-term success, but overall has actually advertised and improved the activity.”
One of the most recent studies to give the lie to music industry comes from Canada’s Sandvine company and far from declining, file sharing is acually increasing, says its European managing director, Chris Colman.
“There’s been no decline in the number of people file-sharing.”
In fact, “The company’s research indicates that the proportion of total net traffic used for peer-to-peer sharing has declined only slightly in the US over the last year, from 70 to 65 per cent.
Furthermore, “file-sharing in Europe has not dropped at all – it now accounts for 70 to 80 per cent of net traffic. And internet usage in both the US and Europe is still growing, meaning that file-sharing is growing overall.”
Pierre-Louis is quoyted as saying the RIAA isn’t afraid of a consumer backlash. “We’re facing a daunting challenge and we have to face it head-on.”
May 28th, 2004 at 6:02 pm
they need to sue some person who recently already lost everything after he/she apparently d/l etc (maybe lost his job and wife etc etc)
then the old addage of cant squeeze blood out of a stone will come into play, then this person can stand up to the tyranny without fear of retribution cause they have nothing to lose anyways.
big 5 are nothing but fear mongers and despicable spinsters of the truth and outright dishonest to their customers.
buy our product or else….what happened with that racketeering charge in the states? I thought that was totally applicable (RICO). Did the RIAA manage to sneak in some more legislation (more riders perhaps) that exempts them from the RICO statute like they managed to do with anti-competitve legislation??