Who’s going to pay the RIAA?
p2pnet news view P2P | RIAA:- I feel for Joel Tenenbaum. I really do. He’s someone who likes music and who shared it. But he’s been painted as a villain and a thief.
I like music too.
And I’ve shared it.
With a good heart Debbie Rosenbaum, one of the Harvard law students who, under the guidance of Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, ran Joel’s defence during the just-concluded RIAA debacle, contacted me and, certainly, a lot of other people, via Facebook to tell me about a fund-raising effort for Joel.
She says »»»
As many of you have already heard, a verdict came in yesterday against Joel for $675,000.
A grassroots campaign was started earlier today by individuals who aspire to help raise money in order for Joel not to have to file for bankruptcy. The idea is that if every file-sharer donated $.99 or the price of a few albums, a resounding message could be sent to the RIAA from the court of public opinion.
Sorry, Debbie. I know you’re suggesting this only for the best. But unless I have the intention dead wrong, money raised would in one way or another go to the labels and that being so, the resounding message to Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music, Sony Music and their RIAA would be »»»
You win again! Don’t worry, guys, if your victims can’t pay you, file sharers will!
Politicians who have sex with page boys
p2pnet readers raised more than $15,000 for Patti Santangelo, one of the first RIAA victims. But the money was for legal costs.
Like Charlie Nesson and his team of students, her lawyer, Jordan Glass, contributed every minute of his time free, but in court cases, there are always unavoidable out-of-pocket legal expenses — disbursements, they’re called — and the money p2pnet readers donated covered those, and only those.
None of it went into the pockets of RIAA lawyers or to the Big 4 labels who’d created the mess in the first place.
A Minnesota jury, lacking sensible and authoritative direction, decided Jammie Thomas-Rasset owed the hugely wealthy corporate music industry, wholly controlled by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, almost two million dollars.
And this was for allegedly sharing 24 songs online.
Rapists, murderers, kidnappers, and politicians who have sex with page boys, lie to their constituents and cheat on their taxes, get away with less.
Far less.
A bit over $100
My friend Chris Ovenden over in the UK wrote this »»»
Constitutionally speaking, Tenenbaum cannot be held responsible for the further sharing of those who downloaded from him, as the RIAA would like to suggest he should be.
I would like to help Judge Gertner’s review proceeding by suggesting an alternative means of calculating the damages caused by an individual. It’s horribly simple: divide the estimated total losses by the estimated total number of sharers.
I will leave it to the experts to hammer out the exact figures, but here is my back-of-an-envelope calculation:
In 2005 the RIAA were claiming annual losses to piracy of $1bn, of which they attributed $300m to people with suitcases of dodgy CDs(1), the rest presumably to filesharing. I can’t find a more up-to-date guesstimate, but let’s assume a similar figure on average throughout this first decade of p2p use, giving total losses of $7bn to date. My salt is well and truly pinched already, but let’s continue. No-one seems to know exactly how many filesharers there are worldwide, but the estimated figure of 60 million seems to have been doing the rounds for some years as these things tend to. The number seems to me rather low, but will serve to keep our damages on the generous side (to the labels).
So what’s the damage? A whopping $116.67 per user, on average. This is in full, not per track or anything arbitrary like that, and no nasty little ‘m’ after the amount. Just a bit over a hundred dollars.
Just a bit over $100, eh? And that’s always assuming file sharers owe anything at all, an argument I don’t endorse.
So, Debbie, I’d really like to help. I honestly would. He didn’t cave in. Instead, he stood against the worst the labels had to offer and set an example for others and if other RIAA victims had done the same, the labels would have been forced to halt their bizarre and ridiculous sue ‘em all marketing campaign years ago.
I feel badly about posting this and I truly hope I’m wrong, Debbie, and if I am, I’ll immediately post an item apologising and linking directly to your campaign page.
But if I’m not, I hope not too many people, as sympathetic as they may be toward Joel’s predicament, will set a precedent others might follow by footing the RIAA bill.
________________
UPDATE: See Joel lawsuit fund NOT for the RIAA
Jon Newton – p2pnet
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
July, 2009
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August 2nd, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I’m reminded of Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay who said of the $4m award against him and his co-defendants: “Even if we had the money I would rather burn everything I owned and not even give them … the ashes.”
Bully tactics, extortion and perversion of the law should not be rewarded, they should be resisted, fought back and beaten down. If Joel’s legal team can think of another way for the millions who do the same simple, harmless thing for which he has been persecuted to help him, please let us know. This, we should not do.
August 2nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I say Joel should team up with Jammie and the others and launch a class-action counter suit, for extortion, illegal methods of collecting evidence, among other things. Individually, the defendents are easily beaten by the cartels, but together, they may very well have the case they need to win their freedom and put the blood sucking parasites in their place.
August 2nd, 2009 at 4:26 pm
I absolutely agree with Reader’s Write. I’m willing to bet that about .01% of the award will go to the artists involved. The record companies and the RIAA are horribly greedy, and have been revealed using spyware to track downloads people make. There is no way the rewards they get are justifiable. Further, the record companies have been ripping the artists out of all of their cash. I really hope the liberal and independent musicians out there create an efficient label that can break away from the corporate greed of the music industry (Trent Reznor comes to mind, given the things he says about music). The RIAA and the labels it supports will face extraordinary resistance while they continue to get exorbitant sums of money while simultaneously defecating on the artists we love.
August 2nd, 2009 at 5:34 pm
To help you I would be paying the RIAA and that I am not willing to do.
Declare bankruptcy and use all the press contacts you have made to tell your story.
That is the way to do it. Pay and you pay them for having persecuted you. That is what I think.
J-P
August 2nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
I would rather see people contribute to a “pot” that would go toward getting better lawyers for the *right* victims. (Those who had the presence of mind not to admit to anything in the first place, thus guaranteeing a better chance of being defended.)
The whole file sharing scene needs better representation in these cases.
So far, all Nesson and the kids (as well-intentioned as they may have been) have succeeded in doing is helping to reinforce the BS about file sharing being “illegal” and ” all about piracy”. The 2 cases they presented so far, surprisingly, lacked any sense of substance, and failed to go after the RIAA to actually PROVE (if even possible!) the defendants in question had “distributed” anything.
Personally, I think placing our collective compassion for people such as Jammie and Joel is not doing the REAL argument any service. These people already threw away their defense by confessing too much – they should have bloody-well settled from the beginning, letting the “charity” of lawyers like Nesson et al go to those who have a much better chance of being defended and showing the judges who the real assholes have been.
August 2nd, 2009 at 7:28 pm
DA: There is a pot, of sorts. Ray has one via Recording Industry vs The People – http://www.p2pnet.net/story/18292. Direct link – https://my.fsf.org/donate/directed-donations/riaa/
Cheers!
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:01 am
“Constitutionally speaking, Tenenbaum cannot be held responsible for the further sharing of those who downloaded from him, as the RIAA would like to suggest he should be.”
Right on. Those who downloaded from Tenenbaum are the indispensable parties that were required to be in the case as sued parties.
The judge should have thrown out the case because the indispensable parties, the downloaders and the song owners songwriters or publishers had not been included.
The judge just f****d up while some lawyers were just staring at the wall.