RIAA sues LSU student
p2pnet.net News:- There have been several reports indicating an LSU student has been one of the latest victims of the RIAA’s sue ‘em all crusade. US District Judge Frank Polozola has already granted the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) permission to obtain this student’s identity from LSU through a subpoena.
According to several sources, the student is supposedly guilty of downloading and sharing a grand total of nine copyrighted songs.
It wasn’t too long ago Cary Sherman claimed the RIAA was only going after “egregious copyright infringers”. It appears Sherman’s definition of ‘egregious’ differs from the one found in every English dictionary.
The RIAA’s Jonathan Lamy justifies the latest wave of lawsuits by saying, “The objective here is to create an environment where legitimate online music services can compete and flourish. There’s still a very serious piracy problem, and that’s why we continue to do what we do.”
Sharing nine copyrighted songs is now considered to be a serious problem by the RIAA, even though music CD sales continue to rise.
Roughly a year ago, US senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) expressed concern about the way the RIAA was using its power to launch assaults on practically defenceless people and sent a letter to Sherman, who responded by assuring Coleman that the RIAA was focusing on “egregious offenders who are engaging in substantial amounts of
illegal activity.”
Coleman responded to Sherman’s letter by saying he was gratified by assurances that the industry is initially focusing on egregious offenders. Coleman also said the RIAA had promised to provide his Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations with supplementary documents that, “confirm it is not targeting nominal users.”
Let’s examine that promise for a moment.
The RIAA promised to supply documents that confirm that they’re not targeting nominal users. Have they also changed the definition of the word “nominal”? To date, more than 1,000 people have succumbed to the RIAA and handed over an average of $3000 each to avoid a costly date in court with the blood-sucking extortionists.
The RIAA hasn’t released any data that specify how many songs these people were allegedly sharing. I say ‘allegedly’ because Media Sentry (one of the companies that do the RIAA’s dirty work) has falsely accused people of copyright infringement in the past. Were some of these people also sharing less than 10 songs?
It’s time for Senator Coleman to send Sherman another letter demanding that he provide documents that contain detailed information about how many songs each and every one of the RIAA’s victims were sharing.
Drake Zamanov
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See:-
not targeting – Senator Releases RIAA Subpoena Data, internetnews.com, August 18, 2003
October 3rd, 2004 at 8:12 pm
What’s the public good that outweights privacy reights
in having the identity of someone who shared nine songs revealed?
How much can one sue for sharing nine songs?
That case might be worth fighting.
October 3rd, 2004 at 8:15 pm
How much?
Nothing serious – a mere $750 to $150,000 per track, depending on whether or not the judge is having a bad hair day. Times nine.
October 4th, 2004 at 12:34 am
Don’t forget lawyer costs!
October 4th, 2004 at 11:21 am
There is something fishy here. RIIA is not a copyright holder. If you have no copyrights you cannot sue anyone for copyright infringenment. Cannot understand how it is that RIIA can request and get information about an alleged infringer and then go to court if RIIA is not a copyright holder. The copyright holders are the individual record companies, performers, songwriters, etc. Very strange indeed.
Rafael Venegas
Executive Director
http://www.gvenegas.com
October 4th, 2004 at 3:49 pm
Motown Records, Sony BMG and Arista were 3 of the record companies who went after this student. They are all represented by the RIAA and that’s why I wrote that the judge granted the RIAA permission to obtain this student’s identity. Sorry for the confusion.
Drake
October 6th, 2004 at 2:21 pm
Has anyone ever pursued the line of reasoning that the RIAA really has no proof that a file was uploaded from an infrigers PC, just that it existed?
October 6th, 2004 at 2:21 pm
Has anyone ever pursued the line of reasoning that the RIAA really has no proof that a file was uploaded from an infringers PC, just that it existed?