Sue kids in UK piracy suits?
p2pnet.net News:- Having set the pace by victimizing 12-year-old Brianna Lahara, the four members of the Big Music record label cartel say they’re equally OK with suing children in Britain.
Brianna and her mother live in New York and last year Mrs Lahara agreed to pay the cartel’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) $2000 to ’settle’.
Like everyone else the RIAA has gone after so far, she accepted an offer she couldn’t possibly have refused. It was either that or up against Big Music and its legions of lawyers.
“[...] as this case illustrates, parents need to be aware of what their children are doing on their computers,” said Mitch Bainwol in one of his first public utterances after taking over from Hilary Rosen as RIAA boss.
Brianna had believed that by paying Sharman Networks $29.99 for its so-called ad-free Kazaa, she was entitled to download whatever songs she wanted.
Now, the cartel has extended its fruitless sue ‘em all campaign into Europe with its British Phonographic Industry (BPI), suing 28 Britons as “the worst offenders” with “hundreds more would follow,” says the Guardian Unlimited.
Does that include kids such as Briana?
Yes.
“It is not our intention to target children,” BPI chairman Peter Jamieson is quoted as saying, “but [we will] if they are breaking the law on a very large scale.”
The RIAA recently chalked up its 5,700th American sue ‘em all victim without making an appreciable difference in file sharing.
However, UK arts minister, Estelle Morris supports, “the principle of proportionate legal action against the worst offending uploaders’ says the report. “I hope it will stop the habitual offender who uploads to make a quick buck out of other people’s talent.”
Habitual offender?
These are ordinary people, not criminals. They haven’t stolen anything and nor have they used the music they’ve shared to enrich themselves in any way.
Nor has any of Big Music’s thousands of US victims ever been found guilty of anything. That’s because not one of the people it’s persecuting could afford to meet the labels in open court.
In the meanwhile, the real criminals, the organized international counterfeiters, dance circles around the entertainment industry.
Have Broadband. Will download.
Another Guardian story centres on Laurence, 40, who says he’s downloaded, “thousands of singles and hundreds of individual music videos”.
His sons download, too, but, “I’ve never burnt a CD and sold it on,” he’s quoted as saying.
“It isn’t done. You just do it for your own use. I probably spend more on music now since I started downloading.
“A lot of people I know who download say the same thing.”
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See:-
Brianna Lahara – We gave up on Prohibition …, p2pnet
sue ‘em all – Big Music anti-piracy war, p2pnet, October 7, 2004
worst offenders – Music labels wage war on bootleggers, Guardian Unlimited, October 7, 2004
never burnt a CD -‘If you like something, you buy it eventually’, Guardian Unlimited, October 8, 2004
October 10th, 2004 at 1:38 pm
When will everyone quit being so chickenshit and actually stand up to these assholes?
October 10th, 2004 at 4:47 pm
Basically they have too much money.
Your average Joe Blogs doesn’t have millions in the bank to pay for overpriced lawyers like these Cartels.
It is only the goverments who can stop these Cartels setting the Future into a normal persons nightmare and a lawers dream (well that is unless EVERYONE stops buying their products and giving them the money to them).
October 10th, 2004 at 10:26 pm
i cannot connect to my kazaa lite server but my brordband internet is working fine, i have jst over a 1000 files in my shared folder, is there a risk i have been blocked for legal resoons?
October 11th, 2004 at 2:18 am
why can’t a team of lawyers anxious to stop the industry donate their talents for one or two cases that are easy to defend and turn it into a high profile test case? There are a lot of lawyers I hear out on the blogs hating the industry and what they’re doing. use your talents people.
October 11th, 2004 at 2:25 am
This is bad. We have American rubbish coming at us from all directions, and now this kind of thing, justified in the name of the Almighty US Dollar. Wonderful.
October 11th, 2004 at 2:38 am
Q – How can you tell when a lawyer is lying?
A – When you see his lips moving
Its true. Donate is not a word they likeand they can make more from the industry than by representing people against it.
October 11th, 2004 at 6:48 pm
yes, i recommend you format your disk IMMIDIATLY!!!!!
October 12th, 2004 at 4:31 pm
I resent that remark. I’m heading to law school next year to specialize in IP, specifically digital IP, and one of the things I dream about is doing just that. Not all lawyers are greedy, dishonest bastards. There certainly are a fair number of them, but some just happen to do what’s right.
The EFF has a newsletter that goes out to interested lawyers looking for cases to take on for little or no money. Look into it.
October 13th, 2004 at 4:28 pm
i suspect the bpi are only suing the worst offenders they can find as they dont want to risk actually ending up in court, which is more likely with how legal aid works in the UK.
October 15th, 2004 at 3:35 pm
99% of lawers give the others a bad name.