RIAA tries again
p2pnet.net News:- Last month, for the second time, a US federal court threw out Big Music’s attempt to force an ISP to hand over customer names.
Now it’s back again in a situation paralleling the movie studios’ bid – their third – to get a clear court ruling overturned to crush p2p file sharing.
The RIAA had been using subpoenas issued by a court clerk rather than a judge or magistrate and demanded that Verizon Online turn over the name of a customer the RIAA claimed had illegal copies of copyrighted music files.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in effect decided file sharing wasn’t an issue when the 1998 DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) came into force, tossing out the RIAA case.
The cartel tried the same tactic against ISP Charter Communications only to have its case once more thrown out by the Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit on similar grounds.
In another appeal, the RIAA is arguing that the 8th Circuit ruling, if upheld, “will deprive copyright owners of a critically important tool for stopping the massive infringement of copyrights over the Internet," says the Charlotte Observer, going on:
“The appeals court said Charter’s role was ‘confined to acting as a conduit in the transfer of files through its network.’ In now challenging that ruling, the RIAA said ‘there is no dispute that these individuals are committing copyright infringement on a massive scale and that Charter is the only entity able to identify the individuals’."
The RIAA appeal says the court’s, "misreading of the statute (in last month’s split 8th Circuit ruling) produced a result that is irreconcilable with the DMCA’s text, structure and purposes," adds the Observer.
February 28th, 2005 at 8:09 pm
“The RIAA appeal says the court’s, “misreading of the statute (in last month’s split 8th Circuit ruling) produced a result that is irreconcilable with the DMCA’s text, structure and purposes,” adds the Observer.”
Well, if you follow the RIAA thoughts that the DMCA was brought in to help big bussiness screw their customers then of course they are right.
February 28th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
The RIAA appeal says the court’s, “misreading of the statute (in last month’s split 8th Circuit ruling) produced a result that is irreconcilable with the DMCA’s text, structure and purposes,” adds the Observer.
if the DMCA as written allows large corporations to lump 500 people at a time into a single subpoena for unrelated offenses, then the DMCA is unconstitutional under the due process clause..
of course section 1201 already violates the due process clause by placing the interpretation of copyright in the hands not of the courts, but machinery controlled entirely by large copyright based conglomerates.
March 1st, 2005 at 11:23 am
If the recording industry can’t specifically identify an individual by name at the time they apply to the court, how can any attempt at prosecution be legal? Surely they’d have to walk into the court clutching a piece of paper emblazoned with the name of a person, that they KNOW and can PROVE to have downloaded their media without paying for it, to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting any kind of subpoena, let alone a prosecution.
A name which they can’t come up with without getting Kazaa, Grokster or whoever to tell them. Which the said companies are never going to do unless compelled to by law.
All the above means that the entertainment industry is trying to write their own version of the copyright laws in order to gain the ability to trace ‘offenders’ without giving a thought to the non-related copyright issues that would be affected by such changes.
I should point out that I have NO digitally compressed music (or other) files on my Hard Drive that I haven’t paid for, except in the case of older material that is unavailable to buy new in any format.
I don’t see how my ‘illegal’ possession of these tracks is hurting anyone, since I could (if I were willing to spend enough time) trawl round the second-hand record shops in my area and find a copy, which I could then quite legally buy and listen to without one penny of the purchase price going to the author, recording artist or record company.
And you can’t tell me that the last owner hasn’t taped it to listen to in the car or MP3ed it before he sold the original? I know I have!
All I can say to these profit motivated record company execs and their lawyers is this: Drop the price of the record (CD, download, etc) and accept that you are only gonna make $100,000 each every year instead of the millions you currently do. After all, how much money do you need?
I personally know a couple of people who have millions in the bank and work hard, every waking hour of the week, to make more, while actually living on LESS than I do!
I know that’s a bit of a rant, but it’s true nontheless. As a former touring musician I appreciate that recording artists like to be rewarded for their (very) hard work, but why should their record company bosses, who generally work about 1/2 as hard want an even bigger slice of the pie they’ve done little or nothing to bake?
March 1st, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Until this week, I have been a vocal supporter of p2p but not an actual user of it. I supported p2p because I have seen the good that this technology promotes. Recently, while working at a friends house, I saw how quickly he could get not only music, but information, video’s and software via p2p. I was amazed at how one could find desired material quickly without all the frustration of wading through commercial websites. With the exceptin of this website and a very few others, I no longer conduct my information searches via the web. I now use mosly p2p.
By the way, for all the R.I.A.A. employees who read postings here, I use p2p to download music. I do not go to the stores to buy your crap. In fact, I don’t even listen to much music under control of the R.I.A.A. Hower, I do like the fact tht if I wanted something that is R.I.A.A. controlled, I have the method of getting it right here at my fingertips, and there is not a darned thing you can do about it. If you want to sue me, you would not get any money out of me neither. R.I.A.A. and M.P.A.A. this serves as your notice that the poeple are tired of having to pay exhoribtant proces for the drivel that you produce. The only move that was produced in Hollywood that is worth a damned in the past 5 years was one that your cartel tried to shut down, and that was the “Passion of The Christ.” You attempts at stopping ordinary folks from exercising their freedom of speech and freedom of the press will be unsuccessful. If you manage to pay off your cronies in the government and court system, and get this technology banned, then we will write other software to get what we want done. You cannot beat us, because there are too many of us. You days of exploiting and controlling us are numbered.