RIAA copyright extortion 101, updated
p2pnet view P2P | RIAA:- A lawyer joke is a joke about a lawyer. Or lawyers. Wikipedia – Lawyer Joke.
It goes on >>>
Lawyers are commonly the object of contempt, scorn and derision and so are made the butt of jokes such as:
Q. What is the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?
A. One is a scum-sucking, bottom-feeding scavenger. The other is a fish.
Below are two more lawyer jokes, revised here to accommodate the attorneys behind the Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music RIAA sue ‘em all campaign >>>
Q. What happens when you cross an RIAA lawyer with a thief, a liar and a whore.
A. Nothing.
Q. How many RIAA lawyer jokes are there?
A. None. They’re all true.
Guided by (in order of appearance) Jay Berman, Hilary Rosen and, most recently, ex-political factotum Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA set up a new international legal specialty: legal extortion.
Under it lawyers, many of them paid obscene amounts, sue innocent people knowing they have absolutely no chance of defending themselves because they simply don’t have, and can’t possibly get, adequate financial or legal resources.
It’s called “tough love” by RIAA spinster Cary Sherman, a lawyer.
Bainwol’s salary in 2008 was $2,032,072) and his 2/ic, Sherman, pulled down $1,331,747 the same year.
The RIAA has turned legal extortion into a fine art: “Pay us to go away or we’ll sue your ass and even if we lose, we’ll make your life so miserable you’ll wish you’d ’settled’ when you had the chance.”
The irony is: their actions achieved nothing. Sensitised to the possibilites by the lawsuits, people by the hundreds of millions today share music files with each other, and the RIAA spent $16,000,000 of the Big 4’s hard-earned ( 
) money to recover a paltry $391,000.
Now the practice is being refined by unscupulous lawyers everywhere.
Copyright extortion 101
In one of the worst examples of the new-style copyright infringement racket, the Copyright Group, run by a crew of ferral lawyers, is trying to identify potential victims by forcing the likes of Time Warner to divulge IP addresses.
Now Steve Gibson (right), CEO of a Las Vegas start-up wrongly tagged Righthaven, “has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission”, says Wired, going on:
“And he says he’s making money.
Righthaven has “sued the nonprofit group NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), the association Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, real estate agent and blogger Matt Farnham, gambling site MajorWager.com and the company MoneyReign, which allegedly runs the site casinoreign.com”, said MediaPost back in April, continuing >>>
The cases seemed to have come as a surprise to some of the defendants.
Farnham, the realtor who was sued last week for allegedly posting portions of two articles to his blog, says no one ever asked him to remove the material. “I would have taken it down in a heartbeat,” he says.
Farnham adds that he was only trying to share items that he believed would interest people searching for real estate. “I thought it was a compliment to the paper that I wanted to get that information out,” he says, adding that his posts linked back to the newspaper. “I had honest intentions.”
Says the Citizen Media Law Project >>>
Righthaven LLC, a Las Vegas company associated with Las Vegas Review-Journal owner Stephens Media LLC, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Matt Farnham, a real estate agent, and Omnia Alliance LLC, the operator of Inside Real Estate, a website that describes itself as an “advanced tool for both real estate agents and home buyers and sellers on the web.”
The complaint, which Righthaven filed in federal court in Nevada, alleges that Inside Real Estate displayed a “substantial portion” of two Review-Journal articles without permission.
Is Gibson a clever lawyer merely taking advantage of a golden opportunity?
Or what?
(Cheers, RW)
Jon Newton – p2pnet
… and identi.ca
tough love – RIAA lawsuits are ‘tough love’, October 18, 2007
$2,032,072 -RIAA boss Bainwol paid $2 million in 2008, July 10, 2010
hard-earned ( ) – RIAA spends $16,000,000 to recover $391,000,July 13, 2010
crew of ferral lawyers – Civil rights groups vs US Copyright Group, June 3, 2010
Wired – Newspaper Chain’s New Business Plan: Copyright Suits, July 22, 2010
MediaPost – Newspaper Enlists Startup To Police Web For Copyright Violations, April 22, 2010
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July 26th, 2010 at 11:54 am
The real villains here are the Judges, who encourage this kind of behaviour by repeatedly bending over backwards in favor of the rightsholder groups time and time again, an example being allowing massive, John Doe subpoenas to be sent out by the RIAA. Now you have shark law firms doing the same thing. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/50-000-i-new-i-lawsuits-against-movie-downloaders
Until we have a balanced Judiciary that STOPS bending over backwards for the plaintiffs in these cases you will only see more of this.
July 26th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
“The irony is: their actions achieved nothing”
Ya, It did achieve something.
Several corporate executives and lawyers are now on few target lists.
That was not a smart move.
July 26th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Some questions about the person being sued:
1) Have they caused or risked physical injury to anyone?
2) Have they burgled anyone’s property and removed items of value?
3) Have they been dishonest or made false claims?
4) Have they falsely imprisoned anyone or otherwise impeded their liberty?
None of the above?
You mean, they have simply been accused/suspected of infringing the legally granted monopoly held by a legally created entity?
People no doubt think I’m a little eccentric when I quote Thomas Paine, who informed us that privileges were instruments of injustice THREE CENTURIES AGO. What’s so terrible here though, is that we have a double-privilege! The privilege of a reproduction monopoly AND a legal entity privileged to be recognised by the law as if it was a human being.
At least if a person sues someone over an alleged infringement of their unethical privilege, they have a reputation as a scumbag for the rest of their life. But, a corporation? What do they care? As an immortal, they just carry on regardless, sell out, or rebrand as necessary. And the soulless lawyers, whilst they still have psychopathic corporations that still need them as henchmen, they won’t lose any sleep over a lack of friends.
July 26th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
But there are _some_ good lawyers.
I met both of them the other day.
August 1st, 2010 at 6:50 pm
“People no doubt think I’m a little eccentric when I quote Thomas Paine, who informed us that privileges were instruments of injustice THREE CENTURIES AGO.”
I may be a little late with this, Crosby, but I don’t think you’re eccentric at all. I think you’re right on the money. Privileges ARE instruments of injustice. They seem to think that privileges equal rights, but that’s not true. A privilege is an unfair advantage (at least to me) and they will continue to be until someone does something.