‘I’ll take on the RIAA’
p2pnet.net News:- An outraged father says he’ll take on the Big Music cartel.
If he does, it’ll be the first time one of the RIAA’s 10,306 subpoenas has resulted in an actual court appearance. And if the father can convince a judge he’s not responsible for mp3s the cartel’s RIAA says his daughter downloaded two years ago, it’ll spell major problems for the industry.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), owned by EMI, Sony BMG, UMG and Warner, says Dave Binks must either pay $3,650 to make it go away, or risk a court appearance which could ultimately cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When she was only 13 Samantha Binks used Kazaa to download more than 600 songs, says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, going on:
“She thought downloading the songs was free and legal, but her father, Dave Bink, is now getting sued for his daughter’s actions.”
Until last week, “Kazaa advertised itself as ‘100 percent legal’,” says the story. “That she might have been breaking the law never crossed her mind.”
But Samantha’s father argues he shouldn’t be sued for something his daughter did, says the Journal Sentinel.
“As he sees it, Samantha was duped by Kazaa’s advertising. ‘I’m going to take it to court, even though I can’t afford a lawyer, Bink said. I’ll probably get chewed up and spit out. But I just don’t think it’s fair’.”
An ‘innocent infringer’
Cecilia Gonzalez was one of the 261 people pilloried by the RIAA when it started launching subpoenas in 2003.
“Gonzalez’s defense has relied on the doctrine of “fair use” – enshrined in the U.S. Copyright Act – and the claim that she was an ‘innocent infringer’ upon the record companies’ copyrights,” says The Meter.
However, as per a summary judgment demanded by the labels, at the moment, she owes $22,500 for downloading 30 songs.
The court, “rejected the defendant’s assertion that her downloading, which she contended was done for the purpose of sampling music before buying, was a fair use,” says the Stanford Law Center. “The court also refused to mitigate defendant’s liability for statutory damages on the ground that she was an innocent infringer, finding that inclusion of copyright notice on published copies of the downloaded recordings was sufficient to put her on notice of their copyrighted status.”
But, “The chances of them ever getting a monetary reward out of Cecilia are slim to none,” said Gonzalez’s lawyer, Geoff Baker, quoted in The Meter. “She’s somebody who purchased their products religiously, she’s got five kids to feed, and she doesn’t have a job now. Why they chose to go after her, I don’t know. It still doesn’t make sense to me why this case goes on.”
Baker was appealing the decison and the case, “will likely drag on for months or even years,” said the post, adding:
” ‘At this point we haven’t seen any notice of appeal,’ says RIAA VP Pierre-Louis. ‘Right now, we have a summary judgment motion that we’re delighted with and I think we’ll just see what happens next’.”
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See:-
Journal Sentinel – You’ve got lawsuit: Father sued for teen’s downloads, May 15, 2005
The Meter – Gnat, Meet Cannon, February 5, 2005
Stanford Law Center – Court grants summary judgment in favor of music companies against a direct infringer for downloading songs
May 17th, 2005 at 7:54 pm
As good as this sounds, unfortunately it has the potential to cast the dark shadow upon P2P technology, again…obviously it’s not whats at fault, but the RIAA spinsters will use this angle to the max to further their crusade to crush the technology that they see as a threat to monopolistic stranglehold on distribution and promotion.
This case seems to be a double-edged sword.
TT
May 18th, 2005 at 12:21 am
In our case, a music publisher stole our songs by fraudulently claiming them as their own, to the extent that 80 of the songs were even registered at the copyright office. The publisher went on to publish the name of 267 songs we own as their own on their web page. The judge gave the publisher the “punishment” of returning to us $16,000 they illegally made with one song but were allowed to keep the over $100,000 the publisher made (a proven in court fact) with the other songs. That is, the publisher was allowed to keep most of the real earnings. The judge saw nothing wrong with the thefy of songs. So the ward was to return a fractoin of the money the publisher made illegally with our songs.
The whole story is on our web page: http://www.gvenegas.com
It really makes one mad that someone who simply share copies of music (without stealing the music or exploiting it for money) is threateded with severe punishment and inconvenience.
BTW, a copyright notice is de facto meaningless because these notices are frequently no more than fraudulent claims (as it was in our case described here).
Rafel Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
May 18th, 2005 at 10:06 am
Thats what copyright law is supposed to protect.
If I wrote a piece of music, Painted a picture, Created a movie, and then earned some money from it, and then someone comes along and claims its his, and makes money out of it, (then thats wrong), and the copyright law was written, for those kind of infrigments in Mind, NOT for rich people to steal more money from the poor. I call this utter injustice, Bullying, and the Governments who allow these things to continue Pussies!. If they fear that they are going to loose the money from these big companies, to support them during their election campaing, then u arent a government for all society, but a government for ur friends, and a dicator for the rest of people in your country.
May 19th, 2005 at 12:33 am
“If they fear that they are going to loose the money from these big companies, to support them during their election campaing, then u arent a government for all society, but a government for ur friends, and a dicator for the rest of people in your country. ”
Funny, the rest of the world was saying that about America for centuries and were called “anti-american”. Now you guys arent allowed to download free music and movies and you suddenly realize that we were right all along. Now do you believe us when we say you are also ignorant and stupid? <smile>