RIAA victim defense blog
p2pnet.net News:- Patricia Santangelo is the mother of five who’s decided she’s not going to cave in to the RIAA’s blackmail attempts.
The RIAA is short for Recording Industry Association of America but only one of its four owners, WMG, is in North America. The others are EMI, the world’s largest record label and based in England, UMH, France, and Sony BMG, Japan and Germany.
They’re using their RIAA to demand $7,500 from Santangelo. Or else. But she plans to fight.
“I just got so aggravated about how threatening they were,” she said recently.
Her lawyer is Morlan Ty Rogers and his firm, Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP, has just organized a blog to collect evidence and input.
“Through the Electronic Frontier Foundation we and our firm have undertaken to represent people in our area who have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for having computers whose internet accounts were used to open up peer-to-peer file sharing accounts,” says Ray Beckerman.
“We find these cases to be oppressive and unfair, as large law firms financed by the recording industry sue ordinary working people for thousands of dollars.”
Stay tuned for more on this.
If there’s something you think we should know, contact us – tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
plans to fight – New York mom battles Big Music, August 15, 2005
blog – Recording Industry vs The People, August 26, 2005
August 27th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
Another way for attorneys to cash in on this.
August 27th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
hey its better than having her essentialy get probed by the record cartels id rather have a lawer get a little richer than the RIAA pigs get a little fatter
August 27th, 2005 at 10:28 pm
— hey its better –
Much better. And if they win, which I think they will if the legal team can get beyond the cartel’s resources, the ramifications will be enormous.
I can see it now – among many other things, a class action suit brought by people the labels have ripped off so far. The win will ricochet into Europe and beyond. And think of all the evidence that’ll be brought out – such as the fact file sharing hasn’t meant a loss in sales, that the *sue ‘em all* campaign has had no appreciable effect, meaning a lot of people have been terrorised for nothing. And so on …..
August 28th, 2005 at 1:24 am
Just Watch. The judge has already told the RIAA to cease and desist from having the ‘Settlement Center’ harass her. Once discovery starts and the tough questions get asked of the cartel, it’s quite likely they are going to drop the suit, citing ‘inadequacies in the evidence collected’ and blame it on whomever they paid to spy on whatever p2p network was allegedly used.
The truth seems to be that the RIAA never wants any of these lawsuits to actually get to court where THEY have to wind up answering questions. They are just using these lawsuits to harass and intimidate. This is a clear violation of federal procedure. (Rule 11) It would be interesting to see what the ramifications are vis-a-vis RICO even though the federal court system were being used as the tool of coercion.
PS: It’s also about time that ’statutory damages’ be done away with in the copyright laws and be replaced by ‘actual damages.’ Make them prove how much was truly ‘lost’ (and please, not the way the BSA calculates such things) resulting from an instance of infringement.
August 28th, 2005 at 1:36 am
Come to Boycott-RIAA sometime.
Theres a guy called Mroop there who would Loooove to
tell you why RICO can’t be used.
August 28th, 2005 at 5:23 am
If I remeber correctly the RIAA/MPAA managed to exclude themselves from any sort of litagation such as RICO by getting the laws changed using a rider on another bill that was going to pass for sure….
TT
August 28th, 2005 at 6:17 am
Hey Jon Newton,
How about we set up a ‘Dedicated section’ on P2PNET.NET where users can submit PERSONAL experiences, brainstorming defense tactics, and break down the RIAA / MPAA’s faulty logic.
We can use it as evidence and support for all those people who get harrassed and persecuted by these cartel bastards!
I think many people would like to help, and have many, MANY personal accounts of mistreatment and abuse to share!
August 28th, 2005 at 9:25 pm
This reminds me of legion legal case in UK, which became called McLibel. It one of longest court case’s in UK legal history, basicaly the defents took on McDonald’s and sort of won. The defendents didn’t have an legal support in court. Long story short it cost McDonald $ millions in there own legal costs which they didn’t get back. It realy is worth an read!
http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/
August 31st, 2005 at 4:24 pm
The struggle against the cartels can be torture, even if you have all the facts in your favor. The justice system should be relabeled the “unjust system” Anyone who doubts this should visit my site (http://www.gvenegas.com). The crooks that openly stole our copyrights walked away from court as if the victims were the crooks.
Nevertheless some suggestions/ideas for a defense:
- A downloader cannot know if a file is of a work in public domain because that information is never revealed on records, in the radio, etc. It is not even available at the Copyright Office, since unregistered works may or may not be in the public domain. The Copyright Office recommends a method to determine if a work is in the public domain that is basically absurd and is of no help.
- A downloader cannot know what is legal and what is not legal from reading the copyright law, if it is found. Then again a work may be covered by the copyright law of another country. Then the interpretation of the laws depends on the jurisprudence you find. Almost always there is a jusrisprudnce that suggests an opposite interpretation of the law. Put differently, copyright “crimes” are outside the scope of ordinary people, the ones that happen to own the government that passes laws that make them criminal for doing ordinary things, like using blank CDs and recorders that are sold to ordinary people for ordinary use that is classified as “theft” by their own government. In the realm of te absurd, the copyright system only can only benefit the big copyright holders (the so called cartel).
- An owner of a copyright cannot prove damages caused by any individual who copies a file.
- Copying files is, at worse, nothing more than a victimless crime. At best, it is a method of promoting art, the constitutional purpose of the copyright law.
- Copying a file to a hard disk is no differenet than capturing (copying) a television program to a tape, and that is legal.
- Copyright ownership theft is massive. Many songs are registered at the Copyright Office in the name of the publishers that robbed the songs. Many works were formerly in the public doamin and are now claimed by someone who changed a couple of notes and claims. Sometimes the songs should have been returned to the original owner, the composer, but the publishers keeps it as their own. Many records are nothing more than copies of public domain works that may habe been wrongly copyright claimed because they have a new cover design or the sound scratches were removed. See BIGGEST COPYRIGHT SCAM: RENEWAL RIGHTS APPROPRIATION here:
http://chocoweb.blogspot.com/ . See also “The judge: Stealing a song for many years is not as bad as singing it once” at http://www.gvenegas.com.
- Record companies contribute to p2p by using obsoleted methods of distribution and selling very low quality products at inflated prices. Most musical tracks on the average record are useless and no more than fill up songs, so the consumer, when lucky, is made to pay $15 for one good track/song.
- When someone sends someone else an mp3 file through e-mail the file is then copied to the hard disk. Will RIAA check next our e-mail to see who receives what files?
- When someone receives a CD from someone else will the receiver have to request a notarized affidavit from the giver to insure that he/she is not in the possesion of a pirated copy?
- No one has proven that the copyright laws is in accordance to the constitutional mandate to promore the arts. Actually it is working the other way around and may be unconstitutional. The law is destroying music. See “The Copyright Funnel” here: http://chocoweb.blogspot.com/.
All the best to victim Patricia Santangelo and attorney Morlan Ty Rogers.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com