Even if not, that hardly means the RIAA is doing “nothing wrong”, either from an ethical or business standpoint.

Otherwise, I do agree that the punishment is out of whack with the crime, as defined by current law. It would be interesting to see what a court challenge on “cruel and unusual punishment” grounds would produce.

But then, IANAL. I just call ‘em like I see ‘em.

Who do these guys think they are? Where is their patriotism?

According to the self proclaimed “composer societies”, ASCAP and BMI, the U.S. national anthem, the STAR SPANGLED BANNER (and the anthem of many other countries) has hundreds of owners. I swear this is true even though I myself find it hard to beleive. If in doubt check http://www.ascap.com/ , ACE Title Search, Search the Database and enter Star Spangled Banner, click on title and you get “Your title search for “STAR SPANGLED BANNER” returned 277 results.”. This means that the STAR SPANGLED BANNER has 277 self proclaimed “owners” who pretend to profit and probably do profit from the use of the anthen. Certainly ASCAP and the music publishers that own and control ASCAP do profit.

Now let us say you download the STAR SPANGLED BANNER from a p2p network, is that theft?

Let RIAA answer the question.
Let ASCAP answer the question.
Let BMI anser the question.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

- What RIAA does is extorsion / criminal
- It is wrong for justice to be decided by private interests and a private police.
- It is game playing explitation of the legal system because the legal costs of litigating a defense fall upon the acused and the legal costs are ridiculously high because…. the laws has been turned into a business. If the acuser in a lawsuit had to to pay the legal expenses of the acused at time of filing the lawsuit, then fewer, if any, frivolous and abisive lawsuits would be filed.
- The legal theory that parents are responsible for what their children do is laughable, If a a parent were responsible for what a son/daughter does, the parent could never never leave the child out of sight, after all, children are alway “‘difaming” other children.
- The copyright laws cannot possibly be understood by 99 percent of the people. Even copyright lawyers do not frequently understand the laws because of the mixed up jurisprudence and the evasiveness of the laws.
- The legal system rewards lawyers, regardless if they win or loose cases.
- Most music is in the public domain. Perhaps one percent may have copyrights… but there is no practical way of knowing which is which when looking at a list of songs in a computer disk. When a kid is about to download a song file, there is no way to know if the file is public domain or not.
-The music does nor fairly share their income with the artist, the performers and the composers, in the case of music.
- RIAA members payola is a far more serious problem for the music industry from the people’s perspective and the Justice Deparment does nothing serious about it. So RIAA goes after kids while the Justice Department ignores RIAA member crimes.

etc, etc.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

I wonder, has the people realized that, regardless of the legality of p2p file sharing. police work and judicial decisoins and judgements are being made by the lawyers instead of the people through their ppolice organizations, the Justice Department and the courts?

The RIAA takeover of justice is nothing more than the destruction of democeacy. Too bad the elected officials of government have not noticed.

EXTORTION - The use, or the express or implicit threat of the use, of violence or other criminal means to cause harm to person, reputation, or property as a means to obtain property from someone else with his consent. USC 18

The Hobbs Act defines “extortion” as “the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.” 18 U.S.C. S 1951(b)(2).

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

When you find the number, pass it on to every “marketing” firm you can find. Use it as a contact number on every web based form and “survey” you can find. Post it on every website that gives you the option.

Let the marketing industry do the work for you ;o)

Now is not the time to cower to such repugnant and illegal extortion.

Read what the law says:

Fromt the United States Supreme Court:
Like the prudential component, the constitutional component of standing doctrine incorporates concepts concededly not susceptible of precise definition. The injury alleged must be, for example, “` distinct and palpable,’” Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 100 (1979) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, supra, at 501), and not “abstract” or “conjectural” or “hypothetical,” Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 101 -102 (1983); O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 494 (1974). The injury must be “fairly” traceable to the challenged action, and relief from the injury must be “likely” to follow from a favorable decision. See Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S., at 38 , 41. These terms cannot be defined so as to make application of the constitutional standing requirement a mechanical exercise.

Furthermore, [it] is equally true that before one is entitled to a remedy against an alleged wrongdoer, there must be some duty owing from the wrongdoer towards the injured person.” State Compensation Fund v. Superior Court, 15 Ariz App 597,598,490 P.2d 426 (1972)
—

That means to have a “cause of action” the RIAA will need to prove there is a real loss. Not “abstract” or “conjectural” or “hypothetical,”. Remember the burden of proof is on them.

So we can start hitting it with a sort of DoS attack on there phone lines.

While one could reasonable assume that such a file might be owned, there is no ownership stamp to say that file is one that is an infringement possibility.

The only way to tell it is truely named is to use the file after it is recieved. Up to that point the file you downloaded could be anything from a recipe to a fake file with nothing in or on it.

Would you pay for a fake file with a name of a owned song? If it is was fake you wouldn’t truely have a owned song would you? Only a name.

This stinks to high heaven of intimidation, fear mongering, bullying, economic terrorism, and even the possibility of using illegally obtained information. I suspect it is one reason that the RIAA doesn’t want these cases to go to court, nor to reveal how they know what they claim to know.

To be called theft, someone would have to remove the item from where it was placed, leaving a missing item.

To be called copyright infringement, someone else must be shown to have purchased a copy of the item.

If file sharing is a crime, then in no way does a screenshot imply that the file was shared. It must be shown that someone else acquired an actual copy of a said item.

Contrast this with Harvard and MIT who have basically told the RIAA to go pound sand, adding “by the way, our endowments are much larger than the assets of your patrons and at Harvard, we have lots of lawyers and at MIT we have lots of very smart techno-wizes who could probably suck all of your e-mail out of your server and have it posted on 40 different websites within the hour.”

What?