p2pnet Special:- The RIAA, MPAA, IFPI, BPI, BSA and all the other entertainment and software cartel ‘trade’ organizations drone on and on like dripping taps, ceaselessly spouting their tired messages that file sharing is ruining their multi-billion dollar businesses and that they’re very reluctantly being forced to sue their customers into buying ‘product’.

They own the mainstream print and electronic media and consequently, their messages, and the messages of their fellow corporations, bolstered by media-carried PR pieces repeated by the gullible, appear everywhere as though they emenate from reliable sources.

And most people have been meticulously trained to believe that if it’s in the papers or on the air, it must be for real.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has since day one been claiming its bizarre sue ‘em all marketing campaign, which has so far notched up around 14,000 victims, is making a significant difference, deterring file sharers.

GartnerG2 analyst Michael McGuire says Hollywood is getting the message that fighting new technology may not necessarily be the best answer, according to USA Today, which also has him stating that since the record labels began suing song-swappers in 2003, use of file-sharing programs has skyrocketed.

We were given the statistics on the left by p2p research company Big Champagne. They show the average number of people simultaneously logged onto the p2p networks around the world at any given time between August, 2003, and August, 2005.

In 2003 in the US, the focus of the disingenuous RIAA hype, 2,630,960 people were logged on at any moment, in 2004 the figure was 4,549,801, and in August 2005, it was 6,871,308.

Both sets of figures clearly demonstrate that file sharing has trebled and that the Big Four record label cartel’s contention that by suing its customers, it’s dealing with that it perceives to be a file sharing problem, is pure hog-wash.

Meanwhile, the Big Four record labels (EMI, Universal, Sony BMG and Warner) and the Big Seven movie studios (Walt Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios LLLP; and Warner Bros) use every trick in the book to make sure the real message, that they’re conning people blind, doesn’t show up.

This is brainwashing and under it, anything goes.

Crime Scene
We had an angry email from a p2pnet reader in Texas who’d seen a piece in the San Jose Mercury News on September 20 that made her blood boil.

“Ostensibly written by a local high school student, it was the only item on a full page usually given over to teen topics and (again - ostensibly) written by and for teens,” said our reader. “The article floated on top of a highly professional graphic created by two staff artists. The graphic was a stylized ‘Crime Scene’, replete with yellow tape warning not to cross, etc.”

By Justin DeRosa, the article was provocatively headlined, DOWNLOAD DANGERS: IT’S EASY, INSTANT, ALMOST ADDICTIVE, BUT FILE-SHARING CAN COST YOU PLENTY. It was routinely taken offline soon after its appearance.

Among other things, in an observation that would have done credit to an RIAA scribe, “Over the years, the RIAA has sued thousands of people for illegal file-sharing,” says DeRosa. “Almost all the defendants in these cases have settled out of court for thousands of dollars. Even if the file-sharer were to go to trial and win, he or she would still have to pay lawyers� fees. Thus, simply being targeted could mean losing thousands of dollars.”

Actually, relatively few of the defendants have ’settled’ and there’s now a growing movement for victims to refuse to cave in. Ask Patricia Santangelo, Dawnell Leadbetter or Tanya Andersen, three American mothers who are defying the cartel.

And on the “still have to pay lawyers’ fees,” a case now starting to draw attention concerns Michigan mother Candy Chan and her 13-year-old daughter, Britanny.

The RIAA claimed Mrs Chan was indirectly liable as a copyright infringer because she’d given Britanny a computer.

“After taking Ms Chan’s deposition, the RIAA moved to add the daughter,” her lawyer, John Hermann, told p2pnet. “I objected, arguing that the daughter was a minor and that they had to appoint a guardian ad litem before for the child before they could proceed.

“In the meantime, I threatened filing a motion for summary judgment on behalf of Ms Chan”.

That frightened off the RIAA legal hit men and the complaint against her was dropped. Go here for chapter-and-verse.

Handout from the RIAA
Back to the p2pnet reader who’d been angered by the Mercury News story, “At first glance, it appears to be the effort of one of the teenage reporters cautioning his fellow teens against the ‘Dangers of Downloading Digital Music Files’. Closer scrutiny, however, suggests that it is little more than a press release handout from the RIAA, recycled by the teenage reporter to make it look as though he had taken the initiative to research the subject matter, then had interviewed fellow teenagers for their input, and had crafted a laudable news item, which then stood alone on its merits.

“If, in fact, a high school student is the authentic author of this item, he is to be highly commended for his expertise at grammar, punctuation, syntax, and vocabulary, because there is no hint of error in any of those fields, which cause such great trouble for most teenagers. There are no split infinitives, no dangling prepositions, no misuse of gerunds, no incomplete sentences, and no misplaced adverbial phrases. He permits no redundancy, he allows no disagreements between subjects and predicates nor any disparity between dependent and independent clauses, and he is economical with word usage.

“What�s more, he was carefully selective in choosing such intelligent and articulate teens for interview. The erstwhile Rheanna Piazza has an electronic calculator for a mind and is quick to let us know that ‘If you downloaded one whole CD, it wouldn’t be worth $250,000. You would have to send this CD to 16,666 people, keeping in mind that the average CD is $15.’

“In fact, the only faults one can find serve as the basis for the allegation that this is no unbiased, objective, well-researched article by a journalist in training. One discovers a lack of reference or substantiation for matters stated unequivocally as fact. Where DID he get his ‘facts’? How is it that he can get away with publishing the names of three teenagers who freely admit to the illegal downloading of music files? He makes reference to the lawsuits which have been filed against young and old alike, and while more than 14,000 suits have already been filed, there appears to be no sign of a let-up. The reporter would have no justification for disclosing the identities of his informants.

“A prima fascia case can be made for substantiating that this article is a thinly disguised effort on the part of the entertainment cartels to have the mainscream press champion their cause, while making it appear to be an unbiased and objective presentation of the ‘facts’. It is an obvious extension of the cartels� media blitz to justify their unjustifiable and obnoxious crusade to squeeze every possible penny out of their consumer base.”

‘Misleading and poor journalism’
At the end of the piece, DeRosa makes a series of statements headed The Lowdown on What’s Legal.

File-sharing is a broad term used to define the electronic transfer of information from one user to another. Online programs such as LimeWire and Kazaa enable users to transfer files free of charge to other users (known as peer-to-peer, or P2P, transfers). Depending on what you transfer, this procedure could be against the law. Legal download services, such as iTunes and iMesh, charge a fee. Here’s a summary of what’s legal and not, according to the Music United Coalition, a music-industry group:

WHAT IS ABSOLUTELY ILLEGAL

Uploading copyrighted files (such as music MP3s) over an instant Messenger or a P2P file-sharing network
Downloading copyrighted materials you don’t own with peer-to-peer Software.
Burning CDs of copyrighted material and distributing them, even for Free.
Hosting a copyrighted file for download on a personal Web site.

WHAT’S PROBABLY OK DEPENDING ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES

Burning personal backup CDs or making cassettes of albums you own to preserve the original copy.
Importing music from CDs you own onto your hard drive for personal use.
Putting legal music copies on a portable music player such as an iPod or a mini-disc player.

WHAT IS COMPLETELY LEGAL

Purchasing MP3s from licensed online stores such as iTunes or subscribing to a legal service such as Napster or Rhapsody.
Downloading royalty-free or non-copyrighted music and other files.

The Music United Coalition DeRosa cites as an authority is in fact yet another cartel propaganda organization.

p2pnet asked the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Jason Schultz what he thought about DeRosa’s pronouncements.

“The simplest thing to say is that this person is not a lawyer and appears to have no legal training,” said Schultz. “Nor has he identified any source for his information.

“Thus, believing his take on the law would be like trusting him to diagnose whether or not we have cancer or heart problems without a medical degree.

“I’m sure Mr DeRosa is well-meaning, but I think if he wants to contribute to the conversation about file sharing, he should report on what he and other students are doing factually and not opine on the state of the law.

“To do otherwise is misleading and poor journalism.”

Helen and Dave vs McDonalds
So what? - you ask. Keeping on about this isn’t going to make any difference to the music, movie or software industries. They’re too rich, too powerful and they own too many politicians.

That used to be the case, but not any more. The Net makes all the difference. The mainsceam media are no longer the sole sources of information.

OK, you say. But I’m only one person.

Tell that to Helen Steel and Dave Morris, two very ordinary Londoners who’d handed out pamphlets which included, “a graphic that superimposed the words ‘McDollars,’ ‘McGreedy’ ‘McCancer,’ and ‘McMurder’ over the McDonald’s golden arches logo,” says a Media Libel post.

“The pamphlet broadly attacked the corporation, accusing it of exploiting children, promoting unhealthy diets as well as causing environmental damage and engaging in ill treatment of animals. Steel and Morris, along with three other people, were served with Writs in 1990.

“The others decided to settle, and not to seek a trial. Steel and Morris, however, went to trial and made a counter-claim against McDonald’s for indirectly accusing them of libel in a pamphlet published by the corporation the night before the trial began.”

Steel and Morris had no legal aid, so they represented themselves. And they won in a marathon case that ended only this year.

Individuals can’t do anything?

Stay tuned.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win

- Mohandas Gandhi

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 27th, 2005 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 15122 times