p2p news / p2pnet: All it cares about is money. It wants all it can get. And it’ll do anything to get it, including terrorising the people who keep it fat and happy.

That reads like an teaser from a movie poster but in fact, it’s the Big Four Organized Music gang’s mission statement, OM being Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI.

Quality product? Fair and reasonable pricing? Customer satisfaction?

Huh?

Princeton student Delwin Olivan knows all about the Big Four’s mission. His friends are currently trying to sell enough t-shirts to raise $5,000 for Big Four extortion money.

Now, “The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 requires Internet service providers, if subpoenaed, to turn over names of customers associated with an Internet protocol address for copyright enforcement,” says the Minnesota Daily, the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota student newspaper. “But some doubt the efficacy of these measures.”

It continues, “On an April morning in 2004, a phone call awakened art history student Ben Bercher notifying him he might be sued for copyright violation and that he’d better find a lawyer. The caller, from the University’s Office of Information Technology, told Bercher the lawsuit and ultimatum letter could be picked up at its office. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 requires Internet service providers, if subpoenaed, to turn over names of customers associated with an Internet protocol address for copyright enforcement. But some doubt the efficacy of these measures.”

“Bercher headed from his room to the lobby of Centennial Hall where he picked up a copy of The Minnesota Daily story told of two unidentified students targeted by the Recording Industry Association of America for copyright infringement.”

The RIAA is the pseudo trade organization that does OM’s dirty work in the US. It was demanding $5,000 to $6,000, “and threatened continued legal action, Bercher said,” the Minnesota Daily states.

Bercher tried to negotiate, “because he felt the litigation would be too expensive” and “counter-offered a dollar a file – the going price on iTunes – for his 800 downloaded songs. But the negotiators wouldn’t take less than $3,000, and Bercher settled in cash.”

The process of “threatening lawsuits and demanding money has become streamlined, and most of the settlements are handled by a collection office outside Seattle,” the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Fred von Lohmann is quoted as saying. “It’s become very detached from any reflection of what the person may have done.”

In November the EFF evaluated the RIAA’s tactics in bringing lawsuits said the RIAA tactics weren’t working and, “We basically found that file-sharing is just as prevalent, if not more than, when the lawsuit campaign began and the money is just going back into suing the next 700 people,” von Lohman [sic] said.

In an e-mail to the Minnesota Daily, RIAA spokeswoman Amanda Hunter said, “These lawsuits have helped arrest the tremendous growth of illicit peer-to-peer use, and we will continue to aggressively pursue them.”

In fact, the lawsuits have done absolutely nothing and the practice of sharing files online continues to rise.

On average, in November, 2004, 5,445,275 people were simultaneously logged onto one or more of the p2p networks at any one time, says p2p research firm BigChampagne. By November this year, the number had risen to 6,530,408.

But as p2pnet says here, “the sue ‘em all campaign isn’t confined to America. Music lovers around the world are also being persecuted by Big Four enforcement organizations identical to the RIAA and which, like the RIAA, claim their terror tactics are having a marked effect.

However, this party line represents a complete distortion of reality. Globally, the number of people sharing at any given moment in November, 2003, was 4,392,816. By November, 2004, it had reached 7,452,184 and by this November, the figure was 9,168,812.

“The RIAA has targeted only users with shared folders who have been uploading files, not those who have only downloaded, von Lohman [sic] said,” states the story.

“Users can avoid being targeted by disabling the sharing features on their computers, he said.”

Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local political representatives. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance.

Also read:-
Big Four’s mission – RIAA blackmails Princeton student, December 10, 2005
Minnesota Daily – RIAA burns U students for downloading, December 12, 2005
collection office – Settlement Support Center, LLC, September 22, 2005
here – Patti Santangelo fights Goliath, December 11, 2005

This entry was posted on Monday, December 12th, 2005 at 7:30 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.

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