THE RIAA ARE THE COWARDS.
THEY DON’T HAVE THE NERVE TO EJECT THE NON-TALENTED.

~Lesley

First there was a trend of recording artists becoming thugs.
Lo and Behold, now the Music Industry Itself has “gone thuggy”.

HELLO WORLD!
My name is Lesley Jane.
I am the OWNER of Two Free Websites which add up to over 500
songs, by Myself, American Lesley Jane, and by My Band, BEATLESEX,
AND YOU ALL ARE MORE THAN WELCOME TO
HELP YOURSELVES TO just a whole lot of GREAT MUSIC,
For FREE, Know whut I mean, Vern?

…and the RIAA cannot do a gosh darn thing about it.
N’yeah, N’yeah–N’yeah N’yeah N’yeah.
Became I AM The Proprieter. I Own This. I Make The Call.
My Music Is Free, and the RIAA really does suck a big weenie,
look around you, it’s happening everywhare.

The Truth is, if you make a good record, even if it is free, people
will love you enough to buy your record, because you’re cool,
and they wanna own the actual CD. Making it Free To Download
does not change that, just as long as your music don’t suck!

This is the Real Problem. A complete sell-out of Quality. The Industry decided to put out crap, and people have better sense than to
buy too much of it. It’s your own damn fault RIAA.

And now you wanna shake folks down like the no-talent bunch
of noisemakers y’all are puttin out now? Forgit it. You’re in
for the fight of your lives RIAA.
WE WILL NOT GO SOFTLY INTO THAT pile of crap you expect
people to pay for. I’ll Tell You What. Music is the Language of God. Guess y’all kinda forgot that one, huh?
‘Cause most of that stuff y’all are puttin out, it ain’t music,
and it shouldn’t be sold in the first place. Fire everyone in your
A&R departments, and start over, while you can.
The Industry Is In The Hands Of The People Now.
We Put The Music First, Since You’ve Forgotten How.
Hope The Whole World DOWNLOADS Me.
Sue The Ones That Don’t Know Me.
‘Cause The RIAA Bites The Big Baloney.
And The RIAA Rides The Bony Pony.
Weenie! Weenie! Weenie!

MOM SANTANGELO, You Are An Inspiration
To Us ALL.

God Bless,
Much Love,
~American Lesley Jane
United States Government Registered Superhero

http://www.soundclick.com/americanlesleyjane
http://www.soundclick.com/beatlesex

God Bless America. Land Of The Brave. Home Of The Free.
_____________________________________________________

Coda.

One could say that the blame lies with the industry, for not doing anything to protect their copy-righted material from being copied. IF i have a car and i leave the keys in the car with the window rolled down, my insurer would say i didnt do enough to protect myself. They would not say i was a victim and replace my car. The record companys shoudl be responsible to providing some degree of copy right protection on there music. Instead of of creating such material in an open fomat that can so easily be copied.

As the song ten thousand fists would say, 10 000 fists in the end and those big 4 is going to know the meaning of that very soon

Personally: I will never buy a Sony product of any type again. The rootkit wiped me out. I will never trust them again. I WILL NOT FORGET!

They just aren’t charged or investigated because they own politicians (more of a universal problem with the United States).

I don’t respect big media’s copyrights because I don’t feel they deserve it. If I’m breaking a “law” (and I use that term loosley), then so be it. I do it rarely anyway, since most big media content is mind rot bullshit.

Come and get me. I even help people commit “copyright infringement” (by giving them the pirated media so they don’t have to do it themselves; mainly because they would probably end up an RIAA/MPAA/etc victim if they did due to ignorance).

I have purchased a CD or two in my lifetime; even a DVD. Those are rare exceptions though. It has to be something worth while.

When it reaches the point that a party can close its doors while formulating a bill without admittance by the opposing party then you know there is a stink coming from behind closed doors. Worse, when it comes time to vote on it, the other politicans aren’t given much time to familarize themselves with the contents and implications when there are 15-30 possible proposed bills, each one 700 pages or larger, and they are only given a yes or no vote without any sort of debate to expose just what the bill contains. These sort of back room manovuers are happeing all the time and the present adminstration really stinks of these sort of acts. Worse it isn’t about what is best for the country, it is about party politics and who can swing the bigger stick.

We need in the worse way term limits where a lifetime politican doesn’t exist and can’t form the payolla access to laws from lobby groups. We need limiting access of those lobby groups that doesn’t over ride the needs of the people.

Further, much of the laws that are constructed aren’t done from any other method than looking at whatever an industry has in place and deciding those are best practices and should be law. It’s sort of like putting the fox to guard the hen house, it’s hardly effective in bringing about what is good for the people. Instead it results in what is good for the industry, often at the expense of the people.

One has only to look at IP and copyright to see that this is exactly what has happened. The cartels are winning themselves no friends and at some point this isn’t going to wash. I am still waiting for these backed up cases to start appearing before courts whose time is already a log jam from case overload. Many judges are seeing just what is going on but can not make any sort of rule without it appearing before them.

It also looks as if the RIAA feels that infringement is a second income. The cartels are steadily reducing their output of new artists. They’ve also lost ground on shelf space in the market place by dealing with the chain stores. It equates to not as much money coming down the pipes as the customer can’t see what all is out there from what is on the shelf in the store, and certainly you can’t increase the sales of goods you never put out. To feed the money monster, it appears that infringement cases are the next income maker. As long as potential victims roll over and pay up that is. As soon as it looks like they are going to start standing up in mass, the RIAA will have to go back to the drawing board. There aren’t very many individuals that are going to be able to meet their demands for infringements even if ruled in favor of. So in the long run they have painted themselves in a corner. One that isn’t going to pay off. One doesn’t increase business by making enemies of ones customers and all but the RIAA and cartels seem to know this. The cartels carry the attitude that if they put it out on the market it should be good for a gold mine, no matter what it is. Their attitude is that they don’t have to earn money, that the customer should be beating down the doors to pay for crap. Only reason that isn’t going on is pirates according to their viewpoint.

Over and over I see folks saying, “No more purchases for me”, the boycotts on. Every one of those infringement case victims have friends and you can bet those are being influanced to do the same. This is an ever increasing pool of non customers and it will continue to grow larger. As an end result it is a stance that the cartels can not maintain over the long haul.

One answer. The laws are pushed by the likes of lobbysts Jack Abramoff, who are connected to the parties and make hundreds of millions off the connections, in plain sight. Legislators are mere reps of the lobby and the political mob. They and their aids have no need to read or understand the laws that are passed.

That is why the laws seem to have been written by a commitee of jackasses.

Some suggestions for the solution:

a. Limit legislators to one term.
b. Prohibit non citizen, corporate lobbies.
c. Prohibit donations to a specific candidate from persons that cannot vote for the candiate.
d. Prohibit the existense if proffesional, full time, salary paid legislators.
e. Eliminate one of the parts of congress, the Senate.

Here in Puerto Rico we had a terrible problem with legislators who did nothing for the people, as learned at Washington. We demanded a referendum to halve the legislature, over the legislatures’s almost unanimous objection. Over 80 percent of the voters went along with the referendum’s proposal. In essence, we kicked 1/2 of the legislature in the ass, out, effective 2008 America should learn from us. The people need to take control from the useless (for the people) parties.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

Just watching his smug face talk makes my stomach upset. Patti, I really hope you win the case!

_-Jile-_

http://www.fsf.org/
http://creativecommons.org/
http://sourceforge.net/

Just my 10 cents.
_-Jile-_

What I don’t get is how can the RIAA sue someone for $5000 or even just $1000 for a SINGLE song when a kid could walk into a store and steal a CD with 10+ songs, a booklet, the actual CD, and the CD case but only get a find for no more than $300??? Something obviously is wrong here. The RIAA is abusing a law that is giving them an insane amount of leverage against the consumers.

WE NEED TO WRITE CONGRESS OR SOMETHING AND CHANGE THESE LAWS ON FINE AMOUNTS TO BE REASONABLE SO RIAA STOPS GOING AFTER EVERYONE WHO MAKES A MISTAKE.

We need to form up as a large group to take on these greedy and powerful RIAA assaulters that are ruining peoples lively hoods by suing for insane amounts of money!

Thats the kind of stupid power we’ve given our Gov’t (the kind of power our President ‘cant live without’)…

Disagree? Look into it.

The reality is though that even if 1,000,000 people download a song, it does not equal 1,000,000 lost sales - in MANY cases it sells to people that would otherwise NEVER have bought their music… Sure, a VERY small percent of people who were actually going to be their customers are now going to use p2p souly and never make a purchase but really, even if they never buy a cd - they will get posters, dvd’s, or go to concerts.. Freely distributed mp3’s are the best source of advertising they have ever seen - and has ‘increased’ their sales in the last few years (especially on lesser known artisits) and I’ll conceed that on uber-paid artists their pay is prolly going to go down (oh darn) as they have to SHARE the limelite with backyard bands that are now being noticed - but who bloody cares? Senator Hatch?

The artists simply do not deserve to be multi-millionaires for a few damn songs - at most, they deserve a working man’s wages, give them $15/hr x 2080/hrs …. thats about all their ‘work’ is worth imho.. Not, work 3 months on 12 crappy and 2 good songs and DEMAND millions.. sorry but HELL NO… even if they worked 24hrs a day for those 3 months and received 1 million for it that would be nearly $500/hr.. Sorry, but no.. Let the artists ’starve’ and only get 15/hr.. ((now ask me what I think the studio’s should be getting lol.. they should be getting the drippings from the artists, not the other way around))..

It’s time for the RIAA/MPAA type companies to go away - if every artist put 100% of their music on p2p - without drm but under the creative commons protection - they would still have people flocking to their concerts and would LIKELY make more money that way than using the damn RIAA leeches.. that get most of the artist’s money anyway.. If they want to bloody complain, they should be complaining about the moronic deals they have and not with their loyal fans wanting to remain that… fans..

Now lets look at a few things though.. I own a negative scanner - once I bought it I have not developed a single picture, I only get “negative only” service on my film… the company (primefilm) that made my negative scanner should be sued for all the losses Walgreen’s is having because I no longer pay $6/roll for prints… But, that will never happen.

What about that copymachine - If I see an article in the news paper I will copy it and distribute it to ppl I think would like to read it - its common practice and accepted in the world as ‘normal’ to do that.. even though I’ve copied an entire article and shared it without charge.. Music is the same pot calling the kettle black when we do the same with music.. and honestly the argument isn’t weither I share music with 1 person or 1,000,000 - because if its illegal to share it with 1, then it’s illegal to share with 1,000,000.. if its legal to share with 1 then its legal to share with 1,000,000. Thats the bottom line - because you cant validate sharing of any kind and still have an enforcable layer to work with.

Should I be arrested for recording a tv show and then giving copies of the vhs tape out to my friends - and if they choose to copy that or even give that copy itself out to their friends - increasing the distribution range - what then, should all vcr’s and sharing of tapes be illegal too?

The lines that are being drawn are unenforcable on a global scale and are unrealistic - they will eventually give people such heart burn that even if people were interested in trying and buying music they wont bother because the damn drm on them is going to eat their cd player or whatever new virus sony plants on their cd..

I’m just damn tired of the argument - sharing has always been around, from the PERFECT COPIES of reel to reel that were around in the 60’s - that the military had no problem with their soldiers listening to during the war - to the copies of tapes between friends in the 80’s to the mp3’s of today - its not going away and it’s going to be the primary format of distribution for music globally / in fact, no, it ALREADY IS the primary format for distribution.. If artists want to be rich - they better be able to have concerts.. the lazy ones that dont want to perform (even the ones I like, such as all electronic mixing trance mixers) are going to have to accept there’s no money in the future of non-performing musical arts.

Just my 10 cents and a bit extra…. sorry for the extended rant but ‘fair use’, or the lame lack therein gets me going..
_-Jile-_

I thought I had already apologized for this. So here it goes again. I am sorry I created such a great inconvenience to you, whoever you are. The apology goes, even if you work for or are paid by RIAA.

Ok, now to the real stuff. You say that Sherman makes the case that /unauthorized/ music downloading is illegal.

“Secondly, Sherman makes the case that /unauthorized/ music downloading is illegal.”

Today I wrote this as a reaction to a posting by Julian Bond on the story “How the RIAA gets its victims” (surely you disagree with the title). I will repeat my views here:

How reliable is an Internet authorization is something that will always be imposible (with current technology, software and laws) to establish. Anyone can say “it is ok to download the songs and I am the owner of both the recording and the song”. We all know that if that is not on a signed document by a properly identified individual it is meaningless. Here in my juridiction such an concession of rights (I believe) has to be on a notarized public document, based on a rule written two hundred years before electronic documents came into existence.

Additionally anyone, not the copright owner, can edit an mp3 tag and state in it that the song is in the public domain or that copying is allowed by the owner when in fact he ownership may not exists or the owner is only a fractional owner who shares ownership with others who may oppose the granting of free copying righs (we are now in one of many very ambiguous - and never read by the legislators - parts of the copyright law, that allows each claimant on a copyright to independently authorize the use of the copyrighted matter).

Addituinally anyone edit a DVD and replace the no copy warnings with an “You may copy this DVD to your friends” message.

So can anyone take a CD or a DVD or a song and register it under a false owner name as a copyright owner and then authorrize copying. As a matter of fact 80 songs belonging to my family suffered this fate and the courts said that it was not infringement and took no action against the obvious infringers. A sure invitation to other to do the same thing.

Surely the entire copyright copying rights are nothing but a cloud of smoke left in the wake of technology. Congress and judges have no ideas what has hapenned or what hit them.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

No such thing has ever been established in a court of law:

1. Under the pre 1978 US copyright law, most copyrighted material passed into the public domain because the copyright owner did not bother to file for a copyright renewal period. Then you either renewed or the copyrighted work went into public domain. This alone makes your statement incorrect.

2. Also under the pre 1978 law, many works were renewed and the renewal period expired, at which time the copyrighted work passed into the public domain.

BTW: You would be amazed how many works that went into the public domain or were in it all along and are still being claimed as belonging to someone for the purpose of unlawful exploitation. Example: All or almost all the national anthems of Latin American are licensed to radio stations for a fee by BMI and unscrupulous publishers that claim to own the anthems. Also, the Star Spangled Banner has hundreds of ownership claimants (Check the ASCAP web site) but the song is in the public domain.

3. Duplicating material that has a current copyright owners is legal if the owner authorizes it or simply allows it or invites the copying. I do not specifically authorize the copying of the songs in my web site, We invite listening, but if you are to listen the songs they are first duplicated to your hard disk without you even realizing it. Since I do not object to that copying byproduct and I am the owner, it is then lawful by default.

4. Then there is the no mans land, where copying is neither lawful nor unlawful or is simultaneously lawful and unlawful because the laws of several countries (or the more important jurisprudence) do not cover every situation or contradict each other. A clear contradiction is that a work has several copyright holders and in one country (USA) each owner may authorize the copying but in another (Europe) the authorization of all owners is mandatory, an important issue on the Internet, a multi country system. The point: No mortal may be able to determine if an authorization received was valid or not and thus cannot know if the copying was legal or not.

5. Then there is “fair use” copying. Fair use in not defined anywhere in such a manner that a person can decide if what he/she wants to copy is sure fair use. Only a court can determine if a prior copying was fair use, but, pardon the redundancy, only after the copying occurred. This after the fact method of determining if fair use occurred, make the proposition of fair use a useless one. Recently the director of the library at a major university said in an interview he could never understand what fair use. The meaning is that it is not clear if a researcher copies 5 pages of a book which is no longer published but it is not in the public domain, may face a $150,000 lawsuit from a RIAA like publisher and the only option for the professor is to pray that the judge sides with him/her, that it was fair use. But regardless that a cour decides there was infringement, it is never theft, since nothing physical was taken from the owner.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

Basically, Titles 17 & 18 of the United States Code (Copyright Law) permit people who are confronted with copyright violations to make something like a “no contest” plea for a significantly reduced fine.

It works like this: If you move to formal copyright violation litigation, you could be fined $150,000 to $250,000 per copyright violated. However, if you plead using the “no contest” style process, your fines will only range between $750-$30,000 per copyright violated.

So, here’s the scam: What’s it called if I know that I can accuse you of some dastardly deed, or threaten you with something, and that you will immediately pay me whatever it takes to avoid making this “something” public? (Yes, I know the word, but you’ll have to fill in the blank yourself.)

Essentially, this precise issue is one of the smoke and mirrors tactics of the anti-piracy industry. The enforcement players are very well aware that all they have to do is threaten a person or a company and someone, somewhere, will write a check in whatever amount the enforcement player demands. Free money–no wonder there are around 100 global copyright enforcement players.

As Sherman stated in this interview, the RIAA was very disappointed that she didn’t simply pay up and avoid the formal confrontation. He should be disappointed–now he’ll actually have to work to prove she is guilty.

It all becomes much more complex than this but I won’t bore you with details.

We cannot win any arguments against the *AA unless we raise our logical and legal arguments to a new high, not by posting in all caps and ignoring half of the opponent’s argument.

I used to work in the radio industry and I am very much aware of the criminal behaviors of the music industry (payola).

I have no sympathy for them.