RIAA sues 750 more customers
p2p news / p2pnet: “These people who download music, trade music and share it, are people who love music. I think the labels have forgotten that. They keep pushing people away.”
This doesn’t come from someone who shares music through the p2p networks. Rather, it’s from Terry McBride who runs one of North America’s largest record labels and production companies.
He’s also picking up the tab for a Texas family that’s being sued by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) which has just announced it’s fired another 750 subpoenas at its owners’ customers, bringing the total to more than 18,000.
Owned by Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI, the RIAA is one of the numerous ‘trade’ organizations which are victimizing men, women and childen around the world in a hopeless sue ‘em all campaign purpose-designed to terrorize them into buying more ‘product’.
The number of people using the networks continues to rise.
Meanwhile, RIAA president Cary ‘Scary’ Sherman has come up with a new phrase he hopes will titillate the increasingly jaded mainstream media.
‘Songlifting’.
Under attack this time around are corporate music industry consumers in: Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California; Fort Lauderdale, Fort Pierce, Miami, and Pensacola, Florida; Atlanta and Newnan, Georgia; Council Bluffs, Des Moines, and Rock Island, Iowa; Evansville, Indianapolis, and Terre Haute, Indiana; Boston and Worchester, Massachusetts; Baltimore and Greenbelt, Maryland; Ann Arbor, Bay City, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Marquette, Michigan; Brooklyn, Central Islip, New York, and White Plains, New York; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Columbia, Florence, Greenville, and Spartanburg, South Carolina; Abilene, Corpus Christi, Fort Worth, Galveston, Houston, Midland, San Angelo, San Antonio, and Waco, Texas; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
picking up the tab – Suing music fans is crazy, January 31, 2006
February 2nd, 2006 at 10:12 pm
What would happen if people started swapping their cable modems amongst themselves. You know every cable modem has a unique MAC address that links it to a specific IP address. All what RIAA can see are IP adresses, but if people swap their modems, it would mean they’d have a different IP address every time they get a new modem. It would be hell trying to identify who was who and did what. You wouldn’t have to let anybody know you swapped modems with somebody. Now, this theory may have a flaw, if you know it share it.
February 2nd, 2006 at 11:02 pm
yes but isn’t your acces to your ISP permited by your Mac address ie. they activiate it by the mac address. So it would still be attributed to you, no matter what someone else did with it.
…. but if you don’t have that modem in your possesion when the **IA come a knockin …. I see were your going here
February 2nd, 2006 at 11:02 pm
Good news. The RIAA enemy camp (the customers) continues to grow by leaps while the enemy buys less and less.
February 2nd, 2006 at 11:16 pm
“…. but if you don’t have that modem in your possesion when the **IA come a knockin …. I see were your going here”
Yes, that’s what I had in mind.
February 3rd, 2006 at 1:24 am
Comcast has a server where its customers can activate their own MACs unfortunately I seem to have lost it. Originally one of their call reps gave it to me over the phone but now when I call they claim such a thing has never existed!
February 3rd, 2006 at 1:49 am
i think the senators ought write a new law for the country. they should ban sueing in this country. and put a block shield on riaa. sueing music fans is absurd. especially ones that actually pay for their albums. what riaa are asking for is for the riaa and recording artists to go bankrupt. that is what they asking for. stop this foolishness now! before its too late………
February 3rd, 2006 at 2:39 am
Gee the JEWS who thought this up are JUST LIKE the ones at Directv.
Sue the customer=have no customers.
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:30 am
No need to get all racist.
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:40 am
It’s Worcester, Massachusetts, not Worchester. It’s pronounced Wuh-ster, unless you were born and raised there, in which case it’s “Wiss-tah.” This is not to be confused with Wooster, Ohio which is pronounced “Woo-ster” no matter where you were born.
Extra Credit Question: There is a town 15 miles west of Worcester MA, known as Leicester. What is the correct pronounciation of the name of this town?
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:57 am
Isn’t it pronounced as “Lester”
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:08 am
Well, all I can say is they must have customers to burn and they don’t need them to stay in business. They’ve already suceeded in driving a bunch of customers away. There isn’t any sense or reason to it.
Their like bulldogs, once they got their teeth into they don’t let go unless it is to get a deeper bite. Why would anyone buy their products that are more hassles than they are worth to use?
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:17 am
where do they come from?
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:20 am
There must be more money in suing than marketings and sales.
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:21 am
We 3 must be close.
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:49 am
I dunno about the us setup but in oz most isp’s use dhcp to dynamically assign ip addresses to their customers. So i’d just say “prove that ip was assigned to my pc”. Also there are apparently tools out there that let you change the mac address of your nic.
I’ve never looked for them but the fact they exist and may work throws the whole “ip + mac address = you” equation totally out the window as they cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was you.
But lets face it, the cartels never let the truth get in the way of a lawsuit.
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:17 pm
I think their goal is to get ~$7000/consumer….or non consumer in the case of the wrongly accused. Then they don’t need those pesky artists…opps ment product suppliers
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:20 pm
I think most isp use the mac address to identify you as the person who paid for the account…..therefore changing your mac address might cause you to loose your connection or for someone else to be charged for your usage.
…..someone who knows more feel free to correct me.
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:33 pm
a utility called SMAC can spoof MAC addresses.
http://www.klcconsulting.net/smac/
I used this to increase my ping when I was having bandwidth issues during ISP upgrading processes at the recommendation of a post in the comcast help forums.
THis was in 2003 or ‘04, and the post is long since been removed, but I’m sure there are tutorials out there on its use.
As I recall (don’t do this without checking into it first!) all you need to do is change one digit in the last field, reboot your modem and the MAC addy is spoofed…check before doing this!
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:41 pm
a utility called SMAC can spoof MAC addresses.
http://www.klcconsulting.net/smac/
I used this to increase my ping when I was having bandwidth issues during ISP upgrading processes at the recommendation of a post in the comcast help forums.
THis was in 2003 or ‘04, and the post is long since been removed, but I’m sure there are tutorials out there on its use.
As I recall (don’t do this without checking into it first!) all you need to do is change one digit in the last field, reboot your modem and the MAC addy is spoofed…check before doing this!
anonymous coward has spoken…
February 3rd, 2006 at 5:31 pm
I found myself buying music again but from Nettwerk Productions because of their positive role in this debacle.
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:01 pm
The punishment should fit the crime, and taking away a child’s college fund for the “crime” of copying a song that they might not even have bought anyways is tantamount to executing a man for stealing a magazine. Not to mention the fact that the recording industry has destroyed any “right” to claim they are a victim by continually breaking the law with payola, overzealous DRM and the bribing of corrupt politicians to get copyright continually extended. How can you honestly expect the customer to honor his part of the deal when everyday the other side finds new ways of screwing him over, both legal and illegal?
February 3rd, 2006 at 9:39 pm
>>How can you honestly expect the customer to honor his part of the >>deal when everyday the other side finds new ways of screwing him >>over, both legal and illegal?
You can’t! Write your Senators just once.
June 30th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
It’s pronounced Lester – and is actually right next to Worcester, not 15 miles away.