p2pnet - rss feed: Big Music sues 2,000 customers
p2p news / p2pnet: Organized Music cartel members Warner Music (USA), Sony BMG (Japan, Germany), Vivendi Universal (France) and Emi (Britain) have gone to the mattresses in their desperate efforts haul alienated customers and former customers, driven to the p2p networks and independent music download sites by exorbitant corporate download prices, poor quality product and ongoing intimidation tactics, back into the fold.
The multi-billion-dollar Big Four own numerous ‘trade’ associations such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association), ARIA (Australian RIAA (Recording Industry Association), BPI (British Phonographic Industry), IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), and so on, ad nauseum.
Their seriously discredited RIAA is already persecuting some 18,000 of the estimated 61 million US file sharers, and now the offshore IFPI says it’s going to try to sue 2,000 men, women and children in Portugal, “where the legal market has been devastated by the impact of illegal file-sharing,” it states.
The Big Four are also using threats against children to try blackmail European parents into compliance.
One of the RIAA’s first targets was an American child, 12-year-old Brianna LaHara. When she found out she was a Big Music victim, “I got really scared,” she said in 2003. “My stomach is all turning.” Since then, others, including school-girl Britanny Chan, have been targeted by the RIAA, with the children of Patti Santangelo, the first US victim to stand up to the labels, lined up for special attention.
Now, “The latest actions come with a new warning to parents to check what their children are doing online as they could face financial penalties if their children access illegal material,” threatens the IFPI, whose owners are currently under state and federal investigation in the US on price-fixing charges, having already tacitly admitted their guilt in bribery scandals.
They’re also being sued under the RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization)Act, usually reserved for Organized Crime cases.
In the US, the Big Four have trotted out federal attorney general Alberto Gonzales for a school propaganda blitz.
And yet mainstream media reporters continue to parrot IFPI, and other Organized Music, statements as though they’re accurate and reliable.
FBI agent ‘dug through my trash’
“I thought that anything would be better than my early morning Spanish class, but I realized I was wrong on that day two years ago when a campus police officer pulled me out of class to inform me that an FBI agent was waiting for me at my dormitory room.”
The quote is the intro to a Los Angeles Times story in which a University of North Carolina at Charlotte student describes how he’s arrested by the FBI.
Later, “There wasn’t just one agent in my dorm room but a team,” he says. “One stood at the door while another wheeled my computer out on a cart. One wearing a rubber glove dug through my trash while another sorted through my closet.”
His alleged crime?
Sharing music online.
The material and student’s identity story was very obviously ’supplied’ by the RIAA, which frequently uses students as PR dupes.
Suing the same people
Meanwhile, “Today the IFPI announced a new wave of lawsuits (2000) in Europe,” posts Torrentfreak from Holland. He goes on:
But how new is this wave? It seems like they keep suing the same people over and over again. If you compare today’s press release with the one they put out last year you will see that in both cases they sued a ‘German judge’, a ‘British Councilor’ and a ‘French Chef’. What a coincidence!
Ok, I have to agree, it seems like the French chef got a promotion because last year he or she was just a cook.
Here are two fragments from both press releases.
April 12, 2005
Those who are paying the price of piracy include a German judge, a French cook and a British local councilor.
April 4, 2006
A wide variety of people are finding themselves on the receiving end of legal action and paying large financial penalties. They include a Finnish carpenter, a British postman, a Czech IT manager, a German judge, a French chef, a British local councillor and a retired German couple.
Sure, I know that these “lively” examples are just a propaganda tool that is used to make us feel vulnerable. But still, they could have been a little more creative.
Ok, I have to admit, the postman, carpenter and the retired couple are new, and very appealing. They replaced last years nurse, truck driver and car salesman. But I wonder why they sue the retired couple as “a couple”. How does that work? Did they share a single windows account or what?
Well, I think the bottom line is that the IFPI announced 2000 new lawsuits, so we all should be very scared. Everybody is vulnerable, and the next person that’s going to be sued could be YOU.
Of ‘devastation’ and ‘lost sales’
And as we posted in our story on the Gonzales scandal, “neither Hollywood nor the Big Four Organized Music cartel have ever come even close to demonstrating that a file shared equals a sale lost and in fact, as far as the labels are concerned, a report which has just hit the Net says unequivocally, ‘lawsuits against individual consumers, payola practices, and, most recently, restrictive use of digital rights management’ are the cause of their problems.”
We recently asked internationally acknowledged internet and copyright expert Dr Michael Geist, “Is file sharing really ‘devastating’ (to quote the CRIA claim) the music industry and its various elements ?
“I don’t believe so,” said Geist. “I’m sure it has some impact, but it’s hard to know precisely what that impact is as there’s some evidence that the impact is positive, not negative.
“Regardless, the decline in sales that the major labels have experienced in recent years is almost certainly about a host of issues that have little to do with P2P, including more consumer entertainment choices, pricing, changes in the retail distribution of music, the decline of radio, and the releases being brought to market.”
(Thanks to everyone in North America and elsewhere who took the trouble to email us about this)
Also See:
Britanny Chan - RIAA fails in Chan case, March 22, 2006
special attention - RIAA targets Santangelo’s kids, February 16, 2006
state and federal investigation - DoJ probes Big Music downloads, March 3, 2006
bribery scandals - 9 radio stations in bribery probe, February 9, 2005
usually reserved - RIAA p2p file share defeat, March 19, 2006
propaganda blitz - Alberto Gonzales’ school horror show, March 31, 2006
Los Angeles Times - Sinking a music pirate, April 3, 2006
Torrentfreak - More (of the same) Filesharing Lawsuits in Europe, April 4, 2006
‘devastating’ - p2pnet talks to Michael Geist, March 24, 2006
April 5th, 2006 at 4:12 am
Googling the name “MICKEY BORCHARDT” (The alleged name of the alleged student in the article above) on news.google.com turns exactly ONE and only ONE entry and it’s the op-ed piece in the LA TIMES.
This seems EXTREMELY suspicious. If someone was actually arrested by the FBI for CRIMINAL copyright infringment via p2p, I would have thought there’d be a press release bonanza from the RIAA.
If I were to venture a guess, I would surmise that this piece was professionally written and a PR firm “placed” it on the op-ed page of the LA Times. If so, shame on all involved.
April 5th, 2006 at 4:22 am
Searching the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s website (uncc.edu) using the search term ‘FBI’ does not turn up anything at involving p2p, or an arrest of a student for p2p or anything else. Using their ‘people finder’ to locate the alleged student, MICKEY BORCHARDT, returns no results. Of the disciplinary consequences imposed by the University cited by the alledged arrestee, expulsion was not among them.
What’s that I smell?
–TurboGeek
April 5th, 2006 at 11:53 am
a rat? a liar perhaps?
April 5th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
I’m thinkin’ he smells BULLSHITE.
April 7th, 2006 at 3:41 am
Derek Adam Borchardt.
Busted in Operation Fastlink …..
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/February/06_crm_103.html
Currently an English Major.
He was a member of Apocalypse Crew, a pre-release group.
He in no way is like the “average” P2P user.
It is clearly a coerced piece of propoganda.
April 8th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
To understand how insane this suing of customers by the copyright cartels the following statement by Russell McOrmond should be read. While Mr. McOrmond wrote it in the context of Canadian law, it really applies to the law of everywhere.
Wrote Russell McOrmond - p2pnet contributing editor:
“If copyright is to be respected in Canada by private citizens, it needs to be respectable (ie, understandable, and reasonably able to be obeyed), which the current act is not.
Simple questions like whether or not unauthorized downloading of music is an infringement causes great debate among lawyers. It’s unreasonable for the government to expect citizens to obey a law which even specialized lawyers don’t understand and can’t agree on.”
I add:
Of course the laws get more complicated (less understandable) when you mix in the international Internet anf the laws and legal systems of other countries (not all consistent, to say the least) and where copyrighted works are created and distributed (legally and illegally).
Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. It is a reason.
That the law is confusing is not an excuse. It is another reason.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
April 8th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
A British judges has just decided that the author od “The Da Vinci Code” did not infringe someone else’s rights.
The NY Time has this heading:
Idea for ‘Da Vinci Code’ Was Not Stolen, Judge Says
But ideas cannot be copyright protected. So the people of a major newspapapar are confused about copyrights or dowright misleading the people. Or maybe it is the judge that is confused.
The article says the judge stated that the suing party
“had failed in their effort to prove that Mr. Brown had stolen their “central theme” because they could not accurately state what that theme was.”
But the words “central theme” do not appear in any copyright law, including the American. The use of these ambiguous words is very unfortunate, as now any author must know the “central theme” of every work under copyright so as to make sure that they are not used (thus infringed).
Furthermore Mr. Brown, the author of “The DaVinci Code” is quoted as saying:
“Today’s verdict shows that this claim was utterly without merit,” he said. “I’m still astonished that these two authors chose to file their suit at all.”
Mr. Brown could have rightfully said that it was amazing that the lawyers who filed the lawsuit (and their author customer) were so confused about the copyright law (or so corrupt) that that they chose to file the lawsuit (which reminds me of RIAA).
To resume: Newspapers are confuse, lawyers are confused, authors are confused and judges are confused.
Insane confusion.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
April 8th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
And we expect the p2p kids to know
what is copyright infringenet is?
April 8th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Sounds suspicious, yes, but I checked the FBi website to find this:
http://washingtondc.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel06/wf022806usa.htm
April 8th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
And then you find that he was NOT a casual P2P user ( as he implies in his lol .. report ). He was a member of a Apocalypse, a well know pre-release group ( in his report he implies, but does not clearly say, the he was not involved in pre-release activity ).
The … report .. is designed to scare casual P2P users into believeing that what they are doing is a criminal matter.
It’s not, it’s a Civil matter.
This person got busted doing a lot more than casual P2P, and probably as part of his plea agreement has been forced to write a deliberately misleading propoganda paper with a gun to his head.
The got a tool under their thumb.
But, P2P is STILL not a Criminal matter.
Civil.
April 10th, 2006 at 1:39 am
It turns out that the publisher of all of the works in question is Random House (UK). Normally if an issue such as this arises within the ‘family’, they try to work it out internally to forego the bad PR. I suppose that the main reason this spilled out into open court is that there is potentially a great deal more money at stake should there be interest from the film industry, marchandising, licensing of T-shirt and bottle openers, etc.
If can can successfully assert a claim for copyright infringement based on a similar theme or concept, nothing new would likely ever get produced as accordig to Christopher Booker in “Why we write stories…” there are only seven basic plots in literature. I’m comfortably certain they have all been used at least once.
–TurboGeek
May 8th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
try searching just his last name and you’ll come up with a listing for derek a borchardt. mickey is a nickname.