RIAA lawsuit insurance offer
p2p news / p2pnet: A company in Sweden is asking for $19 a year to insure you against being sued by the RIAA.
“I have no idea if these insurers can be trusted with $19/year, but it actually sounds like a pretty plausible business model,” says Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing.
“If you count up all the file-sharers on the net, and divide it by the all the fines and settlements ever paid to the RIAA, my guess is that it’s way less than $19/year, which suggests that you could make a buck (or Kronor) at this.”
I dunno, though. As p2pnet has observed elsewhere, with the entertainment cartels, hype springs eternal and that’s all the lawsuits are. Hype.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is supposed to be an American ‘trade’ organization. Of course, it isn’t. Only one of its owners, Warner Music, is actually based in the US. The rest, the majority, are from France (Vivendi Universal), Japan and Germany (Sony BMG) and Britain (EMI).
Be that as it may, the RIAA hasn’t actually sued anyone yet. All it’s done is to fire off subpoenas to some 19,000 men, women and even kids in America. And so far, not one of them has appeared in a court or been found guilty of anything.
Everything else is hype. The RIAA hasn’t, for example, been able to back up its ridiculous claim that a file shared equals a sale lost. And despite other claims that people who share music files with each other are criminals and thieves, nothing has been stolen and no money has been exchanged for the shared files.
Other assertions, ie, that the multi-billion-dollar Big Four are being “devastated” by file sharing, are equally empty,
Against that, around 61 million Americans have shared files, so the odds of becoming a victim aren’t exactly high. In fact, they’re astronomical in terms of NOT becoming another excuse for the RIAA to issue yet another bullshit puff piece.
Meanwhile, Boing Boing says, ” The /. submitter translates the link as follows: ‘For a mere 140 SEK ($19 USD) per year, they will pay all your fines and give you a t-shirt if you get convicted for file sharing’.'”
Cheers!
Jon Newton
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Also See:
Boing Boing – P2P insurer will pay your fines if RIAA sues: $19/year! , June 22, 2006
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win – Mohandas Gandhi
June 29th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
The RIAA couldnt possibly see consumers as THAT stupid and just wallets to take money out of. What a huge insult to consumers that play on fear. This shows numerous things, how the court system doesnt work, rich companies against the little (and alone) guy, fear and intimidation on a large scale, and basically sheer arrogance (get a free Tshirt?)….can you say wtf?
June 29th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
This is for real. In Sweden you have the right if you are poor to FREE legal representation, if you are found guilty and fined this insurance will cover it.
June 29th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Anyone remember when SCO (new) first came out with _their_ “lawsuit-indemnification” program? Same s*it; different day, here, imho.
It was rank extortion then, and it’s rank extortion now.
June 29th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
The only joke here is the RIAA.
June 30th, 2006 at 5:17 am
I hardly know where to begin this. I’ll wander a bit in my thoughts and hope it comes to successful conclusion.
Getting insurance for legal extorsion when dealing with the mass of poeple using p2p say the odds are good you are wasting your money. Another thought to go with this is that it may well be a short term thing for the RIAA and cartels in the long haul.
Lately they’ve decided their getting lambasted in the public opinion with whatever comes out. In that light they have claimed to have changed their tactics to deal on a local level instead of using national media. It appears to me that they are thinking the damage will be less in more localized settings as long as they can keep it out of the national media.
To my line of thought this is an even worse idea than plastering it over national news. In national news, the event has reached such commonplace standing that it no longer has shock value. Certainly those in other geographical areas are saying too bad for them but not for me.
For those that will now read that Joe Six Pack, the quiet guy down the street is *gasp* a file sharer, won’t hit them as hard in the sense of disconnection. Instead Joe Six Pack may be the guy whose family comes over for the weekend B-B-Que. As such, this guy will have far more sympathy and far less disconnection from the event. Turning yet more against the cartels and the **AA pet lapdogs. At a local level it may allow less chance to snare kin of an important personage but then again, I wonder how many hits to date have happened in Washington DC as a whole.
I think the long term sue em all is a deadend street for the cartels. That it is just a matter of time before they see diminishing returns as a direct result of these actions. While it is true that licensing will still carry high costs for movies and the like, part of the whole was the public favoring their artists as fans. The public now feels very disconnected from the artist and that fan support is no longer at the levels it once was.