More RIAA nonsense

[TV-VCR 14]

So far we've had grandmothers, dead people, disabled single mothers, and today, we can add another category to the list of those targeted by the RIAA: the homeless. Earlier this week, the RIAA decided to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit against Chaz Berry after learning he was living in a homeless shelter—but not until after a magistrate judge denied an earlier motion for summary judgment and recommended sanctions against the RIAA's attorneys.

Berry was sued by the RIAA in February 2007 for copyright infringement after an IP address logged by MediaSentry on a P2P network was traced back to his AOL account. When the time came for Berry to be served with a copy of the complaint, the RIAA discovered that he had vacated his apartment. A pretrial conference scheduled for April 19, 2007 was postponed for 60 days at the labels' request, due to the RIAA's professed inability to serve Berry with a summons at his last-known address.

The RIAA said in its April 17 filing that it was "conducting a thorough address investigation" so it could serve Berry with a copy of the summons. But that wasn't quite right: it turns out that the RIAA's process server slapped a copy of the summons "in a conspicuous place" at Berry's last known address on April 9—a full eight days before the RIAA said it couldn't locate him. The process server's attempts were detailed in an April 25, 2007 affidavit completed by the process server, who also said that a copy was sent via first-class mail to the same address.

In June 2007, the RIAA moved for a default judgment against Berry. In his Report and Recommendation issued in February of this year, Magistrate Judge Kevin N. Fox criticized the RIAA, calling its representation that it had made every effort to locate Berry "disingenuous." He found that the RIAA's statements were "not made in good faith" and recommended the imposition of sanctions against the RIAA's attorneys.

At some point after the release of Magistrate Fox's report, the RIAA discovered that Berry was living in a homeless shelter. At that point, the labels apparently decided not to pursue the case any further and have filed no objection to last week's denial of their motion for summary judgment. In addition, the RIAA has voluntarily dismissed the case with prejudice.

The case has been dismissed without prejudice, with presiding Judge Harold Baer, Jr. deciding not to subject the lawyers to sanctions. "Their excuse here is the well-worn 'clerical error,' i.e., the office clerk 'mis-calendered this date,' and they 'sincerely apologize' for their failure," wrote Baer. "Once again, while Plaintiffs' lawyers... must keep careful records of deadlines and all court days, the error is not sufficiently akin to a contempt of court."

We contacted the RIAA to get its perspective on the case and, in particular, why it is dismissing Warner v. Berry without prejudice, which would allow the labels to sue the homeless man again should his circumstances change. "As you know, there may be lots of specific reasons that can cause a dismissal of a case without prejudice," RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth told Ars. "We recognize and evaluate the particular circumstances of each case, including this one, always endeavoring to be fair and reasonable while protecting our rights." Duckworth also assured Ars that the labels have no intention of suing Berry in the future.

Original article at Ars Technica

[SimRabbit 48]

But he HAD a home when he illegally shared files.

[krbe 193]

Are they giving up on their cases just because he's homeless? And others because they're dead? This is atrocious: These people deserve to pay every single penny they got, and be imprisoned and anally raped if they can't!

[Zelgadis 638]

I wonder how long it's going to take for the RIAA and the record companies to realize that their business model is beyond dead and buried. Instead of suing people, they should be devoting all available resources to creating a new business model, because that's the only thing that is going to save them.

ISF

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: zelgadis I wonder how long it's going to take for the RIAA and the record companies to realize that their business model is beyond dead and buried. Instead of suing people, they should be devoting all available resources to creating a new business model, because that's the only thing that is going to save them.

quote>

Yeah, seriously. The idea that they're going to stamp out piracy is preposterous, and by attempting to do so they only make enemies and thus just encourage more people to pirate music.

As for the "new business model", I can sum it up in six points:

1) Stop suing people. Seriously, it's petty and it gets you nowhere.

2) Give artists more autonomy. Make it so that priority number one is pleasing the fans, not making money/pleasing the record label executives.

3) Stop giving careers to people with no talent but nice bodies. Only sign artists who can actually write and perform their own music.

4) Stop putting DRM on legitimately downloadable music. Steve Jobs was dead on when he said it was "2% copyright protection and 98% customer annoyance." Everyone knows you can get around it by burning the music onto a CD and re-ripping it, anyway.

5) Put those downloads in a universal file format like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis. This proprietary filetype crap has got to stop (like mp4 that you can only play with iTunes, wma that you can only play with Windows Media Player, etc.). Then if someone decides to switch what music player they use they don't have to convert all those files.

6) Disband the RIAA and have Labels operate independent of each other, not in cahoots with each other. This is important because the very existence of the RIAA invokes ire in an awful lot of people, who view it as an "evil organization".

[JanYpe 17]

Originally posted by: Bumdark krbe: What the hell is wrong with you? Are you completely demented? It's not like downloading some tunes off the Net deserves to get you incarcerated, much less getting raped in jail! A fine would be far more appropriate. Lighten up!

quote>

Study this and then read his post. There'll be a test tomorrow.

[your_adress_here 11]

Originally posted by: JanYpe

Originally posted by: Bumdark krbe: What the hell is wrong with you? Are you completely demented? It's not like downloading some tunes off the Net deserves to get you incarcerated, much less getting raped in jail! A fine would be far more appropriate. Lighten up!

quote>

Study this and then read his post. There'll be a test tomorrow.quote>

Win.

[TV-VCR 14]

Originally posted by: krbeThese people deserve to pay every single penny they got, and be imprisoned and anally raped if they can't!quote>

That's pretty much the RIAA's tactic. Demolish the daylights out of someone in hopes that it will scare other people off from their preferred P2P client.

[krbe 193]

Originally posted by: TV-VCR

Originally posted by: krbeThese people deserve to pay every single penny they got, and be imprisoned and anally raped if they can't!quote>

That's pretty much the RIAA's tactic. Demolish the daylights out of someone in hopes that it will scare other people off from their preferred P2P client. quote>

They're just like hunted whales—large, heavy breaths while the blood is pouring out of them, before they get the terminal blow, or just die by the lack of blood.

The worst is that they're trying to shift the reason for doing this from those rich players in the business (including record label directors) to those that aren't that well know , even though it's not their work! It's the record company that owns it; not the artist. The artists are "employed" by the label, pretty much as most of the rest of us are. Authors, painters, sculptors, playwrights, pretty much any other artist own their own work (though painters and sculptors are dealing with real property, as opposed to musicians and authors). Music, however, is owned by some old men in suit who can't afford a new swimming pool because you're downloading songs.

Also, they try to trick us into believing that downloading music from the Internet equals to stealing. With all those lawsuits going on, and all those lawyers who get a cut of the cake from the blessed few left that actually buy their music, you would think that they knew the difference from copyright infringment and stealing? That, with respect, is basic law teaching: A license agreement does not constitute property in the legal sense!

And are "Idol", "X-Factor", "Got Talent" and the likes supposed to be the new business model alongside lawsuits? Then I see no problem helping "ruining" neither the RIAA nor Sony/BMG. That's not artistic creativity; that's pure and simple "industry", and that's not how the artistic world works. Where I come from, there is an expression which roughly can be translated as "Bourse and cathedral", implying that these two are pretty much separated—commercial principles don't mix with religion, and by extent art. Still, when they art went commercial, they chose the one of the worst forms of business: Monopoly. And they're supposedly trying do do it hard for the artists to lead an independent life:

Toni Braxton also declared bankruptcy in 1998. She sold $188 million worth of CDs, but she was broke because of a terrible recording contract that paid her less than 35 cents per album. Bankruptcy can be an artist's only defense against a truly horrible deal and the RIAA wants to take it away.quote>

Courtney Love does the math (it's from 2000, but might still be interesting to some).

[nazaguy 0]

Courtney Love does the math (it's from 2000, but might still be interesting to some).quote>

While i agree the the basic message, i just don't trust Courtney Love doing math.

[Easy Bakes 253]

It probaly just posturing on thier part. It wont stop it but it makes it look like they are doing something

about the piracy, when in reality its an acceptable % of loss for them.

Remember back when VCRs were 1st coming out thier were lawsuits filed by the movie and TV industry. One of thier arguments was every one would record and make copies of movies and TV shows and no one would every buy copies of said movies.

didnt quite work out that way, mostly becuase people are too lazy too make the copies or dont want a grainy 3rd or 4th generation copy of thier favorite movies.

So movie rental stores were invented and they created a new industry.

This will end up the same way, i know its eaiser to trade/copy these files now and theres no degradtion of quality makeing copies of copies, but people are still lazy and the song they want is only 99cents.

[krbe 193]

Originally posted by: nazaguy

Courtney Love does the math (it's from 2000, but might still be interesting to some).quote>

While i agree the the basic message, i just don't trust Courtney Love doing math.quote>

It's not that I believe that Obama's writing his own speeches too.

However, the essence lies in this quote:

Originally posted by Courtney Love When people buy the bootleg T-shirt in the concert parking lot and not the more expensive T-shirt inside the venue, it isn't to save money. The T-shirt in the parking lot is cheap and badly made, but it's easier to buy. The bootleggers have a better distribution system. There's no waiting in line and it only takes two minutes to buy one.quote>

[Easy Bakes 253]

She right the quality of the parking lot shirts is lousy.

A friendof mine got one at Van halen and was already faded out after 3 washings.then again he paid 10 bucks for it when the ones inside

were 75.

But i doubt the bootlegers have better distibution then the concert promoters.

I have shirts iv had for 10+ years and thier still dark.

[mightygoose 92]

they do have better distribution, you dont have to go to the concert to get the shirt they have a much wider target market, and although the product is lousy, its 1/7th the price, plus there will be a much smaller queue at the bootleggers table/stand/thing....

[krbe 193]

And you can get them at an well stocked markets for years after...

[panthersimcity4 162]

The RIAA people are a bunch of evil fascist swine!

lol, seriously though, they're so obsessed with making money that they'll chase after anyone they catch downloading music illegally.

[patriots_1228 51]

Are people so poor these days they can't spent a tiny 99 cents on a song?

You know for the price of a pizza you can buy a CD?

I mean gee, if your gonna break the law, do so in style, not downloading stuff a 7 year old can afford for free. Its like stealing a peace of bubblegum....

[Hamish 1,369]

Like patriots said, do something big if you want to break the law. Rob a bank or something, then you can buy all the songs that you want!

Also ,You'd possibly save enough to buy the cd if you didn't use the internet to download songs. People don't realize that the internet costs money! in some cases, not downloading the song would save you enough money to buy the song, or cd.

And I've heard of people going into internet cafe's to download songs, so you spend what, a fair ammount of money to use the place, then download songs for free. Well its not free buddy. Remember that cash that you handed over, you could have brought the song for lees money than that!

[Danlikebooks 6]

"No, you don't NEED it, and that's final!" "We don't actually NEED anything except for food, air and water, so why don't we all go live in caves and spear large animals for food every day?"

[ilikehotdogsalot 307]

Originally posted by: patriots_1228 Are people so poor these days they can't spent a tiny 99 cents on a song?

You know for the price of a pizza you can buy a CD?

I mean gee, if your gonna break the law, do so in style, not downloading stuff a 7 year old can afford for free. Its like stealing a peace of bubblegum....quote>

Most people that I know have over 200 songs, so that's 200 dollars right there. Then there are those that have thousands of songs, I wasn't aware that 7 year olds can spend over 1,000 dollars on songs. Besides, it's obviously not like taking a piece of bubble gum, because people are making a big deal out of it.

[Callbat 8]

Originally posted by: ilikehotdogsalot

Originally posted by: patriots_1228 Are people so poor these days they can't spent a tiny 99 cents on a song?

You know for the price of a pizza you can buy a CD?

I mean gee, if your gonna break the law, do so in style, not downloading stuff a 7 year old can afford for free. Its like stealing a peace of bubblegum....quote>

Most people that I know have over 200 songs, so that's 200 dollars right there. Then there are those that have thousands of songs, I wasn't aware that 7 year olds can spend over 1,000 dollars on songs. Besides, it's obviously not like taking a piece of bubble gum, because people are making a big deal out of it.quote>

Hey but then those beautiful, wonderful, ever so generous rich people wouldn't get their Raymond Luxury Yachts.

In the end, who cares? All those pop stars have no real talent anyway.

[TV-VCR 14]

Originally posted by: Callbat

Originally posted by: ilikehotdogsalot

Originally posted by: patriots_1228 Are people so poor these days they can't spent a tiny 99 cents on a song?

You know for the price of a pizza you can buy a CD?

I mean gee, if your gonna break the law, do so in style, not downloading stuff a 7 year old can afford for free. Its like stealing a peace of bubblegum....quote>

Most people that I know have over 200 songs, so that's 200 dollars right there. Then there are those that have thousands of songs, I wasn't aware that 7 year olds can spend over 1,000 dollars on songs. Besides, it's obviously not like taking a piece of bubble gum, because people are making a big deal out of it.quote>

Hey but then those beautiful, wonderful, ever so generous rich people wouldn't get their Raymond Luxury Yachts.quote>

Good thing I have tinyurl set to preview. You were gonna rickroll me.

Originally posted by: CallbatIn the end, who cares? All those pop stars have no real talent anyway.quote>

There are still some who have talent, but mostly it's just people who look sexy, not people who can actually be original and come up with good songs.

And as for the comments on music being cheap, yeah, it seems cheap, but what happens when you start adding it up? Yeah. FYI my music collection is fairly small. The thing is, from what I've been seeing it's mostly young folk (13 - 30 in age) that do this. I mean, as a kid, unless you're rich, you don't have a lot of money to burn by default. If you're in higher ed, most of your money is likely going towards those classes and 99 cent hot dogs. So the option of torrenting music can become very appealing to all those kids and young adults who want some stuff to fill up their iPods with. I mean, why spend $30 on that new album when you're saving up for that new gizmo you're wanting? Adults that don't make that much money will use torrents too.

I've never pirated music, and hey, my music collection is pretty small. I have around 300 songs. That's because, I only get $14 a week from allowance, and I'm too young for a job . I'm saving up for some new tech equipment, so why should I set myself back 3 weeks just for 12 songs, which some I might not like?

[Voar Tok 4]

Originally posted by: patriots_1228 Are people so poor these days they can't spent a tiny 99 cents on a song?

You know for the price of a pizza you can buy a CD?

I mean gee, if your gonna break the law, do so in style, not downloading stuff a 7 year old can afford for free. Its like stealing a peace of bubblegum....quote>

Not that I'm advocating piracy here, but let me give you an example of why people have an issue with paying "a tiny 99 cents" for a song.  I just fixed the computer of a girl who was in desperate need of the thing so she could write her papers and listen to her music.  She has limewire on her computer, and 14.5 gigabytes of songs.  Doesn't sound like much, but when I put all her music back into iTunes, it said she had 45 days worth of music.  Assuming a dollar a song, and all songs lasting approximately three to four minutes, she would have spent somewhere between $16,000 to $21,000 just on music.  It's all music that she likes too.  Tell me how she would pay for that?

Originally posted by: hamish

Also ,You'd possibly save enough to buy the cd if you didn't use the internet to download songs. People don't realize that the internet costs money! in some cases, not downloading the song would save you enough money to buy the song, or cd.quote>

That doesn't even make sense?  Why would not downloading the song save me enough money to buy the CD when I would be having an internet connection at my house anyway?  Most people don't bother going off to internet cafes to download music illegally.  Even off at college, where state universities turn over students by the thousands each year for illegal file trading, no one cares about the fact that the university can monitor every packet of information that comes across their connection, along with, in the case of the internet for me, trace the packet right down to the ethernet plug it was transferred across.  People still don't care.

What's more, I won't go into details, but for a student, or anyone with half a brain on internet functioning, it's ridiculously easy to spoof the packets, making it virtually impossible to trace.  Through a simple process (a completely legal process I might add) I can trick the university routers into thinking that my xbox 360, which has a throttled bandwidth allotment, is actually my laptop, which is allowed to use a connection speed about ten times faster.  If the IT department actually gave much interest examining the packets of info that are being transmitted, they'd know in a heartbeat that my xbox is posing as an imposter on the network.  They don't care.

Point being - no one cares.  Except the RIAA.

[krbe 193]

And remember that if you're going to buy the music, you have to agree to some ridiculous license agreement which says that you'll never be able to play the music on anything else than the seller's mp3-equipment, that you turn over your soul to the record labels and that RIAA gets your first born child.

When you bought an LP, you could listen to it in your home, in the home of your friend, on any LP player in the world. When the CDs got around, you would have a player in your living room, the bed room, your car, and later any PC of your wish. THey became small enough to bring to parties for others to listen to, or if you were a broadcaster you could easily grab the five unknown bands at that festival you were at and play to your heart's content the rest of the week.

Today you are limited to play the music on five different "authorised" devices, you're being traced by intelligence services every time you download, wether legally or not, and even if you buy all those extra cables, you can still can't be sure how much you'll be able ot transfer to the stereo or computer.

And what happens if I'm a broadcaster, turns up at my job at 5 in the morning only to realise that all computers are down? Am I allowed to use my iPod to get the music out, or not?

In today's decentralised world you don't need large mastedonts as one copyright agency and just four or five record labels. What's important is the distribution system. Let musicians and recorders compete against each other, a transparent copyright/licensing regime and most important of all: Let the state enforce the law! There are a lot of legislation protecting the citizens from the government, but very little that protects one person from another.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Originally posted by: krbe

Originally posted by: TV-VCR

Originally posted by: krbe

Also, they try to trick us into believing that downloading music from the Internet equals to stealing. With all those lawsuits going on, and all those lawyers who get a cut of the cake from the blessed few left that actually buy their music, you would think that they knew the difference from copyright infringment and stealing? That, with respect, is basic law teaching: A license agreement does not constitute property in the legal sense!quote>

Actually, it is property...but for computer files, we use the term "intellectual property".  It is stealing no matter how you look at it...the phrase "it's not stealing, just sharing files" is what people use as a cop-out because they know it's wrong.  Duke87 tought me into thinking that MP4 is bad, because it is, and I don't really like the RIAA, but still...

Are people so poor these days they can't spent a tiny 99 cents on a song?

You know for the price of a pizza you can buy a CD?

I mean gee, if your gonna break the law, do so in style, not downloading stuff a 7 year old can afford for free. Its like stealing a peace of bubblegum....quote>

I agree with that too.  Why is it so bad to pay for music?  Now, I don't care who's selling the songs...it's still stealing, no matter what, and it's wrong.  Charging a homeless person is just ridiculous, but nonetheless...

And on that note, I studied the Bill of Rights just recently and...isn't there a law against "double jeapordy" (charging a suspect for the same crime twice)?  5th or 6th Amdendment I believe...

[krbe 193]

Originally posted by: Yoshiisland Actually, it is property...but for computer files, we use the term "intellectual property". It is stealing no matter how you look at it...the phrase "it's not stealing, just sharing files" is what people use as a cop-out because they know it's wrong. Duke87 tought me into thinking that MP4 is bad, because it is, and I don't really like the RIAA, but still...quote>

Let's take this one more time: Illegal downloading is not stealing. Theft means, a little simplified, to take another persons property without this persons consent. This only applies to property, and intellectual property is not covered by this. Intellectual property is infact not property at all, it's a right to words in a specific arrangment, tunes, etc. Take for example the Apple lawsuit against Microsoft when Microsoft started using overlapping windows. Sure you can say they "stole" the idea, but they didn't take something without Apple's consent. They looked upon the GUI, and said, hey, that's not too stupid—maybe we should use something similar? Theft means to prohibit others (the owner) to use a thing; and when I copy a song, or Microsoft decides to use the same GUI as Apple, I don't prohibit the record label from using the same song, and Microsoft don't prohibits Apple from using overlapping windows. What might be the case, though, is that due to copyright laws I might not use the song without consent from the copyright owner (which sadly doesn't means the artist), or that Microsoft might not use the overlapping windows without consent.

For further information on intellectual property as a "deceiving" concept, read The Guardian's '"Intellectual property" is a silly euphemism'

[patriots_1228 51]

Originally posted by: krbe And remember that if you're going to buy the music, you have to agree to some ridiculous license agreement which says that you'll never be able to play the music on anything else than the seller's mp3-equipment, that you turn over your soul to the record labels and that RIAA gets your first born child.

quote>

Theres a way around that. you burn it onto a cd then import it int oyour library as a mp3....and o wait...uh...you didn't hear that from me

[your_adress_here 11]

While I haven't read the whole topic (*yawn*), I might add that Iron Maiden truly do their stuff for the music. When I went to see them in Toronto, every single ticket was $50. No paying $200 for a floor ticket. The t-shirts were also only $35.

Too bad so many bands these days are greedy.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: patriots_1228

Originally posted by: krbe And remember that if you're going to buy the music, you have to agree to some ridiculous license agreement which says that you'll never be able to play the music on anything else than the seller's mp3-equipment, that you turn over your soul to the record labels and that RIAA gets your first born child.

quote>

Theres a way around that. you burn it onto a cd then import it int oyour library as a mp3....and o wait...uh...you didn't hear that from me quote>

Pretty much everyone knows about that trick, anyway. Thing is, it's a lot of extra time and effort, and a waste of blank CDs (which also cost money).

On another note: ya gotta love the PSAs: put on these handcuffs and do exactly what we tell you or we'll sic the Spanish Inquisition on you. Piracy is stealing! Stealing bad! Don't do it!

[Jazzmaster 716]

Originally posted by: krbe

Originally posted by: Yoshiisland Actually, it is property...but for computer files, we use the term "intellectual property". It is stealing no matter how you look at it...the phrase "it's not stealing, just sharing files" is what people use as a cop-out because they know it's wrong. Duke87 tought me into thinking that MP4 is bad, because it is, and I don't really like the RIAA, but still...quote>

Let's take this one more time: Illegal downloading is not stealing. Theft means, a little simplified, to take another persons property without this persons consent. This only applies to property, and intellectual property is not covered by this. Intellectual property is infact not property at all, it's a right to words in a specific arrangment, tunes, etc. Take for example the Apple lawsuit against Microsoft when Microsoft started using overlapping windows. Sure you can say they "stole" the idea, but they didn't take something without Apple's consent. They looked upon the GUI, and said, hey, that's not too stupid—maybe we should use something similar? Theft means to prohibit others (the owner) to use a thing; and when I copy a song, or Microsoft decides to use the same GUI as Apple, I don't prohibit the record label from using the same song, and Microsoft don't prohibits Apple from using overlapping windows. What might be the case, though, is that due to copyright laws I might not use the song without consent from the copyright owner (which sadly doesn't means the artist), or that Microsoft might not use the overlapping windows without consent.

For further information on intellectual property as a "deceiving" concept, read The Guardian's '"Intellectual property" is a silly euphemism'quote>

Point taken.  Sorry for the misunderstanding.  It's just that to some, although it's not physical property, you're still taking something without doing something you're supposed to do to get it, and that is paying for it.  So while the definition "stealing" may not necessarily apply, it is still against the law.  Perhaps I should use the term "piracy" instead.