arstechnica.com — It's finally happened, people have gotten fed up enough that proper legal action is being taken. The suit covers price fixing...it also alleges that major labels were conspiring to first take down Napster and then build online music services that purposely stunted their service to drive people away from the idea of online music...
Mar 13, 2006 View in Crawl 4
dradisMar 14, 2006
I'm not sure William Lerach's lawsuit is such a good idea (but let's wait and see). Much like the allegedly intentionally failed online music stores, a failed lawsuit would have severely negative repercussions for future lawsuits, and thus consumers as a whole. I seriously hope that Mr. Lerach has some smoking-gun evidence up his sleeve, or things are going to get really nasty.
vendrakeMar 14, 2006
They are suing people who are allowing others to download songs. Therefore the "damage" is the lost sale of everyone who downloaded. Also, the unlimited music provided by most sites is for listening only. Those sites try to prevent you from saving the song for future use; unless you pay an extra charge per song. I'm not saying I like the RIAA; if they burn in hell I'll pour on some lighter fluid. I'm just saying they do have a legal basis for the raping for the innocents.
jayfMar 14, 2006
Personally, I prefer when the RIAA and MPAA does the suing.After each round, a new generation of P2P apps better than the one before it emerges.There's no one trial that is going to bring down an enemy that has hordes of teenagers funding it.Technology however is doing the trick and nicely.
diafelMar 14, 2006
Haha sheeple, that's very clever. You combined the word "sheep" with "people". Take that conformity!
arramolMar 14, 2006
No, no, no. That's not free speech. If the artist chooses to distribute their songs for free, then it's closer to free speech. Free speech means the government doesn't put limits on what you can and can't say. It has nothing to do with money. There are plenty of problems with the current business model (overcharging, frivolous lawsuits, DRM), but you do not have the RIGHT to take the artist's music for free without their permission. It isn't stealing in the sense that you haven't taken something away from them, but you have robbed them of the opportunity to sell something that belongs to them.I'm dead-set against most of what the industry is doing. But that doesn't cloud my ability to see both sides of the issue. On the one hand, the industry has NO right to charge ridiculous fees, to make us pay multiple times for the same product, or to tell us which devices we can play our media on. That said, artists DO have a right to get paid for what they do. They are not under some sort of obligation to give you whatever you want for free. Please stop misusing the Constitution.
papauMar 14, 2006
Looks like the lawyers found a nice ripe carcase to feed on here ....Hmm the sword has two sides ..Funny That?
isepicMar 15, 2006
I think they should be FORCED to give MONEY not some download that doesn't cost them anything (yeah, unless of course you're on the other end, then if you download it w/o their proper channels, you just STOLE it BS)
film11Mar 17, 2006
What I'm interested in is the fact that RIAA claim hundreds of dollars of damages FOR EACH SONG PIRATED, yet when we have been wrongfully overcharged we get a tuppence per song, $2.50, $5 something around there. Hardly seems fair to me. Maybe it's time we started claiming $100 for each song we thought was overcharged.