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150 Comments
- blackbelt88, on 10/12/2007, -2/+77Or they could, you know, adapt to the changing times and change their business model.
- chuckfoo, on 10/12/2007, -10/+61I am advocating piracy here
- Delphion, on 10/12/2007, -12/+41can't somebody just plant a few blocks of C4 in their central offices?
no, seriously. it worked great for Rambo. - Durrok, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28OK sert, give me $10k of your money and lets see how this changes your life.
- newevilmind, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27Seems like every time the MAFIAA sues somebody they send out press releases to try to scare everybody else.
scare tactics. - deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -7/+20Enjoy your morals, I'll enjoy my free music. Everyone wins.
- readme, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17There's no police involved. You just receive notice from the RIAA that you are being sued. If the RIAA tried to push the criminal angle they would be laughed out of court when they try to obtain a warrant.
In the grand scheme of things, music piracy is equivalent to shoplifting a $15 CD. It's petty larceny and should be treated as such. The RIAA wants you to think it's so much more, thus the multi-thousand dollar civil lawsuits. They know if they tried to press criminal charges the damages would be perhaps a $100 - $1000 fine.
Pressing criminal charges requires tying up the law enforcement system, a search and seizure of property, hours of time for the police, DAs and/or the FBI -- not going to happen for what is in reality petty larceny. It's much easier for them to get their army of lawyers to crush some unsuspecting family. All we need is one person to fight back and win to set the precedent. It's much easier to settle for $5,000 when you're looking at "damages" in the $250,000 range.
Go to your local music store and shoplift 10 CDs and at worst you'll get a $500 fine and charged with a misdemeanor that you can probably plea down to a violation and community service. - evilgod69, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13u should fear the riaa and companies like sony, never forget the sony rootkit incident, nor how they love DRM which is completely ineffective of stoping 95% of piracy, and only hurts consumers
- chmod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11You know what would really put it to the RIAA? Stop downloading their *****. Also, stop buying music. Paying for products like these fuels them. Getting sued for downloading ***** also fuels them. I have been boycotting the recording industry for about 5-6 years now, and over the past year alone I have bought hundreds of CDs.... used. Be patient, and wait for used ***** to pop up. I like supporting artists so I go to their concerts. The sad thing is that parents DO need to start caring about what their kids are doing on their f*ck*ng computers. This is why so many kids are falling prey to pedophiles and so many parents are getting their ***** taken away from the riaa. I'm sure this will be slammed down into last week but god d*mn people, get a clue!
- tony23, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11This won't raise enough money for these people to hire the sort of lawyers who can actually take on the army the RIAA employs.
More effective would be to organize a boycott against RIAA labels, until the RIAA stops such tactics. Much harder to accomplish, sadly. - MrSunshine, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14You don't have any children and don't know what it is like to bring them up, right?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14The Pirate Bay isnt called Pirate Bay because they like Johnny Depp,
People who walk on eggshells about pirating are just as lame as the RIAA themselves. I torrent cause, its Free simple as that, I dont want to further pay large corporations who in the end spoon feeds me reality shows that I never wanted to watch in the first place then lace every 15 minute segment with some sponser's product I could give two ***** about. The times are a changing, and a whole digital media front is exploding online, these corporate ***** better get their ***** together or they will end up like the 8 track. - TheShrike, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15@ SergeAx
It was a joke. Lighten up. - lukeydukey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9First of all, it's not illegal downloading. Downloading has never been utterly illegal. Some RIAA/MPAA PR person invented that myth to scare us "cash cows" so they can make more money off our arses.
2. If you think donating won't at least help a little, take a look at Patti Santangelo: They're bringing the case against a jury thanks to donations.
3. The RIAA & MPAA have no concern for the Artist whatsoever. Why else would they own the copyright and find some odd way to extend it for 70 years instead of the original 7 years.
4. For you idiots thinking we're all stupid for doing this, you better realize that this isn't just about downloading. Would you really listen to a corporation if they told you not to do something because it's hurting their chances of getting one more Bentley or Mercedes? We're not stupid. They tried to control the information flow. What we're all doing is breaking that cycle of disinformation.
5. Don't be scared, notice how they specifically select people who have no money, no understanding of the internet, and basically no idea what the hell downloading is until they're slapped with a lawsuit.
6. Indie music all the way =)
7.If you believe the RIAA is right, might as well say V for Vendetta is a prediction of the world in a few years. - Ikioi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14No! Don't fight it! Otherwise, Britney Spears will never be able to afford all the reconstructive surgery to make her look forever like 16 year old who's never been pregnant! She needs every red cent from every 12 year old in the world to pay for the hundreds of operations she'll need!
It's just wrong for the poor to assume that their needs come before plastic surgery needs of the ultra rich.
(yes, that's sarcasm) - tciny, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13You should write her that. I think she'll be SO incredibly thankful for your kind words...
- iSlayer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10That sounds odd. As far as I remember most of the money artists make are from their concerts. Only a small percentage get money from the recording industry (very small). Thats exactly what the RIAA would have said. Are you part of that gangster online MAFIAA group we like to call the RIAA in disguise?
- invader, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"I support the artists I like to reward them for their work"
oh? so you _don't_ buy CDs at record stores, but you _do_ go to shows and sport awesome band t-shirts? glad to hear you're not blatantly ignorant, thinking that any of the money you spend on a CD actually goes to "supporting" the artist/content creator. buying CDs is just "supporting" multimillion dollar legal teams to strong arm cash settlements out of consumers just like you. it's also "supporting" the RIAA CEO's $1,000,000+* yearly salary. go team
* = i don't know the current salary, but it broke $1 mil almost 5 years ago - kacymartin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I'm living in the poor house already trying to pay 10,000 a year for school, if I had to pay another 10k for downloading movies I would either have to quit school or start selling organs.
- Durrok, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Lars won't be able to afford his gold plated Ferrari either ;)
- tavisjohn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"Or they could, you know, adapt to the changing times and change their business model."
They have changed their buisness model, Their new buisness model is to claim that they have lost $100,000's of dollars because "this person" pirited music, therefore they should re-pay the losses. (Who buys $100,000's worth of music in a year?) Why make a product when you can sue people and extort it from them, LEAGALLY!!!! - scotty79, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Why do people try to avoid advocating piracy? Piracy is far more moral than wild, insane copyright that we have now. So far piracy did more good to society (especially in technologically underdeveloped countries) than copyright.
- mogdor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7"Prosecuting these people is wrong, but they [RIAA, Time Warner, Sony, etc.] can't back down now. Once they do, they'll lose power."
Should giant corporations lose power or should innocent peoples' lives be ruined? From a moral standpoint it's a no-brainer, but unfortunately life is damn unfair sometimes. It's up to us to MAKE it fair. - newevilmind, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I'm interested in finding out exactly how they pick their prey.
I also don't really understand what happens. It's a civil lawsuit trying to recover "damages"??? or do the police knock your door down toss your stuff everywhere and run off with your computer?
I really don't understand this. How are people getting "caught"??? - abbott75, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10RIAA asks for money from random people.
This site asks for money from random people. - EricWurth02, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Imagine a world where the RIAA won this fight:
-CD's would probably still be expensive.
-Small Bands would almost never make it, so we wouldn't have as much new music.
-Copy protection would make it so no ones iPods would not be nearly as full.
-forget ripping your cd's you own to your computer
-plus who knows what other horrible repercussions
Does anyone else think That's kinda scary? - sroske, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7everytime the word children appears in commentary or articles on either slashdot or digg some user comments on bad parenting to blame. is this an american culture thing? i just do not understand it. no father or mother i know would make such stupid comments. i've been a father for 8 years, and for you folks without children, really, shutup. you do not have a clue what being a parent is all about.
- shreky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I agree with some of the commentors that donating will not solve the problem. It helps those people and that is good. What we need to do is stop buying the music, movies for a month. I think June 2006 is the month. A major action like that would not only get the RIAA to listen but will get the media talking.
Boycott all media June 2006! - kacymartin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@ SergeAx
what local cinema do you go to, its 7 bucks for me here and thats with my University ID! - Sutrannu, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Hear Hear. The only course of action is to make it so easy to steal the content, and so easy for artists to distribute and get paid directly online, that the record companies become a non-entity. Certainly there are consequences. They will spend all the money they currently have trying to sue us all... but they'll be doing that anyway. I guess it's not really a consequence after all. The market demands that market must change.
- MattH, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The RIAA will have a few of these meritless cases thrown out of court (not one case has gone to trial YET) and they will have to thourhly investigate and document every case of copyright infringement .
people who are behind a wireless router, the RIAA will have to prove that the alleged infringer resides at the IP "owners" adress .
This widespread wholesale litigation threatening by the RIAA may come to bite them in the Arse .
Anyone can sue you but proving that you did anything is another story. - zombiedog, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Hey lady, don't let your kids on the computer to steal music. You will just expose your computer to viruses and ad ware, and more seriously expose your kids to bad things they aren't ready to comprehend, like porn and worse.
Instead, take them to the library. There they will find good books and a world of learning. While there they may find some good CDs and DVDs as well. These will work in your computer, don't have bad things and are safe to "use" if you catch my drift. Support your local library! - addw, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8If my kid goes out & steals an apple or a CD from a shop, will I get prosecuted ? No.
Why ? He was not under my control/supervision at the time (my name is not Fagin).
Will I, perhaps, be asked to keep a closer eye on him ? Maybe.
If my kid downloads music on his PC, will I get prosecuted ? This is what they are trying to do.
I am often out at work, my kid plays his CDs via his computer in his room - I hate all his music and so it all sounds the same to me (I am an old fogey).
I don't understand anything about computers.
I don't need to use them to sweep_the_streets/fill_shop_shelves/... I think that my kid is a PC
genius.
You get the idea ? A certain amount of parental responsibility is reasonable, the RIAA is assuming total knowledge of what the kids do and total responsibility. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9And why's that funny?
- goettel, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9You're far gone, but let's give it a shot.
Sharing music is not piracy, since nobody is making money. Somehow, the image of throat cutting thiefs at sea doesn't really convey the real image of the average person downloading and sharing content. Laws are, indeed, there for several reasons, one of which is to protect the powerful and greedy. Labelling people on a certain behaviour because you don't like it is as bad as racism.
Try to think for yourself instead of quoting capitalist dogma. - shmatt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4if you have to justify something, there also a good chance there are a lot of greedy bastards out there.
- stutteringstan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Actions are followed by consequences.
About most victims:
1. no clue
2. no money
3. no life.
Donating money will temporarily solve the second problem. I believe that the other two problems are more pressing, especially the lack of life. I read the story, I'm not sure why they can not continue with their lives.
Everyone faces similar types of problems such as IRS audits, insurance company run-a-rounds, and lease disputes. Why should this be any different? Why does this require special attention from people who are not involved? This is between the so called "victims" and the RIAA. - 5blocksfree, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@chmod Interesting that someone else sees the light here. Most people know only two words when it comes to music: "I want". Removing the revenue stream by refusing to buy sends a clear, indisputable message, while refusing to download completely removes any impetus for lawsuits and other actions - like the crazy legislation they've lobbied for (and have been successful at seeing become law).
- johndi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That sounds good in principle Dan, but....
The RIAA doesn't own the copyrights.
Has filed suits for music that they don't even represents the studio that represnts the musician.
Has sued people who didn't do anything wrong.
Is using illegal means to obtain evidence.
Is now claiming you can't even rip music from a CD to put it on an MP3 player.
They have submitted laws in many counties, including the USA.
The are pushing for permanent anti-trust exemption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA#CD_Ripping_controversy
http://mutazilite.arstechnica.com/cgi-bin/htsearch?words=riaa
In other words, your principles don't mean ***** to the unprincipled. - henrysmith1, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7The RIAA would have us believe that if they don't win:
- CDs will be more expensive
- Small bands will never make it
- The iPod will have to be illegal
- Computers too
- Babies screened at birth and potential pirates sterilised - chrism1128, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I advocate the following:
Piracy
The complete demise of the Record Companies
The complete demise of the Movie Companies
Let's tear it all down and take 20 years for the crooks to build it back up
I hope the internet let's musicians and fans benefit in the same way that these new small banks have benefitted customers. Wow imagine a business being open when customers are available to use the service. - tmcleroy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4if i had money i would donate b/c the riaa has destroyed so many lives.
- Nameless1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Give me one reason on why i should buy a cd that i cant rip, play, read or listen to :) (anywhere, anyhow, any method)
btw the best client for music is eMule - kalphegor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Offer better products/services instead of paying some company to fight with normal people, movies (one or two good movies in a year? shame), music (all pop is like ***** this days, try http://di.fm for better music), games (oh come on for most MMPORGSSRG you need to pay to play), what's left?
- CarbonAndroid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Exactly. They are only companies for christ sake. No income to a company is like no oxygen to a human.
Their offerings are not solent green, something essential to life. - Zipko, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The $100,000 lawsuit figures are coming from fact that the RIAA is picking people who are actively sharing on p2p networks, not so much the ones who are downloading. It's the potential damages that come from having every single person on the network download the song from your copy. Since they can't tell exactly how many people you've illegally given the song to, they just estimate on the high end. A song assumed to be given out to every user on the network can easily be justified as being so expensive. Of course, we know that argument is bs because not everyone on the network wants to download your copy of Britney Spears, but in court it probably makes a good argument.
Of course, to poke a hole in my own argument, as the defense I would just claim that you can just as easily assume noone downloaded it, and thus the damage is $0. Force the RIAA to prove people are download the song, which is harder for them to do than just identifying that the person has the song out there. - takeda, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I was helping removing spyware/viruses from few family computers. Many of them had limewire, kazaa etc. installed and run in background. Parents don't know computers to well... How they supposed to know that kazaa or limewire isn't just another app that was preinstalled by default by computer manufacturer?
Also I met few peoples (around 18) who still think limewire is 100% legal to use (they cannot explain why, but they know, because their friends told them that).
I'm pretty sure, that MAFIAA (I like that name) knows who they're suing (but it's hard to resist an easy target).
Anyway, I'm pretty sure many innocent people were sued. There is a bunch of unprotected WiFi hotspots, just waiting to be used for downloading.
Anyway, it's interesting, that 90% of the time, people who download the music, are just kids. Can MAFIAA really win such case?
How parents can protect against downloading if most of the time they know much less about computers than their kids. - dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What I want to know is, the RIAA are suing people because "The artists are losing money" and similar well-meaning-but-utter-crap lines.. How much of the randsom money ever acctualy makes it anywhere near the artists? My guess is between %0 and %5..
If someone downloads, say, 1000 MP3s, which roughtly goes into 100 CDs, each one is roughtly £10 (GBP, but thats not important).. The fine should (in my opinion anyway) maybe be about £1500.. And the £1000 should go TO THE ARTISTS.. Then Mr RIAA can use the one-of-far-too-many £500-cuts towards his 38th super-shiney-car..
I'd like to see the RIAAs pricing calculator.. "Number of illegal MP3s *Types 3 into calculator* *Presses the only button on the calculator, the [x10000] button*"..
- Ben - Zaster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Boycott these low-lifes. Buy music from independent labels. Get you music fix by listening to college radio and public radio. Don't put another dime in the pockets of scumbag RIAA lawyers who sit drooling over the college funds of 15 year old kids.
- grouch, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The problem the RIAA is having today is that intellectual property wasn't always so hard to protect. It was intended to protect companies from companies. Unless you had a printing press, or vinyl press, or vhs dubbing facilities, or cd-printing facilities, the only way you had to get content was to purchase it from somebody.
Now, for the first time in history, there isn't any artificial barriers between us and them. The fortuitous circumstances of both wanting to enforce IP and being the only providers has disappeared. What was practical before is no longer practical.
There were outcries about audio cassettes. VCRs. Copy machines. But they all paled in comparison to perfect digital copies. The insufficiency of the technology made imperfect copies. Really crappy imperfect copies. Now computers are used by record companies, publishers, film studios, and school children. The dam has broken, and it's not just other companies stealing Mickey Mouse to worry about. It's nobody paying for Mickey at all.
There truly is no God-given right to own or sell ideas. None. They are laws, invented by man. Making money is a commendable idea, but requires practical arrangements, and a workable plan. It has ceased being practical. Trying to make laws that force people to give you money -is- not only criminal, it won't work anyway. Good ideas don't need enforcement.
Extending copyrights another 100 years isn't the answer. Suing mothers isn't the answer. Downloading content is a good first step. Not because it's legal, but because it's practical! Itunes is well organized, and easy to use, and fast. Can't say the same for many torrent sites. Less selection, less guarantee of quality and tagging, etc. It's practical to sell music online, with lots of money backing it. Make a better product.
And pirates paved the way. Pirates also paved the way to downloading television programs. Now ABC is going to give it a try. Give the people what they want, which shouldn't be difficult to figure out when they are already pointing out what it is they want by how they are behaving. Stay practical. Stop trying to enforce laws that don't agree with the reality of the world any more. -
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