Record Labels May Face Risk In Music Suits
from the timmy's-college-money-going-to-Kid-Rock dept
Well, it looks like at least one file sharing service has hired a lobbyist in Washington, who came up with an absolutely priceless quote about the RIAA’s recent decision to sue their customers. He asks how most people are going to react when they see a story of the RIAA cracking down on a family, forcing them to settle and seeing how “the money they were saving for Timmy’s college education now has to go to Kid Rock.” Of course, that assumes the money ever would get back to Kid Rock. Instead, it’ll end up in the pockets of the music industry execs who can’t face the fact that their business model is obsolete. In the meantime, though, more people are suggesting that the backlash to these new lawsuits may do a lot more harm than good for the music industry. They say that someone is going to get accused unfairly, and plenty of people are going to be forced to give up too much money for what they feel is a minor infraction. Worse, they expect all the goodwill Congress has towards the entertainment industry to come crashing down the first time a politician’s son or daughter is sued for downloading music.
Comments on “Record Labels May Face Risk In Music Suits”
fair use?
OK, I buy a CD. I like the tunes. Instead of ripping them into MP3s myself, I find someone else with a better encoder made MP3s and I download the files for TUNES I ALREADY OWN. Is this a fair use?
On the other hand, I know my friends don’t have as nice an MP3 encoder as I do. So, I encode MP3s of my CD collection and share them on a file-sharing network…
Don’t tell me this is taking any money out of the artists’ pockets. Most artists have more to risk from obscurity than piracy.
Re: fair use?
I’ve got a collection of thousands of original CD’s that I’ll ‘give’ to anybody busted by the RIAA.. if they own it, downloading ain’t even a crime. Anybody in my area that’s accused of copyright infringement will have an excellent chance of survival, at ZERO cost.
Re: Re: fair use?
I think they’re not going to sue the downloaders, but the folks who make large numbers of files available.
It’s an attempt to “drain the swamp”.
Routers and culpibility
In my house, and most of my friends, one connection is shared between two or three computers, with multiple users sharing. Who is to say who downloaded what. It is a common criminal ploy (at least on the cop shows) for multiple criminals to each point the finger at each other, this providing reasonable doubt for each individual.
Wouldn’t the same situation apply here (it was little Timmy who downloaded all that music; No, it as Timmy Sr. who downloaded the music)
Or better yet, do what several people who were arrested for child porn have started doing, claiming that there is a trojan on your computer and that any illegal content must have been put there by an EVIL HACKER!
It’s not that either of these solutions are moral or honest, but it just goes to show that invading people’s personal computers and taking them to court for their contents is frought with difficulties.
No Subject Given
Politicians are exempt; there won’t be a case where the RIAA sues a congressman’s kid… don’t you know they aren’t subject to the same controls placed on the general populous…
Re: No Subject Given
“Politicians are exempt; there won’t be a case where the RIAA sues a congressman’s kid… don’t you know they aren’t subject to the same controls placed on the general populous…”
Who told you that? Dude, they’re tracking IP numbers. Just like they did with the metallica suit. Several politician’s kids were named in that. What make you think this will be any different? What happens if their kid is in a college dorm? Do you really think the RIAA has a record of every congressman’s college dorm? This little problem that the RIAA is creating for themselves will ultimately destroy their undustry. As if it wasn’t self destructing already.
No Subject Given
Recently cracked the original CD from my collection. Anyone have odd’s that the music industry will send me a new one for free?
These guys don’t care about being fair to their customers. How is it that going from cassettes to CD’s, which are much less expensive to manufacture, the price jumped 100%? Or what about how they happily collected money when you bought a ‘best of’ CD with songs you already owned from the various original releases? I’m just a little bit sick of all their crying. Just a little…