RIAA Pursuing 532 New Users (1 Viewer)

[Lew Crippen]

After the ruling in December stating that Internet Service Providers did not have to provide names of those suspected of suspected illegal activities involving file sharing and downloading of music, it seemed as though the RIAA would have a difficult time identifying offenders.

Using a new approach, the RIAA is now suing via IP addresses. The
San Francisco Chronicle as does the The Dallas Morning News (but I can't find that online--just read it with my morning coffee.

 

[Angelo.M]

I thought this was an interesting quote from the AP story, carried in the New York Times:

"These are soccer moms, immigrant families, just ordinary citizens trying to reap the benefits of what appears to them to be nifty technology," said Jay Flemma, a New York lawyer who represented eight people sued in previous rounds by the music industry. "They're scared and they're frustrated and they really don't understand the nuances of copyright law."

 

[John Watson]

Subversive thought just came to me : Has the RIAA ever made massive contributions to funds for the still-living few, or the heirs of those old-time blues, rock, or country performers, that we occasionally hear about, who were paid pittances or were swindled by sharpies out of any reward for their massive contribution to the music?

 

[DavidLW]

That is not what the ruling stated. The Internet Service Provider must always provide the identity of the owner of the I.P address that the RIAA suspects is violating copyright laws because the RIAA has a court supena. What the December ruling changed was the way the RIAA obtain the supena. Before December, all the RIAA had to do was bring a list of I.P. Addresses suspected of copyright law violation to the court clerk and ask for a supena. The court issued one supena with the list of I.P Addresses on it. Once identified, the RIAA would then decide who would get sued and who would get off with a warning. The Internet Service Provider challenged the method of how the supena was issued and won. The new ruling states that the RIAA must first sue each I.P. Address individually and obtain a supena for each "John (Jane) Doe" being sued. This encompases more paperwork and each supena cost $35.00 or so. And since the suing process has already begun, it is less likely that anyone would get off with just a warning.

 

[Lew Crippen]

You are correct David, it is not. But it interrupted by many at the time, that it would fall into the too hard bucket. I summed in haste and error.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

I would agree with this. The ISPs have actually made the likelyhood of legal proceedings that much more possible, since the procedure is now underway from the start.

 

[Thomas Newton]

That's the crux of the matter. Clerks aren't supposed to provide the backbone of "due process". Judges and juries are.

It appears that the RIAA previously brought their fishing list to a clerk, who had to grant subpoena requests, with no review by a judge. Now they must go to a judge to get subpoenas, just like anyone else would have to do.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

It's worth noting that in recent interviews, David Kawakami, the leader of the Sony Super Audio CD project, has vehemently criticized these actions by the RIAA. He has said that is no business model to "sue your customers".

He's clearly right and I see no long term benefit to the RIAA on this. And in the process a large number of people get severely penalized.

The music industry gets everything its going to get from this ongoing negative PR.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

And rightly so!

 

[Jack Shappa]

I would guess most downloaders also buy products as well, so they are suing customers. The assumption that they would have received money for a significant portion of downloads I believe to be false.

- Jack

 

[DavidLW]

The RIAA are not yet targeting downloaders. They have brought their suits against uploaders. These are people that offer their music collections to others on the internet. The last article stated "800 or more" copyrighted songs were made available (shared) on each of these people computers to anyone with the proper sofware. So it's not a matter of how much these 532 "customers" would have spent on music but how many thousands or millions of dollars of music weren't bought by others because these people offered it for free. If the RIAA gets rid of the uploaders, there would be nothing for the downloaders to download.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I think that this is pretty funny when you consider that a lecture on sound business practices is coming from the head of a format that is so far not exactly delivering customers what they really want—which I would suggest is for the Hi Resolution world to sort itself out and agree on a single format. And that is available at a more modest price point.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

...and is also using copy protection to secure its assets in the hope that it will stop the very piracy the RIAA is going after.

 

[Jack Shappa]

Unless someone isn't sharing, a downloader is by default an uploader. In other words if you download 50 mp3s, and don't move them out of your shared folder (and don't turn sharing off) you're an uploader. So again, the question is would people who download those mp3s have otherwise purchased them? I guess the answer is no to the vast majority of DLs

- Jack

 

[DavidLW]

But the downloads are in the hundreds of millions per year. So even if 90% of the DLs wouldn't have purchased any music the remaining 10% still amounts to a descent amount of change. The iTune store has sold over 30 million dollars of music and this is thought to only represent less than 2% of all downloaded music (legal or illegal). Now, I don't believe that this is the main cause of the revenue decline in music sale but until the RIAA is convinced otherwise we will probably not see too much of a reduction in the cost of new release CD's.