Posted 10/07/2007 06:14:00 PM by Douglas

Here's a take on the RIAA's case this week that nails it.

The problem isn't the verdict. It's the penalty.

After decades of special-interest lobbying by large holders of intellectual property rights, U.S. copyright law has spiraled out of control. It's been transformed from limited protections of authors' rights for 14 years to a juggernaut with criminal enforcement, sky-high penalties, and up to 120 years of legal protection.

Copyright no longer abides by the fundamental principle of law, which is that the damages awarded should be related to any harm committed. No wonder Jammie Thomas got slapped with a $222,000 bill. (And I wouldn't be surprised to see attorney's fees add another $100,000 on top of it.)

"It doesn't strike a regular person that by passing a CD around the neighborhood, they should have their house taken away," says Lew Rockwell, president of the free-market Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. "And by electronic means it shouldn't be any different."

According to the RIAA, I should be in Git-Mo for making a mix-tape for my college girlfriend. Actually, I should be in Git-Mo for putting Patsy Cline on the same tape as the Beastie Boys.

Labels: RIAA

Posted 10/06/2007 04:50:00 PM by Douglas

OK, so she's guilty. She probably did what they said she did, so I'm not going to cry about that. But it's still a stupid law.

Thomas was the first person to fight back all the way to a trial. Six major record companies accused Thomas of offering 1,702 songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network. At trial, they focused on 24 songs and jurors decided Thursday that Thomas willfully violated the copyright on all 24. Their verdict was for damages of $9,250 per song, or $222,000.

The recording industry won two victories with that verdict.

I don't think so. Is $220K going to do a damn thing for the industry? Other than further alienating their consumers, I doubt this will do a thing to deter more than a dozen file-sharing users to stop. So instead of dealing with the new technology, they're just digging a bigger hole for themselves in a vain attempt to regain the glory days of the $16 CD.

One of my favourite stories the Onion has ever done.

Labels: RIAA

Posted 10/04/2007 04:38:00 PM by Douglas

The RIAA continues their steady march away from relevance. I have to admire this woman for not just emptying her bank account like most of the other accused did, but it doesn't look like she's gonna win.

Six major record companies accuse Jammie Thomas, 30, of sharing 1,702 songs online in violation of the companies' copyrights. The record companies claim they found the songs on a Kazaa file-sharing account they later linked to her.

After two days of testimony from 11 witnesses, the defense rested without calling anyone to the stand, and closing arguments in the civil trial were scheduled for Thursday morning.

Earlier in the day, Thomas set up her computer in court to show the jury how quickly CDs could be copied onto it. That demonstration came in response to testimony from an expert for the record companies, Doug Jacobson, who said the songs on one of Thomas' computer drives were copied at a pace so fast it suggested piracy.

Many appeared just 15 seconds apart, which Jacobson claimed was faster than Thomas could have copied songs from CDs she owned onto the computer.

But each song Thomas copied in court over Gabriel's objection took less than 10 seconds to land on the computer.

Wow. This kind of thing is going to sound really absurd in about five more years.

Labels: RIAA

Posted 5/14/2007 05:54:00 PM by Douglas

The RIAA is at it again, this time targeting college students with their litigious zeal over file sharing.

Barg couldn't imagine anyone expected her to pay $3,000 — $7.87 per song — for some 1980s ballads and Spice Girls tunes she downloaded for laughs in her dorm room. Besides, the 20-year-old had friends who had downloaded thousands of songs without repercussion.

"Obviously I knew it was illegal, but no one got in trouble for it," Barg said.

Typical legal strong-arming. Go after college students who don't have any money and offer a relatively cheap buy-out so as to scare the crap out of the other million students that are file sharing.

I'm not going to add any value to the millions of column inches that have been devoted to this in the past, and the intellectual property aspects of file sharing are complicated, but where the RIAA is fundamentally wrong is that a shared file does not equate to a lost CD sale. It's not hard to imagine that a person might download a song or two by someone they're curious about and then go buy their entire catalog. Or, on the other hand, they could listen to that one song and realize it's total crap. Stealing a CD in a store is much more heinous because that theft prohibits someone else from buying it. File sharing doesn't even come close, and for an new upstart band without distribution, file sharing is their answer to their prayers: Getting their music out through the most efficient means available.

"Technically, I'm guilty. I just think it's ridiculous, the way they're going about it," Barg said. "We have to find a way to adjust our legal policy to take into account this new technology, and so far, they're not doing a very good job."

Technically, you're an idiot. Of course you're "guilty," but that doesn't mean it's OK just because it's a dumb law.

The only positive outcome from this is that the RIAA's spiraling legal costs will become prohibitive (even for their deep pockets), thus adding so much cost to each CD price that the studio system collapses under it's own legal fees. Then we can start over.

Labels: RIAA

Posted 2/16/2006 05:07:00 PM by Douglas

The RIAA, not content with merely marching towards their inevitable obsolescence have decided to spend some of their legal fees on some kind of super-sonic transporter that will take them right off the map of viability.

As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:

"Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use."

If I understand what the RIAA is saying, "perfectly lawful" means "lawful until we change our mind."

Record companies, your days are numbered, and sure, you're going to blame your demise on "the internets", but more honestly it's your litigious and even Luddite-like attitude that will have driven you into the ground like a tent stake in loose sand.

Labels: RIAA

Posted 12/17/2005 12:52:00 PM by Douglas

The RIAA continues their steady march towards obsolescence, this time in Amarillo.

The recording industry's battle against music downloading entered a new front Thursday after six industry giants filed a copyright infringement suit against an Amarillo man, court records show.

Anyone downloading music files, no matter how many, could be targeted by record companies, he said.

Don't they have anything better to do besides prosecuting people individually? Before too long, they'll be going after radio stations for distributing music. Or even word of mouth.

Labels: RIAA

Posted 11/21/2005 05:24:00 PM by Douglas

The home computer has been the thorn in the side of record company executives and the RIAA for the past decade, and after countless attempts to reign in the piracy of CD and/or file sharing, how does Sony react? Like a total moron.

The fact that so-called digital rights management might always be a doomed experiment became painfully clear with the fiasco that erupted after Sony BMG Music Entertainment added a technology known as XCP to more than 50 popular CDs.

After it was discovered that XCP opened gaping security holes in users' computers — as did the method Sony BMG offered for removing XCP — Sony BMG was forced to recall the discs this week. Some 4.7 million had been made and 2.1 million sold.

Here's the deal, guys. You sell buggy whips. Those little $13.99 to $15.99 plastic disks with holes in the middle have proved to be a complete rip-off, not only because they only contain 10 songs (when 20 will generally easily fit) but because two thirds of the CD is complete and utter dreck pumped out by the label as filler. Instead of attacking the problem, why not try something that's already 100% within your control: The cause:

Phil Leigh, analyst for Inside Digital Media, said the debacle shows just how reluctant the labels are to change their business model to reflect the distribution powers — good and bad — of the Internet. He believes that rather than adopting technological methods to try to stop unauthorized copying of music, record companies need to do more to remove the incentive for piracy.

Well, Phil, you can't unring the bell. The internet has shown us how easy it is to share files, and even without the net, it's so much easier to extract the "good" songs from a CD and dump the rest. Then it can again be "shared" many times. I think it's a stretch to say these are lost sales, because these people aren't going to buy the CD for one decent song anyway. But where did Sony go wrong this time?:

"The biggest mistake the labels are making is, they're letting their lawyers make technical decisions. Lawyers don't have any better understanding of technology than a cow does algebra," Leigh said. "They insist on chasing this white whale."

When all you've got is a hammer, pretty soon, everything starts looking like a nail. If everyone in the country is guilty of violating the spirit, if not the letter of the law, then why not go after my grandma because I made her a copy of my Glen Miller CD? She's just as guilty, right? Why not throw her in jail? But he continues:

It's easy to understand why the music industry wishes songs could magically be prevented from being ripped from CDs and shared freely.

Why is that easy to understand? If I buy a CD, want to listen to it on my computer (or MP3 player) why should I have to jump through any hoops? I paid for it, right? I own that copy, and I haven't made any duplicates. Where's the crime? The record companies don't understand why their customers don't want the medium they paid for to be totally unusable in a format they desire?

The industry has seen an estimated $2 billion overall decline in CD sales in the last five years. New digital services such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes have made up some of that, but still account for just 6 percent of the industry's global sales.

YAWN! They're still blaming this $2 Billion decline on the internet? That was cute in 1999-2000, but now it's just trite. I know I'm not the first to say it, but listen: There is a new method of exchanging recordings. You can't stop it. Adapt or be forgotten.

This is going to be a huge leap in the interpretation of intellectual property laws in this country. For too long, these record companies have been dependent on stupid teenagers to go out and buy the first CD they saw. Now they don't have to. Hell, they could even record the song from the radio, digitize it to their computer, and put that on a CD and listen to it from now 'till the second coming. Is that illegal? I'm sure the RIAA would say yes.

This sums it up nicely, and I wish the record companies would take note:

"It's an arms race that the content owner can never win," said Yankee Group analyst Michael Goodman. "In order to make it usable, you also have to make it beatable. If you really truly want to lock it down, it is possible to lock it down. But it is so onerous on the user that they'd never want to use it in the first place."

So, why are your sales down, jackass?

Also, enjoy your lawsuit for implementing spyware, jackasses:

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a civil lawsuit on Monday against Sony BMG Music Entertainment for hiding "spyware" software on its compact discs in a bid to thwart music copying.

According to the lawsuit filed in Travis County, several of the company's music compact discs require customers to download Sony's media players if they want to listen to the CDs on a computer.

God Bless Texas!

Labels: RIAA

Posted 1/09/2005 04:43:00 PM by Douglas

Check out these snazzy new iPods! [h/t Frank]

Some of these are pretty funny, but I don't think anyone at the RIAA knows how to use one.

Labels: RIAA

Posted 11/30/2003 05:20:00 PM by Douglas

Will the downloading generation ever pay for online music? I think we all know the answer to that. It's a big, emphatic, apathetic NO. Why?:

"it's too easy to get music free.''

Is the RIAA ever going to wake up and embrace this efficient way of distributing music, or are they going to continue to try to lock up Jr. High kids.

Also, There's a publication called the Vanderbilt Hustler? Who knew?

Labels: RIAA

Posted 6/18/2003 08:51:00 AM by Douglas

Orin Hatch has lost his freakin' mind. Since when has the deliberate destruction of private property been a suitable alternative to the violation of copyright law?

"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."
"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.

What a novel idea! Next we can have onboard computers that will damage your piston rings when you exceed posted speed limits, or exploding VCRs that self destruct when you copy a tape. But Instapundit has the best idea:

In the spirit of the Framers, I'm tempted to endorse a more traditional remedy: twice warning a politician about threatening people's rights and property, and then running him out of town on a rail.

That's one, Orrin.

The Onion had a piece a while back about how the RIAA was going to sue the radio stations for "illegally distributing copyrighted material all over the country." Doesn't sound that unreasonable now, does it?

Labels: RIAA