Comments on: RIAA wins key victory; accused file sharer must pay $220,000
Federal jury orders woman to pay $9,250 for each song she shared online. EFF says copyright attorneys already lining up to help should there be an appeal.
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anyone believe these songs are worth almost $10,000 per user?
This is clearly a message judgment and the while the RIAA has
very little chance of collecting anything, it will put a scare into
file traders.
Look for iTunes to pass Best Buy as the number two music
retailer pretty soon now..
I do what I have done for 15 years and this is to buy the cd used for 1.00-5.00 from Pawn Shops in the area or online. I haven't paid over 5.00 for a cd in all these years. I may have to wait an extra month or two for someone to tire of their cd but it's worth it in the savings.
The only exception to this is minor/indie artists. I pass the money to them willingly.
It's all about greed. Pump & dump stocks. Greedy executives. The RIAA. The divide between the rich & poor growing every year. I'm sure it's because we're all so lazy here in America (not!). Land of the free, home of the brave? What happend to that? Now it's land of the take-as-much-as-you-can-as-quickly-as-you can. Television teaching our kids that fame and wealth are what's important in life; and it's looks so easy to take!
We need to wake up here in America and fire our beaurocrats, change these laws that allow businesses to pilfer our pockets for something that cost them two cents to make in China while paying us just enough to get by. Where is all of the cost savings going to make that product? Back in our salaries? Lowering the price of the product? Hell no; it's back in the pockets of the richest 1% of our nation.
A wealthy man is a like a fisherman with a big net. He can scoop up more fish that the guy with the little net. What does he do with all the fish? He sells them of course and buys a bigger net with the profits (built overseas of course). With that bigger net he catches even more fish. The little guy just can't keep up. Then the wealthy man moves his company (and it's big bank account to Dubai). The wealth man needs to pay for his right to use such a big net and have such a greater opportunity to catch more fish over the little guy. And that's about the time when George Bush says he's giving them a tax temporary tax break for the economy (which he lied about being temporary and makes permanent).
Get it while you can because just like the oil in the Middle East it's gonna run out sooner than you think...
Here is the real question. What do we do about it to fix it? I dont like giving up. I think it is time to change things and not just sit by and watch these big nets take our fish.
In the not so distant future with the current state of America's employment picture, the have nots will tire of the haves and we'll be faced with anarchy in the U.S. !
Its not about free music, its about the tactics the RIAA and other
like them use. They hacked her PC & tracked her movements. Its
clearly illegal. wake up people they are not the law & they
should be punished.
Don't buy or download any illegal music or go to the movies for
6 months and they will feel it. Or if you're smart. Don't share
Music! its you who share who are getting prosecuted. unless
you know how to not share don't even use P2P because you are
going to get caught! it does not take much. more than likely
just coming in this room will get you scanned and if you were
sharing music when you came in guess what? you just got
caught.
She should appeal, the very concept that one is guilty or any action (even in a civil case) where it has not been shown they had any real connection is ridiculous and asinine.
This is very analogous to speeding cameras, can you give someone a speeding ticket with out proving he/she was actually the driver? Some states say yes, some say no, the Supreme Court usually says no. Hopefully this will get that far, otherwise the precedent becomes guilt by association.
Imagine if your car is stolen, then used in a crime and you have to pay the victims because it was your car. "We don't care, you should have had a better alarm system."
Bad precedent, bad news...greed and law always are!
Instead of wasting our time and their own mnney on show trials thate are not going to stop kids from ripping and running anymore than "Just Say No" stops them from doing drugs, the record company's could do the following:
1. Wake up and smell the coffee. Offer a sliding scale wherein you pay top dollar for new material and 10 to 25 cents per song for older songs. Make it universal so everyone gets a piece including the artists.
2. Stop trying to scare people into not trying to get something for nothing. It just doesn't work.
3. Bring salary and staffing in-line with the modern realities of music. You can't afford greasy non-instrument playing middle management anymore, cut costs and CEO Salaries.
4. Stop beating up on students and housewives and go after the real deal, China and India. You look like punks beating up on American women and children who are slipping peanuts out the front door while asia steals everything under the sun out the back door. You look like idiots.
Dave Macks
Why isn't the RIAA taking on China? Because American workers are much easier targets.
Screw the RIAA.
Do you seriously think that people will pay top dollars or even 25 cents for any music when they can get it for free on one of these file sharing sites?
"2. Stop trying to scare people into not trying to get something for nothing. It just doesn't work."
You just made my point above. You can't have both 1 and 2.
"3. Bring salary and staffing in-line with the modern realities of music. You can't afford greasy non-instrument playing middle management anymore, cut costs and CEO Salaries."
I know for a fact that most Music Labels have reduce their staffs by %50 or more since the file sharing trend began. I have friends who are Audio Recording Engineers and Programmers who have been laid off due to the current music market. No level of reduction is enough as long as there is no revenue coming in because people can get your products for free on the internet.
"4. Stop beating up on students and housewives and go after the real deal, China and India. You look like punks beating up on American women and children who are slipping peanuts out the front door while asia steals everything under the sun out the back door."
How do you know they are not going after the big fish in China and India? At every trade talks between the US and China, the US Trade officials have been pressuring China and other coutries to clamp down on their illegal factories. There's not much more we can do sort of going to war with them. I don't think that's an option in anyone's mind. The RIAA is also not "beating up on students and housewives". If you weren't file sharing, they would have no reason to go after you. If they catch you, the first thing they offer is a settlement. This lady decide to take her chance in court and now everyone is blaming the RIAA for being the bad guy??? The RIAA did not ask for any damage amount. Apparently the jury in Minnesota felt that file sharing is wrong and they set the amount to $220,000 to send a message to would be file sharers that there is a big price to pay if you get caught.
If you don't agree with the RIAA tactics, you can simply boycott their products. Stop buying or listening to musics. Tell all your friends to do the same if you want. Don't do something wrong just to get back at the RIAA. My parents have always taught me: "two wrongs don't make a right".
Whether the music isn't worth the price, or the music industry's business model is no longer working, or she was singled out, or the penalty didn't fit the crime, is interesting but irrelevant to Jamie's conduct.
Dose this mean if I lose my Ipod and someone uses it to share files with I'm at fault?
Dose this mean if I lose my copyrighted music CDs and someone uses them to share files with I'm at fault?
I believe the jury was mad at her for letting some one in her house break the law. Another case of prosecute the convenient found party and not the guilty. :(
As your theoretically lost iPod is concerned, it doesn't matter whose music is being shared, it matters on whose computer the sharing occurs. So should the thief be caught sharing music from a stolen iPod it wouldn't matter where he got the iPod from - the thief would be guilty since she made the music available to others just like the housewife in the story.
Chris will never have the reputation of EFF, because he spend his life seeing how much money he can get away with taking from other people, whereas the EFF spends its time making society a better place.
Chris thinks the latest statement can always explain the ones before them...but mere bluster isn't going to change reputations here, the EFF is well respected, because they do the work to earn that respect, year after year.
However, you do when you purchase music.
So, not only are they biting the hand that feeds them, they're biting their own hands as well. Sounds like cutting your nose to spite your face. IDIOTS!!
Time to drop the membership.
Even if you do not like their music, you have to respect a band that is showing that they are NOT greedy drug induced ******. This is about the music and for the fans. Bands like Radiohead and Coldplay who prove album after album that every track is a great track, I will definitely BUY the CD. There's so much crap music being pushed out that it's no wonder the music industry sucks so bad right now. I am so sick or pre-manufactured pop, the same old ghetto gangsta hip hop and rip off alternative...
All I can say is I hope more bands follow Radiohead's lead and give the proverbial finger to the record companies.
It would send a message to RIAA from the people.
Also, I'm not going to pay ludicrous amounts for "creativity" that produces the same old crap over and over again. It seems to me, from the continuously dropping album sales, that most of you aren't going to pay for it either.
Good songwriters will get whatever they're worth. And bad writers will, too. Thank goodness we're finally seeing some free market forces working successfully on the music industry to curb the exhorbitant incomes of unimportant, untalented entertainers.
What happened 9 years ago? That's about the time of the whole dot com bubble bursting... followed by a recession... followed by 9/11. I'm not an expert in micro-economics by any means, but I am fairly certain there were a lot of other factors involved in declining music sales during that time.
And let's be realistic for a minute, the majority of music in the last 10 - 15 years has sucked ass. People are getting tired of $20 for a CD with one or two good songs. Heaven forbid we have a consumer who thinks for a change.
I'm not whining about stealing music, but gone are the days when I will blindly buy a CD on a whim. There's still bands I will always buy like Radiohead, Coldplay, Ben Folds etc... going out and buying something like American Hi Five or Alien Ant Farm because I heard one song I liked on the radio only to find out that the CD over all sucked... why waste my money ya know?
When CDs become reasonably priced, then piracy will go down and sales will go up. When the RIAA stops suing people forcing this little war against the consumers... people might be more willing to buy music. I know this part will be hard to understand, but when the music industry learns that the old way of doing business doesn't bode so well in the digital age and they change their whole model and attitude, they might just be surprised at how much music they will actually sell.
$20 for a CD versus FREE that's a no brainer for the poor, middle class and those in college. $5-10 for a CD seems a lot more in lines with reality.
And she / they did not steal a CD. They stole a file that, if played on the right kind of equipment might sound like a song.
- Score: Scum Suckers1; We The People 0
- by dahnb October 5, 2007 8:52 AM PDT
- Convicted by a jury of her peer-to-peers????
- Like this Reply to this comment
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