Comments on: Four reasons why the RIAA won a jury verdict of $220,000

The recording industry just won a huge legal victory against illicit file-sharing. How? Two key decisions the judge made helped a lot.

[rdupuy11]

Settled

Your belief that someone who used the phrase 'spouting off' needs to be cautioned to 'keep it civil'...rather places you out of touch with the nature of the discussions. In other words, the remark was tame.

Calling people thiefs and felons and axe murders because they, not copied themselves, but made available a song, is more the order of the day. 'Spouting off' is quite the civil choice of words.

You know what else, the record companies can solve this through technology, 'seeding' which has far better rate of success than lawsuits. If people really cared about artists, they would want a solution that works, not one that all evidence has shown has almost no impact.

The reason they want to go this way, is the same reason people went to the coliseum to see people kill each other...its a sad commentary on human nature.

Keep it civil indeed. ISP's know when you download a song, how about they just don't do it. Because they are big and have money too, and they can lobby to keep thier part in the crime above the law with various theories about being a service provider, as opposed to publisher...but its all legal mumbo jumbo. If they were held responsible, they would quickly move to block the downloads, which they can do quite easily.

[George Riddick]

Only strong deterrents will stop this epidemic

What a Strategic Blunder!

You know, I have never agreed with the folks at the Electronic Freedom Foundation, or other groups who seem dedicated to changing the long standing laws of copyright protection in this country. But I have noted one thing.

Their allies seem to include some of the brightest young minds in this country. From the law professors and students at Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Duke, and others ... to the lawyers at some of the most prestigious IP firms in the land ... to the engineers and scientists at some of our leading technology companies in this country ... the intellectual brainpower in this self-described "new wave" group has been impressive.

How this group could allow a strategic blunder like what we've just seen come out of Duluth is beyond me. Why these organizations didn't get involved, study the case thoroughly, and encourage Ms. Thomas, and her obviously inexperienced attorney, to surrender is truly phenomenal.

This is not the individual, the attorney, the forum, or the time I would want a precedent such as this established. What a strategic blunder!

Maybe these people are not nearly as smart as I gave them credit for. Apparently, they all sat back and naively thought (make that "wished") that Ms. Thomas would somehow end the RIAA onslaught forever.

Don't get me wrong. I applaud the decisions made by both the judge and jury in this precedent setting case. The anti-copyright crowd will suffer the consequences of this loss big time. Our economy will be strengthened. And these decisions will do more to help curtail widespread Internet Piracy than all the politicians, copyright industry executives, and lobbyists in this entire country put together.

I thought good lawyers advised their clients of the downside of their attempts to "change the law of the land" and could be sanctioned if they chose to pursue only "the big payday" or their personal "15 minutes of fame" instead. Read the copyright laws. Displaying and downloading copyright-protected works owned by others without their permission is illegal. It has both civil and criminal consequences. And, as in the case of Ms. Thomas in Duluth, they can be severe. She will have to pay back nearly $500,000 by having her pay check garnished for the rest of her life.

But she doesn't get any sympathy from me. If she had taken this many copyrighted songs out of Best Buy or Wal-Mart, she'd be in jail right now. And owe back a like amount of money as well. None of us - right or left - want to live in a lawless society. It's interesting to debate legal principles and consequences, but fearing to go outside for a cup of coffee or a loaf of bread is not something we have had any experience with in this country at all. Thank goodness!

And if you don't think organized white collar crime families are behind much of this Internet piracy epidemic, you'd better think again.

COUNTERPOINT:

Here is the one issue I have discussed with my 20-year-old son and I do have "conflicts" with. Google infringes more legitimate copyrights every single day than Ms. Thomas could do in a lifetime. Do we now have a country that has completely different standards for the billionaires than we do for the normal working folks? If so, I sure hope this is short-lived as well. I think I'd rather give up the coffee and the bread than have to worry about Google stealing from me every single day.

What's your opinion?

George P. Riddick, III
Chairman/CEO
Imageline, Inc.

[e-mail]

[techforumz]

Sure, wanna play that game?

Alrighty, there is no way that I will buy music at this price. I can live my life without anything but internet radio, thank you very much. I don't even like music from large artists that much. In fact I like COMPUTER generated music. So if they don't stop this, they will lose everyone. If people can download without being caught, they will. It's just trying to scare people. So they're only screwing themselves.

[MakeSense!]

Give away your neighbor's car too ?

An addiction to free goods doesn't justify giving away other peoples' goods for free. What do you think: tomorrow we should allow people to give away their neighbors lawn mower, car, house, and what else?

Everyone jumping off the bridge still doesn't make it a sensible thing to do.

[officewiz808]

RIAA Sucks Lama Balls

If the RIAA scumbags had any sense of fair play, they'd aim to recover just the actual retail value of the songs, but instead, they try to financially gang rape a college student whom they know doesn't have the means to defend herself.

Next, they'll be going after you. Think they're not tracking your illegal mp3s on itunes? Think again. They're getting ready to sue Apple and Apple will eventually hand over their records, unless we the people, make Apple destroy all such records in the name of privacy and stopping scum bags like the RIAA.

The RIAA represents the labels, and as we well know, the labels hardly represent the artists. The artist typically sees less that 5% of the profits, and in general, would be better off representing himself.

God bless.

[Sparky650]

The difference is.. ..

1. The person paying .99 is paying full price for uncompressed audio and getting lossy sub par compressed preview audio with restrictions.
Considering one can find used cds as low as 2.00 per album one finds themselves tired of being shafted.
2. The person sharing is offering a test drive to obvious music one obviously loves. This compressed and lossy audio is more like a person offering test drives of this great car they own and really want others to try it out.

The record company is much like a store owner where one wishes to purchase a lamp. The store owner has a price on the lamp.
The lamp is kind of costly but even more so when you find that the store owner wishes to charge extra for the lamp shade and the power cord. You find out that your aunt (love of artist) makes the lamp but the store owner only pays her .02.
A neighbor takes a picture of the lamp which you sit on your dresser to see if the lamp is what you really want. The store owner finds out about this and breaks down your door and beats you and takes your wallet.
So what we have is a company that beats and underpays it's employees. A company that beats and overcharges the customers. A company that doesn't really want you to experience their merchandise other than dropping out money. Then wonders why nobody wants to shop there anymore.

[Sparky650]

Why are indie music sales up?

Why are indie label sales up? Why is it that Indies can make profit from this free market? Why is it that an indie artist on a small label can sell 25,000 copies of an album and make more money than an artist on a major label that sold a million?
The reason I know this figure is because one of my favorite indie rock artists basically releases his own material on his own label and makes 5.00 per cd and estimates he makes more money than Alice In Chains in their heyday.

[Sparky650]

Buy Indie

I haven't purchased an RIAA affiliated Cd in 7 years because of their behavior. I informed what artists I liked on these AA labels I could no longer support them. Sure I'll buy their disc if it is used and reasonable. I used to buy 5-10 discs a month from them but now I purchase used and indie only.

[eric23dc]

This case is ridiculous here because the RIAA was allowed to have stretched the law. Whenever the law is stretched usually ridiculous things follow. No one should forget that the constitution assigns the congress to be THE only one law maker. The congress made the statue definition of distribution as 'physical object' being passed over from hand to hand because only these 2 words 'physical object' are absolutely correct here. OTHERWISE, if it could be stretched at the will of any parties, RIAA can sue anyone and win unless you buy the cd but never listen to it. In fact, whenever the music is played in a house other people in distance within miles, can use a device to record the music nicely by shooting a laser beam toward a window of the room, where the music is being played, and receiving the reflection. Therefore, RIAA can encourage some spies to record music this way as a evidence of incriminating any and every music listeners whom they dislike for 'make available' or 'distribute' music. Right, in the future no one should listen to the music they buy otherwise they are distributing or making it available for distribution. How ridiculous can that be? Or, should we go back to the original statue which uses the words "physical object"?

[CantStandRockStars]

Rock stars suck. Arrogant bags of dirt. Screw 'em. They treat their fans like trash, the very ones that made them rich. I hope they all lose their butt.

And, the Association? Ha........