Sony-BMG Wins: Defendant must pay $9,250 per song
section: common, for your questions: KezNews forum, 5.10.2007
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) won the first of many digital music file sharing cases Thursday against a single mother, with a U.S. jury finding her guilty of copyright infringement and fining her a total of $222,000.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota could have fined Jammie Thomas as much as $3.6 million, but opted not to. She was found guilty of stealing and giving away via Internet peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing service Kazaa a total of 24 songs from companies including Capitol Records Inc., Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Bros. Records Inc.
Thomas, a Native American, has two children.
The guilty verdict in its first ever such case is a sign the RIAA may come out victorious on more of the over 20,000 lawsuits it has filed against people in its bid to stop Internet copyright infringement. The industry association has spent millions of dollars on advertising campaigns against Internet piracy and has a zero-tolerance policy against the practice.
People have been able to share music, movies, television programs and other Internet files for years with peer-to-peer Internet sites and software. Some sites remain open, but many have been shut down by industry lawsuits and work to create laws in countries throughout the world. Companies and industry associations say they are loosing billions of dollars a year through Internet and optical disc piracy.
source:
itworld.com
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Comments(12)
first, the 24 songs were already made available over the internet.
secondly,
the defendant wasn't proven she had provided access for downloading these songs. because
just like a telephone number, it does not establish the operator at the time.
imagine your wifi mobile phone being hacked, just like a wifi router providng your
internet access for someone else to use your ip address and or telephone number to share
songs or used for terrorist activity. this only points out the obvious, that an ip
addresses cannot establish proof of what individual was committing whatever crime.
if someone goes into a store and steals 24 songs, is that someone going to get
$220,000 fine?
who’s the real pirate, the lady sharing 24 songs, or the music
association demanding $220,000 dollars for those 24 songs?
why is it okay for
the riaa to mass produce millions of copies that they profit, but individuals are
forbidden to share their copies for no money?
so, deny society their culture to
share, just so a market monopoly can exist to profit for it’s owners instead?
isn't that just serving the wealthy only? it's no wonder why intellectual property
rights are used as a tool in a capitalistic system to take away the people's rights.
first the wealthy can only afford patents and then everything they own means you
don't. remember how the indians regarded land? they thought nobody could own land, you
are born and then you die, so you can only occupy it for a time. but, now the captialistic
system uses intellectual property rights against the individuals who are not wealthy and
rich. they do it by locking you out, by making patents live longer than people do!
ask yourself what right does sony records get to copyright music made by beethoven
hundreds of years later?
did beethoven give his permission for sony records to
only have this right to listen to his music?
and if anyone shares music, to
their children, wife or husband, while over the internet, does that become a crime now?
how will the riaa or mpaa know the difference of sharing to your own family
members when they never know the individual but just some ip address?
riaa's practices involve price-fixing, blaming its poor financial state on unfounded
digital piracy claims (and in turn, blaming and suing its own consumers), lobbying for
changes that hinder technological innovation and change copyright laws, underpaying the
artists it represents, invading personal privacy to enforce copyrights, and dismantling
entire computer networks just because of their ability (of their users) to share
copyrighted files.
the riaa has also been criticized for bringing lawsuits
against children, such as 12 year old brianna lahara in 2003 and again in the media after
they subpoenaed gertrude walton, an 83-year-old grandmother who had died in december of
2004.
almost 300 years ago the myth of the creator was born with a statute intended to
break the perpetual copyright monopoly of the stationers' company and bring scotland
under a common law of copyright ending piracy in a new 'great britain'. the legal
fiction was planted that all rights originated with the creator but that any 'natural'
or moral rights of that creator are extinguished on publication. furthermore, the economic
rights of the creator are compromised in the financial interest of proprietors or
'copyright owners'. thus economic rights of the creator can, and usually are,
transferred to proprietors in return for a one-time payout by the stroke of a pen on an
'all rights license'. the myth survived the american revolution and has now led, full
circle, back to a virtual perpetual copyright extending onto four generations and covering
all existing and any as yet to be invented means of fixing the work of a creator in
material form. in effect, copyright has become the legal foundation for the industrial
organization of the arts/entertainment/media industry.
all innovation is always
built upon prior innovation.
i will now stop buying all cd/dvds from these pirates, regardless of the artist or how
good the tracks are.
if a few more do it, well most internet uses and with luck
sony-bmg will go bust.
money grubbing thieves, pay the artist stuff all and pocket
the big bucks for them selves
the members of the riaa are very good examples of greed. it has nothing to do with
capitalism or whatever political system, but is a pure human vice without limit. the
profits that the riaa make could feed half of africa. they have the money to lobby for
tough laws according to their wishes, and enforce them through the courts with little
opposition. my beef against them goes back to the 1970's, when the dat audio recording
was developed. this allowed for cheap digital recording on tape. we never saw these on
the market because they themselves succeeded in destroying this great invention through
litigation. this invention would have allowed the ordinary person to make studio quality
recordings at home, and the average person had to wait until personal computers were
finally able to do this on their hard drives in the mid 90's, 20 years later. the riaa
had finally met its match in microsoft. personally, i would be most happy if citizens do
all they can to lawfully destroy this monster.
and then we get the artists to not signup with the big companies but retain the rights
to sell direct. we can all buy direct and the greedy hogs will starve to death on the
trough without slop to eat off the public and artists they go belly up and it could not
happen soon enough or to a better group of sorry skumbags!
we just need a smart group
to start it. i do not know that much about the music industry or how we could contact the
artists but i see some are letting their tracks go for whatever we feel is a good price
with a minimum of $1.00
lets think about this and do it!
send the hogs to the
butchershop!
tulie
the best way to make our point felt is to stop buying any cd or dvd's.
i doubt it would go on further because her legal fees are adding up but ip addresses are
not by any means hard evidence. hell one can always claim my router was open and someone
else committed a crime to commit the piracy on a system rather then theirs.
o
well f*(k the riaa and mpaa. they are the modern mob of the internet age.
this is sad. she must feel soo wronged when every else is doing it around her. the
charges are soo big too. i am making sure i am downloading everything i can, these are not
getting one red cent off me.... just increases my anger.
i think its stupid i know a policeman that downloads music, everyone does! when was the
last time anyone said oh i bought an album today? people dont they go i downloaded an
album i dont think people should get done for doing it cos if you downlad a program like
limewire- its begging you to download songs and films its the creators of such programs
that should be jailed- im not complaining cos i use them, but these programs are designed
for non copyrighted file share such as...such as what? artwork? a novel you wrote
yourself? no one uses it for that it amazes me that these programs are still allowed to be
used, and that hundreds of thousands of bit torrent websites are still up and running with
the latest songs and films available to download on the front page for use with azeurus
etc.
another thing is that people who dont know a lot about computers probably dont
even know that its illegal to download songs because it has such a user friendly interface
the ends justifie the means huh?
corporate interests win out over the lives of
individuals. she should be fined for the price of buying the cd's and maybe found guilty
of a misdemeanor and paying a fine for that, no more. the ones who downed from her should
be fined for the price of the cd's.
the punishment fits the crime? can we even call
it a cime?
riaa and lawyers who do work saying "its my job" should be hung in
the streets and they will be.
courts do this to a single mother?
have
they no descency?
ps
i too will never buy a music cd again untill this bs is put bed for good.
i've probably bough over a thousand cd's in my life so far, mostly from music
clubs, some from big retailers but now, not one will i buy ever.
see what the
riaa does, how effective it is?
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Who's the Real Pirate a 24 Song Lady or $$$ 220,000 RIAA?
By mofia on 05.10.2007 - 23:10