bout time somebody fights back. good for her.

Hmm

So if I was a big company like the RIAA and I target middle to lower-income people or students and say "Pay the fine of 6,000 - 7,000 dollars because I have proof that you have pirated certain files and performed copyright infringement", even if I'm not 100% or just flat out lying, I have a good chance of winning in these scenarios in that the fine is high enough that I get some cash out this but low enough that the person being fined will consider paying it instead of dealing with legal fees. And if said person is being fined does persist and goes to court, I hire the best lawyers and the person gets bombarded with legal costs that pale in comparison with the original fine.


That's really tricky. I assume it isn't anywhere as clear-cut as this, but damn...

So what's stopping the RIAA just handing out these fines to random people? Well not random people, but target ones that probably aren't very computer literate and no real access to lawyers.

That's basically what they've been doing.

Their other favorite legal strategy is to sue you on the other side of the country and serve you papers 3 days ahead of your court date. Because it's impossible for you to get there, let alone hire a lawyer in that state, it means you automatically lose the trial.

Is that legal? I mean, if you commit a crime in Florida, you don't stand trial for it in Washington state do you (even if the victim hails from there)?
It also seems like such a transparently underhanded technique that any judge worth his salt would throw them out.

I hate the legal system, its so messed up.

Gimme a benevolent dictator please.

Yeah it doesn't sound right, cause that's how it works with every other case where there's a court involved.

It's actually kind of convoluted how it works. There's a difference between crimes (wrongs against the state, e.g. larceny, murder, kidnapping) and torts (civil wrongs, i.e. the kinds that you can sue for, e.g. negligence, economic fraud, defamation). Some actions (such as assault, battery,etc.) can be both though (since the state can prosecute someone for assault, and the person assaulted can sue the assaulter as well for compensation).

People who are tried for crimes are tried in the state(s) against which they committed the crime (if they violated a state statute), or in federal court (if it was a federal statute), or in both in certain cases.

For torts (in general defined as committed when:
1. a duty imposed by the law owed by one "person" (entity) to another
2. is breached and
3. proximately causes
4. injury or damage to the owner of a legally protected interest

which is what the RIAA is suing people for), on the other hand, the plaintiff must show that the courts they are suing in has 1) jurisdiction over the parties, and 2) subject matter jurisdiction over the case itself.

Jurisdiction over the parties BASICALLY means that both parties have to have some "CONNECTION" to the state in which the court resides -- there can be "no surprise" to either party if they are called out to that place. Courts automatically have personal jurisdiction over the plaintiff because he/she is the one who brought the suit to that court -- therefore there's no way he/she could be "surprised" that it is being tried there. For the defendant, the "minimum contacts" include things like presence (whether he/she has been there/whether the suit is served while they are there), residency (whether he/she lives there -- or if it's a company, the state in which it's incorporated), consent (whether the defendent "agrees" to be tried in that state), or OTHER minimum contacts (basically otherwise "sufficient" affiliation with the state in question to make it reasonable that he/she is tried there involving things like property and commercial activity). [Edit: I found some more info on minimum contacts specifically w/ regards to internet cases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_in_internet_cases ]

So basically, yes the RIAA can do what Jon`C mentioned (there are more details involved than the three-days-you-can't-show-up-so-you-lose-your-trial thing though), because their lawyers can make the argument that you have a "connection" to wherever it is they're suing you at (omg you downloaded a song through a server that resides there?! or something like that. I'm just generalizing/speculating on this though... I haven't actually looked into these cases.)

Also note that if it is blatantly clear that a court does not have personal jurisdiction over you, you can send a lawyer to dismiss on grounds of lack of jurisdiction.


** Disclaimer: I'm drawing on some pretty basic legal studies knowledge and I am not the best person to provide entirely precise or accurate info on the matter... it'd probably be better for someone who's extensively studied the relevant tort/jurisdiction laws to speak on it further. Don't take this as legal advice because I will probably screw you over**

"We simply cannot allow online piracy to continue destroying the livelihoods of artists, musicians, songwriters, retailers, and everyone in the music industry."

Yeah, those poor artists are living out of boxes on the streets because people download a few songs online. Give me a break. Maybe the people with worthless jobs in the RIAA are feeling a pinch because consumers are questioning why music costs so friggin much.

Good for her for fighting.

Bobbert, that's not an exaggeration. It's the truth.

It really bugs me when people who don't understand anything about the music industry and the recording industry just automatically decide that record companies 100% wrong. I mean, it's not downloading "a few songs online". It's a consistant decline in record sales that's been going on for the past ten years and is showing no sign of letting up. On one hand, there is an element of getting with the times (i.e. the technology isn't about to be uninvented) but recording artists still need to be paid for their product.

If the consumers are wondering why music "costs so friggin much" then maybe they should do some research. Making records is expensive.

Speaking of which, Tracer, where can I hear your guitarin'?

Yeah, like the case where they threatened to sue a woman who had no computer, or the one where they tried to sue a dead guy.

They sued a homeless guy in the last week or so

Link are broked.

Works for me....Oh, it might be because I'm on a university network and it lets me in to that stuff.

Quick summary of the conclusion:

VIII. Conclusions

Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample. Even our most negative point estimate (specification 6 of table 7) implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album’s weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero. Because our sample was constructed to be representative of the population of commercially relevant albums, we can use our estimates to test hypotheses about the impact of P2P on the entire industry. Using 95 percent confidence bands, these tests are presented in table 11. Taking into account all our (instrumented) estimates including the least precise results in tables 7–9, we can reject a null that P2P caused a sales decline greater than 24.1 million albums. For reference, the music industry sold 803 million CDs in 2002, which was a loss of 80 million from the previous year (RIAA 2004). Our estimates become more precise if we relax the assumption that file sharing affects only contemporaneous sales and if we allow for growth in the number of file sharers. For example, the scaled GMM models in table 9 reject a null of losses greater than 6.6 million. Relying on our five most precise estimates, we conclude that the impact could not have been larger than 6.0 million albums. While file sharers downloaded billions of files in 2002, the consequences for the industry amounted to no more than 0.7 percent of sales.

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wat?

Tracer,

They may not be 100% wrong, but I believe that many of their actions are unjust. Sure, good news doesn't make headlines, but there's way too much bad news out there about the RIAA to be coincidental.

Perhaps I'm uneducated on the subject, but I can't help getting the impression that the RIAA is using underhanded tactics to attempt to preserve an outmoded system of music distribution (or preserve the outmoded organization itself?). Music sales declining for a decade is no justification to go on a mass campaign of questionable litigation. The decline in sales is an economic signal that the market desires change. Change doesn't have to come in the form of completely free music, but if the music industry sales are on the rocks, it is for a reason. IMHO, they need to change with the times and quit trying to bail out a sinking ship.

Personally, I agree that digital delivery is the new thing and Cds are on the way out. I also think that chasing after individuals who pirate music is like bashing your head against the wall because the technology isn't going away.

However, I don't believe you can condone piracy by just by saying that the market desires a change. There are legal alternatives to buying stuff at ye olde music shoppe, but I think in general people just want it free and then justify their actions afterwards by vilifying record labels.

saberopus: Um, I'll try to get some stuff up soon.

buck: I'd be interested to read the whole article, mainly because I think it's completely wrong. Can you get a working link?

Incidentally, the use of Napster - before the RIAA started suing their own customers - caused an upswing in album sales.


Recording, marketing, distribution and retailing are expensive. Manufacturing is dirt cheap. I know what you meant, but I'm just clarifying this.

Nobody would have a problem with the recording industry played it on the straight and narrow... but they don't.

Okay. Artists typically get paid 10-14% of the MSRP, right? Except instead of paying 10-14%, they make deductions first: something along the lines of 25% for packaging, 10% for breakage, and an additional 25% for developing new technologies.

Okay. So that means the artists' 10-14% is factored in to these cuts, right? They make up the remainder? Wrong. Deductions mean they get paid 4-6% of the total cost of the album. The rest goes straight into the label's pocket.

Okay. You could argue that, maybe, they do need to deduct for packaging and breakage for CDs. Even though packaging for CDs costs maybe a dollar with the oil prices the way they are, and the breakage rate they charge would cover replacement costs for 2/3rds of any given shipment.

So why do they deduct packaging and breakage costs from iTunes sales?

I honestly don't know a whole lot about the way the recording industry operates within itself, but from what I'm told the labels also deduct fees from the artists for using their recording equipment, for marketing and for distribution. So what I'm asking is, if the recording industry is already charging the artist for everything under the sun, why are they also taking 90-86% of the profit from the album as well?

Digital delivery is the future, but the future won't happen until EMI, Sony-BMG, Warner, Universal and lose so much money by flailing around that their shareholders sue them.

I just double-checked, and the labels do withhold profits from the album until marketing, recording and distribution costs are repaid.

Depends on your recording contract, naturally.

Am I the only one left who likes to buy CDs? I like the album artwork, the fact I actually have a physical copy, the booklets inside, etc. Especially when it costs around the same as digital purchases, with no damn DRM to fool with.

Well, they're not really taking windfall profits. If you're talking about MSRP then don't forget to add in the CD store's markup (which is about 100%, and is a big reason why CDs cost what they do at the store).

Anyways, making a 'traditional' CD (an album where you get signed to a record label and get their distribution) is like taking out a bank loan to start your business, and I think that asking why artists have to repay that money is sort of like asking why you have to pay back your bank loan. If a label fronts $80000 for me to make my record I don't see what's unreasonable about having to return that cash. Both parties get something good out of the deal.

I'm not really sure what you mean by getting charged for recording equipment...record labels don't rent out gear.

Let me go through my notes to see if I can find any hard figures and get back to you (I just moved back home from school, so I'm not sure where everything is at this point).

What about Wal-Mart, who sells CDs at a loss? I think they're around $7-10, so unless you're talking about stores in malls that sell CDs to stupid teenagers for $20 (because shopping at ____ is trendy), I'm not sure what you mean.

In Canada, HMV retails CDs for $15-$25 (so did Sam the Record Man before it shut down)...pretty much everywhere I've shopped for new CDs sells them in that price range (not counting discount/baragin bin stuff). I'll pop in to Wal-Mart tomorrow to see what they charge.

A recording company should, in my mind, enter a contract of interests with an artist, fronting the initial sales costs with the agreement that 25% of profits (after the front price) is returned to the recording industry. This is how investors for every other quality-based investment is done.

It'd be interesting to learn when the recording industry established their twisted sense of financial logic. Professional Indian givers.

wow, I think i have figured out why none of the australian branches of record lables are doing that sort of thing here. It is because you guys seem to have a legal system where the plaintifs still dont need to pay the defendants legal fees even if the defendant wins.

seriously, if you made that one simple change to your civil court proceedings, I would bet you that you would see the frivolous lawsuit rate PLUMMET. because then there would be a disincentive to bring large lawsuites onto someone with the intent of getting them to make a settlement, as if someone is absolutely sure that they would successfuly defend themselves, they would not need to worry about legal fees.

Yes, because Australian courts don't have things such as Anton Piller orders.

what do search orders have to do with lawyer fees having to be payed by the loosing party to the winning party?

I see what you are getting at.

wait, i dont, because they require clear evidence to carry out beforehand, and are mostly used to stop the destruction of evidence by the accusee. My point was that the RIAA would actualy have to think about what they are doing when making these cases, because if they had to pay lawyer costs of the defendants if they (the RIAA) lost, they would only go after those who they had more than just an IP adress reported as being downloading songs at that time.

Also, there would be a second benefit in that it would reduce the burden on the legal system by stopping people who sue on flimsy pretexts, but arrange it so the defendant would be better off settleing than going to court.

I agree. I like having a cd with the booklet. Sure you can get the image online somewhere, but reading through the booklet gives you something more to enjoy.

man... from start to finish the band im in can write, record, and press and receive a batch of 1,000 cd's (cost of the 5 song EP. we just recorded.) for around 2,000$ we only have to sell them at 4$ a pop to make our money back and make a 100% profit. (granted we do cut out a LOT of middle men, and while the studio we record and mix at is really decent it is not hugely expensive.)

Why is it that people think record sales ONLY decreased because of online downloading? I'm sure it played a big part, but the main reason I don't buy CDs (I have 4 or 5) is because they are RARELY worth it. There isn't many CDs where the whole CD is good, where every track is worth buying. Buying songs as singles has helped them a lot (iTunes ect ect). The RIAA is starting to realize it isn't needed like it used to be. People can promote their own music online, build a fanbase, THEN sign to a label. They don't have to get bent over a table for years and have their profits sucked dry by a label who thinks they owe them so much for 'making them stars'.

There is a reason big bands are starting to do their sales online... because it works better.

I bought NIN-Ghosts only BECAUSE I got to hear it first, but not only that, but because they LET me... I respected that enough that I actually bought a hard copy of it for myself. I haven't even opened it, but you know what, they deserve it.

I do too. But if there's just one song I want instead of a whole CD I can download it from Amazon.com.

I've never been into music piracy. I think that people shouldn't just download thousands of files, but the RIAA seems to go a bit overboard on the punishments and lawsuits.

Me too, I like to have a physical object, that way it feels like I actually own something. Plus CD cases are nifty.

Infact I'm actually in the process of purchasing all the cds I've admitedly pirated over time.

yup. what the RIAA seems to forget is an entire new movement of self-produced CD's, with the new generation of sound-savvy tech people knowing their way around the digital way of recording things, if you know how to work your gear, you can get some really nice recordings out of gear you own. once that gear is paid for with the initial sales run, it's all profit for marketing and promoting and touring and gigging. more work, but it's how the industry's turning.

and with the free samplers on myspace, (major bands are using it too nowadays...) it really is a nice and lucrative business model. thing is, the major's don't like this model because it makes them irrelevent. that is, unless they forget the whole recording side of things and resume working the field they're good at: Marketing and Distribution.

That's flat-out wrong. You're saying that record sales started declining about ten years ago because the quality of music went downhill. Even if you had somehow listened to every album ever (which you would need to do in order to pass that judgement), that's just aesthetics. The bottom line is that file-sharing smoked the record industry and will continue to do so until some kind of changes happen.



You say 'build a fanbase' in an offhand manner as though it's the simplest thing ever. Distrubtion and marketing are probably the biggest challenges faced by musicians: getting a good product is straightforeward enough, but getting people to notice it? That's hard. As for your other comment about having profits sucked dry, that's really not how the music business works.

I'm still looking for my notes. Sorry it's taken so long (I finished moving the last of my stuff at like 11:30 last night). If I can't find them, I'll just have to track down my information online.

No, my point was any legal system can be exploited given the right tools. Do you know the intricacies of the legal system? Do you any differences between US and Australian courts other than "because it doesn't happen often here". Do you study law?

If RIAA was situated in Australia, I'm willing to bet they can easily find loopholes in the system and continue what they are doing now. I wouldn't be surprised at this claim because they do hire good lawyers and know their way around legal system because they are a big company after all. They create "frivolous" lawsuits because they have money to pay for the costs.

So what exactly that prevents them to abuse in Australia courts, or what prevents them to use tactics to scare people away from courts?

I know I don't buy CDs because it's not worth $15 for a single.