12 year old girl slapped with RIAA charge

My complaint isn't with the legality,its obviously illegal,its with the RIAA saying there sales are going down because of Illegal D/L. Automobile,computers,House sales are also way down and not because of theft ,simply because of a slow economy.They are blaming the d/l'ers instead of trying to improve the product or reduce prices,I was able to buy my truck at 0% on a 5yr loan ,simply because they can't move vehicles(as a side note Chrysler now offers 0% on a 6yr loan).If people aren't buying houses ,house prices and interest rates come down.The RIAA is trying to charge the same price for an ,in my opinion,inferior product and are looking an excuse to not put their own house in order first.Even software companies reduce prices and improve their products rather than blame d/l'ers and are hitting them hard too.

My 2cents
 
Prof is absolutely right.


Bitch all you want but I bet this kid & those close to her have learned a very valuable lifelong lesson.
 
D/L'ers are hurting the music industries bottom line ,undoubtedly.Are D/L'ers causing a drop in sales ,questionable ,as these peolple wouldn't be buying the music anyway(AS IN THE CASE OF THE 12YR OLD).This girl and her friends have most definately learned a lesson,but will they run out a buy music they can't afford ,NO,so the music industry is still going to find itself in a slump and then who are they going to blame?
 
A.B.Normal said:
My complaint isn't with the legality,its obviously illegal,its with the RIAA saying there sales are going down because of Illegal D/L. Automobile,computers,House sales are also way down and not because of theft ,simply because of a slow economy.They are blaming the d/l'ers instead of trying to improve the product or reduce prices,I was able to buy my truck at 0% on a 5yr loan ,simply because they can't move vehicles(as a side note Chrysler now offers 0% on a 6yr loan).If people aren't buying houses ,house prices and interest rates come down.The RIAA is trying to charge the same price for an ,in my opinion,inferior product and are looking an excuse to not put their own house in order first.Even software companies reduce prices and improve their products rather than blame d/l'ers and are hitting them hard too.

My 2cents
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I beg your pardon, Wade, but if it's such an inferior product, why are people downloading thousands of them? How many have you downloaded?


It's, as you say, your opinion. But what's so inferior about it? Sound quality has never been better. Media has never been so reliable.

Why should they have to reduce their price to stop theft? Should Rolex drop their prices to stop people stealing them? Maybe dropping prices on cars would stop car theft.

The automotive industry is offering incentives to stimulate sales. Why? Because when the economy is slow, people buy used cars. They repair their old ones. Three of my four cars are over a decade old, and I'd drive any of them trans-canada without worry. I've no reason to buy a new car. They need to give me a reason. Hence, incentives.

What incentive does the RIAA need to give? The market is there. People want to own the music. But they'd rather steal it than pay for it. Until they get caught.
 
They'll blame the artists for putting crappy music together.

The other night, my wife & I were laughing at (err, watching) Ziggy Stardust on Bravo(?). We were commenting about the 70's music scene. There was some great stuff (lots & lots of crap too) put out then. What's missing today is VARIETY. Once the labels get a group that sells, they make 100 clones of that sound. I remember when Guns n Roses first hit. They were great. Within a month, there was at least 5 other bands on the market that sounded like them & the bar scene in LA was GnR or bust. They quit signing artists about 20 years ago & started signing marketing pro's. :(
 
yep, there are very few places out there today where you can hear genuinely good quality new music. radio stations are pumped full of what the the marketing dept wants us to hear and just results in the endless clones filling the airtime.

as for the music sales stuff, i believe in the uk album sales are still strong, even on the rise, while singles are taking a pasting. the blame is placed at the file sharers door for the sales fall but the product itself has deteriorated over the last 5 years. restrictions over what will be allowed to count for the chart [length of single, number of tracks etc] now means my 2-4 quid buys me pretty much bugger all but crappy remixes.

singles have always been a fickle market but the fall in single sales i think is as much about the creation of a less desirable product as file sharing.
 
As already stated "inferior " refers to music content more than audio quality.And I don't really listen to music so I never d/l'd,untill I bought my truck I didn't have a CD player for 6yrs,had to dig out my MegaDeath to try it out :lol2: .

Why should they have to reduce their price to stop theft? Should Rolex drop their prices to stop people stealing them? Maybe dropping prices on cars would stop car theft.
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Law of supply and demand ,d/l ing has nothing to do with it.People who aren't d/ling aren't buying,lowering prices would mean those who aren't downloading would buy. I disagree that the market is there ,the RIAA is using lawsuits as part of its business model to raise cash because nobody is buying,if the Internet disappeared tomorrow ,sales would not increase noticeably.If instead of $2000 fines the thieves(yes they are thieves)were made to do communty service ,the RIAA would soon cease to prosecute because its not about stopping or deterring its about $$$.Community service would better serve society and would in most cases be a bigger deterent as most teenagers aren't going to be threatened by Mommy & Daddy having to fork over some cash.On that note how the heck were they able to prosecute a 12yr old anyway?if they are tracking IPs wouldn't the parent be charged?
 
Jesus, Wade, what colour's the sky in your world? You blame the RIAA because today's music sucks? How about blaming .... the listeners? If rap/hiphop/dance didn't sell, they wouldn't record it.

Law of supply and demand? When there's two suppliers, one charging and one free, which do you think is gonna be getting business?

You disagree that the market is there? Well that's your opinion. Personally, I think your nuts. Lemme check summat. Right now, Kazaa has 3,073,130 users online and 637,360,469 files. Three million users and six hundred million files. Are you telling me that there's not a single person in that mess who'd pay for a cd if he couldn't download it?

As for community service, I don't see your point. If the police did their job of preventing theft, then community service would be possible. But, the RIAA is spending it's own cash to prosecute these people. And do you really, truely think that $2000 even covers the legal fees? That's what you're calling their new business model? As for IDing the users, just IP tracking wouldn't hold up in court. There's a lot more to it. Which, also, adds to the total persecution costs. Doesn't sound like that's a solid way of making money to me.
 
Jesus, Wade, what colour's the sky in your world? You blame the RIAA because today's music sucks? How about blaming .... the listeners? If rap/hiphop/dance didn't sell, they wouldn't record it.
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Laclustre music is to partially to blame for lows sales,economy is also.Brittany ,N'sync will always sell because Mommy & Daddy will buy it for there kids.

Law of supply and demand? When there's two suppliers, one charging and one free, which do you think is gonna be getting business?
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There are people unwilling/unable to pay $20 a CD and unwilling/unable to D/L.Drop the price to where these people can/will buy and sales $$ will increase.D/Lers will always find a way even if it means taping off the radio,they shouldn't be figured into "sales " numbers.


You disagree that the market is there? Well that's your opinion. Personally, I think your nuts. Lemme check summat. Right now, Kazaa has 3,073,130 users online and 637,360,469 files. Three million users and six hundred million files. Are you telling me that there's not a single person in that mess who'd pay for a cd if he couldn't download it?
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Kazza distributes more than just music and alot of the music files I'll assume are duplicates ,so the #s are quite a bit smaller.There may be some who would buy ,but the RIAA seems to keep implying that all users would and this is where they get their"we are losing XXX amount of $$$".If Adobe were to say that they are losing $XXXmillion because of the PS downloads they'd be laughed at because all the 15yr olds d/l Photoshop wouldn't run out and buy it if they couldn't d/l it.They aren't losing anything IF those d/ling it would otherwise NOT buy it.

As for community service, I don't see your point. If the police did their job of preventing theft, then community service would be possible. But, the RIAA is spending it's own cash to prosecute these people. And do you really, truely think that $2000 even covers the legal fees? That's what you're calling their new business model? As for IDing the users, just IP tracking wouldn't hold up in court. There's a lot more to it. Which, also, adds to the total persecution costs. Doesn't sound like that's a solid way of making money to me.
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From the RIAA site( I posted the whole thing cause http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/062503_b.asp can be a pain to get to)


H How do we gather evidence?
To begin with, our evidence-gathering process (like all our other anti-piracy techniques) is completely legal and involves searching only for files that are readily available to every other member of the public.

Here’s how it works: When you log onto a peer-to-peer network, your P2P software has a default setting that automatically informs the network of your user name and the names and sizes of the files on your hard drive that are available for copying.

Because all this information is publicly available to anyone on the network, it’s relatively easy to look for—and find—users who are offering to “share” copyrighted music files. The networks could not work if this were not the case. Given the huge number of P2P users (there are an estimated five million of them online at any given time), we use software to search the network for infringing files, similar to the way other users search the network.

When we come across a user who is distributing copyrighted music files, we download copyrighted music files (of our member companies) the user is offering, as well as document the date and time that we downloaded those files.

Additional information that is publicly available from these systems allows us to identify the user’s Internet Service Provider (ISP). After manually reviewing the information gathered by the software, we can then decide whether it justifies serving the ISP with a subpoena requesting the name and address of the individual whose account was being used to distribute copyrighted music. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ISPs are required to provide copyright holders with such information when there is a good-faith reason to believe their copyrights are being infringed.
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That was one 12yr olds fine others will be alot more .



I am in noway condoning the d/lers(actually after reading the RIAA site its only people who make files available who are being charged) so this kinda makes some of our arguments moot, :swing:


The RIAA is using flawed #s to suggest its losing as much as it is to P2P users ,thats my major complaint.To suggest that even half of the people on p2p would buy if p2p didn't exist is laughable let alone the #s they come up with.I even saw a news item where christian and gospel record labels are blaming p2p for slumping sales ,I have to question whether that audience really gets into Illegal fileswapping (guess its possible.)


its 5am I'm off to bed.
 
Professur said:
What? *shakes head* Did you even read what you just posted? They owe you ? What the fuck is this? Does Ford owe you a new car if you wrap your old one around a post? Read what I wrote. You!!! You have the right to back up your stuff. If your format your harddrive, Microsoft doesn't owe you dick. If the media changes, you have the right to copy your stuff onto that new media. I copied lots of software from 5 1/4 to 3 1/2 diskettes over the years. Perfectly legal.

What is this owe shit you've wrapped yourself up in? Get off it and join the real world. Noone owes you.
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Calm down Prof! I dont see how you can compare a software, game or music liscense to a car in any coherent sort of way.

If you own a copy of windows and it gets scratched, it is possible to get it replaced free of charge because you own the content not the container.

The "owe" thing is not nearly what you made it out to be. In the example I was using, I was simply stating that if you have already paid for the content...and you own the content (or liscense), then provisions should be made to protect the consumers from having to keep purschasing the same material over and over and over again.

To use your example of a car. If you purchase a ford, then you own that ford. If that ford proves to be a worthless POS then they "owe" you another ford under the federal lemon laws. Laws which I believe were meant to protect the consumer from having to purchase the same car they just bought 6 months later.

With a software lisense, as long as the software is "supported" and sold as such...then they "owe" you the support service and patches and bug fixes that go with it.

In fact, Apple was just sued recently for not fully supporting their OS.

Since when is a buisness "oweing" somthing in exchange for the purchase price a bad thing???

If you truly believe that buisnesses have no responsibility to support their products or provide replacements or warranties, or make provisions to replace liscensed copies of "intelluctual" property...well you didnt say that directly but your general attitude towards the concept of "owe" seemed to indicate it...

Then I want to do buisness with you. Im sure I can find some crap to sale you that is worthless, unsupported, non warrantied and non-replaceable if damaged :D
 
Heer's an argument nobody I have talked to seems to be able to get around.

I own the CD Black Sabbath, Paranoid. So now I own the right to listen to all those songs, so do I further have the right to download a copy of each song to listen to on the computer? I know I should be legally able to take the CD and make it into MP3's but is it illegal if I just go the easiest route and download it?
 
Oh and another thing....Did you know the RIAA is also using data they have gathered on file sharing for marketing purposes? I just found that to be a bit over the top.
 
the most disturbing thing for me is the title of this thread on teh front page quicklink thingie reads '12 year old girl slapped with...'

i keep hoping its a different thread where the ending is '...16lb trout' or '...massive tax hike by evil commie democrats' or '...welfare cheat tag by dribbly neo conservatives with agenda of hate'

the sort of stuff i'm used to seeing :D
 
ris said:
the sort of stuff i'm used to seeing :D
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Like this ??? http://www.confusionroad.com/article.php?article_id=157

sadpuppy_copy1.jpg
 
markjs said:
Heer's an argument nobody I have talked to seems to be able to get around.

I own the CD Black Sabbath, Paranoid. So now I own the right to listen to all those songs, so do I further have the right to download a copy of each song to listen to on the computer? I know I should be legally able to take the CD and make it into MP3's but is it illegal if I just go the easiest route and download it?
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Well, if you want to get technical, it is only legal to rip a CD to mp3's when using RIAA approved hardware that (1) may have some form of multi-generation copy protection and more importantly (2) includes a royalty payment to the RIAA as part of the purchase cost.

As an example, it is legal to use a Phillips stand alone CD-R burner to make a "favorites" mix CD because that product is RIAA approved and included a royalty fee when you purchased it (and, further, it is only technically legal when used in combination with CD "audio" discs as opposed to CD "data" discs, because the former include RIAA royalty payments, and the latter does not). In contrast, it is often technically illegal to use a computer equipped with general purpose CD burning capability to do the same thing, though I think the RIAA has approved certain hardware and software packages recently that give a legitimate path for using your PC.

So, it isn't always legal to obtain an mp3 from a CD you own, dependant on the hardware you use to accomplish that task. By extension, downloading the mp3 would without a doubt fall under non-RIAA sanctioned methods of obtaining that mp3.

That answers your question from a purely legal viewpoint. In reality, if the RIAA came after you with a lawsuit and you could readily prove that you legally owned the CD format of each and every song you had downloaded, and could also prove that you legally owned RIAA approved hardware for converting CD-PCM data to mp3 format, they would probably drop the charges... and if not you could probably easily win your case in court, since there was absolute equivalency in the end result from both mp3 obtaining options available to you.

Of course, that's a bit more detailed than your more generic description above, but it does answer the question, and there is no need to "get around" anything.
 
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