RIAA – Mostly Harmless

June 19, 2009

RIAA successfully shakes down another victim

So Jammie Thomas’s verdict went from $222,000 to $1.92 million in her re-trial. I still think her “gremlins did it” defense was the height of stupidity but if anything, this verdict shows that the laws are seriously flawed. $80,000 per song?

We should all create some music and sign up with the recording industry since every starving artist obviously gets filthy rich from the RIAA. Pirating music and video is illegal, but there should be some sort of penalty that weighs the actual crime with the real damages. The RIAA is and remains an extortion outfit and will get more mileage from this verdict to advertise their extortion/protection racket.

Jammie Thomas made a mistake and should have come clean. How different would the outcome for her had been if her lawyer said to the RIAA “If you keep the terms private, we will pay $xx per song”. That would have likely been accepted if only because the RIAA would have avoided the bad press. Instead, she now again becomes the poster child for “Hey, I said it was not me” defense.

Now the RIAA and their extortion scheme of “Pay up now or we’ll take your family’s home and possessions” scam just got more lucrative. She will never be able to pay but they will get it all back in free press.

December 30, 2007

More RIAA sillynesss

EFF good, RIAA bad. That’s a pretty simple and yet accurate way of looking at things.

If this Washington Post article is to be believed, then the RIAA is going after virtually every iPod user. A consumer in Arizona is being sued for making MP3s of music that he legally purchased. Not distributed to other people, just transfered to his PC. The reasoning seems to be making an “unauthorized copy” is an illegal act.

Anyone can use iTunes to rip CDs to your PC for your personal use and onto your iPod. According to the RIAA that is an unauthorized copy, so you are breaking the law. My favorite example of this is when the President’s iPod play list included a Beatles song that had to be ripped from a CD.

I wonder if the reverse of that applies? My car does not have an AUX port for playing my iPod. But it does have a CD player so I used iTunes to create a CD to play some songs. I purchased those songs, I’m the one listening to them. This is not an accident; I am using a feature in iTunes.

I don’t play the music on my PC, iPod, or CD player all at the same time and this is for my personal use only (who else likes my taste in music?). So I guess this is illegal if the RIAA is to be believed? And how about MP3s? If an MP3 of music exists how can someone guarantee that it is not and unauthorized copy potentially to be distributed?

Prove to me that you did not do something illegal. You could potentially do something illegal so you will be a worthy candidate to be sued.

Sigh. Groups like the RIAA succeed against truly dumb people so they feel emboldened to do this. All thanks to the DMCA and other really anti-consumer laws and advocates. Fair ~~use~~ sue indeed.

October 5, 2007

You need to be this tall to use a computer

Actually that should be “you need to understand how an application works before you can use it”. I think that Jammie Thomas would be better off today if she understood what could happen in the real world with using an application.

When I get Opensuse (this weekend I’ll get OpenSUSE 10.3) I’ll leave it running for a while to benefit others. Once I’ve done that long enough I’ll take it down. Contributing to the Opensuse torrent is a deliberate action on my part, it’s not automatic and does not share files on my hard drive. I’m not sure that I can use µTorrent to just share folders; never wanted to so I just don’t know.

Kazaa is a P2P file sharing app. IMHO It’s different from Bit Torrent because in Bit Torrent you need to leave the download running in order to share it. Apparently with Kazaa it’s trivial to share out your whole music library and this has gotten Kazaa into deep poo with the music industry.

This lady was sued by the RIAA and rather than settling ~~for the extortion~~ she went to trial. The RIAA behaves like a shake down organization and claims that if you rip the CD’s you paid for to your iPod then you are a thief. I did it with my CDs (can you get Basia on iTunes?), apparently so did the POTUS when he had the Beatles on his ipod. Soon I am sure they will insist on a pay-per-play model.

Oddly enough she lost. Her defense was basically “I don’t know how this happened, but it was not me. Maybe gremlins did it”. If she had used a different Kazaa account name than the one she uses for other services, then maybe. But her lawyer tried the dumbest defense possible by just claiming ignorance of the file sharing of those 24 music tracks.

I don’t like the RIAA. I think they should be shut down and let consumers alone instead of trying to scare them with “the sky will fall on you if you don’t contact our settlement ~~extortion~~ centers” tactics. I think that they are hurting their industry more than they are protecting it. But if you are caught doing something that is illegal, whether it should be illegal or not is moot, then you just might want to be able to demonstrate that it was not you instead of just saying it.

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RIAA successfully shakes down another victim

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Jan Dembowski