Posted on 04/26/2008 2:57:55 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Andersen got the piracy case against her dropped; now she's going after the RIAA for conspiracy.
When Tanya Andersen opens the door to her modest apartment in suburban Portland, Ore., her Maltese-terrier mix, Tazz, runs over and wags his tail in a friendly hello. The 45-year-old single mother doesn't seem like much of a fighter. She spends most of her days sitting on an overstuffed sofa with a heating pad behind her back to ease chronic pain and migraines that have kept her on disability for nearly five years. Her voice is soft and halting. Yet this woman is behind a fierce assault on the music industry and its tactics for combating music piracy on the Internet. "I've just got to keep doing what I believe is right," she says, with Tazz curled up next to her on the couch. "And that's fighting and letting people know what's happening."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
No music company has ever ripped me off, did they get you?
Maybe you could contribute to the RIAA’s defense fund, you sound like you’re in the tank for them.
I wish her well. I’m sick of the RIAA.
The RIAA is an extortion racket, they pray on people like her.
That was a dumb post, yeah, we got the picture.
You should be sending checks to the RIAA when you listen to music on the radio, then.
That's stealing too, you know.
Sounds like you're projecting, to me.
So you think she should have paid the RIAA thousands of dollars in extortion for music that she proved somebody else downloaded?
Sounds right to me too. Stand your ground.
The RIAA is fighting a loosing battle.
If one is so inclined, there are many ways to download music without leaving a fingerprint the RIAA could use.
IMHO, the RIAA would be better off figuring out a way to fix their badly broken business model.
Most consumer ISPs set up "address pools" of IPs that work this way. When you log on, you are issued a session IP that is returned to the pool when you log off. This is exactly what makes the RIAA's legal theory so much bunk, believed only by techno-naive judges.
For some reason Hollywood has special rights to file suits against anonymous people, these being the "John Does" represented by Internet addresses. They hope that the John Doe represented by a given IP when a song is downloaded is the same person associated with the address when, perhaps weeks later, they are able to find out what name is currently associated with the address.
Meanwhile, Congress keeps granting these bozos rights to more and more imaginary real estate. From each, according to his willingness to be bullied; to each, according to his campaign donations.
But this case is hardly about that. It’s about someone using technology to say somebody else did something that they may or may not have done. This went to court, and the case could not be found sufficient, so eventually all charges were dropped.
Look, I teach computer networking at Auburn. There are hundreds of sophisticated ways I could spoof an ip address to make it “look” like you did something on your computer that never happened. As a minimum, they need to have law enforcement or other third party inspect the computer itself. That could tell whether such theft as this really occured, but just by the date and time stamp of an ip address assigned by an ISP? Too easy to spoof to start demanding folks settle for thousands.
I have no problem with anyone protected their property rights, but not using sham tactics to do so. Too many folks use other folks lack of knowledge about technology to take them for a figurative ride.
So what does that have to do with the fact that the RIAA wrongly accused an individual of stealing music and your stupendous comment?
It's a trade organization that represents record labels, not artists. In fact, at the same time as it sues consumers, the RIAA is famous for trying to cut the royalties artists get from the labels. Small wonder that there is a rising tendency to, now that the Internet has become the market, to cut out still another set of middlemen.
Read Freeper 'fish hawk's' position in post #26. That's what I'm agreeing with.
I’m sure if blam’s IP were spoofed by a pedophile and the FBI came knocking on his door he would simply accept the consequences.
Yes, but his “reply” in post 26 indirectly states that he supports the RIAA’s case in this particular story. If not, why even post in reply to begin with? I therefore think that other FReepers are correct to then challenge him.
No that is not stealing. The Radio station has to pay for the music. So one way or another it gets paid. One would be smarter, if they are so tight they don’t want to get music the proper way by actually buying it, I guess you could tape record your radio. RIAA would have no way to trace that, right. But wouldn’t it just be easier and legal to pay for it down at the music store?
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