Posted on 09/09/2003 8:04:18 AM PDT by jgrubbs
The RIAA has nailed one of the most prolific file-traders in the U.S., filing a lawsuit against 12-year-old Brianna LaHara.
When not at the playground with her friends, "Biggie Brianna" is trading music files from her home in New York. The little girl received one of the 261 lawsuits filed by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) on Monday, according to the New York Post. She may look like a sweet and innocent child, but the RIAA says it's only going after major copyright violators at the moment. So you make the call.
"I got really scared. My stomach is all turning," Brianna told the Post. "I thought it was OK to download music because my mom paid a service fee for it. Out of all people, why did they pick me?"
It turns out that Brianna's mum paid a $29.99 service charge to KaZaA for the company's music service. Brianna, however, thought this meant she could download songs at will. How naive!
When reporters charged into Brianna's home, she was helping her brother with some homework. She is an honors student at St. Gregory the Great school.
Brianna could face charges of up to $150,000 per infringed song. but we have a feeling this might be a tad unrealistic. We suggest the RIAA take all of her toys instead.
"Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," RIAA president Cary Sherman said in a statement. "But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action."
Go get her, Cary.
Wouldn't it be more like, someone walks into that grocery store, buys some ice cream, then goes around giving it to others who in turn pass it on even more people, etc, etc. Of course, ice cream is a consumable, tangible good while music is more intangible and has no finite consumable amount. Maybe another analagy might work better.
If you BOUGHT an album, and then make a cassette copy of that album so you can listen to it in your car, that is an example of a copy that has been paid for (if you give that tape to a friend it becomes theft because both of you have a copy of something that only one of you paid for). If you tape/copy a song off the radio onto a cassette, or tape a movie or tv show off broadcast tv, the broadcast was paid for by the advertising dollars that accompany it and your taping the show/song to view/listen later is acceptable. If you then make additional copies to distribute to others, that is not.
I don't condone the actions of the people that downloaded the music, but I don't see what the RIAA setting out to ruin their lives will accomplish. The Record industry was asleep at the wheel. Trying to undo the damage now is like closing the barn door after the horse is out!
By definition: whether you're streaming to your speakers, or storing on your harddrive; You ARE downloading material.
I suspect YOU are GUILTY of that crime too. Turn your self in to your local FBI/RIAA/JBT's straight away.
Nonsense. Giving something away that you paid nothing for is not like selling it.
It was given, for free. Then re-given, for free.
There is no barter for "like valued" items because there is never a perceived cash value by the participants.
The law is very clear - what you cannot do is "share" your music with others and thereby skirting royalty payments to the artists. Places like Kazaa (sp?) are just providing the software and a lookup directory. So, if some one wants a song (illegally) they go to Kazaa look it up and are provided with a list of servers that can provide it. This Brianna was hosting one of those servers. How do we know it was her idea? Maybe it was Mommy's idea and used her daughter as a front. The daughter's only defense is that she didn't know that others were downloading from her, which is pretty lame.
No, it wouldn't be like that, unless you mean the person walks into the store, buys one gallon of ice cream, takes it outside and gives it away, returns to the store and takes another gallon of ice cream but uses the receipt for the first gallon to walk out with the second gallon, then comes back for a third, fourth, fifth, twentieth, fiftiefth, hundredth, etc. gallon of ice cream all using the receipt for only the first gallon purchased. If you pay for one of something and give it away, that is fine. But you can't pay for one of something, then make hundreds of copies and give them away claiming that you already paid for it.
That is the problem with file "sharing". To truly share something, there is only one of it and when you are using it nobody else can. But if you put it out there to "share" and then hundreds of people can take it without paying for it, then you have cheated the owner out of hundreds of units of sales. One unit was purchased, but hundreds of people now have that unit.
The difference is that all of the examples you mentioned (except the ripping) are covered by the First Sale doctrine. The law is abundantly clear in those cases. A different exemption exists in the case of ripping a CD for personal use, but that is more murky.
The article reads as if it were reporters that knocked the door down "When reporters charged into Brianna's home . . . ." It's all about corporate greed, you know. Not intellectual property rights.
Irrelevent. What does the law say?
No, if you lend a CD to a friend (which means you don't have it anymore until your friend returns it to you) you are not breaking the law. If you burn a copy of the cd and give that to your friend (which means you both now have a copy although only one copy has been purchased) you are breaking the law. If you "rip" the CD to listen to it on your MP3 player, you are not breaking the law. But if you then give the original CD to your friend, while you keep the MP3 files on your MP3 player (which again means you both now have a copy while only one copy has been purchased) you are breaking the law. Not really all that murky unless you choose to be intentionally obtuse.
Nonsense.
File swappers trade files with others in the expectation that they will gain other files which they desire.
If you steal a car which you didn't pay for and then "give" it away in return for another car it's precisely like selling it. Money doesn't have to change hands, only value.
Thank you. That is precisely my point. File sharing is not like ice cream buying or ice cream stealing because we are talking tangible vs intangible. As I said before, maybe another analogy might work better. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for ice cream analogies. In the past, I have personally referred to Saddam's Iraq as a great big ice cream cone sitting in the desert sun. If we didn't lick it and soon, it was gonna cause a great big mess. I just have trouble follwing the music to ice cream link.
It looks like perhaps I was making the same point you were making in response to that poster.
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