RIAA sued for amnesty offer

CNET.com ^ | September 10, 2003, 9:04 AM PT | Stefanie Olsen

[ThinkFreedom]

A day after the Recording Industry Association of America filed a slew of lawsuits against alleged illegal song swappers, it became the target of legal action over its own "amnesty" program.

California resident Eric Parke, on behalf of the general public of the state, filed a suit Tuesday against the trade association because of its amnesty, or "Clean Slate," program, a provisional shield it introduced Monday that allows people to avoid legal action by stepping forward and forfeiting any illegally traded songs. The suit, filed in the Marin Superior Court of California, charges that the RIAA's program is a deceptive and fraudulent business practice.

It is "designed to induce members of the general public...to incriminate themselves and provide the RIAA and others with actionable admissions of wrongdoing under penalty of perjury while (receiving)...no legally binding release of claims...in return," according to the complaint.

"This lawsuit seeks a remedy to stop the RIAA from engaging in unlawful, misleading and fraudulent business practices," the suit reads.

The RIAA responded to the suit with a maxim: "No good deed goes unpunished, apparently."

"It's also unfortunate that a lawyer would try to prevent others from getting the assurances they want that they will not be sued," an RIAA representative wrote in an e-mail.

The complaint is the first legal retaliation to the RIAA's lawsuit campaign against individual file swappers. The trade group filed 261 lawsuits against computer users it said were exclusively "egregious" file swappers, marking the first time copyright laws have been used on a mass scale against individual Net users. The barrage of lawsuits signaled a turning point in the industry's three-year fight against online song-trading services such as Kazaa and the now-defunct Napster and one of the most controversial moments in the recording industry's digital history.

On Tuesday, the RIAA settled its first case with Brianna Lahara, a 12-year-old New York resident. The recording industry agreed to drop its case against the preteen in exchange for $2,000, a sum considerably lower than previous settlement arrangements. Legal actions by the RIAA had been taken on a sporadic basis against operators of pirate servers or sites, but ordinary computer users have never before been at serious risk of liability for widespread behavior.

After long years of avoiding direct conflict with file swappers who might also be music buyers, industry executives said they have lost patience. Monday's lawsuits are just the first wave of what the group said ultimately could be "thousands more" lawsuits filed over the next few months.

Under the RIAA's "Clean Slate" program, file swappers must destroy any copies of copyrighted works they have downloaded from services such as Kazaa and sign a notarized affidavit pledging never to trade copyrighted works online again.

But Ira Rothken, legal counsel for Parke, said after reviewing the RIAA's legal documents that the trade group provides no real amnesty for such file swappers. With the legalese, the trade group does not agree to destroy data or promise to protect users from further suits, Rothken said.

"The legal documents only give one thing to people in return: that the RIAA won't cooperate," Rothken said. "The RIAA's legal document does not even prevent RIAA members from suing."

The suit asks the court to enjoin the RIAA from falsely advertising its program.

CNET News.com's John Borland contributed to this report.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

"It is "designed to induce members of the general public...to incriminate themselves and provide the RIAA and others with actionable admissions of wrongdoing under penalty of perjury while (receiving)...no legally binding release of claims...in return," according to the complaint."


Notice how the media completely left out these facts while reporting on this issue. They hid the facts on purpose to protect the record industry. If a Republican dominated corp pulled this, they would have went nuts.

[ThinkFreedom]

"Notice how the media completely left out these facts while reporting on this issue. They hid the facts on purpose to protect the record industry. If a Republican dominated corp pulled this, they would have went nuts."

Even if a corp. *percieved* to be right wing or conservative, the left makes like a rabid dog at any "injustice" that happens (or happens in the minds of lefties, or the leftist press). I mean, has there been a leftist protest of *any* discription in the past - say - 30 years where a coke machine hasn't been smashed and a local McDonald's franchinse vandalized? Of course, this is "legitimate" protest against "evil money grubbing multinationals" and "evil capitalists" who supposedly fund 3rd world dictators (of course, when France does the same...) and the clubbing of cute baby seals and dolphins. Heck, even if the local McFranchisee is the #1 supporter of the local DNC branch they're *still* going to get their store trashed.

The left even screams when very liberal corporations like GE (parent company of NBC) don't take their side 100% in the "War Debate".

On the other hand, aside from a few stories about environMENTALists going to Ted Turner's ranches, realising who owns them (and whose paying for their protest), and going home, not too much protest goes on at those Turner ranches. Or when a company like Warner Music - which "Uncle Ted" used to control and still owns a heap of shares in (and is one of the RIAA member record companies) - starts suing little kids, he gets another free ride.

In fact, I'm wondering if that grotesque display of Nihlist immorality between Madonna (under contract to Warner) and Britney was co-incidence, or something to appease the leftist media before they started suing kids who downloaded the song they played just before?

No matter what happens though, you can rest assured this story will probably stay in the tech papers and on conservative / libertarian sites. And I doubt that the leftists and the ACLU are going to be in a hurry to help the "little guy" against the "evil money-grabbing" RIAA anytime soon.

[Paul C. Jesup]

What can be said but that the media is the voice of tyranny. It has never, nor will ever be the voice of freedom.

I waiting for the RIAA to go SCO and start suing Independent Bands and their fans for producing and buying independent music, the reasoning being that they 'stole' their music from the copyrighted music owned by the RIAA members.

Of course the RIAA will NOT provide any evidense to support their case, but instead they will try to bankrupt and settle with everyone they sue.

My god, the RIAA is WORSE than the IRS.

[John Doe #1]

You named 2 of the corporations that held no respect for my copyrights. One is now an affiliate of GE who was a distributor of a software that used my copyrighted photographs with no licensing rights from me or payment to me. The computer disks had AT&T's copyright on them.
And AT&T owns a vested interest in AOL-Time-Warner. Guess they think copyright law is only for the rich and mighty that have the ability to get the government to help them in their bullying tactics. It is my opinion that if there's some sharp lawyer out there attempting to defend some of these indicted folks by the RIAA , they may just back water rapidly.

[chief911]

Maybe I'm just uninformed, but why is the RIAA doing the suing? How can they show they have been harmed when the real groups losing money are the artists? Will any of the money collected in these suits find its way back to them? And if it does in what proportion?

[At _War_With_Liberals]

Good post.

Many companies have faced a loss of revenues due to the internet. Travel agencies are basically gone, for example. They should deal with it. 5 years later, and they still cannot make money off of internet sales.

I laughed when they lowered the price of CD's from $18. After years of sluggish sales, they refused to lower the price until now. What kind of business ignores simple economic principles like demand/price relationships. All of the artists are megarich as are the execs. Who is hurting?

What city kid can afford $20/pop 9w/tax) for 1 CD? Plus, the case breaks in a week and there are no lyrics,etc in it.

What don't they understand about 'not worth $20?'

[Paul C. Jesup]

The RIAA are greedy, arrogant, ignorant, control-freak elitists.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

All I know is that the RIAA is like the gatekeeper. They hold the licenses.

[hobbes1]

IF they are a gateway, one wonders if they could be targeted as a monopoly....Somewhere out there, a Lawyer is thinking te very same thing...

[ThinkFreedom]

It depends on what sort of business practices they engage in. Being a monopoly in and of itself isn't an illegal business practice, but how you use your monopoly might be.

Say you build a business that makes mouse and rat traps. You invest in R&D, effective sales teams, efficient distribution, strong relationships with retailers, wholesalers and pest exterminators, efficient manufacturing, effective advertising, good PR, and good customer service. This means you are able to get the best known and best quality mouse trap on the market at the cheapest price. Because of this, you eventually pick up 90% market share of the mouse-trap market. A monopoly like this isn't illegal, it's good business.

But you couldn't take over, or merge, with the company that owns the other 10% of the market, Joe's RAT traps. Nor could you talk to Joe and say "Well, you know, we've got 100% of the rat trap business between us, if we made a cartel we could double the price we sell these things at".

A few years go by, and Joe goes out of business, and you've got a total monopoly. Again, if you suceeded against Joe because you are able to get the best known and best quality mouse trap on the market at the cheapest price, there's no problem.

If someone invents a better mouse trap, there's nothing to stop them from competing against you. Sure, it will take time and money to steal your customers, get the distribution, advertising, etc. going, but if they build a better mouse trap than yours at a better price there's no reason why, in a few years, they won't put you out of business. And this is how a healthy, market economy works.

The problems start to happen when you start to use your monopoly in the wrong way. If you buy a pest-exterminator company, and then turn around to the other pest exterminator companies and tell them "You ain't getting any mouse traps" and shut them out of the market, you could be hit with an anti-trust suit. If you use your mouse traps to force companies to use your new line of rat poison, other companies may again hit you with anti-trust. If you go to retailers and say "If you stock any other brand of mouse traps, you lose mine", you're open to anti-trust. If you want a monopoly in the rat-poison business, or in the pest extermination business, you'll have to earn it by doing the best service at the best price.

Now if the RIAA companies use their size to keep small labels off MTV, out of record stores, or off radio, then there's no reason why they couldn't be hit with anti-trust. Finding an indy label willing to take on the majors is the problem.

[blanknoone]

Au Contraire, according to the Sherman anti-trust act, simply being a monopoly is indeed illegal. Take for example Alcoa, (closest to your mousetrap example) it had a lock on the market because they had developed and patented more efficient aluminum smelting (energy intensive..efficient means cheaper) They were forced to relinquish their intellectual property by licensing it to multiple competitors without any compensation.

[ThinkFreedom]

...either that, or find themselves a couple of 'Rats to bribe, to sponsor bills outlawing P2P and MP3's (even if they are of independent artists)...

[Paul C. Jesup]

Actually the RIAA and MPAA are trying to bribe and pass laws that are FAR FAR worse than that.

[ThinkFreedom]

My mistake, thanks for filling me in. I guess that would make a lawsuit against the RIAA more likely. And it turns out Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. owns an independent record company: http://www.newscorp.com/operations/other.html (see Mushroom Records). Rupert launching an anti-trust suit against the RIAA would be good for 3 reasons:
1) Pointing out that Rupe isn't the all-powerful media oligarch the leftists make him out to be
2) He'd have the money to go through with it and put up a good fight
3) A conservative using a liberal law to attack liberal companies would probably see Democrats becoming a lot more reasonable about Anti-trust laws.

[moehoward]

The RIAA is the "SS" enforcement arm for participating members. Click here for a list of members.

These members "final solution" is a software style license. Yes, you buy it but it is not your property to sell to anyone else unless the copyright holder allows the transfer. Usually with some kind of transfer license fee paid by the new owner. The RIAA have been fighting the sale of pre-owned music for years. It seems they are succeeding, recently Ebay has pulled auctions of purchased Itunes music.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Your statement is a little off. The reason Ebay pulled Itunes music songs from it's auctions is because they are not a physical items.

Ebay still allows the sell of USED CDs, by the thousands. So you can still buy your music that way.

[moehoward]

Maybe you misunderstand.

The RIAA is in fact against music re-sale. period.

They have sued to stop the resale of music in the past. And lost, so far. But make no mistake, their aim is to end copying as well as transferring ownership without additional fees. Copying that old cassette to burn it to CD will be a criminal act if the RIAA has it's way. They believe that the copyright you had with the cassette was for "Hotel California, version 2.0". If you want it on CD, you need to buy "Hotel California, version 3.0"

I did not say Ebay did not allow music-resale. I stated that they have pulled "Itunes" auctions. Ebay points to their no "digital" auctions policy.
Why have such a policy when ownership of these digital files can be verified?

Because, as stated in the linked article, "they are playing it safe". Playing it safe from whom?

I bet you can guess.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Because, as stated in the linked article, "they are playing it safe". Playing it safe from whom?

It is real simple. They are protecting themselves and their members from possible fraud.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

Thanks for the list. Screw them.