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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 01/21/2003 11:51:47 AM PST by TroutStalker
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:47:57 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
In a victory for entertainment companies that are seeking to defend their works against digital copying, a federal judge ordered Verizon Communications Inc. to turn over the name of an Internet subscriber who allegedly made songs broadly available online.
The decision from the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., concerned a subpoena that record-label members of the Recording Industry Association of America had sent to Verizon's Internet unit, demanding that it turn over the name of a subscriber who was allegedly distributing hundreds of songs online. In a written opinion, Judge John D. Bates said that he granted the "RIAA's motion to enforce, and orders Verizon to comply with the properly issued and supported subpoena from RIAA seeking the identity of the alleged infringer."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Not to mention all of the Spyware and Adware that those freeware programs install onto your PC.
| a subscriber who was allegedly distributing hundreds of songs online.
This whole thing is a case of lawyers running amok. Here they are conducting what amounts to a reverse lottery; they will never be able to go after even one per cent of the people who are doing this. Every once in a while, they will sue the parents of some teenager into bankruptcy, but they will not have made a dent in the problem. For how long will the courts let such nonsense go on? This is just lawyers raping and pillaging at random; they aren't doing anything to solve the business issues underlying the problem. Is it right for people to be sending these songs around the Internet without paying for them? Of course not. But how does suing one person out of ten million do anything but piss people off? I can't believe how stupid and pig-headed these RIAA people are about trying to use lawyers to solve their business problem. There is a new music distribution technology that is cheaper than the one they have now. They do not get to use lawyers to prevent its adoption. They can either adopt it themselves, and reduce their prices accordingly, or they can continue to watch their customers adopt it for them... and pay them nothing. |
The rip-off artists and thieves have done the music consumer far more harm than good--not that they'd care. They exhibit the sort of nihilistic, hyper-"me" generation tendencies that used to be the exclusive purview of the Left, but is now championed even by some here on FR, who you'd think would know better.
Says who?? I have downloaded MANY songs from this band, and yet, they still make TONS of money. They have a VERY reasonable trading policy.
I vote for a boycott on ALL artists and labels who encourage suing their former customers.
I have a vast CD collection and I tell you, I would much rather have the genuine article than these homemade CDs. You get the liner notes, artwork and a professionally burned CD that I believe will hold up better in the long run than what you can make at home. I also like the idea of the recording artist making the few pennies on it that the RIAA pays out.
If the recording industry made the price of a CD $5, they would easily make up in volume what they lose in per-unit revenue. Remember when VCR tapes costed $90 for one movie? Now they sell at Wal-Mart for $10 and they sell in the millions and millions.
Of course, the recording industry would have get efficient and downsize. They'd have to cut out all the middlemen from their antiquated and corrupt distribution system.
If the recording industry doesn't change, they are going to die. People now realize how badly they have been getting ripped off all these years. Speaking as one who used to buy over 100 CDs a year, I'll never buy more than a handful a year anymore now that I know I can get a stack of 100 blank CDs for the price they are currently charging for a single pre-recorded CD. I'm an honest consumer (I don't have any homemade CDs made from MP3s downloaded illegally off the web) but I'm not a stupid consumer.
No, it's a case of the record companies trying to get the ISPs to do their work for them. Their goal is to get ISPs to crack down on people by making the ISPs life miserable if they don't.
The case just forced the ISP to cooperate with one person. The next step will be a court order requiring the ISP to keep track of everyone on their network that is involved in file sharing (and threaten them with a possible fine if they don't.)
Keeping track of people who may be illegally sharing copyrighted works is a huge task that would take tons of resources (and cash) to accomplish. The ISP will eventually install systems to prevent file sharing on their network all together (those that don't will be hounded by the record companies via the courts.)
The end results: even people that are legally sharing copyrighted (sharing with permission) or public domain works (don't need permission) will be stopped from sharing. And the record companies close another loophole in their music monopoly.
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This makes it sound like the person was some kind of Big Player in all this, but it could be anyone who has "hundreds of songs" in the sharing directory on their computer. Based on some of the usage numbers I've seen for Kazaa, et. al., there could easily be ten million such people. This one could turn out to be some 12-year-old.