muteoff's Last.fm Journal

More Victories Against the RIAA

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:58:35 +0000

As 2008 nears its end, it's encouraging to know that there have been more victories against irresponsible RIAA lawsuits over the course of the year.
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RIAA Paying Defendant's Legal Fees
Back in June, a federal judge awarded Tanya Andersen $108,000 in legal fees to compensate for defending herself against the RIAA in court. The RIAA initially claimed a Kazaa shared directory that linked to her IP address was unlawfully distributing thousands of songs. The RIAA dropped the case against Andersen last year after concluding her hard drive didn't contain the alleged music tracks.

This marks the second occasion that a target of the RIAA who beat a lawsuit was awarded attorney's fees. Hopefully this is a trend that will continue and offer an incentive for the RIAA to be less frivolous with its legal actions. Also of interest, Tanya Anderson's countersuit against the RIAA, which seeks class-action status to represent thousands of other people wrongly sued, is currently pending.
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Duke Requiring Proof of Copyright Infringement
This month, Duke University VP for student affairs Larry Moneta took a stand against the RIAA, refusing to forward pre-litigation notices to students unless evidence is provided of actual copyright infringement. Actual evidence? Imagine that. This is important because of the pernicious nature of the RIAA's witch hunts--err, lawsuits.

For the cash-strapped among us who can't afford to hire our own top-notch lawyers, the "pre-litigation notices" can be particularly menacing. They basically say the astronomical amounts you could be prosecuted for if your case goes to trial and then graciously extend to you the offer of settling out of court for a meager $3000 (usually).

It's nothing more than bullying in actuality--meant to take advantage of people who don't have the knowledge, time, or resources to navigate the legalities of the issues, and students are a particularly vulnerable group, as I can attest, worried, not only about lawsuits, but about staying enrolled in school. This move is only a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. Knowing the RIAA, they will likely adjust their tactics accordingly and be back at their old tricks in no time, but any message that can be sent to them--that questionable legal activity will be fought vigorously at every turn--is reassuring.
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Jammie Thomas Suit Ruled a Mistrial
The biggest news of the year by far, though, is the dismissal of the case against single mom Jammie Thomas. The trial was the first out of the nearly 30,000 RIAA cases to go to court. She was convicted of copyright infringement for sharing 24 songs on Kazaa last year and ordered to pay $222,000 in damages. For anyone keeping score at home, that's more than 500 times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than 4,000 times the cost of three CDs!

It was after I heard this decision that the RIAA's behavior became completely indefensible and unconscionable. The excessive charges constituted highway robbery as far as I'm concerned, but the trial itself had its own problems. The judge had instructed the jury last year that the recording industry did not have to prove anybody actually downloaded the songs from Thomas' shared folder, just that the songs were made available to be downloaded. Um, what? How do you justify assigning damages if no one actually downloaded the songs?

Thankfully, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Duluth, Minnesota, decried both this erroneous set of instructions and the excessive penalties in September when he declared a mistrial. Somebody buy this man a drink. Sanity has prevailed.

"Late Night Alternative" Radio Playlists (Page 3)

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:44:11 +0000

Music Wars: The RIAA Strikes Back

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:03:40 +0000

Only through me can you achieve a power greater than any Jedi. Learn to know the Dark Side of the Force and you will be able to save your ~~wife~~ DRM from certain death.

Just when you thought the galaxy was safe from Digital Rights Management controls on CDs, I read a recent Gizmodo article quoting RIAA tech chief David Hughe at a recent panel saying DRM is not dead and, in fact, it's coming back and will be more powerful than we can possibly imagine! To quote the Sith lord himself:
[Recently] I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music and 20 of them still require DRM...any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead.
He then went on to say that he thinks subscription services are indeed where we're headed. And when you consider that the likes of Nokia, Sony BMG, and iTunes all have plans in the works for unlimited access-style subscription services, you can understand why he thinks so.

Funny, I seem to remember a certain unlimited access-style service from a while back. Now, that was in the Dark Ages so we only have archaic stone carvings and campfire stories to know exactly how it worked and what it was like, but we're pretty sure the music selection it offered was huge; bound only by how much music users had to share and the number of people using it at a particular time.

Now, it is amusing to watch how slowly the gears turn in the clunky, cobweb-infested machine that is the major label-driven music industry. It only took them 9 years to realize that Napster's all-you-can-eat approach to music downloading is what people are most attracted to and the most viable economic model for online music sales. But the humor quickly turns to dread as you consider the price music consumers are going to pay from the co-opting of this feature. If Hughe gets his way, DRM will be a permanent fixture in the future of music distribution.

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Pictured Above: RIAA headquarters located in Washington, D.C. (Left), and RIAA tech chief David Hughe espousing the virtues of DRM to an average music fan (Right).

I wrote a journal entry a while back detailing how and why DRM is destructive to consumers and the music industry as a whole if you're interested. That was from 2005, though, and some of the technology mentioned in it has been shelved because of the class-action lawsuit that resulted from it. But whatever new DRM technology they roll out, more likely than not, it will continue to trample consumers' fair use rights.

So how likely is Hughe's prediction of music under lock and key? Not very likely, in my opinion. No matter how vast they can make a subscription service, it just won't ever compare with the infinitely larger black market that is the internet. And speaking of that multi-headed hydra, do they really think that "this time it'll be different?" One man's security feature is another man's pet project to crack. No matter how advanced it is, someone, somewhere will find a work-around. Cary Sherman probably still wakes up with cold sweats in the dead of night from nightmares about black tape and black markers defeating their once-mighty content controls.

THE SMALL AND RESOURCEFUL CAN DEFEAT EMPIRES. Pictured Above: small, furry muppets defeated armed soldiers and giant mechanized killing machines with rocks and sticks (Left), and 99 cent markers defeated the copy-control technology of a multi-billion dollar company (Right).

After the legal fiasco following their first failed attempt at forcing DRM on the CD-buying public, the RIAA is approaching this issue a little more cautiously. Consider that Hughe is only suggesting DRM for subscription-based services and not for all music sales. You'd think a DRM-absolutist like Hughe would want not only all online music heavily guarded and regulated, but all CDs as well. There's little doubt in my mind that this is what the RIAA would like to do, it's simply a matter of whether they legally can do it. This tentative approach is a tell-tale sign that they aren't completely sure that they are on solid legal ground with their DRM technology.

So for the time being, we can rest assured that it will be a while before any more copy-protection rears its ugly head. With the ease of internet downloading, I'm still baffled that the RIAA would continually make it more difficult to enjoy the legally purchased music from CDs. I firmly agree that individuals who profit off of unauthorized copied music should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but limiting consumers' rights like the RIAA continues to try to do is not a pragmatic solution to this dilemma. Now, there are many issues where I don't agree with the RIAA but that's best saved for another day, and, possibly, another journal entry.

Some artists under the Sony BMG umbrella that I've been listening to recently: Nicole Atkins, Iggy Pop, Black Kids, Cake, Johnny Cash, The Ting Tings, Bob Dylan, MGMT, Pink Floyd, Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, Rage Against the Machine, Eagles of Death Metal*The original Star Wars/DRM connection shamelessly stolen from a Gizmodo article.
I just took the idea and ran with it a little more to make some jokes.

**I'm aware that it's Obi-Wan that originally said the "more powerful..." bit
but this was funnier and I'm not a Star Wars fanboy, so get off my back. :-)

"Late Night Alternative" Radio Playlists (Page 2)

Sat, 8 Mar 2008 06:30:49 +0000

muteoff's Last.fm Journal

More Victories Against the RIAA

Top 10 Favorite Music Videos

"Late Night Alternative" Radio Playlists (Page 3)

Music Wars: The RIAA Strikes Back

"Late Night Alternative" Radio Playlists (Page 2)