Join RIAA Boycott

[DevilDude]

im in, infact ive been in this since the day napster went down.

[Big Booger]

No doubt, the hayday of napster will forever be remembered.. Burn in HELL RIAA!

[lriecks13]

Add me to your list

[dredone]

Lets send our leaders a clear message about what we think about the RIAA and their sorry lawsuits. Join the EFF and get involved!


For more information on EFF activities & alerts:
<http://www.eff.org/>



EFF is a member-supported nonprofit. Please sign up as a member today!

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* Action Alert: Induce Act Hearing Rescheduled - Keep Up the Pressure!

The Senate Judiciary Committee has taken the Inducing Infringement
of Copyrights Act (Induce Act, S.2560) off the fast track,
scheduling a hearing on the bill next Thursday. This is good
news for the public, but the recording industry is going on the
offensive, turning up its rhetoric in an effort to scare common
sense out of the debate. In a letter sent to the Judiciary
Committee and all 100 senators, RIAA president Mitch Bainwol
insists that critics of the bill are missing the point, and
that the Induce Act is a "moral behavioral test that targets
the bad guys."

But the wording of the legislation itself doesn't support
Bainwol's claims. By making it illegal to "aid, abet, or
induce copyright infringement," the Induce Act could make
companies liable for violations committed by their customers.
This extends liability so far that it threatens both current
and future technologies. Under the Induce Act, creators
of the next iPod or VCR would be forced to subject
themselves to approval from every major copyright holder
before even getting to market. That's too high a price to pay
to satisfy the recording industry in its witch-hunt for
peer-to-peer file sharing.

More than 6,000 EFF supporters have already written to their
senators to stop the Induce Act from giving copyright
holders this kind of veto power over new technologies.
Now it's time to turn up the volume. Forward this message
to five of your friends, family members, or co-workers, and
ask them to support copyright balance, not copyright
bullies.

Send a letter to stop the Induce Act today:
<http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2918>

[KillaJ]

Im def. down...

[efc]

Source: The Register


More universities agree to RIAA/Napster 'protection'

By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Monday 19th July 2004 17:10 GMT
The RIAA and its business front Napster signed up six more universities today to their music rental service - a program that could force parents to shell out even more money for higher education costs.

Cornell University, the George Washington University, Middlebury College, University of Miami, the University of Southern California and the Wright State University (Ohio) have all pledged to have Napster up and running in the near future. The schools join Penn State University and University of Rochester as Napster subscribers. That's a grand total of eight schools in the last nine months that have agreed to become music vendors and pay an RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) tax to avoid lawsuits against their students.

There might be something noble about the schools protecting their children if it were not for the dubious circumstances surrounding these deals. None of the schools have yet to say how much they actually pay for the Napster service. It costs $10 a month for the average subscriber, but Penn State and University of Rochester have admitted to receiving the service for much less. And, in May, Ohio University revealed that Napster is looking for about $3 per month from each student.

The price in itself is a problem but not the main problem. Napster and the RIAA tossed Penn State and University of Rochester sweet deals, having every intention of dangling the schools in front of the press and other universities as models to follow. If Napster would be more forthcoming, we'd all know exactly how much this "service" is going to affect university prices. Some of the Napsterized schools have warned that students may end up footing the service bill directly in the near future - not that they aren't paying in some way, shape or form already.

What's more disconcerting is the way the RIAA has used legal threats to goad these schools toward becoming music brokers. The record labels have repeatedly been accused by the US government of price-fixing and other acts reminiscent of mob-like behavior. Now, they've tied up the courts with thousands of lawsuits and made it clear that universities are their primary targets. And now Cary "Baby Face" Sherman, president of the RIAA, is leaning on schools to pay up for Napster or continue on as legal targets.

It's lucky for Napster that the RIAA picked it as a henchman. Students can now download as many songs as they like while enrolled at a university. This is a nice service if holding onto to your tunes is not important. Once their four years at school are over, the students are cut off from Napster and lose all the music they've download. That is unless they pay 99 cents per song or $10 per album to own a permanent download that can be burned onto CDs or MP3 players.

Real Networks must be wondering what it did wrong to upset Baby Face Sherman, and Apple must be in hysterics as download hungry kids flock to its iPod device, where high margins reign.

"Napster simply outperformed our expectations," said Nicholas John Linder, former student assembly president, Cornell University. "In our role representing the student body, we needed to find a university-wide solution to online piracy and dispel the common fear of looming lawsuits. Napster offers a unique blend of a name students recognize, a broad music library that appeals to every taste and community features that let you discover new music and share your favorites with friends."

Linder forgot to mention that Sherman went to Cornell for his undergraduate degree. Good to keep it all in the family. ®

[Big Booger]

That's blackmail.. you either sign up or we sue you... what the hell kind of country do we live in?

[efc]

People of America, quit buying their music. If you keep giving them profit when they act like thugs - this war is over.

[efc]

Latest outrage of the RIAA.

http://www.wisinfo.com/journal/spjlo...33486275.shtml

[don_corleone]

im in

[efc]

Slow-moving lawsuits over music downloads producing court twists

By Ted Bridis, Associated Press | August 20, 2004

WASHINGTON -- A woman in Milwaukee and her ex-boyfriend are under orders to pay thousands to the recording industry. A man in California refinanced his home to pay an $11,000 settlement. A year after it began, the industry's legal campaign against Internet music piracy is inching through the federal courts, producing some unexpected twists.

"I'm giving up and can't fight this," said Ross Plank, 36, of Playa Del Ray, Calif. He had professed his innocence but surrendered after lawyers found on his computer traces of hundreds of songs that had been deleted one day after he was sued. Plank, recently married, refinanced his home for the money.

"Apparently, they would be able to garnishee my earnings for the rest of my life," Plank said. "For the amount I'm settling, this made sense. I didn't see any other way. They've got all the power in the world."

The campaign has also produced worries, even from one federal judge, that wealthy record companies could trample some of the 3,935 people across the country who have been sued since the first such cases were filed in September 2003.

"I've never had a situation like this before, where there are powerful plaintiffs and powerful lawyers on one side and then a whole slew of ordinary folks on the other side," said U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner at a hearing in Boston. Dozens of such lawsuits have been filed in her court.

On the West Coast, another judge rejected an injunction sought by record companies against one Internet user, saying it would violate her rights.

So far, however, record companies are largely winning their cases, according to a review by The Associated Press of hundreds of lawsuits. They did lose a major ruling this week when a U.S. appeals court in California said manufacturers of software that can be used to download music illegally aren't liable, leaving record labels to pursue lawsuits against Internet users.

James McDonough of Hingham, Mass., said being sued was "very vexing, very frustrating and quite frankly very intimidating." He told Gertner, the Boston judge, that his 14-year-old twins might be responsible for the "heinous crime" of downloading music "in the privacy in our family room with their friends."

Gertner has a teenage daughter and said she was familiar with software for downloading music. She blocked movement on all the Massachusetts cases for months, "to make sure that no one, frankly, is being ground up."

Gertner started ruling on cases again this month, when she threw out counterclaims accusing record companies of trespass and privacy invasions for searching the online music collections of Internet users.

At least 807 Internet users have already settled their cases by paying roughly $3,000 each in fines and promising to delete their illegal song collections, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the largest labels.
Experts said the amounts of those settlements -- compared to $7,500 or more for losing in court -- discourage people from mounting a defense that could resolve important questions about copyrights and the industry's methods for tracing illegal downloads.

"When you're being sued for a relatively small amount of money, it doesn't make sense to hire the specialized entertainment or copyright counsel," Gertner said at a hearing this summer.

In Milwaukee, Suheidy Roman, 25, said she couldn't afford a lawyer when her ex-boyfriend, Gary Kilps, told record companies that both of them had downloaded music on Roman's computer. Although she denies the accusation, Roman ignored legal papers sent to her home. A U.S. judge earlier this year granted a default judgment against her and Kilps, ordering each to pay more than $4,500.

Industry lawyers said they have won an estimated 60 such default judgments nationwide.

"I've got brothers and sisters and family who come here and use my computer all the time," Roman told the AP. "But as far as downloading or distributing music, I don't do that. ... I don't have any money for an attorney, let alone for any judgment against me." She said she is unemployed with two small children.

Roman said that since she was sued, she hasn't talked to Kilps. He doesn't have a telephone listing and didn't return calls from AP to his relatives.

Lawyers said they traced to Roman and Kilps an Internet account distributing songs by UB40, Tu Pac, Destiny's Child and Air Supply. They said the illicit music collection also was associated with an account under the name "Flaka," which Roman acknowledges is her nickname. She told AP she deleted all the files on her computer, not just any songs.

In a few courthouses, the music industry has stumbled even in victory. A judge in California rejected an injunction banning Lisa Dickerson of Santa Ana, Calif., from illegally distributing music online. Although the judge agreed Dickerson was guilty, he said there was no evidence she was still breaking the law and determined that such a ban on future behavior would violate her rights. She was ordered to pay record companies $6,200 in penalties and court costs.

Still, the California consultant who recently agreed to pay the largest settlement in any of the lawsuits, $11,000, urged Internet users not to take solace in rare procedural victories.

"It scares me," Plank said. "For anyone fighting any of these lawsuits -- unless they have nothing to lose -- the only thing to do is settle. You have no power against these people."

[Big Booger]

It's like trying to wrestle an alligator. I wonder how many of these people they are charging will ever buy music again? I know if I were sued I'd never buy a single song or track, ever...

They were potential customers... not any longer. And are these tactics really working? I mean you can go on any P2P and there are still millions and millions of songs available for download.. freely.

What about those who are sharing in countries where the RIAA cannot reach, afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and so on?? I guess the RIAA is just screwed in that sense.

And what about those who store their songs on their HDD for playing.. and say their PC was compromised and some hacker is using their database for illicit sharing? If I were doing the p2p thing, I'd certainly try to use that defense.

[Dehcbad25]

That is a good point. I share my music with my sister. Would that be actually wrong? After all, she could come into my appartment and take the CD (we live next door).
From Apple's point of view, you can share music files inside the same network.
I wonder if the CDs that have the copyright protection are actually legal...don't I have the right to make a back up in MP3 for my own personal use?

[efc]

US raids Net song swappers
Wed August 25, 2004 03:59 PM ET
By Peter Kaplan and Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. agents have raided the homes of five people who allegedly traded hundreds of thousands of songs, movies and other copyrighted material over the Internet, Attorney General John Ashcroft says.

Agents raided residences in Texas, New York and Wisconsin early on Wednesday and seized computers that they suspect were involved in a nationwide file-trading network.

The raids marked a sharp escalation of the years-long legal battle surrounding unauthorised copying over peer-to-peer, or P2P, networks.

Until now, the Justice Department has only pursued elite groups of hackers who steal and distribute movies, music and software before their official release dates.

Authorities made no arrests. But Ashcroft warned that those who copy music, movies and software over P2P networks without permission could face jail time.

"We do not believe it is appropriate for the Department of Justice to stand by while such theft is taking place," Ashcroft said at a press conference.

"P2P does not stand for 'permission to pilfer,'" Ashcroft said.

Targeted in the raids were people operating "hubs" in a file-sharing network based on Direct Connect software.

An official at Direct Connect parent NeoModus was not immediately available for comment.

In order to join the network, members had to promise to provide between one and 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs, Ashcroft said.

"They are clearly directing and operating an enterprise which countenances illegal activity and makes as a condition of membership the willingness to make available material to be stolen," he said.

Each of the five hubs contained 40 petabytes of data, the equivalent of 60,000 movies or 10.5 million songs, Ashcroft said.

Among the files offered on the network were the movies "Kill Bill," "Lord of the Rings -- The Two Towers," and "The Last Samurai," according to an affidavit filed in connection with one of the search warrants.

Agents also searched an Internet service provider, but officials declined to specify which one and said it was not a target of the investigation.

Recording studios have waged an aggressive legal campaign against the networks and their users, but have also appealed to the Justice Department for help.

An appeals court in California affirmed last week that such networks can't be held responsible for illegal copying.

Record labels have brought more than 3,000 copyright lawsuits against individuals since last year, typically winning settlements of around $5,000 (2,780 pounds).

The Recording Industry Association of America on Wednesday announced it had sued another 744 individuals and refiled suits against 152 others who had ignored or declined offers to settle.

[rik]

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