When will the RIAA give up?

[bud_2005]

Music The Recording Industry Association of America has filed lawsuits against 751 people suspected of illegally distributing copyrighted music, including students at Drexel University, Harvard University and the University of Southern California. The "John Doe" suits filed Thursday cite individuals for swapping copyrighted music via unauthorized file-sharing networks, such as LimeWire and *****. The RIAA will now seek court permission to take legal steps to try to identify the defendants.

In addition, the industry trade group said it filed lawsuits against 105 named defendants living across a dozen states, including Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Wisconsin.

The suits are meant to send to "a clear message that stealing music will bring consequences," Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA said in a statement



Do they really think that suing everyone in sight is going to make things all better? This isn't going to make people stop. I've read they have sued now a total of 17,000 people. Isn't there like 10 million people that download music. They going to sue everyone of those too?

 

[TheRelic]

They're doing what's required of them by law, and to set examples. Obviously it will have little impact in the greater scheme of things, and they need to seek alternate methods of getting the results they want - but they have every right to do what they are doing.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Lawyers make money by creating disputes.

 

[penkitten]

who knows??

 

[Vincent]

Good thing they didn't check NM

 

[splinterkb]

How do they think that a 12 year old can come up with like 4 grand when they sue them? Are they ****ing retarded?

 

[Abbott]

What the RIAA is trying to achieve through these lawsuits is primarily fear. Yes, you might be able to get some money. But a lot of these people won't have enough money to pay off the settlements.

But, if you get people to be afraid then there'll be fewer people who will try to use illegal downloading because then they'd be afraid of what *might* happen.

It is silly though. I don't know about wrong, though currently it IS illegal. I've heard that record sales have generally increased since the P2P (peer-to-peer) phenomenon became wide-spread. It's because people who might not have been exposed to different artists become exposed, decide thy like it, and buy some records that they otherwise wouldn't have bought. This is also true for concert tickets, though obviously only true for newer artists.

When the VHS video cassette became widespread, the motion picture industry was afraid that this may mean that this was the end. They were also afraid that this would also result in people ceasing their trips to the theaters. The reason why is because now it became much easier for people to copy videos. This turned out to be false. Yes, it now became possible to watch motion pictures at home, so you no longer had to go to the theater in order to do so. However, one can hardly argue that the industry has suffered because of it.

I think the P2P thing is similar. The only difference being that there isn't necessarily any physical media involved. That's the only real difference as far as I can tell.


Just my $.02,


Ben

 

[Vincent]

Originally posted by Abbott
I think the P2P thing is similar. The only difference being that there isn't necessarily any physical media involved. That's the only real difference as far as I can tell.

but the difference these days is that iPods are so mainstream that you really don't need the CD's anymore. You can get -aps rips that are almost as good of quality as CD and you can fit up to 15k songs on a single ipod, that's over a month and a halfs worth of music. So no need for bulky CD players and massive collections of CD's.

Music "sharing" is an interesting thing but I think iTunes is helping out a lot.

 

[Scrumtulescence]

Maybe the RIAA would have some moral ground to stand on with all of these lawsuits if they themselves weren't raping the music industry. Fuck the RIAA.

 

[diplomatic_lies]

When music downloading becomes quick and widespread (thanks to faster internet connections), I think the music industry might suffer a little.

By the way, cinema attendance IS dwindling. Its much cheaper to rent a $3 DVD, go to a friend's house, and play it on his mega TV. That's why cinemas are charging so much for a ticket.

 

[wavejams007]

Originally posted by diplomatic_lies
When music downloading becomes quick and widespread (thanks to faster internet connections), I think the music industry might suffer a little.

By the way, cinema attendance IS dwindling. Its much cheaper to rent a $3 DVD, go to a friend's house, and play it on his mega TV. That's why cinemas are charging so much for a ticket.

Good point.