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RIAA's Argument Hits the Wallby George Ziemann -- June 30, 2008 Out of the thousands of filesharing cases, the RIAA has been brave enough to take only one to trial. They won the case, but the judge later discovered that he had given a jury instruction which was an "error of law," namely that merely having a shared folder was copyright infringement, pointing to a decision by the Eigth District Court that "infringement of [the distribution right] requires an actual dissemination." So he gives both sides an opportunity to argue whether or not Jammie Thomas should get a new trial. The RIAA steps forward, pretends they didn't hear anything the judge said, and once again argues that merely having a shared folder is copyright infringement, whether anyone takes a copy or not. That's their story and they're sticking to it. It's their entire rationale for suing everyone. If it is an "error of law," then the tens of thousands of people who already forked over a settlement are going to be more pissed at that than they were about paying up in the first place. If it is an "error of law," you didn't get "caught," you got scammed into paying a "fine" for a charge that is essentially the legal equivalent of bullshit. If you've got a subpeona in your hands from the RIAA right now and it accuses you of infringing their copyrights by "making available," you may already be a winner, with a prize of up to $100,000 available. No matter how hard the RIAA is willing to work to push the pile of bullshit up the hill, it still ain't gonna fly when it gets to the top. Remembering that the cases we hear about are only the handful of the tens of thousands wherein the defendant suggests the preposterous notion that, since we're already in court, maybe the RIAA should be required to prove the veracity of their accusations. This is why the RIAA and MPAA have moved one foot to the next platform, which is that anything resembling evidence is an unrealistic expectation.
At this point, I'm wondering why you need a college degree to be a lawyer. How much education is really necessary to say stupid shit like this? In court? I guarantee that if Reynolds is assigned the task of defending the RIAA against Tanya Andersen, "requiring proof" will suddenly be of utmost importance and adhering to those standards will be irrefutably required to reinforce the fine traditions of the American legal system. The only reason they want to ignore the need for evidence when they are the accuser is that they don't have any. Never have. The RIAA's entire legal and public relations campaign for the last 8 years has been built on bullshit. Downloading is not theft. Sharing might be, if they could prove it, but they can't. Stealing from the artists is the only reason for the existence of the music industry; it's on their daily to-do list, right between "Find the audience and sue them" and "Fuck with Apple." The audience used to buy albums and CDs thinking that the money was going to the artists. Blaming the audience is bullshit. We tried to throw money at the artists by purchasing their albums and CDs but mysteriously, it never seemed to reach the intended destination. It always gets lost along the way. We didn't pay for the radio -- the labels did. The music was always free to the audience and... wait a minute... yep, it's still there, about the same quality as that crappy 128k mp3 file from your favorite p2p site. The only difference is that now the audience picks what to listen to instead of the labels, without the endless barrage of commercials that radio forces upon us. Meanwhile, the $10 concert ticket now can run anywhere from $50 to $500, which ought to more than cover the $2 the artist "lost" if you downloaded an entire album that the damn radio wouldn't play in the first place. Okay, I got carried away there for a second, but the industry's position really relies on ignoring all of it and any other logical viewpoints, much less legal viewpoints, contrary to what they have pronounced as the only proper interpretation of the laws, without regard to what the law actually says and without the need to provide evidence to support their assertions. And they act like they believe it. That's the truly amazing part. By definition, the legal pursuit of the audience reduces the size of the audience. The RIAA's inquisition can only be deemed successful when the entire audience is eliminated. I can't quite see how this is going to help record sales in the long run. I guess that's where the college education must come into play. |
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