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Random Staccatoby George Ziemann -- July 2, 2009 RIAA Still Can't Face the Truth -- The RIAA's music blog (amusing in and of itself) has a spiel about how Jammie Thomas-Rasset got caught distributing more than 1700 songs. But they sued her for 24 of them, so you know there is a pretty damn huge fudge factor going on, as usual. I'm thinking that she had physical copies of the other 1676 songs and the RIAA is still afraid to go there. At least 2 of the 24 artists involved (Richard Marx and Moby) have publicly expressed their apologies for having their music being associated with the lawsuit, even though they probably can't do anything about it since they don't own the rights to their own music. It's fair to assume that the other 22 are worth boycotting. Ray Beckerman points out several key points about the flawed nature of this trial. I want to look at two of them, but the link has a lot more.
Once again, I question the basic intelligence of a jury which is willing to bring a guilty verdict and a $2 million fine based on absolutely no evidence. Rewriting History For the purposes of being the defendant in Anderson v Atlantic, the RIAA has decided to change the "facts" concerning the lawsuits. About a year or so ago, they were still saying 30,000 or 35,000 people had been sued and 95 percent of the people they threatened had settled. At one point, Time magazine said 40,000. Then the number stopped growing and settled back to 30,000. Now, in a recent court filing for that case, the RIAA claims, in writing, that they "contacted" 18,000 people and 4,000 of them settled. There was a point in time when I would have asked, "Are they lying now or were they lying then?" These days, I always think they're lying. I'm usually right. ASCAP and Ringtones I personally think that buying ringtones is pretty much the height of stupidity. I see the value in having your individual selection play when your phone rings, but it's the buying part that seems silly. You're going to pay at least twice as much as it costs for the entire song. ASCAP is chasing this money and wants to get paid every time your phone rings, too, via the ISPs. They say that they don't want to charge individuals, but the RIAA said it would never sue individuals, ASCAP is on the RIAA's team and neither of them should be trusted. I think that ASCAP is way over the line on this one. I'm assuming that they get paid for every ringtone sale. That's more than enough. The customer isn't even getting a whole song, they're being charged more than the whole damn song, and the only reason anyone pays for them is that they don't have the minimal technical skill required to make an mp3 and use BlueTooth to send it to your phone. So ASCAP should be happy they got paid at all. This is clearly personal use and a 15-second loop ought to qualify as fair use. Asking for a fee from the ISP every time your phone rings is just plain greedy. If the ISP isn't hosting your ringtone, that's seems a little difficult to me. It's like asking for more money every time you play a CD, even if only part of it plays because it skips. As it is, if you have a CD with the song from which the ringtone is taken, buying a ringtone is a second needless payment to ASCAP and the record company. The Sinking of the Pirate Bay When we last looked at the Pirate Bay, their very corrupt trial had justed ended and the three owners had been given a $3.3 milion fine, along with a year in jail. In the past week, a company came along and bought The Pirate Bay for $7.7 million. The three owners still have to do their year in the slammer, but there's a nice cash prize when they get out. But the story isn't quite over. The company which purchased TPB is being investigated for insider trading just prior to the acquisition, thus tarnishing the name before they even took ownership. |