First RIAA Lawsuit to Head to Trial

First RIAA Lawsuit to Head to Trial

"Out of 14,800 lawsuits the RIAA has filed in the past two years, none have gone to court - until now. Patricia Santangelo, a divorced mother of five living in Wappingers Falls, New York, found herself the target of an RIAA lawsuit and vows to contest it. Santangelo claims that she knows nothing about downloading music online and the likely culprit is not her but a friend's child who used her computer. The RIAA disagrees."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051130-5650.html

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1128675912177

riaa runied music i hate em

I would sure like to see RIAA indicted for racketeering. They have fixed prices, persecuted innocent people, engaged in restraint of trade via the DVD "secret" encoding.....

They should be put in jail.

From the article:

We haven't seen a trial on this issue yet because the RIAA has generously offered to settle the suits for amounts in the US$3000-4000 range, rather than the tens of thousands they would demand if they prevailed in court. To date, more than three thousand people have coughed up.

The RIAA picks on people who can't afford a lawyer, and then basically scares them into coughing up a settlement to make the charges "go away". Kind of reminds me of gangsters demanding "protection money".

One of these days the RIAA will mistakingly sue someone with deep pockets and lose big time. They represent everything that's wrong with business nowadays.

"Under federal copyright law, penalties for copyright violations range from $750 to $150,000 per work infringed. The court will decide the amount of damages."

let's say you take the lower figure and muliply by 1,000 for songs shared. that's $750,000 or greater potential liability you could incurr. VS settling for say $3,000-$4,000

if lawsuits were for actual damages of say $15 per CD (probably less). liabilities would be $15,000 in this same case. not a bankrupt, if you lose situation. no way things would have gotten this far.

this is extortion plain and simple!

no way DCMA act was intended for this abuse. wonder why legislation cannot be passed to correct this?

I hate the RIAA as well. I'll gladly pay my 99 cents per download song from whereever. But let me play it wherever I want, whenever I want and as often as I want without the hassle of going thru hoops and needles dealing with the DMR crap. Given these circumstances, one cannot blame a person for trying to find a copyright free version of a song.

I personally think the use of a computer or the internet for music or games is a waste of resources and and should be banned.

Longbow said:

I personally think the use of a computer or the internet for music or games is a waste of resources and and should be banned.

Click to expand...

CPF use on the internet, on the other hand, raises humanity to a higher level of consciousness so associated broadband fees should be provided as an entitlement....:laughing:

nerdgineer said:

CPF use on the internet, on the other hand, raises humanity to a higher level of consciousness so associated broadband fees should be provided as an entitlement....:laughing:

Click to expand...

Unconscionable to presume otherwise.

At a personal level, I still do not clearly see a fundamental difference between an "idea" produced by an engineer / inventor, and an "idea" produced by an artist.

Other than the foreign companies that hide behind the name RIAA and bribe our congressmen, what possible justification is there for a copywrite to have more legal protection than a patent ?

As far as paying to download a song - I am willing to do that for the right price, but that price is more like 50 cents, and in a high quality format, not the FM quality stuff being sold today.