p2pnet - rss feed: Patti Santangelo fights Goliath: II
p2p news / p2pnet: As the next move in the Patti Santangelo Fight Goliath fund-raising campaign, Jason Rohrer is writing a script which will allow everyone who wants to contribute to post an amount directly into a special PayPal account.
Patti is the New York working mother with five children who’s decided she’s not going to be further victimized by Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music or EMI, the multi-billion-dollar members of the Organized Music cartel which has been trying to extort ’settlement’ money from her, and more than 17,000 others like her, including school kids.
Of the people who’ve so far been attacked by the music industry since 2003, not one has been found guilty of anything and not one has appeared in court.
Patti is flatly refusing to pay for something she didn’t do and when she presents her case to a jury on an as-yet to be determined date, she’ll be the first to meet these hard-core, multi-billion-dollar bullies with their teams of PR hacks, their bought-and-paid for politicians, their unimaginably vast financial and legal resources, face-to-face.
And she’ll be doing it alone, without expert help or legal representation.
The author of the MUTE indie p2p application, among other things, Rohrer wrote the script used by DownhillBattle way back to raise money for RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) victims and strangely, and coincidentally, he too is in the middle of a lawsuit, he too is representing himself and he too is in New York. But his case doesn’t involve file sharing or p2p networks.
“We have natural meadow landscaping around our house instead of a lawn,” Rohrer tells p2pnet. “Our property has been certified by the National Wildlife Federation as a wildlife habitat. Of course, a meadow includes some tall grasses (in some places, our grasses are waist-high). Our village has a ‘mowing ordinance’ that forbids grass from exceeding 10 inches in height. The ordinance was enforced against 34 traditionally mowed lawns in 2005 and one natural meadow landscape (ours).
“I was brought to trial for violation of the ordinance. I represented myself and presented a constitutional law argument. I filed a 16-page memorandum of law with the court as part of my defense. I called an expert witness (a landscape architect and former government official in our county) to testify. The trial lasted over three hours.
“We expect a decision from the judge in a few months.”
Yesterday, the day after the hearing, Rohrer told us he felt good about the way things had gone.
On the application he’s writing for the Santangelo Fight Goliath campaign, anyone with a blog or a web page will be able to post it on his or her site and readers will be able to watch as the amount grows.
There will also be a snail-mail address for people who don’t use, or who don’t want to use, PayPal.
You’ll be able to help Patti by contributing whatever you can afford. The money will pay for legal costs, which will be substantial.
And bear this in mind. The only reason the Big Four have gotten away with it for so long is they’re well aware that none of the thousands of people they’re attacking has the money to fight back.
Here’s a note from Patti:
My choice to fight the RIAA’s lawsuit was made when I received a call from a settlement center saying I’d already been sued. I assumed that once I explained to them that there was no music on my computer and that I never had purchased or signed up for a peer-to-peer program and actually didn’t even know what it was, that they’d drop the entire thing.
After all it was the truth.
Giving them a financial settlement to make it go away would make sense for those who were knowingly committing these acts of piracy and who are getting off a lot easier than I am. That seems to be the problem with the entire process. If you’re guilty of what they say, pay up. If you’re not, pay up or it will cost you even more.
For me to sign an affidavit saying that I’d cease doing something that I was not doing would have been a lie and that’s against everything I believe in.
My initial feeling about the lawsuit was confusion because the computer that my children used when my IP provider was sued for my name I no longer owned, and the computer I did have in our new home had no music on it at all.
The copy of the lawsuit that I received after being named had a KAZAA account with an e-mail I did not recognize and which didn’t belong to anyone in my family.
I had no choice but to fight this and feel that I have no choice but to continue.
I believe there are legitimate issues with how the lawsuits are filed and with the tactics used to scare people into financial settlements. I also have very strong feelings about how, if this did happen on my computer, KAZAA could allow a child to obtain an account that could be potentially dangerous to the child and the parent without parental authorization or the authorization of the person who owned the computer. I do believe that recent lawsuits against p2p networks have changed this but that doesn’t help the people who have already been forced to settle, or the 12-year-olds still being sued.
I would like to make my feelings clear that I do understand the musician’s right to protect their copyrights. I am lucky enough to know a few very talented musicians and song writers and I support and respect their hard work and wouldn’t want anyone stealing from them. The internet has made it possible for new artists to be heard and that’s a wonderful thing, but let’s not use that as an excuse not to buy their albums. I will and my family will always support the musicians.
I was confident that my attorney’s motion to have the case dismissed due to lack of a specific time that copyright infringement took place was an excellent defense and they did a very good job. I was disappointed but understanding that Judge McMahon is doing what she believes needs to be done with this case.
The papers have been filed stating that I wish to continue without an attorney and we are waiting for the Court’s response. This was a mutual decision and based primarily on the cost of this action which I could never be in position to afford. I would like to thank Mr. Beckerman and his associates for all of their hard work.
Thanks also to p2pnet and all readers for their support
Have a peaceful Holiday Season
Patti Santangelo
(Ray Beckerman is the Beldock Levine & Hoffman lawyer who until recently was representing Patti. He runs the Recording Industry vs The People site.)
Meanwhile, if you’re a member of the mainstream media who’s reading this, please bear these points in mind:
The members of Organized Music are using corporate music stores such as iTunes, Napster and RealNetworks to force on people inferior versions of digital tracks which already exist. They’re literally worth no more than a few cents each, but the music industry is wholesaling them at upwards of 65 cents per track, thus forcing iTunes, etc, to charge $1 and more (depending on the market country) for each download.
This isn’t effective marketing. It’s sheer greed.
The idea of variable pricing - something less than $1 for old corporate tracks and around $1.30 to $1.50 for new ones - has been mooted but isn’t, at this point, going anywhere. But even if it’s accepted by the industry and its hangers-on, nothing will change. The vast majority of music lovers simply will not pay through the nose for lo-fi product when they don’t have to.
At no time have the Big Four ever tried to treat their customers as reasonable people who’ll willingly pay a reasonable price for downloads. Instead, the labels have from the beginning said every one of the ‘consumers’ upon whom they depend, absolutely, is a potential criminal who has to be forcefully stopped from stealing.
So far, not one of the17,000 or so people singled out from the estimated between 51 and 61 million people who regularly share music with each other in the US has actually appeared in front of a judge or a jury. However, the cartel has been able to use the mainstream media to imply it’s successfully “prosecuted” all these men, women and children whom it says are thieves, although nothing has been stolen and no one has been deprived of anything in either a physical or digital sense.
With file sharing, the operative word is “share”: no money changes hands.
The labels are also using the media to say file sharing is costing enormous amounts of money in lost sales when actually, it’s never been shown that a file shared equals a sale lost and in fact, a number of experts have suggested file sharing amounts to a free, and priceless, form of exposure and publicity for the cartel and its artists.
The Big Four say their warped sue ‘em all sales program is working and that as a direct result, people are turning away from the p2p networks in favour of the corporate sites supplied and supported by them.
This isn’t even nearly true.
Stay tuned.
Jon
Also read:-
The ‘We’re Not Taking Any More’ club, September 17, 2005
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. as a stocking stuffer or anything else over Christmas. Do bug your local political representatives. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance.
December 17th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
This is great news, count on me for a donation. I also suggest you setup a discussion forum for people to submit ideas. A hidden forum section for GENEROUS lawyers willing to help Patti with a courtroom strategy should also be made available.
Let us all Fight Goliath
December 18th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
Just let me know where I can send some $ to the Patti Fund…
“A Luta Continua”(”The struggle continues”)
Cy
December 18th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
I really hope she can pull this off. like I said earlier I’m sceptical it will happen but I love the idea that she’s willing to fight back. there is one thing that does trouble me a great deal. a sentence she used in her letter….
“I do understand the musician’s right to protect their copyrights.”
She seems to believe the same Industry PR chant that’s been in the media constantly. The musicains have no rights and don’t own the copyrights. it’s not about protecting the musicians. If the musicians owned the copyrights they would be sueing her, not the record labels. Musicians don’t get one cent from all this. It’s so sad when even a victim falls into this veil of misinformation.
December 19th, 2005 at 6:52 am
What you might be seeing is a potential problem for the music cartels. It can be argued that they have abused the Work Made for Hire provisions of copyright law.
This little tidbit from Marci Hamilton at Findlaw: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20001123.html
“”"What Triggered the Settlement (Universal vs MP3.com)
The final move that brought Universal and MP3.com to the negotiating table was arcane, but decisive. Universal proposed to introduce, at the portion of the trial dedicated to proving damages, thousands of copyright registrations to prove ownership of the recordings at issue. This would have been an unremarkable move, except that all of these registrations were filed under the theory that Universal — not the artist who had made the recording — was the legal author of each work. Universal claimed authorship by invoking the “work-made-for-hire” statute, which has the effect of shifting authorship from artists to their employers.
Featured artists like Don Henley, Sheryl Crow, and others immediately organized and complained, through the Recording Artists Coalition. They rightly argued that Universal, along with most other recording companies, was claiming more than the work-made-for-hire statute permits.
The Expansion of Work-Made-For-Hire Status
In order to understand why the artists had a strong argument, it is necessary to understand the work-made-for-hire provisions of the copyright law. Historically, work-made-for-hire was a doctrine that permitted employers to claim authorship in their employees’ work, for all legal purposes, when they had been the primary cause of its creation — providing the “instance and expense” of the work. After negotiations among artists and media industries resulted in a deal on work-made-for-hire, to which Congress deferred, a modified and expanded form of the doctrine was codified in the 1976 Copyright Act, which took effect in 1978.
Not only did this expansion go far beyond traditional work-made-for-hire doctrine, it was also constitutionally suspect. Under the Constitution’s Copyright Clause, Congress has the power to vest copyright only in “Authors,” meaning the creators of expressive works. However, neither the Copyright Clause nor the First Amendment played much of a role in the negotiations over revision of the statute — which is scandalous, but typical on Capitol Hill.”"”
Back to me…
So again, if the Music cartel allows this trial to go through to the end and they presumably win, they will have a huge problem on their hands, as the Recording Artists Coalition will be all over them for abuse of the Work made for Hire status, because Ms. Santangelo will properly demand the cartels prove they have a right to sue for copyright infringement….. The artists are supposedly clients of the recording labels aren’t they? If they are and ever have been only subordinates of the cartels, do you think any artist would ever sign a record contract ever again? I’m surprized [ not really, considering the bully approach of the cartel] they have put themselves in this predicament up to now. All big label artists..or at least a huge majority will have it proven in a court of law that THEY DO NOT OWN THEIR OWN SONGS. This could be huge. More than likely the Cartel will settle out of court once again before they step into a bigger pile of trouble. Just my two cents worth.
December 19th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
The competition has been very innovative, and it is making mony from it new movie, yet you do not have to pay!!! They have produced a movie and have made it available free of charge to filesharers. They have been sponsored by Coca Cola corporation. Sponsored content on the Internet is going to starve the cartels until the cartels produce quality product. Do not give the cartels the ammunition they need to persecute the likes of Patti Santangelo. This ammunition is your money!!! Patronizing the Independents instead of the cartel is a wonderful tactic for people to use whether or not they contribute to Patti’s war chest.
Visit the website below.
http://marcushateshisjob.com
December 19th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
I second that
December 21st, 2005 at 12:22 pm
I repeat here a post on another story (story #7353 - “The Analog Hole bill —-”) but is relevant to Patti Santangelo’s case.
As we all know, when a song is dowmloaded from the Internet, the downloader has no practical way of knowing the copyright status of the song or whether the downloading is authorired by the copyright owners.
I have posted several mp3 musical works on our web page, so obviously I authorize the downloading. Nevertheless the visitor to our web site has no practical way of knowing if their downloading will be declared theft by a record company which may own the recording rights. The fact is that we only own the song rights whereas the recording rights are not owned by anyone because the recordings were issued before the law changed in the 1970s. Before the 1970s, recording were not “protected” by copyright in the USA.
Please note that nothing here suggests that Patti Santangelo actually downloade any songs.
This is my previous post:
“Most of the american public does not care about young naive fools ripping off the entertainment cartels and getting rightly sued for it.”
Wrong. It is not that the Americans do not care. It is they do not know and realize how lives are disrupted and damaged by frivolous lawsuits. Then many Americans have been formed so as not to question things that are political and religious. Put differently, they have been brainwashed.
“I don’t know what country you are from but downloading crap like rap music in the united states without paying for it is THEFT.”.
Downloading cannot be theft because nothing is taken. I saw a recent DVD that has a message: possesion of a pirated DVD was a crime. A friend, a movie fan, who just arrived from a trip to a Latin American where it is rumored that 90 percent of the sold DVDs are pirated, a fact (if a rumor can be a fact) that I know but my friend does not. In that country my friend purchase several DVDs for the simple reason that he wanted them and they are not sold locally, so he thought.
Now, it turns out, my friend could or could not be a criminal and a thief, depending on whether the DVD’s he owns were pirated or not, something he has no way of knowing.
I myself admit that I use to copy LP records to cassettes, without the record manufacturer’s permission. All my friend and adult relatives did it too. Many of these are fine honest people and well regarded professional. If I thought of them as thieves, I would be MAD. After all, then we are all thieves.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 21st, 2005 at 12:51 pm
Some related comments:
I could have commented on my previous post that my “theft” saved many songs that my father composed. How?
Whenever someone tells me they have a recording of my father’s music which I do not have I ask for a copy or for permission to make a copy for myself. Technically I, or whoever copied the song, could be a copyright infringer, if the recording was made in the USA after when recordings became covered by the Copyright Act.
But the problem is that the dates of the recordings are usually unknown and most of the recordings were never legally licensed, or the license is no longer valid and always, no royalties were paid to the author, my father, or my family, the current song copyright owner.
Do I worry about the possibility that I am a copyright infringer of record company rights and will be sued?. Of course not. After all, record companies are all crooks. My sample data says it. There are over 75 recordings of songs we own the copyrights and no one has a license from us and no one has paid us any royalties since my father died in 1993.
Just in the past 5 days I have found three more new to me unlawful records in the web market with 12 songs composed by my father. One is produced in France. The others are are on web pages that sell records and that make it impossible to contact the web page operators.
Funny: The copyright laws allows the production and sale of recordings without an identification of the seller and the producer, while the FBI and the record companies are able to track Internet user’s computers for the purpose of suing them. Is this not odd, the oversight (or was it???) of legislators, that record companies that infringe author rights cannot be tracked by the copyrightowners, but alleged downloaders can be tracked?
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 22nd, 2005 at 4:42 am
This a message from your president, the chief commander.
Dear subjects and P2PNET readers.
As chief commander of my country I have the obligation of enforcing the laws. I also have the obligation to protect my country from terrorist, The Great Patriot (that’s me) Law give me that authority.
I however cannot do my job if my subjects constantly violate our laws, such as the copyright one, and attack me personally as being a stupid dictator, which I deny being.
I have to admit that the lawyers of my country have made the copyright rules too confusing for you plebe. Judges, who are lawyers too have not helped also with their unintelligible decisions that create additional confusion. Perhaps that is why you elected me, a non lawyer non combatant aviator as president, a rare event of which I am proud. You know, not many consider me an aviator, but that is only because they never saw me fly.
Because recent cases of lawsuits against music copiers has created much publicity and anxiety among my subjects I must then speak to you on the subject of copyright, a dear one to me because of it’s national security implications.
First, I would like to do is to clarify in a straightforward and simplified way, the copyright law, so that you know what you can do and what you cannot do with copyrighted things, be it at home or on the Interweb.
I have spent hundreds of hours with my lawyers trying to untangle the copyright rules so I could explain them to you, my dear subjects. Believe me, it was not easy. After all the copyright law comes from medieval times when all computing was done on an abacus.
Let us talk about copying at home. This is strictly prohibited. The fact that truckloads of blank CDs are sold in your neighborhood stores and burners are freely sold does not mean you can burn CDs as you wish. To use a blank cd you must follow my instructions. First you must find out if the song you want to copy is not in the public domain. My legal advisers tell me that there is no way for you to determine this and that makes the copying of any work a risk. You must then repeat the process for the recording, You see each recording has two separate copyrights, one for the song and one for the recording itself. Each right, separately, may or may not be in the public domain. To copy freely, both rights must be in the public domain, something that cannot be determined for any of the two copyrights. So, if you like to play the horses or the lottery you can gamble and copy the song. Otherwise do not copy anything.
As you see, I am keeping my word to give you a simple explanation. The explanation just given could not be simpler.
Now let me explain rule for downloading of songs from the Interweb. Just follow the same procedure as for copying at home.
As you can see it is just too risky to make any copies of songs and records or movies.
If the songs you want to download or copy are from another country, you will have to check with the embassy of the particular country for instructions. If you copy or not copy songs or videos of that country, that is none of our business. On this we reciprocate. We also do not care if citizens of other countries copy our songs or movies, unless these are produced by the major associated record and movie producers.
We mentioned that copying is risky business. Let’s talk about the risks. This is also very simple. You may be caught, either by the copyright possessors (posse for short) or by us in the government. Not that I like it, but that is he law. As you should know the law was passed by the other party, so think about that in the next election. You know, when I was young, I copied many recordings on cassettes. That’s how it was done then. Everyone did it, but no one was ever caught, since there were no computers back then. But technology has changed, and we must be more careful.Spies are everywhere, thanks to the Great Patriot (that’s me) Law.
Finally, you may ask, what happens if I get caught? The copyright posse will come after you, if they think you cannot defend yourself. They will go after every penny you own. Actually, I don’t like their tactics, but as their president, I must uphold the laws.
If you ask me it is not worth the risk. A recent case proves this. A 69 year old grandfather with no wealth to speak of, was sued for over 1/2 a million dollars for downloading four movies. It breaks my heart, just thinking that he could have saved all his pain if he had just rented the four movies for about 10 dollars. I know, this sounds cruel to you, But I must point out that an example had to be made of him. After all human sacrifice is nothing new in the Americas. The Aztecs did it and so did others, so there is legal precedence, my lawyers tell me.
And remember you are responsible of what your computer does as well. If your computer downloads songs by itself without your knowing about it, ignorance is no excuse. This is consistent with our law’s tradition that ignorance of the law is no excuse. So please, makes sure that your computer cannot download songs without your approval, since you will be held accountable for whatever your computer does and whatever copies it has on it’s hard disk.
Another question asked frequently is how can one know if a purchased disk is genuine or pirated and is possession of a pirated disk a crime? I asked my lawyer about this. They have no answer, other than possession of a pirated disk is a crime. There is nothing about this in the law books, so they base their opinion on what movie studios are saying on their DVDs, that possession of pirated disks is theft. Your best bet is to buy only from reputable dealers, if you know who they, the reputable ones, are. If in doubt, do not buy any DVDs and go to the movies instead. The president, an honest and generous man, of the theater owner’s association has told me they agree with me on this, during the last fund raiser party we had.
As to purchases in foreign countries. I advise against that. Anyone entering my country will be checked for pirated disk. If you are in possession of one pirated disk, you will get arrested. You may even have a genuine copy, but they look such much like the pirated ones that some immigration officers get confused and arrest people who have genuine disks that look like the real pirated ones. As you can see, buying disks abroad is a very big gamble.
A final word. Home copying and downloading and the Interweb is the biggest threat to our national security and economy in recent history. Billions of dollars and millions of jobs are at stake, since the money you do not spend purchasing music and video disks and newspapers and other things will then not be spent at all and the jobs that money creates will be lost forever. This is what my economists have told me. Not being an economist myself I don’t really understand the intricate mechanics involved. I simply have faith in the economists that work for me and who formerly worked at Enron, Adelphia and other equally reputable companies. I ask of you the same, faith in your leader, that’s me.
Another final word. What I have said applies only to music and movie copying. Copyrights for photographs, literature and other works basically have the same copyright protection as songs and movies, my lawyers inform me. For reasons that my lawyers do not know, our government does not act to protect these other types of copyrights. This is why the FBI may scan someone’s hard disk for mp3 files but not the jpeg ones for authenticity. I am sometimes asked about this apparent inconsistency. My theory is that only the squeaky wheel gets the oil. The music and movie associations squeak frequently at our parties. Maybe books publishers should squeak more at our parties and should start putting FBI warnings on their books.
A final last word. Lately I have been receiving thousands of pirated cd and movies per day. I guess that politics is behind this, since if I keep one of these records I will have committed copyright theft. As I said before, possession of pirated movies is theft per the movie companies and their DVDs. So please, do not send me any more pirate copies of DVDs or CDs in protest.
RV
December 22nd, 2005 at 8:01 pm
I wouldn’t expect to hear any news from the main stream media.
December 22nd, 2005 at 9:51 pm
Home copying and downloading and the Interweb is the biggest threat to our national security
LMAO - Your kidding me, right?? *shakes his head*
December 23rd, 2005 at 3:08 pm
I forgot to mention an important announcement that is related to copyright, I have just privatized the atomic bomb.
The University of California will now run Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
The will do it in partnership of Bechtel Corporation, formerly or actually, I ma not sure which, run by my buddy, the vice chief commander. As you can see, the bomb will be in god hands.
A are wondering what this has to do wth copyrights? We may have to use the bomb against those countries that promote terrorism and are DVD and CD pirate heavens.
This move is part of my privatization plans. As you are aware by now, I beleive everything should be run by the big private corporations. Government employees tend to be incompetent and really cannot do very much. Remeber Katrina?
The story is in the New York Times here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/national/22alamos.html
Next I will privatize homeland securuty to stop all the infighting in that agency, that has not been able to do a good thing since I created them. Anyway, now that I have privatized the atom bomb, the rest is easy. If my subjects buy this, they will buy anything.
And please remember, don’t worry about world opinion. I don’t.
RV
December 23rd, 2005 at 4:42 pm
A corrected version:
I forgot to mention an important announcement that is related to copyright, I have just privatized the atomic bomb.
The University of California will now run Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
They, UC, will do it in partnership of Bechtel Corporation, formerly or actually, I may not sure which, run by my buddy, the vice chief commander. As you can see, the bomb will be in good hands.
Are wondering what this has to do wth copyrights? We may have to use the bomb against those countries that promote terrorism and are DVD and CD pirate heavens.
This move is part of my privatization plans. As you are aware by now, I beleive everything should be run by the big private corporations. Government employees tend to be incompetent and really cannot do very much. Remeber Katrina? I don’t want that to happen again, with the atom bomb.
The story is in the New York Times here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/national/22alamos.html
Next I will privatize homeland securuty to stop all the infighting in that agency, which has not been able to do it’s job since I created them. Anyway, now that I have privatized the atom bomb, the rest is easy. If you buy this, you will buy anything.
And please remember, don’t worry about world opinion. I don’t.
RV
December 24th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
The University of California has run Los Alamos since it was created in 1943. This is just the first time they have put the contract out to bids from other organizations. So technically the atom bomb has always been privatized.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122200156.html
December 24th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
wonder if she has thought about selling the movie rights?
December 24th, 2005 at 5:51 pm
But was a private construction company (Betchel) a partner of UC?
And what does a construction company (Betchel) know about running what is basically a science investigation operation?
And what if a foreign family, for example, the Saudi, buy a chunck or a majority of Betchel, is it not a security risk?
It’s troubling.
December 24th, 2005 at 10:52 pm
She should donate the movie rights to these people who can surely produce and shame the RIAA/MPAA into oblivion:
http://www.starwreck.com
December 25th, 2005 at 2:01 am
That is always a risk, but with the academics from the University of California being unable to efficiently manage Los Alamos to the point that disks full of the most classified nuclear secrets in the world being magically made up on the inventory reports, it might be even more of a danger to continue with the incompetent management where data can easily be lost and spies can flourish. From what I was able to gather about Betchel, they are a big project management company as well as dealing with engineering, which is exactly what Los Alamos needs. How much they will be involved in the actual research I do not know, but I hope all they will be doing is designing security procedures, calculating budgets, hiring new staff and all that other management stuff. Only time will tell how the partnership works out I guess.
Also, if the Saudis or other non nuclear country wanted to go nuclear, I think it would be a lot cheaper to take the iran route and simply higher one of the out of work Russian nuclear physicists or bribe the Pakistanis for a couple hundred thousand dollars then invest multi-millions into Betchel to gain access to our secrets. The Chinese are definitely a cause for concern however.
Have a good holiday Rafael, or I hope you had a good one. I know they have gone by in some countries and I am not sure where you are located.
-J.T.
December 25th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
After suing RIAA back for invasion of privacy, extorsion and defamation.
In New Yor, a punitive damage state, this should be worth over 30 million green ones.
December 25th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
It is extortion………they (RIAA) are counting on most to settle regardless of their participation.
The internet has introduced many opportunities to share files….ie audio, video or print. Some, might be copyrited…..but, I think that it is “what a person does with that material” that makes the case. If it is used to make money…then it is a violation.
If I send a story from the Tribune, that is copyrighted, to a friend, for whatever reason….Am I a criminal?
If my friend sells that story …as his property….then, he is in violation.
If I own a copy of a TV SHOW and want my sister to view it…am I breaking the law?
The Recording Industry Association of America has found a way to extort monies with the courts blessing.
This isn’t America.
g.r.
December 25th, 2005 at 6:16 pm
just give us her email address so that we can contact her directly, i dont see the need to spend any amount of time creating any sort of “script” or program, paypal makes it very simple to setup a donation button, or we can simply paypal her email address directly.
contact me for more info, or with more info, if you can.
Valis Keogh
http://www.valissoft.com
http://valiskeogh.livejournal.com
December 25th, 2005 at 6:53 pm
What would happen if Patti sued them for tresspassing on her pc.
Isnt that avasion of privitcy
December 26th, 2005 at 5:01 am
I do not download music from the net. I listen to less of it now than ever and have no incentive to buy new music because I don’t hear it in the first place enough to want to buy it. When Napster was alive and well I became interested and bought many CD’s of new artist’s music that I had already downloaded for free. With internet radio, regular radio, my old CD’s, LP’s and other forms of entertainment I see no reason to risk a lawsuit by downloading or purchasing any music. I know that at least in my case, file sharing helped the record companies make more money. Also, it was easy to find old songs online that were not available at the record store. Good old songs like “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” and the like. It’s simple… just don’t buy music. I think the record companies have shot themselves in the foot.
December 26th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
“If I send a story from the Tribune, that is copyrighted, to a friend, for whatever reason….Am I a criminal?”
RIAA says you are a criminal. So will any judge that agrees and says that downloading is theft. Anyway we are all criminals because we all copy images and stories to hard disks without knowing if that have copyright owners or are in the public domain. If you ever used the “save as” or the “capture page as” ot the “set as wallpaper” options of your browse then you are in the 99 percent criminal category of the population per RIAA and the agreeing judges.r
I don’t know about the Tribune but many news web sites invite you to send the story to a friend by e-mail. You click on the invitatoin and the a link to the news story is e-mailed to a friend.
Since I do not like sending links which others control or may suddenly dissapear or that lead to ads, what I do is I copy the story to an e-mail and send it to friends, ocassionally.
I am an infringer because I e-mailed a story? I think not, because what I do is the same as the web site offered to do for me, except I did it my way. Also what I do is no different than cutting an article from a newpaper and giving it to a friend, something everyone, including judges, does. By cutting out an article of a newspaper you did a derivative work of the nespaper, a copright work, without the newpaper’s authorization and that is infringement per the senseless American copyright law.
Besides that, there is no way of getting caught. Certainly a friend is not going to testify against me, unless torture is applied, a possibility under the Bush administration.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 26th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Patti,
I was FORCED to settle with the GREEDY music idustry the same
as thousands of other parents it has made me sick I have
teenage kids also you are so right in fighting this.My atty.
advised me to settle the assholes you are fighting have alot
more money that you or I will ever have to beat us.I have been
a music lover (and buyer)all my life that has changed now that
my kids missed xmas because they got all the money I could
come up with to settle.I or my kids will never again set foot in
a music store again to give those GREEDY bastards another
penny.I like you am computer dumd I never in my life stole
anything from anyone but was made to feel like a thief by
them.I have lost not only $ but sleep over this BS.I pray that
you win this case.I will follow your plight if I win the lotto I
will help with your defense Good Luck J.
December 26th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
How is p2p any different from burning cd’s. well in my mind taking one of your friends cd’s putting it on your computer and burning it is just as illegal as p2p sharing of songs. No one has put a ban on cd burners or forced the music industries to put more security on the cd’s so they can’t be burned. In reality this is where the problem starts, someone “buys” a cd puts it on their computer likes a song and wants a friend to listen to it, and shares it. So why do they stop attacking the people that are trying to spred the record companies music and go after the source, cd and dvd burners. hell why don’t they just go after the artists for making good music that people want to share. This is no different from people recording the radio onto a tape and passing it around, now it is just more high tech.
December 26th, 2005 at 3:47 pm
Federal law allows each person to make a “Fair Use” copy of something they own for back up. This can be a piece of music or a computer program or a DVD.
When a company puts on some form of copy protection, isn’t this stopping a person from doing something they are allowed to do under Federal Law? I think so and so I would argue it’s against public policy/Federal Law.
Same for the idea you can’t return software once it has been opened.
You don’t know the terms of the license until you start to install the software and if you don’t like it (if they say they collect personal information and sell/lease/rent it out), you can decline and you should be able to get your $$ back.
Basic civil law says all terms of a contract must be known before a person is liable to pay when they agree to buy. You can’t toss in new terms after the purchase.
Could be an interesting fight.
I don’t know why someone hasn’t brought this up yet.
December 26th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
After reading about Santangelo’s story one thing came to my mind and I believe this is a question that she could also bring up to court. They claim she downloaded music files, and that someone went into her computer hired by the record company to find out what she had downloaded, now won’t that constitute ivasion?!! (hacking).
Just to add to the note, what is the quality of the downloads, usually they are less than perfect, also why aren’t they chasing who made it available, the program company and themselves for not encrypting a copyrights license to each song that would block anyone from copying. Just a thought!!!
Hope the Judge in the case will have a sound mind and rule in favor of Patti.
God bless you all!!
December 26th, 2005 at 3:53 pm
Funny prior to 9/11 downlaoding was supported by the industry to help promote their songs and artists. When 9/11 happened the industry like all industries went into a slump. So instead of adjusting to reality they decided it was those terrible downloaders who could not afford $20.00 a pop for their music that they were responsible for their loss in businesss. So you see P2P is nothing more than an Al-quida group going after the poor recording industry!!! How greed can they get…. Wait till they get the OK from congress to create bugs to infect P2P computers!!! Oh , yes they keep on trying to violate your rights as FREE people and everyone keeps letting them. Why not pick a lable lets say on January 15th and everyone go buy it then the next day return it UNOPENED!!! Then tell the store owner you are now boycotting the label period. SOny would be a good one because they are after all they are from Japan, so what are they doing screwing with our freedoms….
December 26th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
PATTI : A little food for thought when it comes to squeezing the almighty $$$$$$$ from the american(or any)people.First,lets look who runs the recording & music empire:the same leeches that run the worlds banks & every form of media in the world,the JEWS.Are they fighting for the musicians?? hell NO!! They are fighting for themselfs & their love of the dollar that themselfs are loosing.The american tax payer already supports their welfare state of isreal with more money per year then we(america) give all other countries combined. ALL the money given to these parasites either as loans,military & economic aide has never never never been repaided, why??? because the american gov. is in bed with these leeches up to their necks.(or should i say america is being run by these leeaches) Look at the senate & congress,look at the finance & banking commities, whos heading & sitting on them,JEWS. Thats right,oh!! some may have non-jewish names but do some research & see what name it was changed from.If you think im a jew basher or what ever,consider this,IM A JEW,(but im an american FIRST)…do a little research, look at what our goverment is giving away,(tax money)billions & billions that dont have to be repaided,& who is paying the INTREST ON ALL THESE BILLIONS….WE ARE,& OUR CHILDREN will for generations to come, all for a strip of land almost the size of postage stamp.Also think of this, the jews are collecting trilions of dollars for repparations from looses in the holacoust,but is their ONE MOUNUMENT in isreal thanking all the DEAD americans that died to free them, NO…why? because you cant draw 6% intrest on a dead american body in the bank.PLEASE!!!!! do the research & WAKE-UP PEOPLE.
December 26th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
If I’m correct Microsoft got sued for ‘Looking into people’s computers’ and lost, they had to change how the windows system worked. Gathering supposedly only info they needed to update a computer, although I don’t think this is still the case with them. I think they still gather what they want from a computer but they can’t allow this out into public until such a time as ‘looking into someone’s computer’ becomes accepted.
It should be illegal too do such things, my computer is my haven. It’s not hooked to the internet to allow whoever to browse through it. I might write things I don’t want others too see or hell have pics of my girlfriend nude on my computer that no one has ever seen. Where do they get the right to probe my life and what I do in my life.
Oh wait next they will start sueing people who record off the radio. I mean we don’t pay a fee for that do we? Nope. So according to them that must equal stealing. I agree it has gotten out of hand in a way, movies/games avalible for download that hasn’t even been released to the public Ect… Ect…. I agree go after the people doing that, not the common people who download a song or a movie thats been released on DVD or a game thats out already.
Security on disks have gotten so tight that we as consumers can’t even copy it for back up purposes, well at least until someone cracks the protection. Give it up and stop copy protecting things, you guys might find yourselves in court for breeching our rights to make back-ups of products we buy.
This is getting out of hand and I think Patti has taken a step in the right direction. My hat goes off to her.
December 26th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
hiya.. I just want to know isn;t it illegal what the Music Companies did buy entering her pc with out a warrant or anything like that….
thanks NOUSE
December 26th, 2005 at 8:52 pm
I can not agree with the poster that wants to make this some sort of racial problem. It isn’t about race. Those cartels are based in different countries and it is about money, nothing more, nothing less. Every action they take is in that direction, not in the direction of race. No one race has a monopoly on greed. There are just as many greedy Asians are there are Russians, Frenchmen, or any other country you want to name. No matter the popluation base you can read that “just as many” as more than you. Take race out of the equation; it doesn’t belong there. Your personal views don’t make it the correct viewpoint.
I would be most interested in how the cartels intend to prove that Patti was knowledgable in her infringement. I would be most interested in knowing how the cartels intent to prove ownership as that is a big hole they are dancing around and it has the potential to lead to an artist revolt, without which they can not exist any more than if the customer revolts. So far I see them as doing pretty good at making enemies all around from those they depend on for their economic welfare.
Much of this IP enforcement and where it is going is new. The cartels are scared to death of it. They have opened a can of worms that has the potential to sink them. We already have cases where intrustion into your computer warrents a criminal lawsuit; one only has to look at the spyware and computer fraud parts to see this. It’s relatively brand new on the legal side. Understand when I say brand new, I don’t mean it just came out. I mean that legal issues are based on precedence of past rulings as to how things are dealt with and what constitutes good or bad claims and who is the bad guy to be found guilty. On this level, it takes years and years to become accepted policy and not something new. Much of this still has to be hashed out.
It leaves many areas in the grey. One by one those areas are addressed at some point. (Such as the Sony lawsuits over privacy invasion and security issues that Texas and New York are raising.) The inbetween times is when you get such as we see with the suing of infringers. I still question that the industry has a leg to stand on without proving they are financially damaged and to what degree. So far they are using statutory penalties and it doesn’t in any manner prove the level of damage. As it rests now, they make a claim against an infringer, the infringer has two choices. Either they buy off the legal actions through extortion or they go to court. There is no place in the middle to allow someone accused to prove they didn’t do it and end false claims. In this area, it is very much harder to prove as the IP protections can’t be both tangible and intangible.
If it is a tangible product, having all the protections of real property, then it must exist as a phyiscal object having value. If it is intangible, then it doesn’t deserve the protection of real property. Ones and zeros don’t stike me as tangible, I can hit the delete button, empty the trash, and it no longer exists but as a faint unusable trail. I can’t do that with real property.
If it is real property, then at some point it will be taxed. How do you determine what value that is if it might be gone two minutes later? Still states are wrestling with this problem, try to tax businesses with using property in the form of software. They are also trying to attempt to tax sales from the internet for their own local areas. Both are proving to be thorny issues.
December 27th, 2005 at 7:46 am
I think any lawsuit by “SONY BMG” should be summarily dismissed because they (Sony BMG) can not prove that someone using “rootkit” infected computers has downloaded “music” through second and third party computers. It has been demonstrated that Sony BMG has infected tens of thousands of computers using their CD’s I think it only fitting that everyone sued by them should be fully reimbursed for ALL of their costs !
Yukio YANO
December 27th, 2005 at 8:00 am
Hey it just occurred to me why Sony BGM software was designed to upload onto our computers ! “So they can read the contents of our hard drives !”, so they can sue us for downloading “THEIR music” onto “OUR hard drives” NASTY. We are not permitted to copy the music we have purchased ! Onto our own computers !
Yukio YANO
December 27th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
Sorry to hear about this lady’s troubles, but I can’t condone her actions. As a responsible parent, she should have better control on what programs are on her computer system. it is always easy to clain ignorance because you did not take the time to find out the facts. People are always trying to get something for nothing, when you are taught “NOTHING IS FOR FREE”. There is always some kind of catch. As a mother of 4 and grandmother of 13, I know exactly what programs are on my grandchildrens’ computer, and know which sites they visit. I and their parents make sure we know enough about the basics of computer and know about having security installed on the systems. This issue of file sharing and piracy of music is not new. It is been around for a while. Mrs. Santangelo’s stand about ignorance of the issue is lame because she is the adult setting the example for her kids. She knows right from wrong and is responsible for teaching her kids right from wrong. That’s the problem with some of today’s parents. They don’t maintain strict control over what their kids do and associate with.
December 27th, 2005 at 5:36 pm
I’m donating this week!!
Mike Dallos
December 27th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
Who are you to say that a digital track is only worth several cents. Do you have any idea how much work goes into making a song. Recording, Marketing, Distribution (and yes there is distribution with digital tracks, it is just in a different form, and is expensive), and many more elements go into making a song. It costs a lot of money to make good music. I am sorry you don’t see that. A dollar a song is a very reasonable price. Sure Starbucks and other retailers who charge $20 for a CD are wrong. But Best Buy, or online stores who sell the same CD for $10 to $15 (for a new CD), that is a fair price. The general public only thinks it is overpriced because they can steal it and not likely get caught.
On another note the mom should be held liable. It is her fault no mater what she says. Simply saying I didn’t understand computers is no a way out. If you leave your car keys laying on a counter in your house and your 15 year old kid finds them and takes out the car, then kills someone, who gets in trouble? The parents do, sure the kid does too, but the parents would be in a lot of trouble. The same should apply to the music industry. If a parent allows a kid to access illegal downloads then the parent as well as the kid should be held liable.
If you honestly think you can argue against my points here then please do so. I know for a fact there are not many good points in favor of illegal downloading. I work in the industry and my income is suffering due to the millions of criminals who decide to steal my work. Yet I continue to do it because it is my passion to make music. It is a shame that the general public simply doesn’t understand the way it really works.
December 27th, 2005 at 10:19 pm
Donated $5.00 today.
December 28th, 2005 at 12:01 am
I agree with this post…..
One item that apparently no one has mentioned - READ the back of ANY vinyl album or CD: “Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws.” The laws are copyright laws and have been in place far longer than most of you have been alive. Theft is theft, no matter what technology one uses to perfom it.
I feel for Ms. Santangelo, but regardless of her knowledge of computers and the internet, she is the ADULT in the household and is ultimately responsible for the actions of her children. Perhaps she should have taken more time to understand exactly what her children were doing with the computer instead of now wasting $24,000 and whining about it. Her children are HER responsiblity, NOT mine or yours. And the child or children who ARE responsibe for downloading illegal music files should accept their responsibility, come forward and admit their guilt.
Jeff Larrabee
NH
December 28th, 2005 at 12:09 am
So you’re saying that if her children were manufacturing meth and selling it, and the Mom didn’t know about it, that it’s OKAY to sell meth?
AGAIN, parents need to be PARENTS and watch over their children, get involved with their children and learn what their childrens’ computer habits are. It’s called “responsibility” and obviously it is not in your vocabulary.
I guess the next thing is you’ll be defending someone for building bombs because THEIR parents didn’t care enough to spend time with them??
Oh, right, we already had that happen, it was called Columbine.
Jeff
December 28th, 2005 at 1:11 am
I think what I don’t like about this RIAA case. Is that they hacked someone’s computer. Some hired PI. That probably gets paid a finders fee. If they hack your computer how will the RIAA proved this PI doesn’t download music files to gain his fee?
December 28th, 2005 at 1:15 am
I made the orginal post “you are dead wrong” and I would like to say one more thing. The theifs who have been fined between $1,000 and $10,000 should feel lucky. The law allows for fines of $250,000 per copyright infringment, and 10 years in jail per copyright infringment. So if you have 100 songs, which is a small number compared to the real rates of downloads that is $250 Million, and 1,000 years in jail. I think their fine of several thousand is giving them a break. I am not saying jail time is the right answer for those who d/l illegally, but that is what the law says and they could enforce this if they wanted to. And they would win if it went to trail. The reason it never gets to trial is because most people are smart enough to settle for a few thousand and no jail time. I hope it goes to trial, I hope someone gets fined 250 million, and i hope someone goes to jail. It sounds mean but then everyone will get the point and they will stop, then my life can go back to normal and i can start making money agin.
Chris.
New York, NY
December 28th, 2005 at 1:29 am
>point and they will stop, then my life can go back to normal and i can >start making money agin.
oH cOMe oN…and lose your excuse for not making millions?
Pray that it lasts forever.
December 28th, 2005 at 2:13 am
Millions? are you kidding me, I am making less money now then I have ever made in my life. No where close to a million. I am sorry to be rude but you are in idiot. Do you not realize that behind the artists who make their millions on everything but album sales (in most cases) there are thousands of employees who make a normal wage living. I am an audio engineer and my income is no where close to the income of an artist, the worst argument in the world supporting illegal d/ling is that the industry makes millions they can handle a little loss. That is not true at all. Most of us make normal wages. And besides if i were to make a million from a cd, i probably deserved it. That is the way our economy works if you make something and millions of people want it you deserve to be compensated. Please don’t use that argument anymore. It is an insult to all of us who work hard at what we do, and deserve equal pay for it as well. I hope you are reading this, you just simply don’t understand and have no room to say something like that. If you do however have an intelligent comment on this topic I would love to hear it.
(Do you think you should steal from Ford? Or Microsoft? Or Target? All of their CEO’s and top management make huge sums of money every year. Is it ok to steal from them as well?)
Chris
New York, NY
December 28th, 2005 at 2:17 am
Do you realize how the news website makes money? From advertisers who pay to place ad’s on their websites. If you copy the story, then send it the website no longer gets hits. They will then be losing money. Yes it is wrong. Sending the link they provide is good for them, it gives them more hits, therefore their income is greater from this.
December 28th, 2005 at 2:48 am
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5181562.html
December 28th, 2005 at 5:21 am
>> Twit
Is that your best response? I’m not surprised.
December 28th, 2005 at 6:31 am
For your info I generally work about 50-70 hours a week. I live on my own (in NYC, not exactly the cheapest place to live), I graduated with a business degree, of which I am still paying off my college loans, and I get absolutely no financial support from my parents. Stop making assumptions about me and make a real statement, your just an idiot who is pissed off that they are breaking the law and they have no real knowledge of what they are doing so you make dumb comments to me about living with mommy (which I don’t do). You want some advice: stop posting on the internet if you don’t know what the hell you are talking about. My guess is that you are a high school kid, with no direction, with no job, and you steal music and make it sound like it is ok. Oh and you probably think you know everything. Well I don’t know everything but I do know you are an idiot.
Also I am not whining, I am simply stating the fact that this article has a lot of false information in it.
Chris
New York, NY
December 28th, 2005 at 6:54 am
There is something wrong with your assumption. You assume that if “everyone quits copying you’ll go back to work”. Not necessarily so.
Many bands are jumping over themselves to get signed to a contract anymore. They are finding out that they can make it themselves if they are willing to put sweat equity into it. With computer software they can do the same thing the recording studio does. They can distribute it themselves through this thing you have a problem with called p2p. They are begging folks to listen to it so that they can get a fan base. However the RIAA and cartels would like nothing better than to shut this avenue to the public down so that those artists are once again closed out of the loop. Those same bands are recording their own stuff, mixing it themselves, making the covers, and distributing it on their own.
As much as you seem to feel that folks are stealing your income, it might be a sign that it is time to either change carrers or to find something you can do different with those talents. I am sure at one time there where some really skilled buggy whip makers too.
You should be proud that “your work” is being listened to. (provided you have done some major stuff) Since radio is now a waste land to find new talent and fresh tunes due to payolla, those listeners that left AM for FM are doing it again, because of that lack of fresh stuff. They are showing up at p2p sites to hear stuff they never would have any other way.
There have already been surveys that show those downloading are among the very best of faithful purchasers. If anything the industry should be supporting those same p2p sites for the free advertisement. Those songs on p2p aren’t really good quality. If they want the quality and the artwork then they have to buy it. (ah, isn’t that your beef?) No matter the method there are going to be people that listen and don’t pay. Radio certainly went a long ways towards establishing that mentality with full permission of the cartels.
You should be jumping up and down with joy that music, possibly those very ones you worked on are being heard. That folks are discovering these tunes and actually want to buy, inspite of your ideas on it.
The customers are fed up with DRM and they are showing it. It doesn’t matter that the cartels are determined to stuff it down their customers throats; obviously when they quit buying because they no longer consider the product to be worth what is charged does.
While you may have put in days on one particular song, no one sees that. They see a low quality product that is offered for sale and it doesn’t reflect your work as the original masters do. You need to bitch to those that did this, it isn’t the fed up customer. While you are at it, ask them why they cut so many artists from their roster. Those very slow but long term sellers were what paid the bills regularly in the tight times.
I think your feelings should be directed a different way. We didn’t decide how the product would be packaged and delievered.
December 28th, 2005 at 9:39 am
I love your reply because you are not giving me the same dumb answers that most people do to defend their illegal actions. To be clear about what I am saying, I do not think that p2p sites are bad. They are amazing, they allow bands to share music like you said. It gives them a large audience. What it is that is making me so mad is that if a band does not want their music shared for free, then the public should accept it. Bands in the early stages should and many do give away free music. It is a great promo tool. However they can’t give their music away forever. At some point they have to start making money from their music (or whomever is financing the recordings, R/L’s). The problem is that these p2p networks are used primarily to break the law. It is a fact that people are breaking the law every time a song is downloaded without the copyright holders permission. It is ILLEGAL, and they deserve equal punishment. No, jail time is not the answer for someone who does it once, but if they are caught, told that it is illegal and they do it again then by all means give them the full punishment. I agree that the times are changing, and I too am changing with them. But the argument that I am making is that the public is breaking the law, and when they are sued they think it is crazy, and that the RIAA is out of line and mean. I am only saying that they should be punished for their actions, and I am tired of the “I didn’t know excuse”.
I know for a fact that anyone can record music now; it is easier than ever now. For less than a thousand dollars anyone can purchase some basic equipment and make a CD. However it takes years training, along with great equipment to make a “great” sounding record. The general public will only go so far when it comes to listening to badly recorded music.
I don’t expect my work to go back to what it was years ago, but I do expect people to pay for music that is not meant to be free, so the band can pay those who are helping them to make that music.
Chris
New York, NY
December 28th, 2005 at 11:12 am
“I work in the industry and my income is suffering due to the millions of criminals who decide to steal my work.”
I work in the industry too.
For the past 10 years I have run a music publishing company that belongs to my family. Prior to this I new little of the music business other than that my father (see here http://www.gvenegas.com) never made money with his songs even though he was considered a great songwriter and composer and hundreds of his songs were recorded and very suceesful.
But since I have learned that the industry is mostly run by thieves, be it music publishers, and record companies.
The industry is nothing more than a contract-trapping industry, where artists, songwriters always get the short end of the stick while all the profits go to the business owners who hold the one side contract everyone is forced to sign if any one is to get recorded.
Sure, some very few artists and songwriters, frequently the worst ones, make it and sometimes even big, but it is always through payola (radio and press) and the control of the distribution channels. This is how the crap that makes most of the music that “makes it” gets to the public.
The reality is that most of the better artists, songwriters get nothing conmeasurate with the talent and work done.
And the customer? They get the 98 percent music crap and now the shot in the foot and absurd lawsuits from the record companies.
Great industry, Isn’t it?
No wonder it is headed into oblivion.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 28th, 2005 at 11:17 am
Maybe we should go a bit father with the infringement issues. You are of course aware that on a regular, daily, basis that all walks of life from school teachers to lawyers and judges infringe without a seconds thought. The copy machine makes it very possible and it is used as that. Now if IP is to be protected, then just as surely that is infringement as well as songs. Strangely we aren’t hearing so much about judges reading the facts from an infringed document. It’s still infringement, its still just as serious as your issue, and it still happens everyday. One can’t cut the ball in half and expect it to still roll afterwards. Or how about images? Ever save a picture for a desktop background? If you did, most likely you also infringed on someones work. What I am saying here is this. That it is common preception that this happens day in and day out, not just for songs (which your particular interests lays) but for all works.
Now there is no “copyright markers” on the p2p that I see. Simply it isn’t there. Just like if you want no trespassers on your property, you have to take certain steps to meet that issue. Those steps aren’t earmarked, for whatever reason on those songs. How do you tell the begininng band that wants you to download their songs, from the well established band that you are not familar with? You see the problem? The music industry has been anything but clear on what’s theres and what’s not theirs. They don’t have a data base where you can run go check and know with certainty that you shouldn’t. Yet every one of us is expected to know which is which and what the laws are, despite most of us not qualifing as a lawyer, nor as a copyright specialist.
Further the penalities for statutory infringement aren’t in line with the crime. Statutory penalites are for those that resell or in some way make profit off of those songs. To my knowledge, not one soul sells stuff on p2p. No one is seeking profit. So how does statutory penalities even fit? Honestly they don’t.
However, if IP is to be considered property, as in tangiable property (like land) then it too will be taxed. We aren’t at the point that the laws are balanced with this idea. Some areas are open season while other areas are not. How do you tell the difference between them in a digital file? You don’t even know what the file is till you view it. Lord knows what some of these folks name stuff to get it around the people that would gladly kick some of this crap off the net if they knew. You see where I am coming from? There isn’t an easy way to idenify what is copyright protected and what isn’t.
And what about malware? Only this week a new one is out. One that installs on your computer where you can’t find it to get rid of it, and then turns around and starts downloading movies without your knowledge. Is anyone responcible for that too?
Digital files aren’t really tangible. I erase them for all practical purposes they are gone. That is hardly the realm of tangible propery which is where IP laws are going.
December 28th, 2005 at 11:48 am
“The law allows for fines of $250,000 per copyright infringment, and 10 years in jail per copyright infringment.”
Frankly I cannot understand how anyone can say this without commenting on the absurdity of the law and the fact that the law (as all laws probably are) are taken out of context.
The $150,000 maximimum (it is not $250,000) statutory damages are applicable when they are a fair compensation for the actual damages suffered by the VICTIM of the infringement. When no damages are suffered (copying for personal use does not cause any damages), there should not be any damages awarded.
Under the mistaken theory of this post, when someone copies a single image or one of the millions of pdf files you see on the Internet (without a warning that you have no right to copy) to the hard disk, you could be charged with a crime, sent to jail 10 years and given a huge monetary sentence, for each infringement.
Clearly the person who wrote this post is a lawyer (thus will not be sued) who has no computer (thus cannot be hacked), that works for RIAA or a similar organization (that is the motivation), has no family or neighbors or friend (that will no be sued)and therefore has no need to be concerned about the fate of any fellow humans.
Sound to me like the German who said it was right what was being done to the Jews, mostly because they made money from the exterminations or the reduced competition from the Jews or out of fear.
The phrase “and i can start making money agin” says it all. It is all for money. Not much humanity here, is there?
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
December 28th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
Why have we become a copyright criminal, as defined by the Cartel?
December 28, 2010
I am Dr. Wang. Chief of Medical Research at Shanghai University.
My team of researchers discovered the cure for AIDS in 2007. As a result we won the 2008 Nobel prIze for medicine.
I live and work in China, for the Chinese government, who owns China Pharmaceuticals, the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. My research team is now working and close to a cure for aging.
The Internet is a great tool for research. We make great use of the Internet, unlike other countries, such as America that have become slaves of copyright legislators, lawyers, judges and cartels, To simplify we shall call this group the Cartel. The Cartel opposes copying off the Internet and says it is a crime.
Whenever we find a web page, an article, a chart, a PDF file, etc. that can be useful to our research we save files to hard disks. We have decided to never check that copyright status of what we save to disk for several reasons. It is impossible or (incredibly complex) to verify the status and to get copying permission. More on this point below. Then also, we don’t care to find a reason not to copy what we want to copy. After all the Chinese government we work for doesn’t care to impede our research, which is needed to save the people. The government couldn’t care less what the Cartel thinks or wants.
As result, we now have a vast collection of research papers on our computers. Even if Google went off line tomorrow due to war, we can survive.
You may ask, why have we become a copyright criminal, as defined by the Cartel?
Research cannot be done in a vacuum. A lot of facts/information and previous research and conclusions must be analyzed as part of the current research. Then those facts/information and conclusions must become part of the current research documentation’s.
I will give an example as to why we must save, say a 100 page PDF document written by a scientist from India to the hard disk of the 20 or so main scientists on our staff.
First, reading several 100 plus page technical document on PDF files in a seating by 20 persons is impractical. So you save the document so you or another scientist can later go back to it as needed. Perhaps I will read it during the weekend at my mountain home while my colleagues will read it while traveling to Africa, where our AIDS cure is being applied with their advise.
The problem with working with the document on line (not copied) are many. For example, you may need to refer to the document in a location where a member of the research team can take his laptop computer but there is no Internet connection.
Also you cannot count that on a future date the document will be available on the Internet, as documents on the net or web pages where they reside simply vanish. After all, the research documentation we need prepare may need to be reviewed one or ten years hence.
So if we need a PDF document for my research we will copy it, no questions asked. Yes, a solution to AIDS was more important that what some Cartel lawyer or judge may think about copyrights from their aloof positions.
In the old days of research, you simply photocopied pages from a referenced book or document, indicating on the research reports what was the source. The original book or document could always be located because it was in available on some library.
The closest analogy between the old days of photocopying by researchers and the Internet is to copy the reports or books (PDF files) to a computer hard disk.
Previously I commented that it was impossible or (incredibly complex) verify the copyright status and to get copying permission to copy.
Many PDF documents have an indication that the document has copyrights. What that means I do not know. I am a medical doctor not lawyer. On my research team we have doctors and scientists but no lawyer. Anyway we have decided to do what we are paid to do, find a cure for AIDS and other diseases, not legal copyright research.
In spite of this, we once hired an American lawyer who said he specialized in “International Copyright Law”. to advise us on the matter of possible copyright infringement. He talked about “fair use” but said that was only an American concept and that no one had clear idea about it’s meaning. Unfortunately the American “International Copyright Law” lawyer could not read Chinese or Indian or French or German copyright jurisprudence and could not really advise us about anything about copyright laws. He did mention that the real copyright laws were not the laws themselves but the jurisprudence and these were continually contradicting each other. He also said that what was legal in one country was unlawful in the next, further complicating things Well, so much for copyright legal advice. We decided that copyright legal advise was essentially useless.
Additionally, there is no one place where you can get good information as to wether a file on the Internet can be copied or not. We once contracted an American university scientist to ask permission to post his writing on our related web page. He replied that he sent the message to the legal department of his university. The legal department said that the research was funded by the American federal government and that because of that some research was need to determine if the work was in the public domain as must be all federal government documents, by law. Unfortunately the university had to contract an outside copyright lawyer to do the necessary legal research and there were no funds available for that. We never got a final answer.As a result of the legal hassle, that research paper is no longer available on the Internet.
We Chinese are now the biggest producers and exporters of medicines. 90 percent of the medicines used in America and the world now come from China. A few years back, America was the leader in pharmaceuticals, until they started to sue and imprison copyright infringers. As a result all American research was stopped or became a criminal activity in which no scientists in his/her clear mind would participate. Research in America became also too expensive, since it had to go back to the old days of photocopying, as all computer contents could be checked by the Cartels who then sued everyone in sight. That is why all the top American minds now work for us.
I always knew that there was something funny about Americans. The make copying unlawful and then develop so many tools for copying. Why even Acrobat, an American company has a little button to induce users into the criminal action of copying, and the American courts say that inducement to commit the crime is a crime itself. Why would any country decide to make a criminal out of everyone is beyond me, when the country has the largest relative prison population in the world before staring the copyright witchunt.Anyway I am a medical scientist, and know little of the social sciences.
Believe it or not, that is the secret of our success. I do not mind sharing it with the because their legal system of our potential competitors, mostly Amrica, is so spaghettisized that there is no salvation for them.
So, going back to the question, why have we become a copyright criminal, as defined by the Cartel? To succeed and to survive.
RV
December 28th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
I’m no expert, but from my understanding of the law and constitutional law, the RIAA did not have a valid search warrant or appropriate court order from any judge that I know of to go hacking in to and searching her computer. To my knowledge, one must have a search warrant or appropriate court order to do something like this.
No sane judge or jury would let the RIAA get away with this garbage, and toss the whole case out of court.
Of note, the New York Attorney Generals Office has started investigating the record labels of price gouging and price fixing on digital music downloads. All I can say about this, for the AG’s Office is go for it. Enough of this greedy pigs.
Also note, the artists who the RIAA claims to represent, don’t see a one red cent of this money they supposedly collect. No joke about this, the RIAA and the record labels stick this money in their own pockets, and the artists don’t get one red cent of it.
December 28th, 2005 at 10:26 pm
“What if the band is a flop, well guess who losses the money, that’s right the record label does. They are the ones taking the risk.”
Sorry pal, but the logic is flawed. An ingredient is missing. That is a guaranteed sucess. If record companies gambles with artists it is because they actually sign all comers, regardless of talent. If the gamble does not work out the record company looses little but the artist is tied down to a contr