RIAA settles with 12-year-old girl

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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed 261 lawsuits Monday against computer users it said were exclusively "egregious" file swappers. One of the targets wound up being Brianna Lahara, who was identified by the New York Post as a 12-year-old honors student who lives in a New York City Housing Authority apartment.
The trade group said Tuesday that it had agreed to settle with the preteen's mother for a sum considerably lower than previous settlement arrangements.

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I liked this comment from ZD Net's "Talkback":

GO RIAA - PUT HER IN A CAGE AND PARADE THRU STREET
Or, isn't that good enough for you?
Why don't you torture the girl until she names all the downloads she did so you can bill.
Sick dudes you are . . . . . . . .

Is that what the mafia-like RIAA has had to resort to, shaking down a 12-year-old honor student? Something is rotten in Denmark. I will no longer buy a music CD. Period. I'll live off the radio and what I can find in garage sales.

A big "fuck you" to the RIAA.

According to the NY Post's original article, the mother actually paid a monthly service fee to Kazaa, thinking this absolved her daughter from theft, She was prepared to fight this tooth and nail. Still the RIAA felt the need to "parade this girl in a cage through the streets."

The threat from the RIAA had to be great, perhaps even using Mafia-like tactics, as you imply, for the mother to do a 180 in her statement ("confession")after settlement was agreed.

A big 1998 Johnny Cash, self-paid Billboard advertisement, flip of the bird to the record industry. In their faces.

Obviously the record companies are trying to make a statement with all their lawsuits. And my statement back to them is “fuck you”. Plain and simple.

You don’t go about fixing a supposedly broken system on the backs of 12-year-olds. Plain and simple.

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A big 1998 Johnny Cash, self-paid Billboard advertisement, flip of the bird to the record industry. In their faces.

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There’s a man who had less-is-more written all over him. Dressed in black. Generally simple, gritty and gutty music. He’ll be missed.

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There’s a man who had less-is-more written all over him. Dressed in black. Generally simple, gritty and gutty music. He’ll be missed.

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You said it, brother Brad. That song "When the Man Comes Around" gives me chills. Raw and simple and spiritual and all the more powerful for being sung near the end of a life like his. Actually makes the hairs on my arm stands up, when he says "the hairs on your arm will stand up"...

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That song "When the Man Comes Around" gives me chills.

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Or "Will the Circle Be Unbroken". You might not own every single album – or even any at all – of some artists, but they are closer to your heart than artists whose albums might fill up your closet. A rare few become part of the American landscape. If Johnny Cash hadn't been born we would have had to invent him. I'm not saying that there isn't some marketing behind the Johnny Cash image, but there just couldn't be an authentic Johnny Cash these days. They would roll out some dark, angst-filled image of a loner to try and fill some perceived marketing niche, but you could smell the fakery from a mile away. I think Johnny's more the real deal.

I believe there are real deals everywhere. Marketeers merely try to exploit them for dollars.

There are a few artists who give me hope for the younger generation, I've mentioned a couple of these before: Marylin Manson, Marshall Mathers (eminem), the White Stripes... All kids with a lot to say, and a kind of built-in immunity so far to diluting their vision for marketing ends.

Another healthy part of the culture is satire, particularly animated satire. It will be a poorer world if we lose brilliant and irreverent work like the Simpsons and South Park. I was gratified to see a show like "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart win emmys.

Other national treasures are Stern, Maher, Miller, Penn & Teller. And I think James Randi.

When guys like us get in the fight, the personal computer as a force for human good can be realized. I think we all want PCs to be more than passive entertainment ripoff machines, where everything outlives its usefulness in a week, and which cost more to continually upgrade than to buy. When twiddling becomes more important than using... that's dysfunction. There is as yet yards and yards of underused potential in the personal computer arena. So it behooves us all to get involved, speak our minds, and take an active role in our tech destinies.

What Apple had and lost was a taste of that destiny. The real deal. And we have to kick and scream whenever we see the real deals being traded in for foolishness.

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Other national treasures are Stern, Maher, Miller, Penn & Teller. And I think James Randi.

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Chris Rock, Rush, The Amazing Bradley.

I think one thing this KaZaa craze shows is that there is huge market out there not being tapped. Okay, I'm sure plenty of people are downloading whole albums - new releases - to avoid paying for them. But people want the good stuff - invididual songs - and want to cut out the crap. And let's face it, there's plenty of padding going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that a carefully crafted album can be an entire cohesive listening experience. Taking a song here and a song there - the highlights - is a sure way to miss some really good stuff. But bloat also runs rampant in the music industry. I cant, in my heart of hearts, (even if it turns out to technically be stealing) fault people for wanting to cut the crap and get right to the good stuff.

Also, downloading online is the easiest way to get that hard-to-find stuff. Record companies should be LEADING this new craze, not trying to put a damper on it.s

<< I think one thing this KaZaa craze shows is that there is huge market out there not being tapped. >>

I'm not sure that people wanting to pirate stuff for free constitutes a "market." Hard to see building a business plan around that. Unless you're an accessory to the crime.

It's like saying people want to mug, so the clothing makers need to get with the plan and make pockets easier for the muggers to reach into.

I used to be in the music business, representing artists, so I have strong feelings about this. There's no "peer-to-peer" file "sharing" going on here. It's organized theft. Period.

Markle

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There's no "peer-to-peer" file "sharing" going on here. It's organized theft. Period.

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The music industry had similar concerns about the radio. You can make a near-CD quality copy from taping off an FM broadcast. Although peer-to-peer can offer very near CD quality if they encode at a high enough bit rate, they usually don't. What you end up with is a product that is analogous to what could be gleaned off the radio. The difference is one of convenience. I contend that, similar to the introduction of the radio, the music industry should try to adapt, not squelch.

Although peer-to-peer might not be kosher, if might not technically be theft either:

Myth No. 4: Downloading a song illegally is just like stealing it from a store.
This old chestnut has been bandied about quite a bit in the past five years, but that doesn't make it true. CDs are physical things, and copyright is an abstract right. As Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote (somewhat obliquely) in 1985, "[copyright infringement] does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud...The infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use." There you have it: Infringing on copyright is materially different from stealing physical CDs, according to the highest court in the land (the "thief" in question was acquitted of theft in the case in question, Dowling v. United States). While not definitive, Blackman's statement shows that there is substantial doubt as to whether copyright infringement should be equated with outright theft.

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ALL property rights are somewhat abstract, but they're real. Owning a physical CD does not give you any ownership rights in the music embodied on that disk. Since you don't own it, you don't have the right to post it on the internet for anyone and everyone in the world to copy.

<< You can make a near-CD quality copy from taping off an FM broadcast. >>

I disagree. This is what we used to do. The analog signal that comes to your FM receiver will never be able to be copied as well as a direct digital connection. You always lose a generation of quality every time an analog signal is copied. Minor differences in compression rates for MP3's or other digital sources available over the internet are hardly noticeable. When we used to record music off the air (or even taping it with a recorder plugged into the same stereo that was playing it from a record or CD player), we knew that the price we paid for getting it free was lesser quality. If we wanted it good, we'd have to buy the record. That's not true anymore, and that's where the problem is.

Markle

What about recording off of a digital stream piped directly into your computer from the digital stations in iTunes?

<< What about recording off of a digital stream piped directly into your computer from the digital stations in iTunes? >>

That's one of the ways you get your near-CD quality. That's why it's so easy to pirate music digitally over the net. The difference between iTunes and piracy is that iTunes is licensed and it's done as the copyright owner approves.

It's really that simple. It depends on whether the copyright owner agrees. People don't have the right to copy music just because they want to and because they can. Or because they rationalize it by saying the record companies are greedy pricks. They ARE greedy pricks. But they also spend a lot of money developing, recording, and marketing acts that may not succeed, and which they'll never recoup their investment on.

People say that music on the internet will be more democratic because the artists can go directly to the public without record labels being gatekeepers. But there are so many thousands and thousands of would-be performers and bands out there that just being on the net, without something else to make the public aware of them, is a very inefficient way of getting ahead....particularly on a national or mass-market scale. It could theoretically happen, but it's not likely to happen very often.

If artists and record companies lose the ability to make money from their music, the music business will collapse. There won't be any. Trying to make a living off the internet will put performers back in the position they were in in the distant past: hustling and traveling and trying to live off nickles and dimes.

Markle

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It's really that simple. It depends on whether the copyright owner agrees. People don't have the right to copy music just because they want to and because they can. Or because they rationalize it by saying the record companies are greedy pricks. They ARE greedy pricks. But they also spend a lot of money developing, recording, and marketing acts that may not succeed, and which they'll never recoup their investment on.

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I can't fight your logic, Markle, accept with my own illogic: There's still a place in this world for Robin Hoods. Sometimes the law needs to be tweaked, head-butted and challenged if only to keep us human. The music business is an entrenched racket and for its own good (and ours) needs a bit of shaking up. I consider downloading a few MP3's to be civil disobedience.

<< I consider downloading a few MP3's to be civil disobedience. >>

No problem, if it's just a few. But the KaZaas of the world make it a mass thing with thousands or millions of downloads. Just copy it, post it, and let the world have at it. This is not just letting your friend tape your latest Grateful Dead album. It's not just the big bad record companies who suffer. What about the artists who work and struggle and finally have a chance to be successful and be able to make their living by being musicians, and then having to quit their art and get straight jobs because they can't get enough royalties from record sales? I've heard free-music-download advocates sniff and say the business model of music has to change--performers have to accept that music is free and they have to learn to make their money by live shows and selling T-shirts. But who are they to dictate how others have to live their lives so that THEY can have free music? I'm really fed up with the arrogant attitude of entitlement that those assholes have. There is NEVER a right to steal something just because you want it.

The US Constitution itself provides for copyrights and patents because the founders knew that the arts and sciences were a positive thing for progress in society, and they would be encouraged if inventors and creators had exclusive rights to their "creations" for defined periods so they'd have a chance to be rewarded for their efforts. That principle still holds, even if there are intermediaries like corporations or record companies connecting the creator to the market.

Markle

I always laugh at the music sharing issue. CDs that you buy from a music store aren't $799 apiece. If you don't buy the CD, it's not like nobody will let you hear the song on the radio or watch the video. It's being shared by various broadcast companies every day. We all make the decision, and have the choice to OWN the physical disk where we can choose the time and place of our entertainment... or else we can listen to the artist whenever he or she or it happens to be broadcast.

These Robin Hoods are nickel and diming. Stealing creative property that's not all that exorbitantly priced to begin with. People make mix tapes and CDs for their friends at home ALL THE FRIGGIN' TIME... we can all do it right now with iTunes, Apple has given us the tools. I could make you a CD and put songs on it that I've purchased from CD. Hell, I could hand one to a total stranger as a gift if I wanted. If I SELL it to someone, or mass produce and sell. Or palm my counterfeit copies off as being from the record company, then I'm in violation of the law. Kind of like the whole country of CHINA, which makes our peer-to-peer robin hoods look silly and unorganzied. Counterfeiters are really better at stealing from the rich... though they SELL to the poor, rather than give.

When the medium is music, passive entertainment, there is a difference between going to a concert and owning a COPY of past performances. Record companies used to be able to provide higher quality copies than amateurs. Now that's less true. But anyone who has downloaded music from a peer-to-peer will tell you that there's a diff between NEAR CD quality, and CDs themselves. Quality is often variable.

Either way, the most fascinating thing about the issue is what lurks beneath it... creative property, and trying to license passive entertainment. To do that, you need a captive audience, and the internet isn't yet one.

But again, the music industry is not charging an arm and a leg for music. It's just that ownership of the music, thanks to improving technology, has become less a premium. The industry is reacting in a predictable manner... try to sell their stuff over the internet... lowering prices... trying for volume biz. But the digital hub era has drawbacks. It's tough to charge for stuff more than once. It's tough to prevent people from buying once, giving many. Copying is too easy. I feel BAD for the music industry, but they'll figure it out. They're already messing around with copy protection technologies.

The real highway robbers aren't record companies, but software companies these days. I see a very dangerous turn there. With this "age of the work in progress"... where developers and companies like Apple don't even TRY anymore to make a good product, because they end up making more off of a products flaws, than they ever did off its quality.

A software license can be very expensive. And back in the day it USED to mean an agreement between you and the developer, where you are now chosen people, a client, a customer, exchanged vows, and you'd get upgrades after that whenever you needed them. Free. Now the free part is total history. And upgrade prices are out of control, because software gets upgraded way way way too often for bullshit reasons. "We need money" is not the reason to do a meaningless upgrade. Making a better product, fixing bugs is.

You know what a fair upgrade price is for some of these licenses? Media and postage. Period. But that's if the product is GOOD. Trouble is, nothing is good anymore. The upgrades are seldom true improvements, worth paying as much for as we're paying.

There ain't enough oversight on software. Not enough customers call developers and computer companies on crap. We trust our lives to software, and yet we routinely agree to licensing agreements where we don't need a warranty against anything but media defects. Sorry, that's way too easy to abuse. And OS X is starting to show me the future. These guys can stop trying and still make money.

The latest Adobe offering has me shaking my head. It's sad. The whole new CS series. Unbelievable. Change the name, and bundle. Why do I assume that it's all totally bogus? Right. Burnt too many times. The only thing I got off of reading about the new products was the likely Panther release date (when these Adobe products will ship).

Hey, I hope I'm wrong and the software is spectacular. I just don't see how it can be when the OS it's written for is so weak. And I'm not sure I want to upgrade all my Adobe products just to get the letters C and S, like I was reluctant to pay Macromedia for M's and X's.

Brother Markle said:
No problem, if it's just a few. But the KaZaas of the world make it a mass thing with thousands or millions of downloads.

It's my belief that piracy has an upside and the software and music industry knows it. Microsoft may get all bent out of shape about losing revenue because of illegitimate copies of its software, but I think they (and others, such as Adobe) know it helps to keep their software entrenched as the standard. Some 13-year-old is not likely going to have the money to put down for Photoshop. But he or she might use an illegitimate copy and thereby become another regular customer for Adobe when the time comes for them to have to be legitimate (when they start a business and start making money from the product).

Pop culture these days is wildly influenced by word-of-mouth and the internet is one hell of a word-of-mouth mechanism. I believe your typical nuts-and-bolts non-superstar band makes their money from touring and such things. Album sales, to the best of my knowledge, don't amount to much unless you're a superstar. You're just paying off the debt you've incurred. The record companies – like mining towns of old – keep the artists in debt to the company store. Piracy probably (and I'm guessing here) hurts the record companies way more than the artists. Most of the artists are getting pretty raw deals as it is. No doubt there is even more pressure on them because of piracy but it's still the difference between one spoonful of shit and one and a half.

You may be right, Markle, that the internet will be no savior for the artists (I'm willing to bet otherwise though). But the quick and total dissemination of an artist's music is just an amazing bit of free advertising – for both the artists and the record companies. It's how radio works. The down side, as far as the record companies are concerned, is that the MP3s are often good enough and convenient enough that we don't then need to go out and buy the over-priced (I disagree with BT here) CDs.

Bottom line is that I think the record companies doth protest too much.

I'm really fed up with the arrogant attitude of entitlement that those assholes have. There is NEVER a right to steal something just because you want it.

The internet (and permissive parents?) have probably contributed to this attitude. I think it runs rampant among the OpenSource crowd. It is our God-given right to not have to pay for things IF it is something that is convenient to steal. Frankly, thalo's age of the "work in progress" for software and the general crap state of pop music are further contributors. Some of this shit just isn't worth paying for.

The US Constitution itself provides for copyrights and patents because the founders knew that the arts and sciences were a positive thing for progress in society, and they would be encouraged if inventors and creators had exclusive rights to their "creations" for defined periods so they'd have a chance to be rewarded for their efforts.

I don't want to see the floodgates opened on piracy. But the reality is, at least for music (and soon, if not now, for movies), these things are easy to copy. It's not easy to copy the Mona Lisa or a piece of Chihuly glass. One day it might be. Ever see those 3D modelers that some manufacturers use? Some day (like the Star Trek replicators) we may be able to reproduce works of art that are indistinguishable from the original. We'll go through all this again. I think we're encountering some fundamental things that we're going to have to deal with. It may be that the notion of copyright will have to change. It may be that instead we start living with a near police-state amount of copy protection schemes. It will be interesting to see how all this comes out in the wash.

<< Microsoft may get all bent out of shape about losing revenue because of illegitimate copies of its software... >>

I always have to laugh when I hear Microsoft cry about its software being pirated. Microsoft never invented anything. From the earliest days of DOS, they bought, or more often, stole every idea they ever had from someone else.


Markle