RIAA's scare tactics in practice

[TankGirl]

Daily Texan has an interesting story giving a detailed account on how RIAA persuades people to settle their copyright infringement cases out of court.

Selling settlements

I found myself talking to a representative for The Settlement Service Center in Seattle, a business that conducts settlement negotiations with individuals who have been sued. I pretended to be a distressed student who just received a letter from Time Warner. I asked the man what the documents meant.

"There has been a John Doe lawsuit filed against your IP address. The letter you have received from Time Warner is an indication to you that the law firm of Mitchell, Silberberg, and Knupp in Los Angeles, attorneys for the record company, is seeking the personal information associated with that IP address."

I asked him what that meant.

"Time Warner will turn that info over to the law firm in a matter of days, and the letter is your opportunity to appear in court, if you wish to argue why or why not that information should be leaked. Nobody has won that argument, yet," he added.

Recalling what Sarwal said, I told him that it couldn't possibly have been me, that it was probably my roommates.

"If this is a roommate situation, you are still the one singled out, because you are the account holder for the Internet connection. You are responsible for activity on that account."

I told him that wasn't very fair.

"You should settle with us and dispose of the situation, sir. If your roommates were the ones who actually did the downloading, and you never partook in downloading or listening to music or what not, you might be able to approach them and say, 'we have a problem, help me out here.' But at this point in time you will be the one who will remain on the subpoena."

He didn't mention that this was a fact I could bring up in court. He was trying to sell me on settling.

"And the roommates. We don't have any information pertaining to them, and they will not be pursued at this time," he said ominously.

I asked him if my credit would be affected. Would I be reported to any agencies?

"Not at this time; you are a John Doe. If the situation moves forward where I am not able to negotiate a settlement with you, it will go into a named situation, where you will be named in a federal lawsuit."

My shoulders felt heavier, and I felt my heart beat, panicked, even though I was just pretending to be sued.

This would really, really suck in real life.

"You will be served with a complaint and a summons to appear in court, and by that time your name will be public knowledge to all those people interested in who's being sued by whom."

Was he implicating the media, or was I just feeling guilty?

"It won't affect your credit at this point," he continued. "But if you are named in a federal lawsuit, it could also affect your job opportunities, because on employment applications, many times they will ask, 'have you ever been party to a lawsuit?'

"And you would have to check 'yes' at that time, because that would be public knowledge," he said.

I thanked him for his time and said farewell, but not before he again assured me that I should settle.

In January, the Big Music Mafia boasted it had launched another 717 lawsuits against people who share music online, bringing the total number of those victimized to a shocking 8,423. If each one of these victims settled at the pre-inflated average of $3,000, then the RIAA is set to make an easy $25,269,000.

In the light of these numbers bullying people into submission with ligitation threats is starting to be a considerable source of income for the record cartel. None of this money goes to the artists, of course.

[JackSpratts]

jack sharpens his pencil...

quick: what's $3000.00 divided by 75,000 songs?

- js.

[jcmd62]

Originally Posted by TankGirl

In the light of these numbers bullying people into submission with ligitation threats is starting to be a considerable source of income for the record cartel. None of this money goes to the artists, of course.

Bullying???????? Yea it's not like they broke the law or anything. "My Roomate did it" Now thats using the "buddy" system. When swimming in shark infested waters and a shark approaches......feed your "buddy" to him and make your escape.

Why should any of the money go to the already rich artists. Nausiating the way you act like Britney or any of the music and movie celebrities are hurting for cash and the RIAA keeps them chained up in dungeons until they're needed to perform.

P2p's big claim is that stealing doesn't hurt the Artsits or the RIAA. So if the RIAA does recover money from winning lawsuits against people that stole their property, how do you figure the Artists deserve, much less need any of the money that the RIAA has PAID big bucks to retrieve?

You show me a Starving Artist that isn't starving do to his/her own wasteful spending, alcohol/drug abuse, and greed on their very own part. According to VH1's "It's great to be Britney Spears", Miss Britney buys her thong panties 40 pair at a time from Victorias Secret in EVERY color of course. She recently spent a few weeks in a posh Aspen Hotel Penthouse suite at $12,000 per night.

Please do tell why you feel the artists deserve more excess than they already enjoy, take for granted, and thorougly waste on trivial infantile egotistical just because I can bullshit like $12,000 dollar per night hotel suites that can never be justified in any way for costing that much.

[ONEMANBANNED]

Originally Posted by JackSpratts

jack sharpens his pencil...

quick: what's $3000.00 divided by 75,000 songs?

- js.

0.04?

[multi]

P2p's big claim is that stealing doesn't hurt the Artsits or the RIAA

when did anybody ever give a shit about the RIAA?

p2p could eventualy kill off parasites like the RIAA over the course of a few decades..
bands and artists might still have mangers by then..but they wont have a need for the big music advertising machine that controls what we get to listen to..RIAA and all the other corporate scum that use artists to get their paychecks and their families will all live rich fat and happy for years to come on what they have already sucked up...
the same shit that gets promoted by them over and over by them... the big stars with the big bucks
that only got rich because they were being marketed in large volumes by a greedy industry to every MTV type music show in existance.
they have their clear channel buying up every radio station..so they can control what gets airplay wich dictates the 'top 40' wich in turn has controlled wich artists stay in the rotation...

not just p2p but the internet in general will changed this fucked up scenario...it has been long overdue..but still could take decades to happen
there are plenty of starving artists ,sound engineers ,audio-visual technicians..ect
that if the imbalance of how only certain already rich ones get any exposure continues and crap like DRM and copyrights and DMCA are imposed on consumers and creators ,in the future wont have the basic tools and material they have had for the last few thousand years to create with....

the only real hope is for them to have any of their work out there for people to listen to is to give it away take the chance on the lawsuits by mixing up already known stuff what ever...

..i think most of us can only hope the RIAA as we know it dies a slow and agonising death

[Drakonix]

quick: what's $3000.00 divided by 75,000 songs?

0.04

LOL, does that mean it's cheaper to download like crazy and settle out of court with the RIAA for $0.04 per song "bulk rate" as opposed to downloading it at $0.99 per track?

[JackSpratts]

Originally Posted by Drakonix

LOL, does that mean it's cheaper to download like crazy and settle out of court with the RIAA for $0.04 per song "bulk rate" as opposed to downloading it at $0.99 per track?

depending on the deal you make it sure could be.

- js.