RIAA Defends Lawsuit Spending... But Reminds Everyone How It Helps Screw Over Musicians

from the who's-rationalizing-now? dept

A few weeks ago, there was a lot of attention paid to the story of how the RIAA had spent $17 million and got back $391,000 in settlements. The RIAA is now defending its legal strategy by claiming that the lawsuits had other benefits, such as injunctions against certain sites and (my favorite) to "foster a respect for the rights of creators." It's difficult to see how that's working, as the legal strategy has not only mobilized many music fans against the RIAA and ridiculous copyright laws, but has even gotten top musicians to speak out against the RIAA and its views on copyright. On top of that, given the continued increase in file sharing usage, the whole claim is a joke.

Separately, though, the RIAA says that the numbers are misleading because "sometimes recoveries go directly to record label plaintiffs."

But that raises a different question. If the labels are getting this money... has any of it been passed on to artists? In the discussion on the original story, we had one commenter, who works as an auditor in the music licensing field, who pointed this out and noted that this money isn't going to artists or songwriters at all. We had pointed this out back in 2006, when part of the Google buyout of YouTube involved paying off the big record labels... and that deal was structured in a way that those labels didn't have to share that money with artists.

We've already seen how record label accounting is used to screw over musicians, but this is an important point as well. The RIAA positions itself as defending artists' rights. It talks about how these lawsuits are carried out to protect musicians and help those musicians earn a living. But it's becoming increasingly clear that of the money that actually comes in from these lawsuits, very little of it ever is seen by the artists the labels claim they're protecting.

23 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Uploader Of Guns 'N Roses Album Never Forced To Do RIAA Propaganda; So He Tells The Truth Instead

from the well-how-about-that dept

A year ago, we wrote about the ridiculous situation involving Kevin Cogill, who was sentenced to two months of house arrest. We noted, at the time, that part of the agreement was also that he would produce propaganda for the RIAA. However, a year has passed and he never did the propaganda recording... and he's no longer required to do it. Instead, he's doing interviews where he's saying that people involved in file sharing can get "F'd in the A" by the RIAA. Not quite what the RIAA expected, I guess.

Amusingly, the RIAA's response was that it chose not to have Cogill make the propaganda tapes because of the "unnecessarily high production costs." Leave it to the RIAA -- the organization that pays its boss over $2 million and spends millions on lawsuits that bring nothing back -- to think it's too expensive to record a guy talking. But, perhaps it's telling. Maybe the folks at the RIAA really don't recognize the revolution in recording equipment that makes it rather cheap to record things these days. No wonder their strategy has been so screwed up!

15 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Would You Believe The RIAA Doesn't Agree With The Judge In The Viacom/YouTube Ruling?

from the what-a-shock dept

I can't imagine this surprises anyone, but Slashdot points us to the news that the RIAA is upset by the judge's ruling in the Viacom/YouTube case, which found that YouTube is protected by the DMCA's safe harbors. Of course, Hollywood and the music industry have always hated the safe harbors -- which were only put in the DMCA to appease internet companies and keep them from fighting the rest of the DMCA. But, of course, the entertainment industry doesn't like to give even an inch on these matters, so this case has always been about moving the goalposts and effectively decimating the safe harbors to the point that they are meaningless. The RIAA's statement was posted to its blog (where you cannot comment, of course) and is short, sweet and totally misleading:

Add our voice to those who disagree with a recent summary judgment ruling in the court case between Viacom and YouTube.

We believe that the district court's dangerously expansive reading of the liability immunity provisions of the DMCA upsets the careful balance struck within the law and is bad public policy. It will actually discourage service providers from taking steps to minimize the illegal exchange of copyrighted works on their sites. As the White House recently noted in its strategic plan to combat intellectual property theft it is essential for service providers and intermediaries generally to work collaboratively with content owners to seek practical and efficient solutions to address infringement. We need businesses to be more proactive in addressing infringement, not less. We expect the Court of Appeals will better understand the balance Congress struck when it enacted the DMCA.

This is both wrong and amusing at the same time. The court's ruling was hardly "expansive." It covered the same ground as numerous other cases and basically kept the status quo. It was Viacom that was trying to expand the meaning of the law in effectively wiping out the safe harbor provision.

The idea that this ruling discourages providers from trying to minimize infringement (not theft -- and it's really silly that the industry keeps calling it theft) has already been debunked. Most of the serious companies in the space want to work with the entertainment industry and have put in place voluntary filters -- not because the law requires them, but because they feel it makes business sense. So the ability to work collaboratively is still very much there. And, frankly, it's pretty insulting that the RIAA thinks that tech companies will only work with the RIAA if the law requires them to do so. Of course, it's so very typical of the entertainment industry mindset, where everything is a fight and everyone is in competition. It's as if they don't understand non-zero sum games. The internet world has never needed legal forces to work collaboratively with the entertainment industry. They've wanted to do so time and time again. Napster tried very hard, and the RIAA hit them with a lawsuit. The number of innovative startups sued by RIAA members to force those companies to cough up some equity is too long to list here.

RIAA labels don't work collaboratively. They sue. Arguing that this particular ruling will make it somehow harder to work collaboratively is ridiculous. The tech firms were never the ones running to the lawyers. They were always willing to partner. But, of course, at this point, I guess expecting intellectual honesty from the likes of the RIAA remains a pipedream.

51 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Defining Success: Were The RIAA's Lawsuits A Success Or Not?

from the you-can't-handle-the-truth dept

Over the last few weeks, we've noticed that a series of folks who regularly portray "the loyal opposition" in our comments have been trying to make the case that the RIAA's legal strategy for much of the past decade was not, in fact, a dismal failure. They're posting editorials insisting that the lawsuit campaign was what was necessary to force laws to change in the RIAA's favor, for one thing. And then, one of our regular "anonymous" commenters submitted the following story, insisting that we would never publish it because "Techdirt never publishes the truth," as well as claiming that the following is proof that the RIAA's lawsuits against music fans was a "carefully crafted legal action that has produced results." The specific story is a story from Ars Technica about US Copyright Group's lawsuit campaign (which we've been covering as well), but which includes the following aside about the RIAA's lawsuits:

As the RIAA lawsuits showed us, most people will settle. Data from the recording industry lawsuits, revealed in a court case, showed that 11,000 of the 18,000 Does settled immediately or had their cases dropped by the labels. Seven thousand either refused to settle or never responded to the settlement letter, but after the RIAA subpoenaed their identities and filed "named" lawsuits against them, nearly every one settled.

After years of litigation, the number of people who have pursued a trial all the way to a verdict can be counted on one hand.

This, it appears, is the evidence that the RIAA's lawsuit campaign was a whopping success. Of course, some of us might define success in different ways. The RIAA set off this legal strategy, back in 2003, by claiming that this was part of its "education" campaign to get people to stop using file sharing networks, and go back to buying music directly. How has that worked? Oh, it hasn't. The number of people using file sharing networks to access unauthorized works has continued to grow at a rather rapid clip. And, of course, the real point of all of this was the bottom line: it was to try to help save the big five (at the time) record labels. Except that hasn't worked either. The big five became the big four and the big four are pretty damn close to becoming the big three, once everyone sorts out what to do with EMI. And all of them have a lot less money than they did before.

As for how successful the lawsuits have been for those big record labels? So successful that EMI threatened to leave both the RIAA and IFPI if it didn't back away from these lawsuits. So successful that Sony execs referred to the lawsuits as a "money pit" that have cost the industry millions without bringing back anything near that much in settlement fees.

The fact that lots of people paid up to settle extortion-like fees didn't stop people from using file sharing networks to access unauthorized materials. It didn't get more people to buy. It didn't help the bottom line. It hasn't helped the record labels sell more product. It certainly hasn't helped the big labels stay in business. Hell, it hasn't even helped the RIAA. Towards the end of the legal campaign, the RIAA ended up having massive layoffs of its own staff. And, let's not even get into discussing what the average music fan thinks of the RIAA and the big labels these days...

Success? If that's what you consider a success story, then you're doing it wrong. How you measure a success is everything, and if your metrics are that you got a large percentage of people to pay up for extortion-like lawsuits, pretty much guaranteeing they'd never buy from you again, while the rest of your business burned to the ground, I'm sorry if I have to question your definition of "success."

416 Comments | Leave a Comment..

RIAA Missing The Point About Record Store Day

from the play-it-again dept

The RIAA's blog is an endless source of fun, and its latest post is touting some figures showing the success of the recent "Record Store Day". Record Store Day is a yearly event started by a group of indie record stores that's grown over the last couple of years, and is marked with some festivities as well as the release of a lot of limited-edition records, CDs and other products available only in hard copy in certain participating shops. This year, there were 175 such products, and they helped boost the sales of indie shops. In particular, sales of vinyl albums were up 119 percent over the previous week, and vinyl single sales grew by 529 percent. But this isn't proof that the "we must sell music" mantra is correct; the sales increased not because people were buying music, they increased because they were buying an attractive, scarce physical product, like special vinyl picture discs or limited-edition prints. Record Store Day is a great example of how the packaging of a product that happens to contain music can drive people to buy it. The value consumers were paying for was in that packaging, not necessarily the content within it. Whether they know it or not, the stores and bands have given customers a reason to buy.

5 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Leaked Documents Show UK Web Censorship Proposal Written By Record Labels

from the gov't-for-the-lobbyists,-by-the-lobbyists dept

Lobbying groups and activists write proposed legislation all the time -- it's part of how the process works. But with controversial legislation, you would at least think that politicians would be sensitive to some of the concerns of others before essentially doing a copy-and-paste on what the lobbyists give them. Not so when it comes to copyright in the UK, apparently. We had already discussed the silly proposal to alter the already ridiculously bad (and also written by the entertainment industry) Digital Economy Bill, to allow the courts to block weblocker type sites, if they were regularly used to infringe on copyrights. Now some leaked documents are showing that it was a pretty blatant copy-and-paste job from the BPI, the UK's equivalent of the RIAA. The BPI wrote up a draft and the politicians basically proposed it as is. You would think, at the very least, knowing the controversy over this topic, that they would have considered what others had to say on the issue. But I guess when your role as a politician is to be little more than a sock puppet for the industry, it's easier just to propose the legislation given to you.

16 Comments | Leave a Comment..

RIAA Takes The Cake: Equates File Sharing To Children's Fairy Tale

from the more-pie-for-everyone dept

Something must be in the water over at the RIAA. After first trying to link the Chinese hack of Google to Google's position on copyright and then ridiculously claiming that file sharers were undermining humanitarian aid in Haiti (despite neither being even close to true), now it's resorted to using simplistic fables to try to demonize file sharing. Perhaps it's part of the RIAA's propaganda campaign for school children, but in a recent blog post, RIAA VP Joshua Friedlander compared the file sharing situation to the children's fable Nobody Stole the Pie by Sonia Levitin (by the way, you would think that the RIAA, so concerned about content creators getting paid would at least provide a link to information about that book so you could buy it if you wanted to -- but we'll fix that omission for the RIAA).

You may have heard the story. It's about a bunch of villagers all taking a little nibble of a pie, insisting that just a little bit won't hurt -- and then, of course, the entire pie is gone, and everyone claims that it was "Not I" who ate the pie.

Yes, it's a wonderful fable that you should read to your children in nursery school. But, for the adults who actually understand basic economics, it's clear that the situation the RIAA is facing has absolutely nothing to do with the situation described in the book. So let's fast forward from nursery school to econ 101, and perhaps educate the RIAA a bit.

The reason the pie story functions the way it does is because the pie is a scarce and limited resource. As such, each time someone takes, it means that there is less for others. It's a zero-sum game. In contrast, with a digital file, the content is abundant and an infinite resource. Each time someone makes a copy, rather than less for everyone, there's actually more for everyone. You're actually growing the pie. Neat!

The problem the RIAA and its labels face is not everyone nibbling on the pie. It's that it has always focused on selling pie at greatly inflated prices, because in the old world, you could only get the pie from a few RIAA-run pie shops. In the new world, with abundant pie, where each copy of a piece of pie expands the pie, suddenly people can get their pie from many other places. And it's been great for pretty much everyone, other than the proprietors of the RIAA pie shops. More musicians are able to get their "pies" out there, since the old pieshop gatekeeper is no longer the bottleneck. More musicians are able to make money since they no longer have to rely on the pieshop to fund their ability to make new flavors of pie.

Now, when you have a market with an abundant resource, that actually tends to open up all sorts of new business models around pie (pie eating contests, pie toppings, pie making lessons, pie crusts, pie tins, etc.). In fact, those business models are working quite well. But the RIAA seems to have become confused about where the pie has gone:

In the music industry, it takes the investment of many peoples' money, effort, and time to create the songs and albums we all get to choose from and enjoy. Since most acts never even reach the breakeven point in sales, music labels need to operate like venture capitalists and count on the successes to subsidize the continued development of many artists and releases that may never break out of the red. And it's easy to ignore the harm being done when you're only stealing one copy.

Music companies continue to develop more ways for fans to enjoy their favorite artists and songs legitimately -- and provide additional sources of revenue. But when more music is obtained illegally, and less money is available to invest in finding, developing, and recording new artists, the resources available for the next round are diminished. So if the investments dry up, and fewer new artists are able to be developed, will filesharers who stole bit by bit look at each other and say it was "Not I" who stole the pie?

Such a nice story. Too bad that it's just as much a children's fiction as the original pie fable. Recent studies have shown that the music industry has been growing, not shrinking over the past few years. It's just that the money is going to different places. Again, the RIAA has a blindspot for all the other places where people can get pie, and how they've build up great business models around it, assuming that if you're not getting pie from an RIAA shopkeeper, then you must be "stealing." But that's like saying every time I order pizza from Domino's, I'm stealing from Pizza Hut. Or, even worse, every time I make my own pizza at home, I'm stealing from Pizza Hut.

The real problem is not different people taking "just a little bit." The people haven't been taking, they've been growing the pie. Massively. And the musicians and record labels who understand this have been growing and profiting nicely. So, seriously, RIAA, let's leave the children's fables where they belong and start focusing on updating your antiquated business model to deal with the twenty-first century.

85 Comments | Leave a Comment..

RIAA Claims File Sharers Are 'Undermining Humanitarian Efforts In Haiti', But Leaves Out The Facts

from the oh-please dept

Wow. The RIAA is getting seriously desperate these days. In the past, at least, its arguments made a little bit of sense, if you didn't understand the details or have the data. But these days, they're really reaching. We've already covered Mitch Bainwol's bizarre attempt to link Chinese hackers breaking into Google with copyright law -- despite the two being totally unconnected. And, now, the RIAA is claiming that P2P file sharers are "undermining" humanitarian efforts in Haiti. Now that's quite a claim, and you would think the RIAA would have some evidence to back it up, but (of course), it doesn't. It's just making stuff up.

The claim is based on the fact that some musicians quickly put out a "Hope for Haiti Now" digital only album, with the proceeds going to help Haiti. It apparently did quite well, topping the Billboard sales charts. Considering there were tons of ways to donate to Haiti, this was basically a way to get some free music with your donation. Fair enough. But the RIAA noticed that the tracks also appeared on file sharing sites. This is hardly a surprise, nor is it meaningful. But, according to the RIAA's interpretation, this somehow "undermines" humanitarian efforts:

The album is now widely available on illicit BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and more. The posting highlights a truly ugly side of P2P piracy -- the undermining of humanitarian fundraising efforts via online theft of the "Hope for Haiti Now" compilation. So much for the notion that illegal downloading ("sharing") is an effort to help advance the plight of artists.

So much wrong in so few words. First of all, the album is "available" on the internet. The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and those other sites aren't hosting the album at all. They may be pointing to it, but so is Google. Is that also an "illicit" site? It's amusing, but the blog post the RIAA links to, in an effort to back up this claim, highlights how he found out about it being available via a Google search. But notice what the RIAA did here? Rather than focus on where the file actually is, it blames The Pirate Bay, even though their own source actually used Google to find it, and the files aren't hosted by The Pirate Bay. That's called being disingenuous, at best.

Next, how does this "undermine" anything? If someone wanted to donate to Haiti, there were countless ways to do so. If someone donated a bunch of money directly to the Red Cross, and then chose to get those songs via an unauthorized copy, is that really undermining humanitarian efforts? And for those who downloaded an unauthorized copy and didn't donate anywhere, does anyone at the RIAA seriously believe they would have bought the album otherwise? I recognize that the RIAA thinks music powers everything, but no one bought the album because it was the best way to donate to Haiti.

And that last sentence is a total non sequitur. What does humanitarian aid have to do with advancing the plight of artists? And who said that file sharing was "an effort to help advance the plight of artists" in the first place? No one. The RIAA is just setting up bizarre totally unrelated strawmen to knock down.

But the much bigger issue is that the whole premise of the RIAA post appears to be wrong. It turns out that, while the albums are available via these unauthorized means, almost no one is downloading them. MusicAlly saw the RIAA's blog post, and figured it would check in to see just how much downloading was going on to undermine those Haitian humanitarian efforts... and discovered that very, very, very few people are downloading the album. Considering the sales of the album topped the charts, a comparison was done between downloads of this album and Lady Gaga's hit album, and they found that the charity album is barely noticeable:
Source: MusicAlly.com In terms of specific numbers, MusicAlly explains:

At its peak on 24th January, Hope For Haiti Now was being downloaded 2,680 times a day according to BigChampagne -- compare that to The Fame Monster's 63,845 downloads the same day. Meanwhile, by 23rd February, Hope For Haiti Now's daily downloads had dwindled to 820, compared to 47,971 for the Gaga album.

In other words, despite the claims of the RIAA, file sharers certainly weren't "undermining" anything. They certainly weren't particularly interested in downloading this album at all. Looks like the RIAA has been caught making up arguments that have no relation to fact, yet again.

85 Comments | Leave a Comment..

RIAA CEO Tries To Connect China Google Hack With Google's Attitude Towards Copyright

from the how-out-of-touch-are-you? dept

The RIAA has made some bizarre and totally nonsensical arguments in its time, but it may have just set a new low. castilho points us to an opinion piece written by RIAA boss Mitch Bainwol that tries to pin the blame for the Chinese hack of Google on Google's opinion towards copyright. Seriously. Of course, the logical leaps and bounds you have to go through to make this sort of statement is a bit crazier than your average roller coaster, and in the process Bainwol seems to be implying both that those who give away anything for free are against content creation and that getting hacked actually has something to do with copyright law.

In January, Chinese hackers infiltrated the systems of the biggest technology dog on the global block and, according to the company, stole Google's intellectual property.

I see where you're going with this, but to compare hacked code being copied with fans sharing music (neither of which, by the way, is actually "stealing") is so far off-base that it's guffaw-inducing. In Google's case, this was information for private use -- not something protected by intellectual property law that it was trying to sell. The two situations are entirely different and, unlike Mitch Bainwol, the folks at Google clearly do understand the difference.

In texting parlance, Google has finally had an OMG! moment when it comes to intellectual property. Unfortunately, it took this theft of their IP to flip on the switch.

Ignoring the bizarre and slightly creepy attempt to sound hip, nothing in Google's response suggests any change in opinion on the issue of intellectual property. That's because, as stated above, the hack had nothing to do with intellectual property or intellectual property law. If it caused any sort of epiphany, it should have been in relation to the problems with gov't mandated surveillance, which is what opened Google up to being hacked. Again this has nothing whatsoever to do with intellectual property law and everyone knows it. Except, apparently, Mitch Bainwol.

Frankly, Google has never been very warm to the idea of copyright protections. Google routinely has sided with the "free access" (more aptly the "free of charge") crowd against those who actually create the intellectual property.

I can't speak for Google, obviously, but my sense has always been that they actually do take copyright law incredibly seriously. They went out and hired one of the world's foremost experts in copyright. But it's that second sentence that is so amazingly wrong that I'd like to formally request that Mitch Bainwol and the RIAA issue an apology for being blatantly insulting to everyone who believes in the use of "free" as part of a smart business model. I'll note, of course, that the RIAA itself has long used "free" in parts of their business model -- and to then imply that this is against those who actually create intellectual property is obnoxious in the extreme.

I create intellectual property every single day, as do people at Google, and many others who recognize the value of free content. To imply that those who understand basic economics are somehow "against" content creators is ridiculous. How can you claim that, when we spend so much time showing how content creators -- including a bunch who the labels that Bainwol represents have clearly ripped off repeatedly -- are now making more money by ignoring copyright and leveraging free to their advantage, often to make more money than any RIAA-label ever helped them make?

Mitch, you owe all supporters of "free" an apology.

Remember the Big G's idea to digitize every book in the world and put it in their digital library? That went over so well that Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild of America sued to stop Google from creating the virtual library.

Wait, what? A lawsuit, by itself, doesn't mean anything. Mitch? The Authors Guild hasn't won its lawsuit, and has admitted that the reason it settled was because a bunch of copyright experts told them they had a pretty good chance of losing the lawsuit to Google.

Hell, the RIAA has been sued for racketeering a bunch of times. By Bainwol's own logic here, the RIAA must be racketeers.

Google argued that they were just trying to make the world a better place by making important works of literature available to people all over the globe. A rather egalitarian idea (unless you're the authors and publishers who depend on people actually buying books in order for you to make a living).

Yes, you heard it here first. The RIAA is apparently against people having more access to books. As for that final sentence, again, Bainwol is playing fast and loose with the facts. Google Books only showed mere snippets of books, and most authors found that when their books were available on Google books it helped them sell more and make a better living. Isn't that the point? Or should we not be surprised that the guy who's the spiritual leader of an industry that sued tens of thousands of its biggest fans and presided over the massive collapse of its revenue doesn't quite understand how to focus on the actual bottom line results rather than making up false stats?

Last month, Google found out just how dangerous free access to one's property can be to one's business model. Like Inspector Renault who is "shocked" to find gambling in Rick's saloon in "Casablanca," Google was "shocked" to find their systems hacked and their precious intellectual property stolen. Now, I'm not expecting Google to make a 180° turn and join us in our fight to protect IP the way Claude Raines joined Bogart to fight the Nazis, but perhaps Google will have a more reasonable view of the need to protect IP.

Why? Seriously? Please explain how the hell intellectual property laws would have made the slightest difference here. You could have had the most powerful copyright laws in the world, and it would have had zero impact on the ability of Chinese hackers to break into Google's servers. The hack had nothing to do with intellectual property laws.

The problem here -- and this is quite common with folks who don't actually understand this topic -- is that Bainwol is confusing intellectual property laws with the intellectual property (which isn't actually property, but that's another issue...).

What's the effect of IP theft on the U.S. economy? First, let's look at the IP industry's share of the economy. A 2007 International Intellectual Property Alliance study found 11.7 million people working in the total copyright industries. That's 8.51 percent of the U.S. workforce. These industries help drive our nation's economy. In 2007, IP companies added $1.52 trillion or 11.05 percent to the GDP. When people say "we don't make anything in America anymore," just hit them with those facts.

I see your bogus $1.52 trillion dollars and raise you to $2.2 trillion. That's the amount of the US economy dependent on exceptions to copyright law such as fair use. And that, by the way, is using the same methodology as your $1.52 trillion bogus number. And you know, companies like Google are a big part of those that rely on exceptions in copyright, such as fair use -- something your organization has tried to deny exists.

In cities and towns throughout America, the IP community creates good paying jobs that have an enormous, positive impact. Those jobs come with health care plans and retirement savings accounts. They benefit our cities and towns with increased tax revenues that help pay for the services we all need.

See what Bainwol is doing here? He keeps shifting back and forth between content and IP laws, as if they're the same thing. But they're not. Most of those jobs don't rely on IP laws to exist. In fact, as noted above, a much greater number rely on avoiding IP law through exceptions to have those jobs, with that even larger enormous, positive impact.

Most importantly, the IP industries create products that are enjoyed the world over--games, movies, books, and of course, music. Yet every year, as broadband technology advances, intellectual property thieves become increasingly more sophisticated. The assaults grow more ferocious. The broader the broadband, the easier to steal copyrighted works.

Mitch, those aren't "IP industries." They're content industries, and a significant portion of their income doesn't come because of IP laws. Hell, if we just look at your own industry, music, we see that a significant and growing portion is the part that doesn't rely on IP laws at all. And please can the faux moral panic about broadband being to blame here. You and your organization have had well over a decade to learn how to adapt. Many in the music business have adapted. It's just the organizations that you represent that have been resisting and making bad decisions -- many under your leadership -- that have resulted in nothing but greater and greater losses. This isn't about broadband, but about a basic failure to adapt to a changing marketplace.

Like our friends at Google, we fully support the adoption of broadband and the new and exciting opportunities it provides for consumers to enjoy movies, television programs and music.

And that, right there, explains why you're so far behind. You still don't realize what the internet is. It's a communication platform. It's not for consumers to just enjoy music, television programs and music. It's for them to communicate. You want to turn the internet into a broadcast medium when it's a communications medium. The reason people share content online is because that's what the internet is for. To communicate -- and communication is just a way of sharing information. Until you understand that simple fact, you're going to keep flailing.

Yet there is no question that despite our extensive and innovative offerings of legal content, the levels of online and physical theft around the world extract a profound toll. That activity has a direct and harmful impact on American jobs and our economy. And as Google has found out, this illegal activity is exacerbated by the unwillingness of some--including some businesses and even some governments--to take reasonable steps to address these problems. As we know too well, IP theft has "enablers" all over the place.

Again, no, what Google found out was that it needed better security, not stronger IP laws.

If it is in the national interest to protect the millions of Americans who use Google's services--and it is-- it is also in the national interest to stop the theft of intellectual property. But doing so requires cooperation by other industries and a commitment on the part of government to take reasonable steps, both at home and abroad, to combat the harmful economic effects of IP theft.

Again with the apples and oranges comparison. You're still talking about two totally different things. And your readers know it. They're not stupid. Why treat them as idiots who can't tell the difference?

Working with our partners in business and in government, we hope to ensure that the American intellectual property community remains a strong, vibrant world leader that helps fuel our nation's economic resurgence. With the light shining on Google, one of the 21st century's business icons, perhaps we will see a renewed sense of purpose at home and abroad to protect the heritage and the future of our IP community.

Again, what Google needs is better security. But, given that one of the stellar moments under your watch was when the recording industry decided to place security-eviscerating rootkits on people's computers in the form of DRM, perhaps we should prioritize computer security as an issue before we focus on your wasted effort to prop up an obsolete business model.

I try to take the folks at the RIAA seriously, but when they published something this ridiculous, insulting and wrong, it really makes you wonder.

57 Comments | Leave a Comment..

So Is Verizon Cutting Users Off Or Not?

from the probably-not,-but-they-need-to-clarify dept

Well, well, well. A few days ago, News.com had a story that got a lot of attention saying that Verizon was kicking users off of its service after it had received accusations of file sharing. At the time, we wondered if this was a misstatement by a Verizon spokesperson, and in an update, Verizon insisted that News.com had misquoted its spokesperson, and it had not kicked anyone off. And yet, lots of folks are still reporting that Verizon is kicking users off for file sharing. And, now, News.com has come back and stands by its original story.

Reading through the details, what it appears to have happened was that a Verizon person misspoke, and News.com accurately reported the misstatement (suggesting that users had been kicked off). Verizon is still claiming it "reserves the right" to kick users off, but has not actually done so. Hopefully it realizes that doing so based solely on accusation is a huge mistake and one over which it would almost certainly face serious backlash.

14 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Hey Whatever Happened To Those Andrew Cuomo-Backed, RIAA Agreements With ISPs To Kick People Off The Internet?

from the still-waiting... dept

It's now been over a year since the infamous announcement, leaked to the Wall Street Journal, that the RIAA was going to effectively drop its strategy of suing individuals in favor of agreements, worked out between the RIAA and ISPs with NY AG Andrew Cuomo adding pressure, to kick people off the internet on a "three strikes" regime. The whole thing sounded pretty ridiculous at the time. Cuomo had absolutely no legal standing to pressure ISPs into such a deal, since the ISPs had every legal right to say no. And, since the "leak" many ISPs have insisted, quite vocally, that they have never made any such agreement with the RIAA and that they would never kick their customers offline in such a manner.

And so Greg Sandoval, over at News.com, smartly realizes that these "preliminary agreements" we were told about last year are still nowhere to be found and goes exploring to find out why. Reading between the lines, it appears the answer is that the RIAA flat out lied (no surprise, but...) and the Wall Street Journal bought it (again, no surprise, but...). Basically, with various record labels hemorrhaging money, they started to cut back on their allowance to the RIAA, such that the legal strategy of suing tons of people was getting too expensive. But they didn't want to make it look like they were just giving up.

So they concocted a myth: this idea that ISPs would cut people off. It was, in fact, what the RIAA and other international entertainment industry lobbying groups had been pushing for with little success (since then they have had a few wins on that front, but also many losses). But they couldn't wait for their usual process of pushing through legislation (*cough* ACTA *cough*) to complete before they had to cut back on individual lawsuits. So they brought in Andrew Cuomo, because he had successfully threatened ISPs to get them to cut off Usenet, despite no legal basis for doing so. But, that worked because Cuomo threatened (again, despite no legal basis) to shame them for offering access to child porn. When it came to unauthorized access to music, the moral outrage aspect isn't nearly as strong (not that the RIAA and their lobbyist friends haven't tried six dozen ways to try to link file sharing to child porn -- but most people realize how ridiculous that is).

Given that the ISPs seemed to have little interest (i.e., no interest) in moving forward with this plan, they leaked it to the WSJ, figuring that if ISPs thought others were doing it, then they'd start to sign up, and the whole thing would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Except they failed to account for the simple fact that people protested against any ISP dim enough to think that it's smart to kick off customers based on accusations (not convictions), and ISPs quickly stepped up to deny any such deal, shedding light on the RIAA's big lie.

So, here we are today, with no such agreements in place, and the RIAA back to trying to sneak through "three strikes" legislation through international treaties that they write (which the public has no access to). But, shouldn't someone call them on the fact that they blatantly lied last year? And also, shouldn't someone ask where the WSJ's correction is on that story?

12 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Dear RIAA: It's Not 'Working Together As A Team' When It's Under Threat Of Regulation

from the do-these-guys-ever-make-sense dept

I've been trying not to respond to every RIAA blog post these days, but it's hard to let certain things go when they so rarely make any sense. For example, RIAA President Cary Sherman recently talked up the new regulations that force colleges and universities to "take proactive steps" to stop file sharing. He goes on to make it sound like universities decided to do this in the spirit of "teamwork" with the RIAA, rather than because they risked serious financial consequences under the law for not complying. He also leaves out the fact that tons of colleges and universities are pissed off and complaining about how much time, effort and money they're wasting on this just because Sherman and his friends still don't seem able to embrace modern music business models. Colleges and universities have enough to worry about without the government forcing them to act as the RIAA's police force. If it were truly about teamwork, Cary, you wouldn't have had to spend so much time getting Congress to pass a law to force them to do this.

20 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Moby Explains RIAA Mindset: Please Make The Future Die

from the moby-and-mossberg? dept

It's a bit of an odd pairing, but musician Moby was recently interviewed by Walt Mossberg, and among other things they discussed issues like file sharing and the RIAA's strategy. Moby, of course, has complained about the RIAA's strategy in the past, calling for it to be disbanded following the Jammie Thomas verdict. He's also found success experimenting with giving away his music, so his positions probably don't come as a surprise. He says he has no problem with people downloading his music (though he likes it when they buy it as well), as he's "honored" that people want to listen to his music, and if they download an unauthorized copy: "more power to you." On the RIAA, he can't understand why they're doing something that so clearly alienates fans, but then does a pretty good job explaining why, noting that the current business model of major labels:

"underpins the failure of major labels--they think, it used to be this way, so it ought to be this way." Their ethos is, "Please go away. Make the future die."

Not much new, but the quote is definitely a succinct way of explaining the position held by some at the major record labels over the past decade. Rather than deal with reality, they just want it to go away.

16 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Correcting A Few 'Facts' From The RIAA... For Which We Feel We Deserve Payment

from the we're-waiting-for-the-check... dept

After the Jammie Thomas ruling, the RIAA kept its typical gloating to a minimum, recognizing the PR disaster that the nearly $2 million judgment presented for its already widely disliked members. A few mistakes slipped through, but for the most part, the RIAA kept pretty quiet hoping that Thomas would settle rather than appeal (that didn't work). However, with the Joel Tenenbaum ruling, it appears the RIAA is going in a slightly different direction, posting a snarky blog post about Joel supposedly under the guise of "facts." Now, I've been clear that I think Tenenbaum never should have gone to trial and should have settled a while back. As more facts became clear in his case, it made little sense for him to fight against the RIAA. He broke the law and admitted it. You're not going to get very far fighting in court on that front. I think he's a bad test case (and had terrible legal representation).

So I can see where some of the opening comments from the RIAA's Cara Duckworth come from (basically trying to tear down Joel). But, for the life of me, I can't figure out what good the post does for the RIAA. It's a rather typical tone-deaf pronouncement from a group that's been about as tone deaf as it could possibly be to consumer desire for over a decade. To the people who already support Joel, it comes across as yet another attack. To people who already support the RIAA, it adds nothing new. To people in the middle... it just looks mean to attack this guy. Yes, Joel broke the law. But he was fined $675,000 for 30 songs (and, yes, the RIAA tries to point out that he downloaded/shared much more, but if that's their point, they should have sued him for that as well). Plenty of people see that punishment as totally out of line with any sense of reality. There's a tremendous amount of evidence that file sharing has not been a problem for the music industry -- it was a failure of the labels, often at the urging of the RIAA itself, to embrace new technologies and new business models.

And rather than recognize that, it now wants to smack around a guy they may have just sentenced to a life in poverty? That'll win over supporters...

I can't believe it needs to be said again, but you DON'T win customers by suing the biggest fans of your product. You DON'T win customers by doing everything you can to hold back innovation unless its under your terms. You DON'T win customers by exacting a massive pound of flesh and overvaluing your contribution over everyone else's.

As for the specifics of the RIAA's "facts" they get a bunch wrong. For example:

FACT: As much as he wants to make this into one, this is not a crusade against the RIAA or the laws that protect creators. This is not about us. It's about Joel Tenenbaum and his egregious illegal behavior which robs artists and music creators of the right to be paid for their work, and robs record companies of the ability to invest in new artists and bring new music to the public.

That's not a "fact." That's very much an opinion, and the second part of it is flat-out wrong. It's not a fact, it's a lie. Tenenbaum's actions robbed no one. No one has a "right to be paid for their work." You have a right to try to convince people to buy, and the RIAA and its labels FAILED in convincing Tenenbaum to do that. But that's the market at work. Today for lunch I may pick the deli rather than the pizza shop next door. Based on the RIAA's logic here, I have just "robbed" the pizza place of its "right to be paid" for its work. There is no right to be paid. Only a right to try to convince people to buy. As for "robbing the ability to invest," again, please explain how people choosing not to buy your product is the fault of the people not buying? If you simply put in place business models that work (which we point to all the time, showing artists who embrace file sharing and make more money because of it), there would be plenty of money to "invest in new artists."

And, of course, the woe-is-us routine is bogus as well. As we've seen in two recent studies (the latter from the music industry itself), the music ecosystem is thriving. More money is going into music and music-related goods than ever before. It's just that less and less of it is filtering through the RIAA's labels who (oops!) have a nasty history of not actually paying their artists money they owe them. The idea that not giving money to the RIAA somehow means less music will be brought to the public is laughable. It's not a fact, it's pure propaganda. Thanks to these same new technologies that the RIAA has tried to kill off, it's easier than ever for bands to create, promote and distribute music. And because of that, there's more new music out there than ever before.

Hey, let's agree on the fact that Joel broke the law and it was silly for him to go through with this lawsuit. Done and done. But don't spew a line of pure bull that this was ever about investing in artists.

FACT: Mr. Tenenbaum has put forth the defense that "his generation" has grown up learning that file-sharing isn't wrong. This is a bogus argument. I'm a member of Tenenbaum's generation. I was taught I shouldn't take what doesn't belong to me without permission.

Funny, then, can you explain all the lawsuits that artists have filed against major record labels asking where the money owed to them has gone? Why is it the RIAA's biggest name members seem to have no problem "taking what doesn't belong to them without permission"? And can you explain why the RIAA has been fighting for a new tax on radio stations? Isn't that just "taking what doesn't belong to you" as well? The RIAA has no problem taking what doesn't belong to them (though, usually it works hard behind the scenes to get politicians to pass laws to give it the appearance of legality).

FACT: The best anti-piracy strategy is a thriving legal marketplace that gives music fans a wide variety of innovative options where they can get their favorite music in affordable, hassle-free ways.

Which is why your members, under your legal direction and strategic input have sued a significant number of those services and tried to make the MP3 player itself illegal? Uh-huh.

Because there are some people like Mr. Tenenbaum who believe music should be free, we've had to enforce our rights to protect all those hard-working individuals who create the music.

There's a bit of a problematic logic train here... Because someone doesn't want to buy from us, we have to sue, to get money for the people we work so hard to not give money to. Hmm. Can Cara Duckworth and the RIAA share with us some details on how the "settlement fees" from all the folks threatened by the RIAA has been distributed to artists? The RIAA has no requirement to enforce its rights. As we've seen time and time again, artists who purposely chose not to enforce those rights, but to instead provide something of real value to consumers have found that they can make more money than they ever got from an RIAA member. There's no such thing as that you "had to enforce" your rights. Instead, you could have innovated. You chose not to.

FACT: We do not want to be in court. We'd rather be investing in new artists and bringing great music to the public's collective ears.

If we're dealing in "facts" here, we should get one straight. If a plaintiff doesn't want to be in court, then he or she doesn't sue. It's that simple. Making this out like the RIAA was somehow forced to go to court is ridiculous. Edgar Bronfman Jr. announced nearly a decade ago that he was sending an army of lawyers to sue file sharers. You made the conscious decision to declare war on your best customers. You weren't forced into it at all.

But artists, musicians, music companies, and all the working-class folks who rely on the legitimate sale of music to make a living deserve to be paid for their work.

There we are with the "deserve to be paid." Hell, I "deserve to be paid" for my work too. But, the world doesn't work that way. Deserving to be paid for your work and a nickel gets you five damn cents. You earn money by offering something in the marketplace that people want to buy. You didn't do that. You failed at business 101 and you started suing people because of it.

FACT: We remain willing to settle this case, but Tenenbaum is so far insisting on filing more motions and appeals in order to continue to pursue his misguided mission to get music for free.

You could drop the case. You've already declared (somewhat misleadingly) that you were giving up this strategy of suing music fans. Why continue to tarnish the RIAA's reputation by bankrupting a kid for listening to music?

Nobody can argue that people don't deserve to be paid for their hard work. But through all his illegal actions, Tenenbaum has argued exactly that.

Indeed. No one is likely to argue that people don't deserve to be paid for their hard work, but out here in the real world, deserving to be paid is meaningless. Cara, since I spent so much time correcting your errors, half-truths and misdirections, I feel that I deserve to be paid for this hard work I have done for you. Based on your logic, I should see a check in the mail from you shortly, yes? Clearly, if you don't pay up, we can only assume that you are arguing that I don't deserve to be paid for my hard work. So which is it?

No matter how clearly Tenenbaum broke the law, it doesn't change the only real fact: the RIAA has failed to embrace new business models when they appear, has attacked and held back new technologies and innovations at nearly every opportunity until dragged kicking-and-screaming into the new era (which it still refuses to fully embrace), and has created a PR nightmare for itself that isn't helped by lying to the public in the name of a bunch of bogus "FACTS."

122 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Moby Says 'Disband The RIAA' For Winning $1.92 Million From Jammie Thomas

from the representing-the-artists?!? dept

As a whole bunch of you have sent in, the musician Moby has put up a blog post where he suggests the RIAA should be disbanded for its $1.92 million win over Jammie Thomas. While (unfortunately) he gets a few of the facts wrong (they didn't sue her for $2 million, but it's what the jury chose -- though it is accurate that the RIAA has clearly suggested it has no problem with the statutory rates for infringement in the past), his overall point is sound. It's ridiculous that the RIAA thinks this is the proper strategy:

argh. what utter nonsense. this is how the record companies want to protect themselves? suing suburban moms for listening to music? charging $80,000 per song?

punishing people for listening to music is exactly the wrong way to protect the music business. maybe the record companies have adopted the 'it's better to be feared than respected' approach to dealing with music fans. i don't know, but 'it's better to be feared than respected' doesn't seem like such a sustainable business model when it comes to consumer choice. how about a new model of 'it's better to be loved for helping artists make good records and giving consumers great records at reasonable prices'?

i'm so sorry that any music fan anywhere is ever made to feel bad for making the effort to listen to music.

the riaa needs to be disbanded.

This isn't new territory for Moby. Way back in 2003, he got angry after finding out that some of his songs were being used by the RIAA to sue people, and stated: "I'm tempted to go onto Kazaa and download some of my own music, just to see if the RIAA would sue me for having mp3's of my own songs on my hard-drive."

Still, we're seeing more and more artists react poorly to the RIAA, who still claims to represent them. Why is it that our politicians still buy that clearly incorrect story?

42 Comments | Leave a Comment..

How The Recording Industry Changes Its Own Story

from the anything-for-the-money dept

We've already discussed how silly the Performance Rights Act is -- and how it's basically an attempt by the record labels to get their own bailout courtesy of radio stations. There are all sorts of problems with it, and Jess Walker does an amazing job explaining just how ridiculous the Performance Rights Act is. In doing so, he highlights one point that is quite a common trick in the RIAA's bag of tricks, but which doesn't get enough attention: how it changes the story to flip things around to its advantage over and over and over again. Case in point: the RIAA is arguing that it needs to get royalties to performers for radio air play to "even out" the situation, since radio is the "only" platform where performers don't get royalties. For example, they point to internet radio and satellite radio, where artist do get paid.

So, the RIAA claims, this is unfair... after all, why should they get paid for all of those, but not radio?

Except, the RIAA conveniently wants us all to forget history. That's because it was the RIAA who argued that satellite radio, internet radio and other forms of broadcasting were different from terrestrial radio, and therefore required different royalty structures. In other words, the only reason why this "unfair" dichotomy exists in the first place is because the RIAA lobbied for it by claiming that satellite radio and internet radio were different.

Now it wants everyone to forget that and pretend that it's some weird "anomaly" that terrestrial radio doesn't include performance royalties? Don't buy it. This is the sort of thing the industry has pulled off for years -- pushing one country to extend copyright laws, and then moving to other countries and working up a lobbyist campaign about how that country isn't keeping up with other, more reasonable countries, concerning copyright laws. Have you noticed what's happening in Canada these days? That's a direct example of this sort of thing.

Walker also takes on other points to show how silly and dangerous the Performance Rights Act would be. It benefits no one but the record labels. It harms radio stations. It harms independent musicians. It harms big musicians as well (since most of the money doesn't go to them, but to the record labels). Who does it help? The RIAA, of course:

And for what? Imagine, as a thought experiment, that this bill were passed and, simultaneously, payola were made fully legal. Does anyone doubt that more money would flow toward the radio stations than away? Radio remains the primary means by which the music industry promotes its product. By pushing for this fee, the labels are essentially asking their advertisers to pay them for the service of selling their stuff.

Ah, you say, but what about the independent artists who don't get big promotional pushes from the major music labels? Surely they'd benefit from a new revenue stream? Actually, they'll be even worse off. The economic mission of most commercial radio stations is to deliver audiences to the sponsors whose spots are aired between tunes. So programmers have a built-in preference for music whose mass appeal has already been proven. If you increase the cost of playing a record, that just intensifies the incentive: The more you pay to play a song, the more conservative you'll be about which songs you play. The marginal cost of playing each track is the same, but the commercial payoff is greater for established artists.

Generally speaking, the more it costs to run a station, the more risk-averse it will be. That's one reason low-power and Web outlets are more experimental: They don't have as much money on the line. But those stations--the ones that go out of their way to play diverse and unfamiliar material--are precisely the ones that have the hardest time paying the song tax. The proposed law acknowledges the problem by introducing a sliding scale, with the least profitable outfits paying $500 a year. But while that may be chump change for a big broadcaster, it's a pretty big piece of the operating budget for a low-power, volunteer-run community or student station.

Nor is it the only cost the law will impose. "The record labels are completely out of touch as to how college radio stations operate," Warren Kozireski, president of College Broadcasters Inc., recently complained on his organization's website. "The extensive record keeping requirements that will be required by the Copyright Royalty Board alone will add hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to the true cost of a performance fee." It's relatively easy to do that book-keeping if you have a narrow playlist and rarely deviate from it, as is the case with most large commercial radio stations. But if you have a library of thousands of albums and 45s, many of which were never reissued on CD, and if you allow your DJs to choose which ones they play--or even to bring in still more music from their personal collections of rare soul or jazz or bluegrass or electronica obscurities--then tracking the data suddenly becomes a full-time job.

Worse yet: Though the rhetoric around the proposal focuses on the benefits to musicians, much of the money won't make it to the artists in the first place. In part that reflects the fact that the fees go not just to the performers but to the copyright owner, which frequently means the record company. But it also reflects the corruption in the industry, which legislation like this has probably abetted.

As we've seen time and time again, if the RIAA supports it, it's not good for consumers. It's not good for musicians. It's not good for anyone but a small selection of record labels. Hopefully, Congress recognizes this for the pure money grab it is and shuts it down.

46 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Class Action Lawsuit Against The RIAA For 'Stolen' Money?

from the this-won't-end-well dept

A bunch of folks have been submitting the story about how Jammie Thomas' new lawyer, Kiwi Camara (a Charlie Nesson protege) and Nesson himself are apparently preparing to file a class action lawsuit against the RIAA in an attempt to get back the $100 million plus that they claim the industry "stole" in its settlements. This may be interesting from an academic standpoint (or from a PR/circus standpoint), but I have difficulty believing it will get very far in terms of actually succeeding. I do find the settlements distasteful, and bordering on extortion ("pay up or we sue" is really questionable), but earlier attempts at similar lawsuits haven't gone very far at all. Still, considering that the RIAA has always insisted that its entire legal campaign was part of a grossly misguided and ultimately self-damaging "PR campaign" perhaps it's okay that someone is effectively doing the same thing on the other side.

20 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Administration Lobbyist Ban Not Doing What It's Supposed To Do

from the too-bad dept

While conceptually, I think many people appreciate President Obama's stance against bringing lobbyists into his administration, in all practicality, the rule has been a combination of meaningless or troubling. Tom Barger points to a NY Times article where many people are upset that some extremely qualified folks who worked for non-profit human rights organizations are being denied positions in the administration. There's been some pushing to get the administration to make an exception for human rights and non-profit lobbyists, noting that the intent of the rule was to bar corporate lobbyists from gaining too much influence, but the administration has struck down those suggestions, saying it leads to a slippery slope.

But, of course, in reality, we know that slippery slope already exists. That's because the ban on "lobbyists" is really only being used for folks who were officially registered as lobbyists. That leaves out tons of people who worked for these corporate entities or even for the lobbyist groups themselves, but weren't officially registered lobbyists themselves. We've already seen how the Justice Department is, for example, being filled with lawyers who regularly worked with the RIAA, MPAA and BSA -- three of the biggest copyright lobbying organizations, and those individuals have wasted no time in expressing their desire to continue pushing those industry's viewpoints in their new positions.

So the idea that lobbyists are being kept out is pretty silly. As the NY Times article notes, all this really does is encourage lobbyists not to register themselves as lobbyists, but to focus on lobbying unofficially, so that they can still get administration positions at a later date. That creates less openness and transparency, and a larger risk of regulatory capture, rather than a diminished one. We all like the idea of trying to keep corporate influence out of the law making (and law enforcement) side of government, but a blanket ban on all lobbyists, while letting non-lobbyist lobbyists in the back door isn't exactly reassuring.

11 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Consumer Interest Groups Ask Obama To Stop Appointing RIAA Lawyers

from the good-luck... dept

With the Obama administration appointing a whole bunch of copyright maximalists to various positions (despite an early indication that perhaps he recognized issues with copyright law), a bunch of public interest and consumer interest groups have gotten together to write a letter to Obama, asking him to recognize that he seems to be filling every open slot with a very heavily biased viewpoint which could do significant harm towards innovation. Some of the letter may be inspired by the rumored candidates for the IP Czar position -- all of whom also fall into the copyright maximalist camp. Though, the fact that it's taken Obama so long to appoint this position (upsetting the Senators who wrote the law requiring the position in the first place) suggests (at the very least) he isn't considering this to be a priority.

Still, the EFF also took the opportunity to point out that it seems likely that Obama violated copyright himself, in giving a gift of an iPod filled with music to the Queen of England. It's almost impossible to know whether or not copyright was violated, but that's exactly the problem. Of course, this is likely to be of little concern to the President -- which is itself another problem. Too many people, who have little familiarity with copyright law, simply assume that "copyright is good" and that "more copyright is better," leading to the false belief that those who have a history twisting copyright to their own advantage are the best positioned to speak on copyright policy. That's regulatory capture at its finest -- something the Obama administration had claimed it was trying to avoid. Obviously, there are more important things for Obama to be focused on, but relying so heavily on copyright maximalists who have benefited from distorting the purpose of copyright is quite troubling.

40 Comments | Leave a Comment..

DOJ Sides With RIAA In Tenebaum Case

from the shocker dept

Considering that the Justice Department has hired a bunch of the RIAA's favorite lawyers, it was widely expected that the Justice Department would weigh in on the Joel Tenenbaum case -- despite the fact that folks in the Obama administration aren't supposed to be involved in situations that relate to work they did recently (oops). So, of course, the Justice Deparment has filed an amicus brief supporting the constitutionality of the statutory fines for copyright infringement. As Ray Beckerman notes, the Justice Department seems to have conveniently ignored numerous other precedents -- and doesn't bother to explain why earlier cases that upheld damages of 116 and 44 times damages means it's okay to have damages pushing hundreds of thousands of times over potential damages (and an argument can be made that there were actually no damages at all solely due to Tenenbaum). So while this is hardly surprising, it is a bit disappointing that the DOJ filed this brief, given the obvious conflicts of interest concerning its recent hires.

63 Comments | Leave a Comment..