My favorite line: <i>“Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation,” said Cary Sherman, the RIAA’s president. “But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action.”</i>
Your product? <u>Your</u> product, Mr. RIAA? Your <u>product</u>, even? Does anybody else believe this statement is fundamentally wrong? Shitcakes, call it “other people’s music you advertize and promote” and stop making musicians/music an assembly-line comodity. It’s “their art,” not “your product.” Ass.
When reporters visited teh apartment last night, Brianna — who her mom says is an honors student — was helping her brother with his homework.
I spotted a typo, do I win a prize?
That’s an incredibly cuntish thing to do, sue a little girl. Especially if she’s a hot little girl.
Can’t the girl sue them back for emotional distress? If her name has been published with out her consent then she can defiantly sue them for that.
The British Government got sued for publishing a man’s name in a name and shame campaign. They would post a bill board up on streets with the names of people (living on said street) who didn’t pay their TV licence. One fella sues the freaking government for releasing his name up with out consent.
I’m guessing Señor Sherman is referring to the bands the recording industry manufactures, and that is different because singing songs not written by you and playing music not composed by you is hardly art. Of course, 12-year-olds are all crazy about such popular music.
Still, how the hell do you sue someone who is 12 years old?
I kind of like that they’re going after 12 year old girls now. It makes their case almost completely invalid, and will lose in the court of public opinion very quickly.
Hey, RIAA…go after kindly old women who download Benny Goodman hits, then after the Clergy. Oh, and while you’re at it: the terminally ill.
I joined the boycott RIAA website to see what I and others can do about this bullcrap. Im just wondering how the crap their getting away with hacking into peoples personal computers and finding their “Illegal music”.
Not that I’m particularly interested in this debate, in that downloading music from the Internet is so obviously stealing that I’m not sure why there’s a debate at all… BUT, Phil, “art” is a subset of “product,” so you should probably try to sound less pompous in the future.
If you go into a store, and steal something from a store, then bring it home, does the store have the right to begin randomly searching houses in the vain attempt to find what may or may not be the stolen merchandise (remember, you can rip MP3’s to your computer from purchased CD’s for your own personal amusement)?
The DMCA gave this trade group superhuman powers of evil, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. It’s sort of like the WTO. It’s there, nobody knows why it’s there, nobody really wants it there, yet there’s nothing anybody can do about it…because it is currently more powerful than God Himself.
As expected, the RIAA is getting it over quick to get rid of the bad publicity. Sweeping it uder the rug if you will. Other cases will continue, and the Senate has said (Hey RIAA! Your business practices are A-OK! Keep suing!)
…BUT, Ryan, “stories about Harry Potter doing Draco Malfoy in the butt” is a subset of “slash,” so you should probably try to be less of a fag who likes slash in the future.
Slash, Phil, slash. And I was only trying to point out that distinguishing between the RIAA’s product and the musician’s “art” (if popular music is even anything like art, which I don’t think it is) is nothing more than rhetoric and serves no argumentative purpose.
Aaron: I suspect the store would either let it go (because they have insurance to cover such things) or, if enough were stolen, get the police involved. So maybe what needs to happen is that the police need to be the ones searching computers and bringing criminal charges against music downloaders? I doubt anyone is more comfortable with that. Also, I think a lot of people are satisfied with the continued existence of the WTO. I’m not a particularly huge fan of just handing over US sovereignty to bureaucracies, but at least the WTO does not put quite as much effort as the UN into violating its own rules.
A few things you might already know: The RIAA isn’t “hacking” peoples’ computers. They use the same technology that lets you view someone’s list of shared files.
What their doing is completely legal, our judicial system isn’t THAT fucked up.
I’m not completely positive but i’m willing to bet $1,000 per song that if you DON’T share any files with your P2P downloading program that there is no legal way the RIAA can view your collection.
Soooo, i don’t know about the rest of you pussies but i’m gettin my download on. HOLLA