more support
Hi Guys,
I’ve dissected the day’s best talking points from the RIAA at
http://e-c-t.ca/blog/?p=138 - I hope some of these points are stressed by the defense when their turn comes up, because right now I’ve yet to see concrete evidence provided by the RIAA.
Keep your chins up!
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Even though they have excluded the important defense witnesses, Prof. Nesson is still doing a wonderul job bringing the same points across. What he is saying, and how he is saying, is so plain and simple that it is hard not to agree:
- People have been brought up with file sharing;
- Everybody does it;
- It is so easy;
- Therefore it is completely illogical that for one click or for a few click one can be liable to millions of dollars.
Of course, the way current laws are written, it is precisely this illogical way that is the law and it may lead to very illogical results. Some lawyers have this attitude that “if the law works out this way, then we are not talking about just or unjust, it’s just the way the law written.” Obviously then the law needs to change and it will change, and I wish Prof. Nesson good luck in ushering the new era.
I have some practical suggestions, but I will put them in another letter.
Mark
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Good luck today. I have been following your tweets and have tweeted ourselves on it too.
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It could have been me, so thank you ever so sincerely for taking my battle and fighting it so valiantly.
Be Happy!
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I get all Twitter updates sent to SMS.
Tear these guys up, it is about time some common sense is being said.
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In the ’60’s and 70’s I has a cassette recorder hooked into my receiver. I recorded songs, lots of them and albums from FM stations that would play an entire album, usually late at night.
I copied my records onto cassettes, shared them with friends, they shared with me.
Didn’t stop me from buying albums, but now I will only buy music I can buy directly from the artist.
I was musician back then and played with bands involved with Warner Bros, Bearsville, Monument, Mercury. They were all thieves and liars. Unless you had a good manager and entertainment lawyer you got screwed.
And what they did to black artists in the ’40’s, ’50’s and even 60’s was criminal. They stole millions from them, never to be held accountable.
And there are ways, old school equiptment, cable boxes, freeware, no computer or internet needed.
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, BUY DIRECTLY FROM THE ARTIST
I will never again buy any music from a major label.
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Hi, Joel!
I’ve translated your story from Guardian and post at Russian Freesoftware Community of livejournal.com.
http://community.livejournal.com/ru_freesoftware/4223.html
We all hopes you victory and good luck!
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Joel - I feel for you, and I want you to win. But I suspect your court case is unwinnable. As I understand it, when someone who is guilty of copyright infringement is sued, there are basically three options:
1. Settle - looks like you’ve decided against this. Can’t say I blame you. It’s pretty much a legalized form of extortion!
2. Deny everything and go for a not guilty - as I understand it you’ve decided not to deny the infringement. Good for you! Nobody likes a liar.
3. Admit liability in court but fight the damages, and/or the validity of the law entirely.
From what I can tell by reading case coverage, it looks like you’ve gone with option three, but there are significant problems with executing this strategy. The best you can hope for is a jury nullification, in which case you’d get a not guilty despite admitting liability. The jury might do this if you’re able to convince them that the law itself is unjust. Given that the judge won’t even allow a fair use version of this defense, this strategy seems unlikely to work and any direct attempt to encourage jury nullification may cause a mistrial.
The next best outcome would be the jury awarding bare minimum damages. But as I understand it, the minimum damages the jury could award would still be higher than what the RIAA likely offered in settlement, not to mention court and legal costs that you’re incurring (assuming your representation is not free). So it seems to me anybody in this situation is caught between a rock and a hard place. The only way to win is to convince the jury the law is unjust and go for a not guilty, but that entire legal strategy is, well, probably illegal. This isn’t an episode of Boston Legal!
Anyway, I would be fascinated to hear your thoughts on this catch 22. It seems to me the solution to this whole mess is legislative rather than judicial. When copyright was drafted, it never anticipated noncommercial infringement; all infringements of any consequence prior to the advent of consumer electronics had profit motive. Thus until such time that we have adequate copyright law reform, most people caught in a situation like this may be best advised to settle, as their choices essentially boil down to either paying ~$10k or paying a lot, lot more. Basically a choice between bad or worse.
Thanks and good luck! I hope my grim analysis is somehow wrong.
Eric
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Just back to basics. What in the hell are the songs(and other copyrighted material) doing openly and unprotedted on the world wide webs???? Why aren’t they password protected like any other material on the internet, like, you pay for it or you can’t download it. Listen all ….what ever is on the Internet and not protected I will download it.
What a stupid line of (il)logic. By that reasoning, if a purse is sitting in plain sight on a subway and is not locked up or chained to the owner (i.e, it is unprotected), then it is OK to go and take it. Nope, sorry - if you are not the rightful owner, taking it for your own use is theft.
Participating in the taking of a property right owned by another (the right to control who can use a work of art for other than a fair use - parody, etc.) is theft. You don’t have an ownership right to use it and the rightful owner has not granted you a license to use it. Taking it for your own use without payment is theft.
It’s not so hard to understand as you make it out to be. Just because an item is intellectual property doesn’t mean it is not PROPERTY, whihc means the exclusive right to control an item, tangible or intangible.
It is, in fact, not illegal to take a purse or wallet or any other item left out in the open with no protection or ownership. Lets say you drop your wallet on accident and walk off. It is not stealing for someone to come by and pick up the wallet, and, although potentially immoral, it is not illegal to take the items out of the wallet as your own. This, of course, not applying to things such as credit cards because they are very clearly labeled with your information and thus ownership is implied. By this logic finding a CD in the gutter of the street and taking it as your own makes you the licensed owner if you choose to take and use the CD. This logic could easily be translated to things you find on the internet. If the songs are not tagged in a way that readily, easily, and undeniably implies true ownership, then you finding them on a site for free places the legal burden on that site or whomever is offering the data.
Theoretically in order to have any sort of valid claim to the music and any settlement gained from people ‘illegally’ taking the data, record companies should have to tag music in such an unalterable way that states the original creator of the music and the holder of the legal copyright, and, every time such music is heard in a legal public venue (i.e. during a concert, from the radio, on the phone) the author, creator, and legal holder should have to be stated as this creates ownership and thus establishes the chain possession that would make it legal to sue anyone taking it away from you. Licenses embedded in the music is insufficient because music can be easily played without it by a variety of music players, and if you are using one of those players then it is possible to say you didnt know about its licensing. Also, you cannot ‘hear’ an embedded license over the radio or at a concert. Music heard at a concert is a little different than other forms because there is a pretty decent establishment of ownership since the band singing the music is likely to have ownership, but even then this is not entirely true because cover bands should be subject to laws dealing with plagiarism. Also, even if a band does give the credits as to where their lyrics came from, I’ve never once heard a one say they had obtained permission to duplicate the songs from their legal copyright holders..
I thought that no copyright notice is required to own the copyright. There is no requirement to post “copyright by so and so” in order for a party to have the copyright. The moment I create an intellectual property, be it a photo, painting or a song, I own the copyright. However, It is when you find an infringement that prior registration and notice is of value in stopping the infringement, but again not absolutely essential.
Am I missing something here.
I have a few questions that have plagued me for years, regarding the “fair use doctrine” as it is currently understood. Probably everyone has wondered these same things.
One, is it illegal for me to purchase a CD or DVD and make a copy of it? Answer I am almost certain is NO. (I actually prefer to use a “copy” and store the original safely away.)
But what if I give that copy to a friend? Have I infringed on the property rights or is this considered Fair Use?
Two, if I see an interesting article on the internet, copy and paste it into an email and send it to a friend to read, is that an infringement, Fair Use?
Dear Joel,
You have my full support in this case. What are my oppinions?
1. I will support You with a few dollars, but it does not solve the problem.
2. Internet is strong enough now to fight back.
3. I happily pay 1 dollar to the artist, not 3 dollars more to RIAA
4. Similarity - I do not need to buy newspapers - I read news on web
I do not need to buy translators, vocabularies or encyclopedias - I find it on web
5. Create banner “I do not buy from RIAA” and publish it - I will place it on my website!
6. Oll other users - do not buy from RIAA, pay directly to the artist’s website
and download from them.
7. Good luck!
im in agreement,i married an American girl and when she saw something in a shop and it didnt have a price tag on it she would say “oh, it’s free!”.i know know what she means.i checked my mp3 files and all say not protected in the properties,therefore i assumed they were free.
the owner of this website got a twitter? -Maggie <3