A Look At Just How Much The RIAA Clogged The Court System With Mass Copyright Suits
from the well-that-was-helpful dept
Over a five year period, the RIAA really seemed to believe that its strategy of suing music fans directly made sense. Of course, it did nothing of the sort. The strategy was a miserable failure. More people than ever are sharing unauthorized files online, and the major record labels the RIAA represents have continued to see their revenue drop. The few success stories for those labels have come through innovations from elsewhere, with the labels kicking and screaming (and quite frequently suing) in protest.Of course, at the end of 2008, the RIAA admitted that they were mostly giving up on the strategy (while they implied -- and many claimed -- they had stopped the lawsuits entirely, the truth is they kept filing lawsuits, just slowing down the pace) in favor of supposedly impending agreements to implement three strikes plans with ISPs. Of course, those agreements never showed up, and the more likely story (which we've heard over and over again from folks involved) is that the RIAA was realizing just how much money the legal strategy was costing, and finally recognized that it wasn't really helping. At the same time, with the record labels themselves losing so much money, they were less and less interested in giving so much money to the RIAA. The end result was that soon after all this happened, the RIAA laid off a bunch of folks -- basically admitting defeat.
Wired has now put together a wonderful chart and article demonstrating just how much the RIAA clogged the courts with its mass lawsuit strategy:
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I have concluded that the only way someone could be so tone-deaf and be so focused on the behavior he exhibits here is that some event or events have caused him to view the rest of the world with bitterness. I almost believe that he probably has tried and failed to implement various content business models.
I might think otherwise, but while many here seem willing to attribute merit to opposing positions and treat others with respect, TAM has never (to my knowledge) done the former and only rarely and begrudgingly done the latter.
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He's a damn lazy Googler, though.
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Wake me up when you've found the bit of this article that explicitly states the above. You might have to knock a little harder though; one's hearing deteriorates quite a bit with old age and coffin wood in the way.
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In a nutshell yes.
If the nation cannot afford you to pursue this course of action then that is that. In the end practicalities rule - there is no other way.
Remember the serenity prayer
"God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference. "
At present the recording industry's problem is with the last line.
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I have a problem with the chart ...
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Re: I have a problem with the chart ...
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Re: Re: I have a problem with the chart ...
the 8,500 comes from the chart 2,500 avg per year, I just counted how much it went over 2,500 and added them up.
the 30,000 come from RIAA it self
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Odd too, how until recently broadcast radio and TV made loads of cash, even though the customers didn't 'pay' to listen or watch...
All without lawsuits.
If they just spent HALF the time innovating as they do suing, they'd be much better off.
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Re: Lovely Fiction
; P
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Free
+
Google innovates like no other company.
+
Google has more money than anyone.
Yeah, Mike's wrong.
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Re:
RIAA sells data, and they want to manage that data in a world that can easily attain it elsewhere. RIAA's model is completely outdated. One day VM-ware's will likely be as well, after all, every major platform has Virtualization built into it now, and it's only a matter of time before they surpass VMware, patent protection or not. VMWare will be acquired long before this, however.
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what a mess this planet is becoming
caps
throttles
copyright insanity
patent insanity
civil rights going poof
YA know its only a matter of time before some kid loses it, and starts that ball rolling
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Anyone else?
Interestingly, after recently doing my annual system reformatting, I forgot to reinstall my AVG antivirus. I do not knowingly download infringing material, but I do poke around torrent sites for CC stuff, freely distributed material, and to look into things I read on some sites like TechDirt.
A few days after reformating, I did a system restart and the OS desktop would not load like normal. Instead, I just got a screen saying something along the lines of the MPAA and/or RIAA had detected infringing material on my system and was going to sue unless I did a pre-settlement, even though I had never heard of the file they had supposedly found.
Now, I'm fairly certain this wasn't official, since it wanted me to link to a site and then pay by credit card, nor would it allow me to open up my Task Manager. But when I thought that, I realized how little difference there was between the presettlement extortion letters and the malware....
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Re: Anyone else?
Technically, you could report this to the FBI.
Or you might file a report on the linked site with the CERT.
I hope it was actually RIAA.
Sorry about your computer :(
By chance did you backup or retain the disk in its corrupted/hacked state? It could be evidence if it's for real enough.
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Re: Re: Anyone else?
That's the wonderful thing about doing dillegent backups and having a partitioned, OS. Another quick restore and I was back to normal.
"By chance did you backup or retain the disk in its corrupted/hacked state? It could be evidence if it's for real enough."
I did not, though without a link to another computer capable of doing a full image, how would that have been possible? By preventing the OS Desktop from loading, it wouldn't even let me connect wirelessly (which rendered their plan to have people click their link and enter their CC info useless), so I couldn't link to my office BDR setup.
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Re: Re: Re: Anyone else?
You could have used a prepared boot disk with a lightweight OS and backup software (or even better sector copy software to make a duplicate image on a separate hard drive). However in most cases is would probably not be worth the effort. Even trying to get the attention of the FBI would take a pretty special case, or a few good friends.
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Re: Anyone else?
did you read about this?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/copyright-violation-alert-ransomware-in-the-wild/6095
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Re: Re: Anyone else?
Thanks a ton for the link....
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Re: Re: Re: Anyone else?
(I'll do it in a virtual environment - don't worry about my PeeCee)
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Ludicrous Legal Strategy = Criminal Inspiration
Thanks Harrysan. We haven't seen the last of those, for sure.
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Letter
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Clog?
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Re: Clog?
However, even on their own, many thousands of lawsuits seems beyond trivial. If you just consider some real-world examples, there is a federal court here called the rocket docket. They usually try a case in 3-5 days. So, for a single judge, that would be roughly 52 cases per year, not accounting for other activities, vacation, variability, etc. Just to try 1,000 cases would require 200 judges.
Of course these lawsuits are spread all over the country, and a vast majority never get tried, etc etc. I'm just trying to put some practical context on the numbers. Even if each of the 1,000 cases takes 1 hour for a court to deal with, that's one-half of a person-year, not accounting for all of the ancillary personnel impacts beyond the judge.
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Re: Re: Clog?
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What's the matter with these people
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What's your source?
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Someone (allegedly) infringes copyrights, and the copyright owners (or other party with standing) sue.
That's what courts are there for.
Doesn't make it a good strategy, but hardly an improper use of courts.
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