Leaked Documents Show How The RIAA Plans To Spend The Limewire Settlement
from the it's-not-75-trillion-but-it's-a-start dept
The RIAA believes it is on the cusp of victory in its lawsuit against Limewire, thanks mainly to its large selection of damaging charts. However, it seems to be expecting the worst, if these leaked documents are any indication. All evidence below indicates that the RIAA will be willing to settle for only $15 billion (out of a possible $55 billion). Not only that, but it already has plans in place for the dispersal of the Limewire settlement.
Explanatory Notes
First and foremost, the legal war chest must be refilled. It never sleeps and it is always hungry. Copyright won't protect itself and every battle to secure these rights has become long, uphill and against the wind.
A $15 billion payout doesn't come around every day and our executives are justly entitled to a large chunk of that ($3.15 bil.). As an added bonus (to the bonuses), all executives will be treated to a celebratory blimp ride ($2.25 bil.). This dollar amount seems high until you consider that each executive will be requiring their own blimp. Previously, the executives had shared one blimp, but in the post-Napster environment, "sharing" is obviously no longer a legal option.
Other line items include the ongoing efforts in Washington to impose the RIAA's will on the internet, research and development and the opaquely-named "Other Expenditures."
(1) Other Expenditures
Having run the "Stealing a Song = Stealing a Car" analogy into the ground, we need a new "go to" catchphrase. Hence, $1.05 billion should be earmarked for development of a new anti-piracy metaphor. Suggestions include:
- Stealing a song is like stealing a yacht.
- You wouldn't steal popcorn, would you?
- There's no such thing as a free lunch, free song or an infinite good.
- File sharing is as un-American as immigration, outsourcing and opium production.
- You wouldn't steal a blimp, would you?
- Stealing a song is like kidnapping an artist's children and is punishable by a sentence of 25 years to life.
Other incidental expenditures include a much-needed re-upholstering of the executive suites and a celebratory hot tub full of money to splash around in with various members of the escort community, each of whom will be paid in full for their services, including any fees due for public performance.
(2) Research and Development
A lion's share of the payout will go towards the ongoing development of a time machine/wormhole to 1991 ($450 million). Many recent efforts have come close but the RIAA has yet to reach the pre-Napster days and develop a parallel timeline in which CD sales increase forever. On the plus side, it did manage to get our mom to hook up with our dad, thus ensuring our continued existence.
Other products/services on the way:
- A computer-unfriendly music delivery system, much needed in this time of digital theft. Wax cylinders have been discussed as well as a partnership with RealPlayer, whose clumsy, bug-ridden software would likely prevent music from being enjoyed on a wide variety of operating systems.
- "Lost Sales" calculation improvements, which should allow the RIAA to seek even larger damages from various file sharing services. It is hoped that we will finally reach the trillion dollar mark within the next decade. In addition, breakthroughs should also be sought in the "Shocking Graph" field, what with the recent success of the "Napster Ruined Everything" line graphs.
- A partnership with the developers of The Club to prevent music from being stolen. A possible route would be some sort of clamp that could be tightened around an ethernet cable to prevent uploading. In other words, not so much "throttling" as "strangling."
- Domain seizure technology, via the RIAA's partnership with ICE, which has already proven its ability to take thousands of sites offline despite lack of evidence or proper investigative techniques. On the front burner: cooperating with ICE's takedown of many large pharmaceutical companies who continue to make themselves rich off various anti-seizure remedies, including the weirdly-named Antivan and Dilantin.
Royalty Payments
Royalty disbursements, as expected, will be delivered in a "top down" fashion. Those artists with the most sales will receive a disproportionately large share of the proceeds. After the "Big 3" are taken care of (and a chunk of money thrown towards Paul McGuiness in hopes that some of it lands in his mouth), the remaining funds will be dispersed to yet more lawyers and an appreciable amount ($300,000 ) put towards the ongoing health of Jon Bon Jovi's remaining hair. It is hoped that he will be able to put off his eventual "Trump Hair" for another 7-10 years, thus ensuring his continued success in the field of "fairly attractive frontmen." See footnotes for royalty dispersals.
*Charting Artists
$300,000 will be divided evenly among those artists currently in the Top 40 at the point of dispersal. If said artist happen to include any of the "Big 3," well, I suppose the rest of you should just write better hits, right? There's no crying in the music industry, especially if you're unrecouped.
*Non-Charting Artists
The remainder of the RIAA's roster will split $150,000. To qualify for payment, bands/musicians must have a viable Wikipedia page (stubs and pages slated for deletion do not count) and a web presence that includes more than just a long-abandoned MySpace page. (Try Facebook.)
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Filed Under: leaks, satire, settlement, spending
Companies: limewire, riaa
Reader Comments
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its outrageous!
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Sad...
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I'm sorry, when I see or hear "fat cats" I immediately discount what the person says. Perhaps you don't deserve that, in which case I'm sorry.
I would never have expected money to go to the artists. The artists weren't hurt by file sharing; the labels were.
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also you forgot "U2's manager" in your other expenditures chart
work a little slow for you this Saturday DH?
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Wrong Tim.
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Wrong Tim.
And wrong day.
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It was the wrong day, but I wrote this up and CLT stole it from me.
Dirty doppleganger bastard....
Give the commenter credit for actually looking at the author name, though....
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understandable mistake
"wrong day"
wishful thinking i guess, not sure how i fucked that one up
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And go ahead with the business idea. It sounds like a lot more fun than a bunch of suited execs enjoying a celebratory blimp ride. I'd give the RIAA a call as they're throwing several billion dollars into the blimp industry.
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Wow
I even looked at the first chart and thought it was real except for the bribery being crossed out and replaced.
That's pretty scary.
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Re: Wow
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Re: Wow
Umm..yeah..I knew that....>.>
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did you think that techdirt was ever pro piracy or did you simply leap to that conclusion with no evidence, as appears to be the case?
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I guess thats more for him to say than either of us, but that is certainly how i see things.
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Did any of you people actually ever take an econ classs?
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How are
"Do what you want with the law, I'm just gunna ignore it anyway"
and
"I think we could make things better"
coextensive?
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It is not hatred it is a general dislike and contempt for people and/or organizations that feel entitled.
I really don't care for people that want to glut themselves on a one-time accomplishment or even worse the one-time accomplishment of someone else.
So when someone stands in front of me spraying my face with spit as they demand that I payment for something that is more than 6 months old I get irritated.
I feel this way about my son's girlfriend that is about to calve again and has never paid for groceries in her life because "the State gives" them to her just as much as I do about someone waving a copyright or patent in my face.
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Like the people who think they are entitled to be entertained for free??? LOL
You people are so blatantly hypocritical about so many issues that you'll never be anything but laughed at.
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Or do you think that all free entertainment is pirated retail crap?
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see below.
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Nearly every topic here has some relation to technology (usually how it impacts laws, social norms or business models) - but if you were looking for another Gizmodo, then yeah you came to the wrong blog.
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Which is kinda obvious, isn't it? I mean, compared to musicians, how many record label employees do you see with a garage full of sports cars?
Anyway, musicians. I resent them because they were always cooler than me and got laid. I hate them cuz they're the ones that make the money. Once again, kinda obvious. That show isn't called "MTV's Record Label Employee Cribs", now is it?
So yeah, dig my blog where I pretend to to be about business models but in reality just bitch about copyright and piracy enforcement every week.
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I always got the impression that this site's stance was "anti-stupidity" more than anything else, whether it's tech related or not.
And copyright issues seem to be falling into that category more and more.
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If Limewire's worth 15 billion - maybe the RIAA should ask... what are they doing wrong? Because obviously someone is making a MASSIVE profit off of 'free media'.
Is that an admission to that?
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Try harder
Surely you mean 'like kidnapping an artist, their children, and their children's children.' Otherwise you're giving up the hard won copyright extensions!
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Re: Try harder
Duly noted. Stealing a song is like kidnapping the artist's children, waiting until the artist is dead and then coming back for their grandkids and etc. So, pirates are nothing if not tenacious.
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28 days?
I know you can do better!
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What Makes People Turn Into Pirates?
THE F**K YOU UPLOADER:
These are the people who crack software or write the applications that crack the DRM on DVD's and the like. They enjoy the challenge. They do it for the glory of releasing it first. If "first" is before the copyright holder releases it, even better. And for a lot of them, if they can piss off a big corporation in the process, it's all the more satisfying. These people also want to get movies out as soon as they are at the cinema or get that CD out the same day the promo copies are sent to radio stations. They do it for the virtual glory. They also do games.
THE SHARERS ARE CARERS:
These are the people who rip their CD's and DVD's and record stuff off the TV and radio to upload it for people just because they like to share their things. It doesn't matter that they don't necessarily know the people they are sharing it with, as long as they can make people happy.
THE FRIENDS:
Of course, some people just copy a CD or DVD they own or record a TV show for their friends. They're not putting it up online. They are simple sharing a file or a burned disc the way people would tape an album for a friend in the 1980's. But they are still pirates. It's the way it is.
So now we've looked at the basic variations of the uploaders. There's also variations on downloaders.
THE EVERYTHING SHOULD BE FREE DOWNLOADERS:
These people just download because they can. It doesn't matter what they get, as long as they don't have to pay for it. These people are just as likely to have a few Linux ISO's as they are to have a Windows 7 ISO simply because they were free.
THE BROKE DOWNLOADERS:
These people are also downloading stuff because it is free. However, they still on occasion buy things too. These are the people on a tight budget who would buy, say, a CD or DVD every week because that is all they can afford but, because they can download stuff for free, they have a dozen times more than they would otherwise have. They generally only have what they like and delete things they don't like. These are the kinds of people who, in the 1980's, were taping songs off the radio and taping TV shows in the 1990's.
THE CAN'T BUY IT DOWNLOADERS:
Not to be confused with the "Broke Downloaders", these are people who want stuff that they can't buy. CD's that have been deleted since 1987, TV shows that somebody taped in the 1990's that haven't been released on DVD. They buy what they want but if they can't buy it, it doesn't mean they should go without. Chances are, if it exists, there is a pirate copy available to download somewhere. Sometimes these people don't buy things because the only way to buy it is to pay a huge sum of money on eBay or Amazon Marketplace for it. Still not to be confused with the "Broke Downloaders", if you want a CD, for example, and the only way to get it was to buy it from somebody asking hundreds of dollars for it, would you? Some would, some wouldn't.
Of course, there are lots more reasons than this. When all is said and done, though, these are the three main categories that the majority of uploading and downloading pirates fall into. I hope you've enjoyed reading this little article which I made up off the top of my head based on observations I've made across the last 10 years or so. And, in case you didn't notice, I left out "money" from the uploading categories because the number of people who actually make money from uploading are so far in the minority as to barely be a blip on the radar.
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Twice bitten downloaders:
People that have suffered buyers remorse too many times. Although happy to pay for content they enjoy they refuse to buy anything without sampling it first.
I got into pirating as a broke downloader in college. Now I have money but I hate buying an album to find out it only has one good song or buying a game or movie to find out its an overpriced piece of shit. I happily pay for things I feel are worth my money but I certainly sample a larger selection than what i end up buying.
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I was thinking about the "Twice Bitten Thrice Shy" category but I couldn't think how to word it. You did a splendid summary. Thank you!
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Of course there won't be even so much as enough money to pay the lawyers out of this 'settlement' even if they are shooting for the sky. (I heard Chicken Little complaining about this the other day)
They'll get the domain as partial payment and at some point some idiot will think name recognition is a great way to pull in money. After which it will fall on it's face.
Other than that, the great money hole has claimed another in the pursuit of the legal circus. The copywrong forces ought to go out with a bang and just go ahead and sue all the world governments for 3ʳᵈ party infringement and be done with it. It's all those countries that house internet access companies fault you know.
Thanks for a laugh at the end of the week.
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It would be sort of like a reverse class action suit, where a few principals take several billion people to court. And no one would be terribly surprised if those industries actually entertained this idea for a few minutes.
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Umm..
OH YEAH - I FORGOT - IT WAS NEVER ABOUT THEM JUST PROTECTING THE OBSCENE PROFITS OF THE RECORD LABELS. SCREW THE ARTISTS!
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ANTI-EST.
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