Part2:DRM, RIAA, MPAA and a new House bill thwart consumers
By Susan Wilson
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the House of Representatives have teamed up again to make acquiring and listening to music and videos a potential nightmare for consumers.
Back in 1998, Congress enacted the Digital Rights Millennium Copyright Act (DRMCA). That bill has proven to be the RIAA’s “right to sue” act turning everyone’s computer into the source of a potential law suit and every computer owner into a potential defendant.
The RIAA uses a service called Media Security. Media Security has gathered the majority of the evidence used in RIAA lawsuits. The service has worked as RIAA’s investigative arm trolling KaZaa and other P2P sites for illegal sharing of music. The company had provided pictures of the share folder on defendant’s computers and testified in court.
The RIAA pursuit of illegal downloads is costing record labels a tremendous amount of money for investigation, legal fees, and bad publicity. That has not stopped the RIAA from suing any and every “John Doe” that they can find. It has sued thousands of college students, single mothers, grieving families, grandmothers and even dead people.
The RIAA sued 83 year old Gertrude Walton. When they sent the letter stating that they were going to sue unless Mrs. Walton chose to settle, her daughter received the letter as part of her mother’s estate. She sent the RIAA a copy of her mother’s death certificate. The RIAA sued her mother anyway. Apparently when the case went to court the RIAA had to accept the fact that Mrs. Walton was indeed dead.
In the case of Patricia Santangelo, a divorced mother of three, the RIAA lost that case because Ms. Santangelo successfully proved her own computer illiteracy. The Judge dismissed the case. The RIAA then chose to sue her three children.
Unfortunately, another single mother, Jamie Thomas, was found guilty by a jury who set damages for her to pay at $222,000 or $9250 per song. A single mother who sells lingerie, there is no way that Ms. Thomas has the funds currently to pay this exorbitant amount. There is very little chance that she will ever be able to pay the damage award. Ms. Thomas has appealed the damages as being excessive. The Department of Justice has filed an Amicus brief arguing that the verdict amount is not excessive and should stand.
The ultimate insult to consumers came in Jamie Thomas’ case, when Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, stated “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’,”she said. Her basic premise is that every time you rip a song from a purchased CD to your computer, you are stealing. Every time you rip purchased songs from iTunes, eMusic, etc. to a CD you have stolen that song. Making a compilation CD from various different legal CD’s in your music library is again, stealing.
Now the House has passed the Pro-IP Act. This act increases the amount of damages that can be levied against defendants found guilty of copyright infringement which includes illegal downloads of music or videos to computer. It also creates an new unnecessary cabinet level position, and a new division within the Department of Justice. Under this Act, there would be the new Copyright Enforcement Division complete with a cabinet level Federal Copyright Enforcement Czar.
Creating a new Department of Justice division and a new cabinet level Czar to catch illegal downloads of music and movies is ludicrous. Talk about creating unnecessary bureaucracy! This new division is a perfect example of government jumping to the tune of Big Media.
The large record companies have not been able to show any real damage, but they are able to produce examples of individuals “stealing music” or making music “available” to be stolen. Luckily for the industry, they don’t have to show actual damage in order to get large damage awards.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) and suing the RIAA and MPAA’s customers is not the way to prevent piracy. Instead, the RIAA and MPAA should look at the changes and changing dynamics of the internet and develop a more viable distribution model than the current one. Technology has moved on but the House of Representatives and the RIAA and MPAA have not.
Until reality is taken into account by the rule makers, the only outcome from this new Pro-IP Act will be more unnecessary lawsuits and more damage awards that can’t be paid.
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Stumble It!
May 11th, 2008
The RIAA need to get a life. If copying music to a PC is illegal, the music industry will die entirely – I most certainly wouldn’t buy a CD if I couldn’t use it on my computer because CDs are as good as dead in everything except cars; MP3 players have long taken the lead. Suing people is not the way forward either; that will just make people hate them even more.
They are just seeking money, and while I can see that downloading music illegally costs them money, they should be persecuting the gangs who do it on a large scale. They need to move with the times and move forward into the digital era where electronic devices all ‘communicate’ and share data with each other.
May 12th, 2008
The House of Representatives could do something useful for a change and make a Cabinet level position called “Anti-Monopoly Czar”. That should scare the crap out of the RIAA and MPAA. While they’re at it, they should all resign and head on down to the unemployment line. If I was that incompetent at my day job, I wouldn’t have one.