'ISPs don't work for the RIAA' → Re: EFF - Encouraging Fraudulent Filesharing

Not in a CIVIL lawsuit.

okay, riaa needs to prove by preponderance of the evidence, still riaa needs to prove it, not other way around

Ok, so murder is overstated....

In the end, what right is right, what's wrong is wrong.

Er...I think the ideals of "innocent until proven guilty" still hold in a civil suit. The only difference is, unlike in a criminal suit, the prosecution only needs a majority consensus of the jury...not a 100% absolute vote.

So here we go.

IP Address
Timestamp
Owner of internet account

Game, Set, Match.

IP Address-proves that someone from that account was using the connection
time stamp-proves what time that ip was using the connection
owner of internet account-proves who the ip "belongs" to, that still doesn't prove who is performing this "download"

And by this logic, I could sue an apartment complex for something one of the tenants did. I'm sorry, but suing an account is impossible. You can sue the owner of the account, but then you will need to make your case that it was indeed the owner that performed the crime.

Kinda hard to prove when you just have an IP and a timestamp.

Worldvision FTW!

Now that is not 100% true. Unlike criminal court, in most all civil courts, the defendant does need to respond and deny all accusations or else the plaintiff could easily end up with a default judgment. Simply put, they tell the judge that the IP in question is yours and your IP was sharing copyrighted works. Now, if you fail to respond to this complaint stating you did not do this and request proof that this act of copyright infringement was committed by you, you lose. You can then enjoy wonderful things like wage garnishments, bank attachments and property liens.

True. In a criminal court, you have the freedom to choose to not show up, and just get the book thrown at you...but that's kinda foolish when you stand accused of something that'll make you lose your shirt. Should it actually go to court, however, all one needs is to remove the ground that the charges plant themselves on (ie. who was the downloader?), and pray that your jury's not retarded.

You over simplifying everything. Yes RIAA can request summary judgement against you if you do not reply but most judges will not grand one when we are talking about thousand of dollars. You still need to show the court "judge" that you have the evidence who was doing it. Just because that person is ip account holder doesn't mean that person is responsible. Preponderance of the evidence means more likely then not, having just ip, time stamp and account holder doesn't rich that level that is needed.

Easy, if people pirate then that means many less people are willing to buy a album than buy it. So instead of selling copies for 8.99 for each user, there is just one copy sold so everyone is getting a good for free and we only get 8.99?

To keep thing's simple I will go and ask the indie label to give me a estimated amount of there total costs just to operate the facility and there staff. How much profit they gain and so forth.

If you want proof I will send it your way, because I don't come here and try to bullshit nobody and I seen those paper's myself but I know that does not mean anything unless I post something that has some real value like a bill. I will keep your username on my to do list and I will send you a PM when I have that info.

I am sorry but I don't record all that rap or pop bullcrap because those are clients. The RIAA can do all they want but I work for a independent label and the artists I know are just regular joes who enjoy music and want to get a small income from what they make and every time I talk to these artists in person because we are just talking about something that shares our interest usually the problem's with bills arise.

Then they go off in rants saying how morons talk on the net how piracy is not an issue and that basically they are getting robbed every time without being able to do anything about it and some have just quit and gone to work for a company or hotel.

So what burns me the most is you destroying people's dreams you worthless trash.

P.S I don't work for the RIAA, it's a independent label and we are simply a group of high school student's who help out local artists in the community. But because we are cheap as hell we are growing fast. But if you don't want to purchase our work, fine. But don't go out there giving the stuff we worked weeks on as free pudding.

Don't like it? Don't buy it. Get with the program or go to jail, period.

Please try again, you can't go to jail for civil offence sorry

It should be a misdemeanor not a civil offense.

Are you 100% sure that less selling copies simply isn't the result of the merchandice quality slipping? Perhaps the market isn't willing buy and/or pay as much as it used to. Its certainly easy to blame downloading as the cause to all ills...but that doesn't mean anything in terms of proof.

Music is not an essential commodity, and unlike staple family restockables like toilet paper or groceries, one cannot just assume X number of sales of a CD per Y number of people. If the CD's a flop, people won't buy it. Music is not something we must use in our daily lives - purchases can fluxuate.Indeed. I would love numbers or anything that directly correlates digital downloads into an overall loss in sales. And none of the **AA cooked data either which just assumes a 1:1 ratio in downloads to "losses". Tell me an actual amount of pirated music (ie. loss), compare that value to purchasing customers made online (ie. gain you would not otherwise have), and then tell me if there's a net loss involved.

then RIAA would no longer be fully involved and instead it would be the job of DA's around the country, most DA's have much better thing to do then go after someone that "pirated something" plus we don't have room in prison for all these people that would be getting sent for "pirating". I don't see it becoming misdemeanor offense anytime soon.

There wouldn't be any profit for the **AAs in suing them if the defendants only faced jail time. Believe me, putting pirates in jail is the furthest intention of theirs, so long as they can potentially gain money from the situation.

...true, jail time probably would teach pirates more of a lesson...but teaching lessons isn't necessarily the intentions of the lawsuit threats.

I can only show you numbers of losses per sales on a particular CD. Yes you have a point that it could be that sales are slipping but a rapid drop in sales is more than likely due to piracy than actual purchases.

More or less it's like determining Bittorrent traffic on a network. Everything is all normal and good and then a huge wave of bandwidth is being used killing any gain a company will make over usage.

It will take an actual poll, and since I am in a big high school I think it could be possible to say on a anonymous voting on those who do steal music and those who don't. I think that will then justify a fair comparison or maybe a write in ballot explaining why people would pirate.

In most cases people will say "Duh, it's free". But hey those are not stat's that I can go and pick up, I must make a poll about it.

In many cases I met people who said, well you are comparing free to 10 bucks. Sure, obviously it's a good deal to those who simply download but I guess it's more of a moral issue. Kind of like exporting manufacturing of products to china where that new Blue ray dvd drive was possibly made by a five year old crying his ass off because he was starving to death.

I am not some specialist in polls, but I will try my best to give some info. Because piracy and losses do have a connection. I believe that's something that makes perfect sense but the real matter at hand is "how much of a loss" that would be.

Frankly because of the analog hole all DRM is useless, but it's fair to say that music is also a art and possibly a form of free speech and to charge for that is somewhat wrong I suppose in a way. But when you plug in all the number's sound equipment isn't cheap at all but that's just my honest point of view as a sound engineer who is still in high school.

Well obviously. Frankly I rather have our police men catching child rapists and actual crap from the street's than deal with people who steel music.

But frankly people just don't care. Because this is a society where people only care about themselves. They don't think the damage they could do to someone else for there actions and even if they did they still do it anyway.

But I think it's best said we are all criminals because we all broke the law at least once. Might be from turning into a wrong lane to not stopping at a stop sign. We all committed a crime. Sure I might have gone over board to call a illegal downloaded song and justify that as a misdemeanor.

But frankly, I am just pissed off people talk without knowing the whole background. Oh "we aint doing no damage" as if it where all cooperate americas fault. Hell the people who run those businesses are people too, yet you always tried to squeeze in or you got some dumb shit trying to abuse the way a good or service it was intended to be use and eventually when the company gets mad and starts demanding 1 year contracts or special licenses everyone else get mad.

Why? Because one person can ruin it for everyone and the person who you should be mad at is that dumb ass thinking he is all that and so better than everyone else.

It's just like street racing "oh I am a professional driver, pfft nobody is in danger if I drive over 100"

Yet the next day you see them on the 5AM news only to find out they crashed into a school bus filled with people's children and possibly your children one day. Then your going to be the one yelling over dropping the speed limit to 30mph or less.

It's all about point of view really, there isn't much to be said on this issue because we see it every day yet in the end we never find a solution because we are too busy calling the other guy's mother a whore.

Now, this is not a flame but did you ever think that maybe...just maybe that there music sucks? Maybe they are nothing but a bunch of talentless idiots who only has you and a few other HS students as fans, all of which have zero taste in music. Yes, I know that sounds harsh but is just a possibility. Maybe it would be more fair to say that just maybe their music is not popular enough to be profitable. Hey, I don't know them and they may be great but I have to ask the question that if they are so great, why is it they settle for an indie label and complain they are not making enough money?

Dude, thank you for being honest I did not take that offensive because I know you just said the truth and reality to me.

Yes some of them don't have talent in my honest opinion but who am I to judge? I am simply a sound engineer not an artist, so my position is different.

Yes that is a possibility, which is why to label what is piracy, to what is actual loss or simply a crappy CD is really hard to calculate if at all.

They are simply complaining, as anyone else does to release some stress. It's fair to say that a sound engineer and a artist must connect so there is a level of understand on how they want to sound and how the engineer can understand what the artists want's and make a good audio recording.

But hey, we all complain and cry and kick our feet when we are stressed out, and there are other's who simply keep it in or have a poker face like myself about it. While piracy might affect these guys to a near minimum and by that I mean people exchanging there songs across there phones via bluetooth to some class mate. I am sure if these guys actually did some kind of talent as some other clients do people will enjoy there music. Some will support other's will download.

But even in a small scale piracy is still there and what could benefit the school or us in general will be gone.

But hey, I like people who are to the point and although it may seem harsh things like that are perfectly fine and don't waste my time debating or worrying about people "hurting" my feelings.

Even as a sound engineer some of them ask me if they think they got some talent or "what I think?"

I usually have jaws dropping because I either say you sound pretty good, I like the vocals or possibly how the drummer plays and adds to the lyric or beat in general. But if you plain out suck I will most likely won't be there to waste your time and obviously your money. I am going to flat out say what I need to say.

Sure it's harsh to those who have a dream of some sort, but why make them live a fantasy that will get them no where and let them choose another dream or something else they like? To me you are hurting someone more if you just don't flat out tell them what's wrong.

Sure, people might think your an asshole you could possibly make some people cry. But the truth hurt's, and if you are going to sugar coat it and add a little extra bull (cherry) on top you might as well just save it.

But thanks for being honest.

Oddly enough, the very music execs you defend are beginning to see the light:

»news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/tech ··· 2069.stm

Hey, thumbs up to you for taking it so well. I do have one confession to make though. I did actually buy a CD two summers ago. The only reason I did is because it was indie and I bought it from the musician himself after seeing him perform in person.

I'll second that. I haven't heard a CD worth purchasing in a long while. True, there are the odd singles that are belted out by bands...but not enough to pay premium retail for an entire CD. I'll either wait for a rental, or buy those bands CDs cheap at a used CD music store.

Funny this should come up. This past October I got a chance to listen to some research that a grad student did. His name is Ross Housewright. His topic was "Copyright Infringement from the Inside: Student Perspectives on Music Piracy." He provided some really interesting insights on the use of P2P by students at his school. In his research he found out that there are some students that view downloading and listening to songs as a modern day equivalent of listening to the radio. There are also an entire group of students who wouldn't pay for music at any price. If his group of students is representative of their population, RIAA is screwed. The students also believed that current "education" efforts by the industry are unconvincing and un-threatening. He also found out that there was a core group of students who were fanatical about heir music and would buy most anything by a certain group. For the most part, the students didn't care one way or the other.

For me personally, I quit buying anything from RIAA members. In the days of Napster, I downloaded many songs. I also went and bought many CD's, as I liked the music I was hearing. I have bought 5 CD's in the past 4 or 5 years and only one of those was from a RIAA member. I have a whole bunch of CD's that I have already bought. RIAA can kiss my shiney metal ass.

so you have to resort to name calling to try and prove your point.
People are not willing to put out the money for a CD with maybe one good song on it anymore. People want to mix their own cds with the songs they like.
The gig is up. Consumers are just not willing to buy into the old business model.
There will always be people who will want to try and beat the system. Update the business model and the losses will go down.
The consumer in the long run decides the worth of a product not the producers of the product.

Well when most CD's have only one or two good songs out of 16, whats the point? Thats whu legal music sales are skyrocketing and singles and "best of's" are doing well.
People are getting tired of the filler songs, and its the artists and the RIAA who is to blame. A good musican will spread out his or her best songs over a number of albums, that why they can get the most money over time, but the rest of the songs suck, again one or two out of 16 are good. Its crappy but thats the way it is. Anyways, legal downloads are coming along nice and I dont see piracy putting a big dent into it as the RIAA claims.

I resort to name calling by how clueless some people can be. Usually if you don't hit someone hard there are just going to continue spreading the same crap over and over.

Also, consumer's can choose what they want, mix how ever they want. But not share it amongst a group of friend's. You can have a copy of your music for you. If you make a copy, give it to someone else, you are file sharing.

I never had a problem having a group of friends listening to one CD. Because it's all in one copy, but if you want to take it home, we want our money for that copy you just gave freely away.

The only issue here is you giving a exact copy of our product to someone else.

Now, the RIAA trying to milk you by having to pay for multiple copies on the same song for each device is another story.

Also if the consumer in the long run decides if the product is worth the cost. Then he she will buy, if not then they go empty handed, not with a copy of our product.