JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Mentor Questions Forum Pole dancing song used without permission

It's 24 songs and $1.92 million fine. She could go bankrupt to avoid paying. The law is there and she purposely broke it and then thought she could fight it in court, when it was an open and shut case, and then appealed it. She is showing that she has no respect for the law or other people's property. No one seriously expects her to be able to pay it on her own, but the court sent a strong message, don't flaunt the law and the courts. She didn't just steal the songs but aided and abetted others to steal them, then thumbed her nose at the system, she had to be made an example off.

But if the illegal filesharers feel that she shouldn't have the burden of a bankruptcy, which will seriously affect her life, and, depending on the court's interperetation, may have certain limitations, leaving her still indebted to several entities, then perhaps they should step up to the plate. Let's say there are a half million illegal filesharers. If they ponied up just three bucks apiece, her fine could be paid. Add another buck or two for her lawyer and her inconvenience. Wouldn't that be the moral thing to do?

You're over-reacting. She pirated some music, along with a few hundred million other people in the U.S. You want to talk about "flaunting" the law and the courts? Thumbing your nose? The Pirate Bay openly mocks people that request they stop distributing torrents. THAT is flaunting the law. What this woman did is nowhere near as bad and again doesn't merit the fine.



The issue with that logic is that no one, not even RIAA attorneys, think this fine is reasonable or expects that she will have to pay it. So, other people who download music certainly will not think it is justified and help pay it either.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE55K07E20090621

"Sony BMG attorney Wade Leak, who testified at the trial, said he was "shocked" by the damages award."

"No one expects that the labels will collect the entire amount from Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old Brainerd, Minn., mother of four who testified during the retrial that her ex-boyfriend or sons, then 8 and 10, were most likely responsible for downloading and distributing the songs."

Well, we'll see how it does in appeals. Of course, there is no logic in expecting that illegal filesharers would help one of their own who is in trouble. That was just a satire.

Uh,
Have any of you folks ever heard the story of the two farmers and their mules? Maybe not.

You mean the raffle?

A farmer decided to buy a mule from his friend and gave him $100 with the promise that he get the mule the next day. The next day his friend came over and told him the mule died and he spent the money. The first farmer said just keep the money, bring him the dead mule, and he would take care of it. A few weeks later the first farmer said he made the money back when he raffled off the dead mule. He sold fifty one tickets at two dollars apiece. His friend asked if folks got mad. "Only the winner," said the first farmer, "and when I showed him the dead mule I just gave him his two dollars back."

But these songs aren't dead mules. It's more like living mule clones.

Ha - that's a good story.

Andrew,

I guess I don't understand why the BMG attorney is shocked (unless he is posturing for the public) or why the fine section would be overturned at appeal. That fine is allowable, it has nothing to do with actual damages, and could have been more.

The reason the draconian fine is in the law probably has to do with big business influence on Congress when they wrote the law. Big business wanted to protect their interests, and the fine is supposed to be a deterrent, short of hanging (a joke). Plus, how do you consistently and fairly compute the damages of copyright infringement? There are other examples (the good ones I can think of right now are gambling and drugs) with out-of-proportion punishments that protect business interests or political seats. Plus, when the law was written, the ability to mass copy was not there. "Real" criminals flaunted copyright for monetary gain.

I completely understand what you are saying about jumping turn styles and speeding etc. You are correct, file sharing has become as common as speeding. And you are probably right, the fines need updated to reflect new reality. Look, nobody wants a police state, and I have kids I'm gonna have this issue with, and I certainly don't want to accidentally be hit with some huge fine. But, I can't help continuing to think that by protesting the fine and by comparing file sharing to jumping turn styles, we are trivializing file sharing, and rationalizing as OK our own purposeful behavior in that regard.

Well, Doug, the recording industry claims it will no longer be suing individuals for illegal filesharing. If you believe them, which may not be advisable, then you are safe from losing your credit rating and the ability to buy a house for seven years or so just because your kids downloaded the latest Green Day album.

The industry successfully did what they intended to do. They sent a message. They educated much of the public. They want parents to be scared. It's like the law that allows a policeman to impound your new Dodge pickup truck because they found a seed in the ashtray when they pulled your kid over for drifting a few inches over the double yellow line. It forces parents to monitor and educate their children.

They got the right person for the example, too. A very sympathetic character. It makes the recording industry seem like an evil entity that will destroy the lives of more than just their artists...they will go after a single mother for crimes of her boyfriend and children. Wow!!! Are they ever mean, and dangerous!! When it comes to society's laws or owners' rights, it is better to be feared than ignored. Beware of the Dog.

But now they'll move on to go after the internet companies that provide the systems for illegal downloading. In the meantime, we'll all argue about a fait accompli.

1.2 million? anybody wanna steal my songs i'll let you steal them on a contingency percentage if she gets the 1.2, let's make a deal

Nobody is scared of the RIAA any more than they were before. Not a single person I've ever met in my 4 years at college ever said they stopped downloading because of trials like these. In fact, basically everyone in my age range has grown to hate the music industry, and, by extension, sometimes even independent artists. WE pay the price when the people supposedly representing the industry do a bad PR job.

Basically go ahead and hate the music industry. But when your music is being taken and you never make a dime from music, have no publishers ever even listen to anything you have because there are no more publishers, no record companies,no venues, no radio, just thousands and millions of people all taking advantage of each other's creative work. And make sure you have several other jobs to support yourself. Because you can look right in the mirror and at every other downloader and see right where the problem started.

MAB

I don't hate the music industry. I'm explaining to all of you here why so many people DO, and why the litigation strategy that the RIAA has pursued has thus far been incredibly ineffective. No one is 'scared', they're simply angry and even more rebellious than they were before.

Andrew, some of us were angry young men "back in the day." and understand fairly well. Young people are mostly rebellious. It's in their nature, makes them leave the nest. Then they get older and have young 'uns of their own. Then they become the ones who are rebelled against. It's an unending spiral. It's happened here, it's happening in Iran, it happens in all our families. Nothing new.

Very true, but I think that if you grow up with an "oppressive" organization like the RIAA suing poor, innocent single mothers, grannies, and kids your age, you will PROBABLY harbor a grudge against the music industry for awhile. I spend a lot of my time trying to convince people that the music industry isn't the RIAA, pointing them to sites like JPF, OurStage, OCReMix, etc, but it's an uphill battle because of these ingrained attitudes.

If you grew up with the oppressive government not allowing you to take any drug you wanted, you'd know. That's why I took more drugs than Jerry Garcia. Acid, speed, coke, meth. Folks tried to point me to the straight life, but it was an uphill battle with my ingrained attitudes. After all, it was the oppressive "man," the police that beat the hippies at Grant Park in Chicago and killed four in Kent State. They arrested kids, young girls, innocent mothers, hip grannies, just for a little weed or coke or heroin.

Yeah, it's pretty much the same. We wanna, the bad parents...I mean the bad authorities won't let us. So we'll just do it.

We weren't making any kind of statement, we didn't even realize what we were rebelling against, just wanted to take all the drugs we wanted and wouldn't listen to any evil authority who told us we shouldn't.

It was an uphill battle.

Thank God I lived through it. But, no one could tell me. Just like no one can tell these kids that they're stealing. Sure, the system has corruption, that doesn't mean, though, that taking something that doesn't belong to you is right. If the kids want to make a political statement, they should do it as civil disobedience. Call the police. Tell them they are downloading thousands of songs as a protest. Have the courage of the young girls in the streets of Tehran. Nope, it's just kids stealing and telling themselves it's because the system is so corrupt.

If it's corrupt, don't listen to the music. Go out and buy a local band's music. Do you think they'll do that? I don't. I wouldn't quit doing drugs either. I had to grow up first.

Yeah,

That oppressive RIAA. How dare they try to get people to understanding that it's wrong to steal music. How about that Oppressive Walmart or any other retail store that is oppressing people by not allowing them to walk in and take anything they want, and just walk out without paying? How about those oppressive grocery stores for actually expecting people to pay for groceries, or the oppressive farmers for wanting any money for those products. What about the oppressive computer makers or Internet service providers for actually believing that anyone should pay for anything.
I hear this same belly aching about the RIAA, ASCAP, BMI, all the time. Funny enough these are the same people that always seem to be on one Internet site or another complaining that they can't get anything heard by industry people, that they can't make money, that they are tired of one service after another ripping them off, promising airplay,and then getting burned one time after another and never quite putting the dots together. That if you work on destroying one industry, you yourself get burned.

MAB

As a person who is concerned about injustice, I by nature often tend to take the side of the "little guy." I don't know much about the RIAA organization being soapboxed here, but can relate because I was around when the whole drug inducing hippie "free love" movement was in its prime. And may of these people are no doubt criticized as hyprocrites today because we went so far to the other extreme that drug testing is now a condition for employment, that office romances can lead to harassment lawsuits, and on and on. Later on they moved from drugs to alcohol and created a vibrant bar scene. And guess what? Today the number of bars is way down in most urbanized areas per a movement to get as many closed down as possible, even thought that didn't have problems. Point I'm making is that these people became what they once ridiculed and then some.

I just had this argument with my Granddaughter. Her mother, who is divorced from my son, sent her a laptop computer, my GD was so excited, she said I can't wait to get on line so I can down load some songs. I told her it was wrong and illegal to download songs unless she was paying for them. She said that her mother said it was OK and told her what sites to go too. I told her that her mother was wrong and that she could get into trouble doing it. My GD, 11 years old, said everyone was doing it and I was just being grouchy. I used every argument I could think of but I don't know if I got through to her or not.

Maybe the RIAA should start an education program to be delivered through the school system and get these kids when they are small. When they learn off their peers that it is OK, it becomes much harder for them to admit it is wrong and change.

The RIAA, has probably spent 20 million dollars in the past six to seven years educating people. It has been in public service announcements, before movies, constant magazine, television ads, it has been everywhere.
The lawsuits have been about the six or seventh step and now they have been dropped. There is really not a lot that can be done with an apethetic public. Just the era we live in.

MAB

I can't recall ever seeing any ads in this part of the world about copyright infringement. So have the RIAA thrown in the towel, given up the fight and accepting something they can't ever hope to change?

send me that new cd of yours Andrew (the one you took countless hours in the studio making, your intellectual property that wouldn't exist without your thought, talent, time, and money, you know, the one recorded on the thousands of dollars worth of gear that you spent the last decade or so acquiring)) and i'll burn a copy for everyone on the boards, there's only like 50,000 of us, no big deal

it is now a problem that parallels smoking...
only the ones doing it(filesharing downloaders) are killing the ones who are creating it(us)

Everett,

It is on the front of every movie, Every DVD, every CD, there are warnings in movie theaters, there have been ads on television, there have been countless debates and conversations on pretty much every newshow, for about 8 years. I don't know if Canada just gave up from the beginning but it has been the biggest issue in the mainstream music industry for years. And yes, the RIAA, gave up the legal approach. The bad publicity have led to the inability to even conduct the most simple of defenses.
Genie is pretty much out of the bottle and you see by many posts that even musicians, writers and artists seem to feel that it is "shoving it" to the "Evil record companies." They don't seem to see any ripple effects. Always comes back to bite them on the butt.
Of course, the fact that all these songwriter sites and posts about what service to use to get music out there, and then complaining that all of them are "rip offs" are the ripple effect. Trying to figure out how to get to publishers, then finding out there are no publishers anymore, trying to get songs recorded by artists only to find that they write all their own material, and trying to have web sites, only to dissapear among the millions of other similar web sites, My space, you tube, Face book, etc. are all the ripple effect.
People wanted and demanded music for free. They got it. the only problem is the people making it all got shafted. That is the ripple effect.

MAB

The old saying "I got it for a song" meaning they got something cheap, is coming back into vogue. If people want cheap entertainment that is what they'll get. The million dollar productions coming from the major labels won't be there any more if they can't recoup their cost and make a profit. They will turn their money and energies to making a product that will make them a fair return. Music made them a good return for years, now, because people can steal it, the returns are not so good. Either they cut down on the cost of producing music so they can sell it cheap enough that people won't steal it, or they go out of business. Either way, consumers are gonna lose. The cheaper productions may not be as slick(which might be good in the long run)as when money was no object, so indie artist may be able to compete on a leveller playing field. That's not to say the same thieves of music won't steal from indie artist, if they keep biting the hands of musicians that produce the music, soon there will be no more good new music for them to buy or steal.

As far as putting copyright warnings on CDs, movies, etc, this has little effect on the public, they likely never read it or let it register in their minds, thou shall not steal is in the bible but that don't stop thieves from stealing. Then again they probably never read it in the bible seeing few read the bible any more.

Andrew,

A lot of time I wonder what country you are living in. People who speed, drive drunk and are caught will pay huge fines. Ask anyone who has lost their car or been sitting in jail for years doing it. Loss of liscense, insurance and other issues can lead to bankruptcies and happens every day.
But to just not enforce the laws is nonsense. Almost every one of these high profile cases are the results of several cases against the same people. If you had your music, property stolen by the same person over and over, thereby depriving you of income and lively hood, do you not think you would do something? If someone broke into your home and took your personal property, keyed your car or damaged something you cared about, or even worse, attacked and physically harmed you, would you not do everything in your power to make sure it didn't happen again?

These are never the cases of someone accidentally downloading something and passing it on. These are systematic people, doing it over and over and over and again and then simply refuse to pay anything and their flaunting of the law is one of the proudest things they have, like the recent Pirate Bay issues.

Frankly I just can't understand where anyone who is involved in the creation of music, and trying to make some form of inroads no matter how seemingly inconsequential can look at these issues and feel "It is no big deal, and they shouldn't do anything." Just doesn't make too much sense to me. and anyone who has been in this business for any length of time can tell you there has been a ripple effect that has hit every part of this industry.

Just can't quite understand where you come from. But I guess that is why there are different opinions. Some of us trying to save the sinking ship, just have a problem with people who intend on piling heavy bricks into that ship thereby causing it to take on more water and sink faster, then wondering why the ship is sinking.

MAB