RIAA wins first file sharing case

[JamesB]

anyone catch this? this is a HUGE win for the RIAA

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/sto...3691170&page=1


James

[JohnT]

$222,000. Ouch. All I can say is: the law is the law, and it is quite clear.

[markfh]

Originally Posted by JohnT

$222,000. Ouch. All I can say is: the law is the law, and it is quite clear.

All I can say to this is lmao... the law is usually anything but clear. If it were we wouldn't need so many lawyers to argue it.

Help, master, help! here's a fish hangs in the net,
like a poor man's right in the law.
(Pericles, 2.1.153), Fisherman

[Mike G]

The law in this case is quite clear .. don't share copy written material with others

[Wes]

I kinda figured that a bunch of photogs would be sympathetic seeing as how our work is so often ripped off. I say good for the RIAA.

[ElanR]

Originally Posted by Mike G

The law in this case is quite clear .. don't share copy written material with others

Well, that is not correct. In fact, even the implication that there is a law addressing this, singularly, is not correct.

The issue of copyright and the use of copyrighted material is covered under two, different and opposing concepts in the law, intellectual rights, and fair use. During the years between the Sony Betamax ruling, and up until the passing of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the concepts coexisted with relative balance, with the boundary lines roughly drawn between the presence, or lack of profit generation of the sharing activity. The DMCA disrupted that delicate balance and shifted the law heavily in the favor of the copyright owners.

I know photographers generally feel that the copyright issue is near to their hearts, and generally support a stricter enforcement. But you folks also need to be aware of the extremes reached in some of the DMCA based copyright implementation of late. Like the case of Lexmark claiming their printer cartridges as digital intellectual property, since they contain a programmed chip, making it a crime punishable by a prison term to temper with (refill) them. This case was struck down to my recollection, but the Adobe Reader user agreement, which prohibits any copying or sharing of the e-books used in the reader, including a prohibition on the copying of a passage for the purpose of quoting, or reading the e-book out loud within an earshot of anyone, still stands. When copyright means you must submit to the profit scheme of a corporation in the exclusion of more effective alternatives, or that you can not read a bedtime story out of an e-book to your child, no one here should be celebrating.

[JamesB]

Originally Posted by ElanR

When copyright means you must submit to the profit scheme of a corporation in the exclusion of more effective alternatives, or that you can not read a bedtime story out of an e-book to your child, no one here should be celebrating.

Should everything be free or do you want people to get paid for their time and effort to produce things we enjoy as consumers.
Granted most of the restrictions are outrageous, but since people want stuff better faster and for free, I guess a lot of people will be with out in the near future.

Its no easy solution to fix this problem

James

[ElanR]

James, I do want to pay for what I buy, but after I pay for it, I want to own it, be allowed to use it as I see fit, modify it, loan it out and -- after I no longer have use for it -- sell it. The current user license of most electronic intellectual property prohibits every single one of those. You are in fact not even buying anything, you're paying a license fee to use it under a set of restriction most people never read, the violation of which is a felony. The folks reselling a legit copy of Photoshop in our B&S forum here are felons.

The woman in this case is in the wrong and should be penalized. But the other side of this story is that the rest of us are one court ruling away from having to charge our guests a license fee to play music in our parties. You may think this to be a ridiculous example, but it's no more ridiculous than the real-life examples I gave here.

[jon_k]

I don't agree with the RIAA's business model.

The license for music is as follows:
* If I have a record, I can't transfer the song to 8 track format.
* If I have a cassette I can't transfer it to CD format.
* If I have a CD I can't transfer it to MP3 format, or vice versa MP3 to CD.

This is part of the provisions in the DCMA.

The RIAA has sued people over these violations and won.

So lets make a scenario in the photography world. Lets imagine you run a pro wedding photographer business. You shoot the wedding for a couple, the package includes 30 .jpegs for their uses. -- Lets flash ten years into the future when JPEG is obsolete and not used anymore.

What do you do. Do you hunt down the couple, find out they're using .SFFIF (Some Fictional Future Image Format) that they converted the old JPEG's from... and sue them for DCMA violations? You could make more money in court this way than your photography business ever would!

This is more or less what the RIAA has done, and they have won these cases.

If I was the wedding photographer in the above scenario, I wouldn't sue. The couple in the scenario would have clearly violated the DCMA, but I wouldn't want to create stress and heartache for people who just wanted to document their wedding. Nor would I expect them to buy the .SFFIF version of the images at a premium price from me.

So, when a Beatles fan has an old vinyl that he paid for, and he converts it to CD format for his car, what's the crime? Why does he have to pay $15.99 for the CD when he can just convert the vinyl he already paid for in 1978? I know this works out good for the RIAA execs, but how does this benefit the end user (you)?

[markfh]

Well folks, I'm not entirely convinced that they proved their case. From all that I've read about the evidence against her I'd have to say there's nothing there that can't be spoofed or that her computer hadn't been compromised.

There are at least half a dozen wireless networks in my neighborhood that I can tap into and use if I wanted to do just about anything I want. It ain't rocket science.

I hope she does appeal but I think they'd be hard pressed to find a jury let alone a judge that really understands enough about the technology.

[chenology]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-stealing.html