The Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to release a barrage of civil lawsuits against people who are illegally offering to “share” substantial amounts of copyrighted music over the Internet. The RIAA said it plans to go after the biggest offenders first by slapping them with lawsuits as early as mid-August.
The RIAA said through a statement posted on their web site, “The law is clear and the message to those who are distributing substantial quantities of music online should be equally clear — this activity is illegal, you are not anonymous when you do it, and engaging in it can have real consequences,” said RIAA president Cary Sherman. “We’d much rather spend time making music then dealing with legal issues in courtrooms. But we cannot stand by while piracy takes a devastating toll on artists, musicians, songwriters, retailers and everyone in the music industry.”
“Once we begin our evidence-gathering process, any individual computer user who continues to offer music illegally to millions of others will run the very real risk of facing legal action in the form of civil lawsuits that will cost violators thousands of dollars and potentially subject them to criminal prosecution,” said RIAA President Cary Sherman.
(via Recording Industry Association of America)
3 responses so far ↓
William Coan Pattisall // Jul 25, 2003 at 5:14 pm
To Cary Sherman; the riaa; record companies; and any other such scoundrels: I hope your greed becomes your eventual undoing. Your lawsuit aims at protecting your own interests, not the artists, songwriters, and musicians.
It is no secret that record execs bind aspiring musicians to adhesion contracts that amount to nothing more than indentured servitude.
Musicians get crumbs; the leftovers from you people stuffing your fat, bloated, faces.
Musicians’ contracts don’t allow artists to keep the publishing rights to their own songs. The porkers known as record execs horde them. Therefore, artists don’t really suffer.
As for retailers, I don’t see why file sharing makes any difference to them. They have toughened from years of cd price fixing. I speculate the cost was dumped first onto retailers, but then more heavily onto consumers.
The real tragedy is that you will not embrace this new technology. If you aging, thick-skinned, bald-headed men would get off of your fat, wrinkled asses, then you might find a new bussiness model that is profitable.
The defendants in the grokster suit are far more innovative than you. Kaaza’s not spending one cent on advertising and making millions is proof. Don’t you think you could adapt their methods somehow? Hmm?
Lastly, by threatening the very demographic group responsible for your prosperity with civil and criminal liability, I think you have managed to nail the lid shut on your own coffin. I didn’t think that was possible…
I probably speak for more than just myself when I proclaim that I will never go to a store and buy a cd again.
So don’t get offended when the younger generation, my “peers”, eventually force you from your jobs, cut your pensions, and show you no gratitude. You are only getting what you deserve.
new rocknroll // Sep 8, 2003 at 9:22 pm
You all need to get a clue. Venting about the RIAA is going to get you nowhere… pick a data .. call it October 1 and on this date:
1) get anyone you know to cancel all things AOL TW… Time Mag subscriptions (they’ve got a ton of magazines which can be found herehttp://www.pathfinder.com/pathfinder/index.html), HBO, AOL TW Cable, AOL TW HSI, AOL Service, etc., etc. If somewhere greater than 2% dropped their services… they’d have some explaining to do about why their music is so important that noone wants to do business with them any more.
2) Don’t ever buy any Sony hardware ever. Send them e-mails and letters. Better yet show up at your local best buy on October 1 or some date with your smashed up Sony equipment and leave it with them as a visible reminder of the long lasting impact that Sony’s prosecution of filesharers will have… create enough of a mess and perhaps BestBuy or Ckt City would drop Sony… then you could shop there exclusively and I bet Sony’s share price would drop 10%.
Absent this kind of visible, committed grass roots movements… forget it…. noone cares… they’ll sue the stupid/careless and everyone will move to a more carefully designed sharing program…and the war will go on ….
Stop Your Complaining // Sep 10, 2003 at 3:56 pm
To all the Don Henleys and Randy Travis’ out there who pull up in your expensive limos to court and gripe about how your losing money from all this. Don’t be so full of yourselves. NO ONE IS DOWNLOADING ANY OF YOUR CRAP!!
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