Go ahead and read this court transcript. It’s a 35-page PDF of the London-Sire Records. Does 1-4 copyright infringement case. It’s the same song and dance you’re all familiar with: RIAA catches someone downloading a song, which entitles it to thousands upon thousands of dollars in remuneration. Only this time, the presiding judge, Nancy Gertner of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, actually recognizes the complete absurdity of suing these people so much money for downloading music. Some highlights:

• “There’s a huge imbalance in these cases. The record companies are represented by large law firms with substantial resources. The law is also overwhelmingly on their side.”

• “I can’t say this is a situation that is a goof situation or a fair situation, it is , however, the situation.”

• “You know, it seems to me that counsel representing the record companies have an ethical obligation to fully understand that are fighting people without lawyers, to fully understand that, more than just how do we serve them, but just to understand that the formalities of this are basically bankrupting people, and that it’s terribly critical that you stop it…”

• “…that it was his son who did the downloading and his son has no assets, you’re getting water from a stone. What are you pursuing here?”

The whole thing is pretty tremendous.

Here’s what I don’t understand about all of this. Let’s say the RIAA catches me downloading a song. All of a sudden I owe them several thousand dollars for copyright infringement, right? Now, let’s say I walk into Best Buy and physically steal a copy of an album. Do I owe the RIAA thousands of dollars in that scenario? Because if copyright infringement=theft and theft=small fine, why is the RIAA suing these people for thousands of dollars? How does that make sense?

via Slashdot

How much does it cost to monitor college students’ anti-American P2P activities? A whole lot, and that’s money colleges could be spending on, I don’t know, education.

This chart breaks down the cost of complying with, specifically, the new provisions of the Higher Education Act of 2008. That law, which the RIAA and MPAA were able to lobby their way into, requires colleges try to stem the spread of illegal P2P downloads on campus. The tools to police what students are up to exist—ipaudit is one that comes to mind—but is it really the business of colleges, realm of higher learning, to snoop on what their students are up to? Why not live and let live, punishing violations as they occur rather than spending all day playing cyber nanny?

One comment at Inside Higher Ed goes into the issue of government-sponsored censorship and prior restraint (in a sense), since the law applies to state schools as while as private schools. That’s an issue for another day, I think.

Really, though — who doesn’t like czars? Although the czars of today are a far cry from their imperial namesakes, they are still in positions of great power and presumed authority. I can’t imagine that, more than a decade into the ongoing controversy, this Intellectual Property Czar position has been created for anything other than the abuse of media lobbyists. After all, technology and science advisors should have already been well-versed in the subject when Bush came into power in 2000 — about when this thing really started taking off.

But no, they’ve waited until the month before the man is out of office to create yet another executive position to mandate policy, probably with the advisement of a battalion of industry lawyers. Not only that, but they’ve stiffened penalties for piracy — home-grown piracy by ones and twos, not the organized piracy of Asia where factories pump out knockoffs by the million. “Counterfeiting and piracy costs the United States nearly $250 billion annually,” says the Chamber of Commerce. As if the album-rippers of the United Mom’s Basements of America have that kind of pull!
[image from an old Fark Photoshop contest]

Most people who get threatened by the RIAA with a lawsuit opt to settle out of court. Maybe they should go to trial instead. Jammie Thomas of Minnesota did just that. She was found guilty of sharing 24 music files over the Kazaa network and ordered to pay $222,000 – that’s $9,250 per track. The decision came from a federal jury last year and marked the one and only trial win for the RIAA.

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Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s running mate, is not your friend when it comes to technology. Well, he could well be your friend, if you’re the RIAA or MPAA.

The vice presidential nominee has sponsored bills over the year that were championed by both the music and movie industry. He was one of the main forces behind the Perform Act, which is what the RIAA used to sue XM Satellite Radio for giving its customers the ability to record songs over-the-air.

One of Biden’s bills that would have made encrypting your data much more difficult, which encouraged Phil Zimmermann to create PGP.

If this type of thing revs your engine, be sure to read CNET’s full breakdown. I know many of you couldn’t give a damn who’s president, much less vice president, (good on you, by the way), but I know that TechCrunch endorsed Obama for his views on technology, so maybe a handful of you care. If not, carry on.

The National Center for State Courts, a non-profit dedicated to “Helping Courts Anticipate Change and Better Serve the Public” has released a comic book that aimed at educating children on how the courts work by ripping a case right out of the headlines: piracy! Sadly, the tale is so fantastical - most cases end up in Civil court, not State, and are rarely tried with a public defender - that it loses most of its educational value. As BBG points out:

The strip also confuses federal with magistrate courts and presents a courtroom scenario that would never occur in real life.

It’s the Pascal’s Wager of antipiracy arguments: who cares about the truth when you might burn in hell? I submit that the war is lost when you’re reduced to publishing Chick Tracts.

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When Muxtape was shut down at the weekend, it was met with utterly predictable “Death to the RIAA!” cries. Hopefully we’re above such childishness here, and can spend a minute or two looking at the cartel’s claims, and then we can evaluate the RIAA’s position.

This is what the RIAA told Portfolio.com:

For the past several months, we have communicated our legal concerns with the site and repeatedly tried to work with them to have illegal content taken down. Muxtape was hosting copies of copyrighted sound recordings without authorization from the copyright owners. Making these recordings available for streaming playback also requires authorization from the copyright owners. Muxtape has not obtained authorization from our member companies to host or stream copies of their sound recordings

Would Muxtape have qualified as a public performance, for which authorization would have been needed, or fair use? I make a Muxtape using AmazonMP3-purchased songs then put it on here for you all to listen—would I be violating copyright?

All I’m saying is, not every discussion of RIAA tactics needs to descend into silly name-calling and unproductive temper tantrums.

A Bronx woman will have to pay the RIAA $6,050 for making songs available to download on Kazaa. That works out to something like $756 per song (there were eight songs in question).

The case, Electra v. Barker, matters a little more than serving as anti-RIAA fodder. The RIAA was trying to argue that merely making songs available in a shared folder was tantamount to copyright infringement. If that were the case, the RIAA wouldn’t have to prove that anyone actually downloaded songs from your computer (that is, that you actually uploaded songs). That seems, I don’t know, unfair, but my days of freaking out at the RIAA are over.

What’s the worst that can happen to someone who refuses to pay such a settlement? Are you looking at jailtime for downloading some songs?

Hey, you! Wanna be outraged? Try to go to muxtupe.com.

Oh! It’s down, and thanks to the RIAA, no less!

(Pandora Radio’s days may be numbered, too, by the way.)

That said, muxtupe was one of those sites I’d heard about but never used for more than 24 seconds. “Sharing playlists” really isn’t too high on my list of things I want to do.

But yes, now some of us have yet another reason to be mad at the RIAA.

And if you have no idea what Muxtape is (was?), it’s a site that lets users upload MP3s, then creates and easy-to-share playlist of said music.

via ReadWriteWeb

The RIAA is looking for people and is willing to sweep up whomever it needs to in order to accomplish its continuing goal of punishing piracy. Under a March court order, Tufts University and other ISP’s in the district are supposed to provide a list of possible violators when not able to provide names to a “reasonable degree of technical certainty.”

MediaSentry has identified 11 IP addresses of being an interest to the lawsuit. The RIAA would like people to believe those 11 IP addresses should belong to 11 easily identifiable users. Or even close to easily identifiable. However, that is not the case.
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