Last week, a jury ordered Boston University grad student Joel Tenenbaum to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $675,000 for sharing 30 songs via KaZaA. That’s $22,500 a song, a figure that the jury decided on because they deduced that Tenenbaum’s copyright infringement had been willful—a finding that they came to in part because Tenenbaum adopted a “fair use” defense for his actions, saying in a FAQ that he thinks “Art is meant to be shared.” Tenenbaum and his legal team are preparing to appeal to the trial judge, but for now, let’s all see what 30 songs Tenenbaum figured were OK for sharing with the old-cruddy-software-using masses. MORE »
Posts Tagged ‘Riaa’
playlists
The RIAA’s Newest Big-Money Playlist: Who Knew That Sharing A Limp Bizkit Song Could Be So Expensive?
The Law
Record Industry Would Like To Ban Jammie Thomas From Listening To Any Music, Ever
From the Spectacles That Are Just Making Everyone Look Silly Dept.: As if being put on the hook for $1.92 million wasn’t enough, the music industry wants to take away Jammie Thomas’ access to file-sharing services like KaZaA, too: MORE »
The Law
Court Orders Jammie Thomas To Pay The Music Industry Lot Of Money
Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota resident whose legal tussle with the RIAA has resulted in some hyperbolic news outlets throwing around Joan Of Arc comparisons (oy), has been found guilty of pirating music by a Federal jury and ordered to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $1.92 million–$80,000 for each one of the 24 not-very-good songs that the music-industry lobbying group wanted to nail her for stealing via KaZAA. (Fun fact: That amount of money could buy about 101,000 full-price CDs, before taxes.) In a cruel irony, the money she’ll have to pay is eight times the amount she would have had to shell out had she not decided to appeal the guilty verdict brought against her in October 2007. MORE »
shenanigans
AT & T Swear They’re Not Narcs
Yesterday, word spread that AT & T and Comcast might be shutting down the Internet service of customers engaged in music piracy, whatever that means. Today, AT & T issued their de rigeur denial: “RIAA? We don’t know no RIAA!” MORE »
Layoffs
Internet Readies Its Nelson Muntz Impressions As News Of RIAA Layoffs Breaks
Not that the record industry’s lobbying… MORE »
top
RIAA Fires Its Detective Agency, But Don’t Think That Means You’re Off The Hook
The RIAA has informed the information-gathering company MediaSentry that it will no longer need its services for gathering evidence against people who share Norah Jones songs using outdated Internet protocols, a move that may be in line with the trade organization’s recent decision to stop filing mass lawsuits against people suspected of uploading files. In MediaSentry’s place, the organization has hired another company, the cutely named Danish antipiracy outfit DtecNet Software ApS, to hunt down those people who may be playing pirate in between bouts of wank mining. Will DtecNet work with the RIAA and internet service providers to track down and kill -9 the accounts of those people who may be unleashing discographies across the Internet? I’d say “maybe,” although there’s a bit of a catch—no one’s formally informed the ISPs that they’re supposed to be working as a team yet. MORE »
An Early Christmas Gift From The RIAA
In a move that is a bit of a surprise (to me, at least), the Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it’s moving on from its strategy of using the legal system to crack down on those people sharing music from member labels. After 35,000 lawsuits since 2003, what changed? MORE »
On The Docket: DMX, Liberace’s Ex, And An RIAA Muscle-Flex
Although the O.J. sentencing probably tops… MORE »
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The RIAA Begs To Differ
In my time here at Idolator, I’ve written some unkind things about the RIAA, and some items have probably been slightly more fair (saying I believed the group does “more harm than good”) than others (implying the organization is made up of “a bunch of soulless creeps”). Still, it’s good to get the other side of the story, right? MORE »
