Let's just pretend for a minute that the RIAA has come knocking on your door accusing you of using a P2P service to illegally share music, and violating copyrights. Your first instinct is what? If you're Jeffrey Howell, you:
Remember all of the fuss that the RIAA made over AllofMP3? They sued the Russian music website for a whopping $1.65 trillion back in December of 2006, and now that lawsuit has been dropped. Yes dropped.
In the music industry, everybody is out for money these days. The artists want their fair share, and so the RIAA is out to make sure that they do, In addition to the artists are the composers and songwriters who want their fair share of money as well, and so the ASCAP is out to make sure that they do.
WARNING: Reading this article may cause extreme uncontrollable gut-buster laughter. Continue reading at your own risk...
Some of you may not realize it, but record companies (like EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and Universal) pay rather large amounts of money each year to trade groups like the RIAA and the IFPI which funds their operations. In return, these groups support the artists and labels and spend some of their money to help stop piracy.
Demonoid, a popular invite-only BitTorrent tracker, seems to be swimming in some murky waters lately. At the end of September Demonoid was forced to temporarily shutdown by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), which is equivalent to America's RIAA. They came back online a few days later after installing a system to block all Canadian traffic.
In the very first file-sharing case to go before a jury, Jammie Thomas of Minnesota was found guilty of copyright infringement and ordered to pay $9,250 for each of the 24 songs that were shared over Kazaa back in 2005. That means she owes the RIAA $222,000 dollars.
Many of us buy CDs and rip the music to our computers so that the songs can be put on a portable device like an iPod, Zune, etc. Many of us also do the reverse and purchase songs online, and then burn them to a CD so that they can be listened to in the car, or anywhere else. Neither of those situations in my book, is considered stealing.
We've already heard over and over again that sales of CD's are down, way down. People are turning to online services like iTunes to get their music and therefore have no reason to go out and purchase entire CD's from retailers. The recording industry isn't willing to let CD sales slip away quite yet though, so they've come up with a new way that they hope will help.
It’s amazing what AllofMP3.com has been through over the last year. They’ve been on a wild roller-coaster ride that looks as though it may be ending soon.
Remember the days of Napster when 70 million users traded music, and life was good? Then the RIAA stepped in and sued Napster for copyright infringement and the happy days of sharing music for free were over. Napster then introduced Napster 2.0 which required users to pay a fee for the once free music which didn’t prove to be successful.
Wouldn’t it be nice to get some free music downloads with no strings attached? That’s something many of us long for, and it’s the same thing that the RIAA despises. One of the places where I can download free music is a site that one of my friends told me about, and it’s called PureVolume.
Just when we thought AllofMP3.com had its last breath, they were resuscitated. A Russian Court has told VISA that they must process payments for AllofMP3.com because the site is legal according to Russian law. This now gives life back to the popular download site that was nearly gone.
It is well-known that the RIAA aggressively files lawsuits when they feel they have evidence that someone is pirating music. Back in February we reported that a 16 year old boy from New York was being sued by the RIAA for piracy, and decided to fight back. He’s not alone in his fight anymore becasuse a woman from Beaverton, Oregon is also fighting back.
It’s been one tough journey for AllofMP3.com as the RIAA slowly sucked all life out of their music service based in Russia. Their woes actually started years ago, but more recently you probably remember the $1.65 trillion ($150,000 per violation) lawsuit filed against them in December? Then back in May, AllofMP3 took a hard hit as most of their ways to accept payment were taken away.
There’s more bad news for AllofMP3.com today after an announcement was made that a man out of London who was selling vouchers that users could purchase to buy music from AllofMP3.com was arrested. Thus far, the largest legal action that the RIAA has pursued was the filing of a 1.64 trillion dollar lawsuit (here and here).
Last week, the RIAA announced that they were taking a different route with college students who they accuse of downloading songs via P2P networks illegally. Instead of filing lawsuits and taking them to court right away, they were giving them a different option. The RIAA set up a website where students could go to settle their case by paying a fine.
The RIAA is back at it again! And this time, instead of going after younger kids and teens, they’re going after college students. They are taking a different route with the college students by trying to persuade them to settle the disputes out of court which means less hassle for the RIAA but more money.
The RIAA is in the news again, but this time instead of a victim paying out money to the recording labels, the RIAA was forced to pay out 50,000 in legal fees.
I haven't been able to find information on the largest lawsuit in history but I'm sure this one is right up at the top. The RIAA (yes, I was just as shocked as you ;) ) is suing the website AllofMP3.com on behalf of EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music, and Warner Music in the amount of $150,000 for each of the 11 million songs that were downloaded from June to October of 2006.
