RIAA Admits 70 Cent Price is 'In the Range' 210
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In its professed battle to protect the 'confidentiality' of its 70-cents-per-download wholesale price, the RIAA has now publicly filed papers in UMG v. Lindor in which it admits that the 70-cents-per-download price claimed by the defendant is 'in the range'.(pdf) From the article: 'The pricing data really may not be all that secret. Late in 2005, former New York Attorney General (and current Governor) Eliot Spitzer launched an investigation into price fixing by the record labels, alleging collusion between the major labels in their dealings with the online music industry. Gabriel believes that making the pricing information public would 'implicate [sic] very real antitrust concerns' as the labels are not supposed to share contract information with one another ... Beckerman argues in a letter to the judge that the only reason the labels want to keep this information confidential is to 'serve their strategic objectives for other cases,' which he says does not rise to the legal threshold necessary for a protective order. The proposed order would force the labels to turn over contracts with their 12 largest customers. Most details--such as the identities of the parties--would be kept confidential, but pricing information and volume would not.'"
it's the opposite of trustworthy.... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if there's one thing record labels have an abundancy of, it's anti-trust.
Pricing Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pricing Comparison (Score:5, Informative)
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*The album was "Get Away From Me" by Nellie McKay, who reportedly fought long and hard with Sony to put out a "double-album". Apparently her insistence on a double-album for her second album ended her relationship w/ Sony.
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Yes
Sony wants 1 CD(album) because then Nellie still owes them another album
If the artist(e.g. nellie) has a contract with the distributor(e.g. sony) to produce two albums, the artist can only get out of the contract by producing two albums or having someone make the distributor an offer they can't refuse ala
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I can't recall where I got this from (TV show, news article?), so it could be wrong, but I think if you're a new "up and commer" artist, your cut is ~ $0.02 - $0.03. And I can't remember if that was per song or per CD! Again these numbers may not be exact, but it puts the RIAA
Re:Pricing Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
As I understand it, the production and advertising costs are usually recouped from the artists before they get a cut. In other words, those costs come out of the artists' $0.25, not out of the label's $0.45.
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The Problem With Music
by Steve Albini
http://negativland.com/albini.html [negativland.com]
Artists pay for everything (Score:5, Informative)
Quite true, and many more costs besides. The artists have to bear the entire cost of creating and selling the album, before they get any royalties.
Fair enough, you say? Perhaps - except they don't get to keep it. That album, that they conceived, wrote, performed, recorded, marketed and paid for in full, is no longer theirs. Copyright for the album is owned by the LABEL, and NOT the artist. That really sucks.
Time to link to Steve Vai's words of experience [vai.com] too, on this and the many other nefarious clauses that appear in a standard label contract.Re:Artists pay for everything (Score:5, Insightful)
The top 5 record companies are all far larger than any of their other competitors. That these companies cooperate in any way - like by forming the RIAA - ought to be a huge anti-trust violation.
Only a portion (Score:2)
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Payola, ticket master, law suits, lobbying, Harry Fox? (or who knows how many other licensing and reproductions agencies) and I'm sure there are many more.
The RIAA wants to only have to promote (or make successful) several different people per genre of music per year. That way they can concentrate the spending on those select few and get a better return on investment. There will always be a few new young good looking female pop sing
Re:Pricing Comparison (Score:5, Informative)
Most of what the RIAA groups do could be replaced by VCs who specialize in music, and with managers/agents. If the RIAA wasn't being a monopolizing, price-fixing force, it might have happened already.
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And in radio, there's "no payola".
wink wink. Right.
How else do you explain the incredible tripe playing on the radio these days, not to mention that there are several ongoing investigations into this very allegation. Yeah, it's an "allegation", but until they stop playing the same tired 42 songs of the month, promoted by either ClearChannel or Infinity, with a couple of "oldies" thrown in for "variety", you're going to have a mountain the size of Olympus Mons [wikipedia.org] to scale to convince anyone otherwise.
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but if you think about all that they take care of (advertising, risk of producing your album (which if it's your first could be a total loser bringing in no money), etc.), it doesn't sound too rediculous.
Until you find out that all those expenses are effectively taken from the artist's [salon.com] cut. They have to pay it back...
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"Not that I support the way labels do business, but of course those expenses are taken from the artist's cut. Do you propose that the record labels promote/produce/etc. for free? Any fee they do charge comes out of the "artist's cut". And if the label spends all that money promoting/producing/etc. and it makes no money, those costs are NOT taken from the artist's cut (because they have no cut, the revenue being 0). It's not like the artist is then expected to get a day job and pay back the initial costs (w
Re:Pricing Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you know how much money MOST recording artists will make from every dollar in record sales? Less than 8 cents, and that's only after all the expenses of the recording, distribution and marketing are paid for. In fact, nearly 1/3 of all recording artists who make records that sell more than 1000 copies (to get past the cases where only family members buy the records), will make exactly NOTHING from record sales. You can't just accept the very highest percentage that the top-paid artists will receive as representative, but look at what the recording industry does as a whole. After all, it's not only the top percent of artists that bring in the greatest portion of the entertainment industry's profits.
And the back-catalog, that enormous cash-cow of the big record companies, generally pay nearly nothing to the original artists. The composer might make a few cents on the dollar, but only if they didn't relinquish their publishing, which is much more common for new bands than you would think.
There are better ways for artists to make a living, and for their work to be distributed to consumers. Many have already found them, thank you very much.
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but I have no idea if it's accurate.
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As a crazy example, did you know that Michael Jackson gets mechanical royalties for the Beatles' back catalogue?
Sir Paul is (rightly) pissed about that one, since he doesn't get a dime.
Re:Pricing Comparison (Score:5, Funny)
You misunderstand. The article said, ".25 per song" -- not per dollar, not per copy.
Just 25 cents total, once and for all.
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Just 25 cents total, once and for all.
Then the rapper 50 Cent must be twice as successful as most artists!
All of MP3 profit margins (Score:3, Interesting)
That means a profitable bussiness that had no promotional and production costs for the artist could operate at 30 cents a song. Presumably with higher volume then that could be even lower and still make a profit.
Thus there's a 40 cent gap here. Surely the cost of promotion and production when ammortized over all artisits (proficable ones and not profitable ones) c
Damages (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I suspect that is the reason they wouldn't want their prices known; it destroys the RIAA's ability to sue for massive damages.
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If the RIAA want their pound of flesh, would they not be better off going after the Russian licensing agency?
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They aren't
If the RIAA want their pound of flesh, would they not be better off going after the Russian licensing agency?
Yes. But since the RIAA is in the US of A, suing a "innocent" company in another country (with different laws) for ridiculous amounts just might work.
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If they calculated the damages at $0.70 per download AllOfMP3.com would (likely) be facing damages of $100,000,000 or more which would probably put the company out of buisness. A smart (and well connected) company might consider buying the bankrupt company and attempt to get the legal right to sell the music; a valid argument to make to the RIAA is in places like Russia and China no one is willing to spend more than AllOfMP3.com was already charging for music and AllOfMP3.com would attempt to pr
Different types of Damages (Score:5, Interesting)
Whether or not this is wise law-making is debatable. I suspect that it would be better to force the victim to sue directly for punitive damages, thus leaving the matter to a judge to determine of the punishment fits the offense.
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They can also be used in cases where the actual economic damages are difficult to compute.
Actual, Statutory, and Punitive Damages (Score:5, Informative)
Whether or not this is wise law-making is debatable. I suspect that it would be better to force the victim to sue directly for punitive damages, thus leaving the matter to a judge to determine of the punishment fits the offense.
</blockquote>
This is not quite correct.
Actual damages are damages proven in court, and are intended to compensate the victim.
Punitive (also "Exemplary") damages are damages intended to "punish" or "make an example" of the victim (largely as a general and specific deterrent), beyond what compensates the victim.
Statutory damages are amounts set in statute law in the absence of proven amounts of actual damages (or when the proven amounts are lower); in some cases they are largely compensatory in purpose, and included on the presumption that the kind of harms the statute seeks to provide a remedy for are prohibitively difficult to prove and quantify, and that substituting a default damage amount is a way to provide a reasonable remedy. In other instances, their intent is somewhat punitive in nature, though they are particularly ineffective in that regard as they tend to be superceded by actual damages rather than on top of actual damages.
<blockquote>Whether or not this is wise law-making is debatable. I suspect that it would be better to force the victim to sue directly for punitive damages, thus leaving the matter to a judge to determine of the punishment fits the offense.
</blockquote>
Since the courts have held that punitive damages may only be awarded in a limited proportion to the actual damages proven, this would eliminate the principle role of statutory damages, which is to obviate the need to prove specific actual damages to receive some remedy for certain offenses.
Certainly, there is an argument that substantive due process analysis of the type that constrains <i>punitive</i> damage awards ought also be applied to statutory damage awards beyond what can be reasonably seen as compensatory, and/or that statutory damage amounts in law serving as a rebuttable presumption of actual damages rather than providing an amount that is available in all cases regardless of circumstances.
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I've often wondered why punitive damages are given to the plaintiff, rather than, f
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Punitive damages are held to serve a public social purpose by deterring, through the harsh example, deliberate wrongdoing—which is where punitive damages are available, generally— they are given to the plaintiff because doing so increases the incentive encourages the plaintiff to file suit where such de
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Sometimes (ok, rarely) the government does get a cut. But it makes sense to give it to the plaintiff in order to create an incentive to proceed with expensive litigation even when the actual damages are relatively low (which makes it damn hard to get representation). This may be viewed as an unfortunate response to the inefficiency of our regulatory agencies -- in other words, the plaintiff is doing the g
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Because their lawyers get a third and lawyers write the laws.
Re:Damages (Score:4, Funny)
The damages requested are quite reasonable. Yeah, it's only about a quarter million in actual losses, but the adminstrative expenses run to a trillion and half, especially given that the administrative offices are located in the Cayman Islands.
KFG
Re:Damages (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Damages (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I understand it's pretty expensive there. I had a record company executive try to explain it to me once, but he used a lot of financial jargon, like "exchange rate" and "hooker," so I really didn't catch it all.
Then he walked away singing Titties and beer, titties and beer, titties and beer. .
And all this time I've been laboring under the impression that record company executives weren't particularly fond of Zappa.
KFG
Re:Damages (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Damages (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's be honest here, the only people that truly cares about these particular details are the nerd-types, and while we are at it, let's be honest enough to say that we are a minority. I would bet that if you approached ten people that you normally wouldn't associate with (or they wouldn't normally associate with you) and ask them what a "lossless" or "lossy" format is, nine or ten of them will say "huh?". In short, most people don't really care about that.
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"Future portable players will support formats which allow you to fit 2 or 3 times as much music on them without noticable loss in quality. Do you want to buy a future-proof lossless format which can take advantage of such an advancement in future but will take a bit more space on your PC, or a lossy format which might result in noticable quality lo
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It might be more appropriate to say "They care, they
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If they only make $0.70 wouldn't that imply that for the damages of 1.5 trillion from AllOfMP3.com would only be justified if AllOfMP3.com had uploaded over 2 trillion copies of songs to their users? That would mean if there are 6 billion people in the would that everyone would have had to of downloaded 333 songs. This is not about actual damages and all about putting allofmp3 out of business.
$150,000 per song is just the maximum amount defined under statute. I suspect requesting the maximum from AllofMP3 has alot more to do with getting into newspapers (and thus reminding us all that the RIAA is watching you) then getting the money. The reward is likely to be less.. if they win.. which they may very well do.
Slashdot posturing aside, there's plenty of "common sense" (aka nonsense - but judges and jurries do consider how things look to them) in favor of the argument that AllOfMp3 was pretty bla
AllofMp3 (Score:5, Informative)
and registered a U.S. domain root. (.com)
.com is not a US domain root, it is an international root mainly used for commerce. The US domain root is .us That's not to say the root servers aren't in the US, only that .com is international and not country specific.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
-GiH
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I seem to recall seeing both
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That'd be because the UK's suffix is (drumroll please) .uk! Stone the crows, it's a cor-blimey miracle guv. You never see .gb because that would be "Great Britain" which is a geographic, not political, designation.
It's a quibbling point, but .gb actually was one of the original country codes for the UK. Wiki [wikipedia.org]:
.gb is a reserved Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. Introduced at the same time as the UK's other top-level domain (.uk), it was never widely used, and as it is no longer possible to register under this domain, has since fallen into disuse.
-GiH
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"blatantly using the law" -- that's a funny way to say "doing it legally"
I'll assume you're not so stupid as to miss the vital importance of the changes you made to my words in you "quote" (if my assumption is wrong, my appologies to your caretaker), and are therefore fudding, or just stroking the old ego stick. Blatantly using Russian Law (as opposed to say, U.S. law, which.. you know.. usually applies to deals made in the U.S.) isn't hiding behind legitimate authority, it's just trying to confuse and muddle an issue so sad saps like you can feel like it was wrong to shut them
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-GiH
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Except where exactly is the transaction taking place? Is it in the purchaser's home, or where AllOfMP3's server's are located? This sounds like something that needs to be defined by international treaties, and not US law [but of course US judges would never think of that].
From the sounds of it, it would be legal to purchase from AllOfMP3 if you are physically loc
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"Except where exactly is the transaction taking place? Is it in the purchaser's home, or where AllOfMP3's server's are located? This sounds like something that needs to be defined by international treaties, and not US law [but of course US judges would never think of that]."
The transaction is taking place between a US citizen and the Russian outfit -- that's what counts. When this goes to trial, a key point will be whether allofmp3 is actively soliciting business from the US. Allofmp3 will say they are
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Or some other location...
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-GiH
I don't see how people can... (Score:2)
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I think the fact a client is not required to use the service is one of its strengths. You can download new tracks for yourself anywhere you can get internet access and the ability to save them to a local disc. They allow two songs to download simultaneously at a time so it should be possible to configure any download manager to work under these restrictions.
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Actually, they don't restrict the number of simultaneous downloads at all, AFAICT. In moz, you just have to up the number of "persistant connections" and Bob's your uncle. I have mine set to 6 and I can do 6 downloads at once.
The things I really like about emusic:
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$0.22 per track. The fact that the RIAA is talking $0.70 wholesale really highlights the fact that they are greedy criminals.
I think you've done some incorrect currency conversion there. eMusic tracks are $0.33 in the USA and £0.22 in the UK (at the current exchange rate, $0.33 is £0.17, by the way). iTMS, for reference, is $0.99 in the USA and £0.79 in the UK. This makes iTMS 3 times the price in the USA and 3.6 times the price in UK.
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And "piracy" means violently taking over a ship at sea. What's your point?
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"And "piracy" means violently taking over a ship at sea. What's your point?"
Type "dict piracy" into your Firefox URL bar. You might be surprised!
This is what's known as a "homonym," or a "homophone." Other examples are "bark" and "desert."
Undercutters (Score:2, Funny)
Pain And Suffering (Score:5, Funny)
Or something like that.
In all honesty, it's a hard thing to nail down. If I work in a donut factory, there is SOMEONE, even if that person isn't me, who knows how much that donut costs to make, including materials, equipment, labor, shipping, and pesticides. When it comes to things like music, art, etc., how DO you quantify the cost of the artists' talents, the labels' marketing efforts, the RIAA's... something... etc. Even the most talented singer in the world is useless without distribution... and marketing and distribution channels can sometimes (Britney?) overcome a shallow pool of talent.
That being said, anything that comes out of the multi-mawed beast known as the RIAA is met with instant skepticism. When you spend years upon years intimidating people who may or may not have committed a crime, and many of those that are nominally guilty are in the "OMG, You ate a peanut out of the grocery store bin!" variety, it's hard to find any foothold of remorse in the market. So $0.70 wholesale price might be in the "ballpark." But I don't give a damn.
Re:Pain And Suffering (Score:5, Interesting)
The internet has changed everything
The cost to distribute music is no longer significant and a (hard-working) individual can promote themself to a reasonably successful level with very little work; you probably won't sell out stadiums, but you can make a decent living for the rest of your life as an Artist which (from all the Artists I have met) is the dream. Now, Labels exploit artists they do not help them.
The "Cost" of an Artist's work is a lifetime of developing a skillset that very few people have; it is priceless. The price of an Artist's work per song with how little it costs to distribute the song should be (roughly) the ammount of money the artist is getting.
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This depends on the artist. There are an awful lot of pop-idiots, like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, who, without the mass-market power of their record labels and publicists would be improverished and completely unknown, and deservedly so. I hardly think these characters are furious with their labels for turning their pretty faces and marginal talents into millions upon millions of dollars. It's the poor schmucks with talent but no marketing savvy
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I've seen her goodies.
Britney couldn't even make it as a *porn star* without her label.
Hell, she wouldn't make much as a hooker, either!
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Re:Pain And Suffering (Score:4, Funny)
Kyle: What's the matter with him?
Detective: This month he was hoping to have a gold plated shark tank bar installed right next to the pool, but thanks to people downloading his music for free he must now wait a few months before he can afford it.
*Lars crying next to his pool*
Detective: Come, there's more. Here's Britney Spears' private jet...notice anything? Britney used to have a Gulfstream 4, now she's had to sell it and get a Gulfstream 3 because people like you chose to download her music for free.
*Britney sighs, depressed*
Detective: The Gulfstream 3 doesn't even have a remote control for its surround sound dvd system. Still think downloading music for free is no big deal?
Kyle: We...didn't realize what we were doing...
Detective: That is the folly of man. Now look in this window. Here you see the loving family of Master P. Next week is his son's birthday and all he's ever wanted is an island in French Polynesia.
Kyle: So he's going to get it, right?
Detective: *closes eyes and puts hands on forehead* I see an island without an owner. If thing's keep going the way they are, the child will not get his tropical paradise.
Stan: We're sorry, we'll never download music for free again!
Detective: Man must learn to think of these horrible outcomes before he acts selfishly, or else...I fear...recording artists will be forever doomed to a life of only semi-luxury.
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Well, that makes it easy - it's in the artist's contract. The cost of the artist's talents is what the artist agr
Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
But doesn't this basically mean "if we told everyone the price then people would know it was illegal!"
Ehm, I think you're wrong. (Score:2)
Gabriel believes that making the pricing information public would 'implicate [sic] very real antitrust concerns' But doesn't this basically mean "if we told everyone the price then people would know it was illegal!"
Haven't read the full text through yet (working on it) but.. I think the answer is.. no.
Basically their argument goes "we're not suppose to know what each other's prices are.. so we can't tell you either cuz then we'd all know."
I also could be wrong, flame away.
-GiH
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In fact you are right.
And they are the ones missing something.
Why the [sic]? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is there a "[sic]" in there? That is in fact how you spell the word, and it is used correctly in that context (having the meaning "imply" or "entail").
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Imply, implicate, and entail are NOT synonyms.
Implicate can mean "to require as a necessary circumstance", i.e, a prerequisite (not a result). Here, the antitrust concerns would arise *as a result of* disclosure of the pricing information. Even "imply" would not be correct here, but "entail" would be OK.
RIAA to MAFIAA (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
all the contracts should be public (Score:2)
For everyone else, a non-public contract should be viewed by the courts as highly suspect. The existance of secret contracts exposes people to fraudulent modification of the contracts. If it's not public, it should be damn difficult to enforce.
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Re:There's that free market stuff again. (Score:5, Interesting)
You have that backwards. The music distribution business is highly regulated by copyright law. That has allowed the RIAA cartel to exist. Without the regulation, Napster would have finished the cartel long ago.
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And without regulation, Napster would've replaced one cartel with another long ago. It's not like Napster was the magic bullet that solves human nature.
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Along with Beareshare, Limewire, Kazza, AllofMP3, Yahoo, Google... It would no longer be a monopoly run by a cartel.
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I make my living as a photographer. Photography, like many artforms, is a completely unregulated market. There are absolutely no government controls over this industry, besides general trade (contract) law and criminal law. No license, besides a local business license, is required to open a photography business. There are no controls over education, equipment
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Yeah, who would ever want to hear from a lawyer who regularly takes the cases of RIAA defendants? [slashdot.org]
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You Are Not A Laywer. So please stop being the tool for this lawyer and his celebrity seeking habits (what is this, the 2nd article published this week from this guy?).
You're going to say that slashdot readers don't LOVE to argue about this case? That it dosen't drive hits and discussions like nobodies buisiness?(If you do, you're wrong, check the past few articles for hit-count and the suprising number of interesting items posted under them.)
Slashdot is edutainment - and these articles deliver.
-GiH
Not a Lawyer, just a Law Student.
Re: Only Lawyers may even think about law!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course Slashdot is not a lawyer, but it is silly to propose that only lawyers and judges can have a valid interest in, and discussion of, legal matters that affect all citizens. In fact many laws are actually written by people who aren't necessarily lawyers. These people who dare insert themselves in the legal arena without the requirement of having a law degree are called "legislators."
While it is true that the UMG_v_Lindor case gets a lot of mentions in Slashdot, it is also the case that it is one of the **only** cases out of the 20,000 or so RIAA lawsuits that is going to trial and where a tough litigator is trying to force the RIAA to back up its claims with more than just the thread of ruinously expensive legal action. It also doesn't hurt that the "Recording Industry vs. the People" blog site provides a rare blow by blow account of a legal action in progress which makes for an exciting, albeit slow, tale of one litigator standing up to a veritable army of corporate lawyers with nearly unlimited funds. The blog is an important way of trying to balance the playing field against an opponent with deep pockets and who will play every trick in or out of the book, full well knowing that they will probably avoid any accountability for their own actions.
Only Lawyers may even think about law!!! (WOOT) (Score:5, Insightful)
More seriously:
A great example of a wonderful U.S. legislator was Benjamin Franklin - He was also the U.S.'s key scientist and one of her great publishers of news and raw data. Technologist should adopt Franklin as their Patron of Thought - because the man delivered for engineering, science, philosophy, theology, and political science. The same brain that can brilliantly explain and master the formation of distributive processing and Wide Area Networks could do a great deal of good for this nation by injecting simple practical knowledge of what the internet, and the future hold in store for law and the U.S.
-GiH
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-GiH
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