Teen Accuses Record Companies of Collusion 393
evilned1 writes "A 16-year-old boy being sued by five record companies accusing him of online music piracy, accused the recording industry on Tuesday of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats."
NO WAI!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't wait till studios figure out this isn't the 19th century...
There is a way to make money in music/movies. Selling mass copies of media is not it.
Tom
This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
Silulu. Hot Polynesian Geek Chick. HPGC [scitechpulse.com]
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Why not send your money to FLOSS projects, or sponsor a stipend for a budding developer to give a talk at a conference or something instead.
Or just keep your money...
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
And your source for this claim is
Oh, the RIAA. Right.
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hmmm, indeed. Two words: Guantanamo Bay.
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
if he can actually get the courts to agree that the RIAA is wasting their time, it's a win for everyone, which is why he deserves more than a starving FLOSS developer. i equate a FLOSS developer who doesn't have a real job with an artist who refuses to join our capitalist society. our country has been capitalist for over 200 years... that's not going to change, you don't deserve my money if you can't figure that out for yourself. it's called getting a real job and making sure that anything you code on your own time belongs to you. not too difficult.
if i had the money to donate, i'd donate it to this kid. he's taking on a worthy cause (through his lawyers). chances are a "starving" FLOSS developer has the means to get a real job and afford to live, while a 16 year old kid taking on the RIAA probably doesn't.
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Or in other words, "I didn't do, but even if I did they made me do it, and never told me not to, and
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, it seems to me that the argument that he did not download the music is not just rationalization. If the RIAA has accused him of downloading and he (or his sister) actually bought the music, what has he done wrong?
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
We're talking about "legal" and "illegal". Right and wrong have nothing to do with it.
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
My Dad, who is a lawyer, always used to say: "Law is not justice, legal is not right and illegal is not wrong."
Law is just a set of rules for the smooth functioning of society and has nothing to do with morality or ethics - they may overlap in places, but that does not mean a thing.
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Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Funny)
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I hope you relize that soon, or we will get to hear about how everyone sucks because they don't rave about you piano music.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
Innocent unless proven guilty, remember? One of those democratic principles we're supposed to be fighting for?
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
In WWII did the soldiers decide they weren't going to fire at the enemy combatants because "they hadn't been proven guilty in front of a jury of their peers?" No, they shot at them, and if they captured them, they were sent to POW camps, where they were held as guilty until after the war (or they were traded). You don't try people in war like that, it just doesn't make sense, as all of your time would be spent on the obvious.
I guess you missed the part where Bush declared that the Gitmoees aren't POWs, German soldiers in WW2 aren't enemy combatants, and we aren't actually at war with anyone in particular. Aside from that, you're doing fine.
The people at gitmo are so unlikely to be innocent it's not even a question.
Based on what, exactly? You round up a bunch of people in Afghanistan and they're suddenly bloodthirsty animals? If they weren't then, they are now, and with good reason.
These are the prisoners who demand TVs during the world cup, than destroyed them during commercials.
Sound like fans to me.
These are people who will do anything to kill the western way.
Even if it means raising sheep in a village you've never heard of - suck on that!
I imagine the odds of one of them being innocent is much LESS than the odds that any given person in american prisons is innocent.
That's about 40%, right?
But all these big hot shot lawyers are clamoring to defend them. It's pure publicity on their part, they don't care about guilt or innocence, in fact, they want guilty parties to go free. if these lawyers cared about justice, they'd donate their time to help cases where people were legitimately screwed by the justice system.
So you see nothing wrong with throwing someone in a hole for 3 years, declaring them outside the Geneva convention, and outside civil due process? I hope they come for you tonight.
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously...
They've found a rather large number of folks at Gitmo to be innocent.
Do a search for british gitmo prisoners.
We (america) engaged in *TORTURE* of them which means any admission of guilt on their parts is suspect.
If I were to waterboard you, shave you, parade you around naked, etc. as we have done to these guys, you would confess to just about anything in under 48 hours.
We really need to hold ourselves to higher standards if we hope to be the shining beacon on the hill.
Or we just need to say we are savages too and stop pretending we are better than everyone else.
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Over five years, for David Hicks at least.
Still yet to be charged.
Still yet to have any substantial evidence against him released.
And recently announced, no guarantee that time served will count towards any future sentance.
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Even the Pentagon says only about 10% will face trial because of a lack of evidence: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361740/ [msn.com]
And of course there's Seton Hall Law School's report: http://law.shu.edu/news/guantanamo_report_final_2_ 08_06.pdf [shu.edu] (pdf)
Two notable factoids: only 5% were captured by US forces. Secondly, we were paying a $4285 reward per head. Pakistan delivered quite a few and with a per capita income = $720 [worldbank.org.pk] (that's almost 6 years of pay as a reward
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that completely flabberghasts most of the world is that USA actually debate such a thing. What century do we live in anyway ? Seriously, they're called "human rights" for a reason. What part of Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind,(...) is hard to grasp ?
But even ignoring that, there's a second problem, atleast equally bad.
It's perfectly possible (likely even!) that most of the people in Gitmo are guilty of horrible crimes. The way one deals with such is by charging people for an actual court, and have the court hand out a sentence. (which in the USA can include the death-penalty)
Putting everyone in prison for like literally half a decade, yet never formally forwarding any charges, and just say "it's ok, they're *probably* guilty, most of them anyway, so we won't even bother trying to show that for a court" is definitely *NOT* how it's done. It's a complete disgrace.
And it completely undermines USAs position as the "good guys". It gives the other side an excuse to say: Sure we play dirty, but look at them Americans, they ignore stuff like the human rigths when it suits them too, they're no different. (notice: I don't nessecarily *agree* with this statement, I just think you stupidly invite it by not following your own rules)
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
And you know that they're guilty without anything like a fair trial. Because they're terrorists and they don't deserve a fair trial (or somesuch bullshit circular reasoning).
Let's not even get into the pseudo-legalistic weaselling BS that the US is trying to use to get around the Geneva Convention.
Are you saying that the British government would have been justified in using torture against Irish Republican terrorists who covered the walls of their cells in excrement?
Anyway, let's make one thing absolutely clear. The Taliban, Al Qaeda and all their hardline Wahabi friends are vermin who I'd quite happily see stoned to death, or finished off in similarly appropriate medievel style. Who's worse- the Americans or the Taliban and friends? The Taliban.
But regardless of what your dumbfuck "With us or against us" black-and-white-world leader says, it doesn't justify what's going on at Gitmo, and if you need them to compare against and make yourselves look good, you're already fucked.
Also, apart from anything else.... nice little anti-American propaganda tool you set yourselves up there. Fucking idiots. Not that I'm bothered about it making the US look bad (deservedly so, and not my problem). But anything that lets those lowlife portray themselves (and co-opt the cases of the innocent who had nothing to do with them) as martyrs and recruit more to their cause isn't exactly desirable.
Gitmo proves that the Americans are all talk and full of shit when it comes to justice, democracy and whatever. Go on- bring up some spurious dichotomy and ask how I'd prefer living in a world ruled by the Taliban (because if I'm not kissing your ass, I'm endorsing them, right?)
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"If indeed the Second Amendment provides an absolute, constitutional protection for the right to bear arms in order to preserve the power of the people to resist government tyranny, then it must allow individuals to possess bazookas, torpedoes, SCUD missiles and even nuclear warheads, for they, like handguns, rifles and M-16s, are arms. Moreover, it is hard to imagine any serious resistance to the military without such arms. Y
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:4, Insightful)
In order for the populace to defend them from a tyranny of the federal government, I believe the ACLU is right, you would have to give people access to tanks, missiles, etc AND provide them with a reasonable means of obtaining said weapons, otherwise one could make the argument that the government is not giving people the means to exercise their rights.
At the risk of going wildly off the story's topic, I have to disagree. Look at the situation in Iraq. The terrorists (resistance fighters, whatever you want to call them) don't have tanks. They don't have missiles (unless you call the RPG a missile). They don't have body armor. But they seem to be holding their own. One might say they have a good chance of "winning".
Given a strong will to not be over-run, and the support of the population at large (go ahead and try to tell me that these people are able to acquire and plant explosives without being noticed) you don't need fancy weapons to hold back a vastly superior armed force, as long as that armed force cares about image.
Even that condition is debatable. Witness the Chechens. Their Russian adversaries don't seem to be nearly as squeamish to civilian losses as the Americans are (see Wikipedia's entry on the Battle of Grozny [wikipedia.org] for a taste), but still the Chechens resist (3 Soldiers Die in Chechen Rebel Ambush [google.com]). Granted in that battle (click here [army.mil] for one account and some lessons that should have been carried into Iraq), both sides had heavy arms. But here are some good quotes that help make my point:
One experienced sniper is capable of doing what will prove to be beyond the capability of a tank, gun, or entire infantry subunit: disable a commander, destroy a gun or mortar crew, control one or two streets . . . and, most important, instill in the enemy a feeling of constant danger, nervousness, and expectation of a sudden shot. Everyone fears the Chechen snipers in Grozny. . . . There are many cases where a sniper wounds a serviceman, and then kills the wounded person and those who come to his aid.[20]
The sniper could also use an RPG in conjunction with a sniper rifle. A real problem for Russian troops was identifying snipers who shot at them and then donned a Red Cross armband and mingled with the local populace and the Russian soldiers he was killing. To counteract this, Russian checkpoints began forcing the Chechen men to take off their shirts. Soldiers would look for bruises on the shoulder from weapon recoil, for powder burns on forearms, or for a silver lining around cuffs (from mortar or artillery propellant bags). They also smelled clothing for gunpowder and looked for traces of it under fingernails or on arms or legs. Russian forces also employed snipers, but not with the same degree of success as the Chechens. A March 1995 article decrying the neglect of sniper training attests to this fact.[21]
The correct mix and employment of weapons in the city were also important. Grozny was a three-tiered fight (upper floors of buildings, street level, and subterranean or basement), and the weapons had to fit. Russian tanks could not lower their main gun tubes and coaxial machine guns low enough to shoot into basements harboring Chechen fighters. To correct this problem, the Russians put ZSU-23-4 self-propelled, multi-barreled, antiaircraft machine guns forward with columns to fire at heights and into basements.
The use of artillery and air power in the city was counterproductive in many instances. Indiscriminate bombing and shelling turned the local population against the Russians. The locals included some Russian citizens who were inhabitants of Grozny (and who found it incomprehensible that their
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Silulu. Hot Polynesian Geek Chick. HPGC tech news netcast. [scitechpulse.com]
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Oh, are you one of those people that hates OLPC because there might be some child out there that's hungry? Either a cause is worthy, or a cause is not worthy. Is raising money to break up an illegal cartel engaging in extortion and price fixing a good thing or a bad thing? That is the only question that needs to be asked.
Re:This puts a grin on my face. (Score:5, Insightful)
just 'cause the *iaa keeps bleating 'youre stealing, its illegal, etc' doesnt make it so.
i'd throw a few gold coins his way too, as this looks like a pretty good vector to prise open the *iaa shenanigans
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Another vector would be to stop giving gold coins to the RIAA in the first place. Of course that requires convincing the mass population of sheep that they should be wiser with their money and stop following payola tunes all around the place.
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This kid, in my own opinion, isn't trying to "fight the machine". I believe this kid is simply trying to weasel his way out of getting in serious trouble, and the bes
Did you RTA? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the RIAA is going to lose this case, and it's going to set the stage for how the RIAA's patterned lawsuits start failing, time after time.
The last argument, in particular, should be able to defeat any RIAA lawsuit in court, since people buy and sell CD's all the time, and the RIAA can't prove what the person owned the rights to at the time they downloaded copyrighted music.
"His defenses to the industry's lawsuit include that he never sent copyrighted music to others, that the recording companies promoted file sharing before turning against it, that average computer users were never warned that it was illegal, that the statute of limitations has passed, and that all the music claimed to have been downloaded was actually owned by his sister on store-bought CDs."
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Huh? Apropos of anything else, why would the court give a flying fuck if his sister had rights to everything he downloaded? How is that even remotely relevant? "But Your Honor, my client's cousin had already bought some of the CDs ..."?
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Donate to the cause (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.p2pnet.net/goliath/ [p2pnet.net]
SiteAdvisor - p2pnet,net (Score:5, Informative)
Red-flagged by SiteAdvisor. Here is the report from McAfee for p2pnet.net:
When we tested this site we found links to warezclient.com, which we found to be a distributor of downloads some people consider adware, spyware or other unwanted programs
After entering our e-mail address on this site, we received 3.7 e-mails per week.
I offer this purely as a suggestion, mind you, not legal advice:
But if the heart of your defense is that know you "nothing, nothing!" about the darker side of the P2P nets, a jury might think that this is a mighty strange place to find you.
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God bless this little thief (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe sort of... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, sort of. There is of course a lawyer behind it. A 16 year old might have a gut feeling that these things are taking place, but I'm guessing his lawyer suggested this particular approach...
Re:God bless this little thief (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's a shame that the only direct penalty against the government in this case was $2 million, which to the USA Federal Government is less than pocket change.
What should have happened is that the specific officers/agents/officials involved should have been publically identified, fired, and then prosecuted and incarcerated just as though they were private citizens who had taken the exact same actions. My bet is that if this happene
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Yeah, I know *I* love seeing buckets of my money go to people who sue the government. I'll gladly pay higher taxes just so people can get more respectable settlements!
It's a shame that he was awarded any sum by the government. The people who made the mistake should have been held accountable, and perhaps sued in civil court. Fining the government doe
Re:God bless this little thief (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is incorrect. We are talking about what he *is*, not what can be proved in court. The courts presume innocence. However, whether he is guilty or not is a factual matter dependent on whether he did it or not. Whether he is found guilty is a procedural question answered in a court of law. The vernacular and the legal definitions of guilty do not match. He is a little thief that the courts must presume is innoce
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Then we had better find out what *is* is.
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Ok... (Score:5, Funny)
Uh... yeah, no kidding. I thought the RIAA's past legal failures should have already taught them that. Oh, wait... were they talking about the kid's charges?
Re:Ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right - The kid's charges.
After all, the US recording industry has lost three major price-fixing cases in the past 20 years, with absolutely no effect whatsoever on how they do business. CDs cost the same, radio stations still live and die by pay-for-play under various names, and the industry still rapes both the artists and the fans that let it exist in the first place.
So why would just one more teaspoon make the ocean overflow?
Its was about time, but the sad fact is (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its was about time, but the sad fact is (Score:5, Insightful)
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and Big Tobacco is still Big Tobacco. What, precisely, has changed?
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I believe the word you were looking for is embiggens.
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Hate to say it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hate to say it... (Score:5, Insightful)
If these five separate companies were actually acting individually, and not as a monopolistic cartel, then they should each have conducted their own investigations of wrongdoing, and each have filed their own separate lawsuits for the individual violations of their IP. But them all acting together as one big organization kind of gives the game away and removes any doubt that these are saparate companies only as a mere formality. They are acting as a single entity with no free-market competition in mind while holding these proceedings. But that's just my layman's view of the situation, and I just hope the common sense I hope I applied to this analysis parallels the actual law in some way.
I just don't know if you can come up with a more textbook definition of monopoly (and all the reasons why they are bad) than what the RIAA seems to represent.
No, No, and No. (Score:2)
No they're not. An owner of a copyright can sue you for violating that copyright, and if they demostrate that you did in fact violate their copyright, they will win. An owner of a copyright acting in collusion with other copyright owners can STILL sue you for violating their copyright, and will STILL win if they demonstrate that you violated the copyright.
Nowhere in copyright law does is say "Do not copy copyrighte
Not a defence (Score:2)
A counter-claim isn't trying to deflect the shots, it's shooting back and making the other side do some work.
in other shocking news... (Score:2)
seriously though, more power to him.
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Magic money tree ? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not like the people they win suits against can actually pay theese outragous fines.
Re:Magic money tree ? (Score:5, Funny)
Dumping their SCOX?
Is youth and time an effective weapon? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since he's under 18, can he even enter into a contract? Can he effectively use the court system by himself? If he can't, it's all in the hands of whatever attorney will help him (I'm assumig he's not an idle rich kid, and that he basicly has paper-route money).
This is intriguing though. For adults like myself, who have little time to spare and much to lose, quick settlements and/or rapid capitulation to affordable terms are usually the only way out. In other words, if the *AA extorted 10 percent of my wealth, it might be enough to make them go away, and it would be more expedient for me to let them do that then spend half my wealth fighting them.
OTOH, if I'm a 16-year old and I can legally ride my bicycle to the court house and file claims all summer as an "interesting lesson", then what could I lose? That has a certain appeal to it; but I doubt it will fly. They'll probably drag it out until he's 18, and can be subject to things that will bother an adult.
Still though, the idea of a smart kid sitting there in the library putting up his time and zero money, pitted against corporate lawywers who charge their clients 100s of dollars an hour, is intriguing. Even if he loses, he wins, unless they force him to pay court costs--then he's screwed.
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Even if they do drag it out, would it matter? The Judge isn't deciding the case & the punishment based on the defendant's current age, but on his age at the time of the alleged infringement.
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Thousands of layoffs (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course they've done layoffs. That's because once a star gets too big, they cost too much. It's not that hard for the record industry to create a new sensation and not have to pay them squat. Re: New Kids On The Block, Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, The Monkees, Boyz II Men, 98 Degrees, 4ORCE, Hanson....
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RIAA mets RICO? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Five Labels Found Guilty Themselves Once (Score:5, Informative)
The labels were actually found guilty of this once before:
States settle CD price-fixing case
By David Lieberman, USA TODAY
NEW YORK -- The five largest music companies and three of the USA's largest music retailers agreed Monday to pay $67.4 million and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups to settle a lawsuit led by New York and Florida over alleged price-fixing in the late 1990s...
Former FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky said at the time that consumers had been overcharged by $480 million since 1997 and that CD prices would soon drop by as much as $5 a CD as a result.
In settling the lawsuit, Universal BMG and Warner said they simply wanted to avoid court costs and defended the practice.
"We believe our policies were pro-competitive and geared toward keeping more retailers, large and small, in business," Universal said in a statement."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-09-3
Maybe some of those jobs being lost should never have been there to start with
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Court docs (Score:5, Informative)
Fresh from Pacer
14 - Defendant's Answer [PDF] [fienx.net]14 Exhibit A [PDF] [fienx.net]
14 Exhibit B [PDF] [fienx.net]
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TWENTY-FOURTH AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE
Plaintiffs have crafted at least two additional and alternative forms of damages, which forms have not been offered to this Defendant, even though similarly situated. One alternative, explicated by Warner Music's CEO, Edgar Bronfman, is for a parent to talk to his or her children: "I explained to them [his children] what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wr
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Give the attorneys credit for effort (and racking up a huge legal bill) but this is really just a stupid, defective pleading. I mean, they cited to the kids of a Warner exec who were stealing music as waiver o
I hope someone wakes up and really lookx @ this (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's why this is funny... (Score:5, Funny)
*blinks*
Not good (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about it:
people tend to dislike huge corporation
people tend to hate lawyers for huge corporation
No matter what happens the media will report it and public opinion will be on his side. Even if he is guilty this is a massive PR debacle. Setting an example works if the person can be portrayed as EVIL and VICIOUS (like for profit pirates) not young children. Whatever RIAA lawyer thought this was a good idea should be fired...into the sun.
So I say please keep suing grandmothers and children. Come on RIAA...aren't there Eskimo retarded paraplegics in wheelchairs who have AIDS that you can go after? Please do.
Am I missing the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringeme
- Creating a copy and giving it to someone else. This constitutes copyright infringement in most jurisdictions. It is not infringing under specific circumstances such as fair use and fair dealing. In some countries, such as Israel, creating a copy is completely legal, as long as it was done from non-profit intentions.
- Creating a copy to serve as a backup. This is seen as a fundamental right of the software-buyer in some countries, e.g., Germany, Spain, Brazil and Philippines. It can be infringement, depending on the laws and the case law interpretations of those laws, currently undergoing changes in many countries. In the US, legal action was taken against companies which made backup copies while repairing computers (see MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc. (1993)) and as a result, US law was changed to make it clear that this is not copyright infringement.
And collusion sounds like what the oil companies do to maintain the high price of oil, working together for mutual benefit. Who needs monopolies when you have collusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion [wikipedia.org]What I don't get (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides, what 16 year old has $30,000? That's more than most 16 year olds make in two years of working - why not throw him in jail for two years? The average bank robbery nets $5,000 or so - has he really done the equivalent of 6 bank robberies?
Re:What I don't get (Score:4, Insightful)
He isn't accused of stealing $30,000 worth of music. He is accused of stealing $40 worth of music, and they want $30,000 in damages for that.
What now? (Score:3, Funny)
*RIAA finds downloaded music*
RIAA - "let's go sue the mother"
*RIAA looses case*
RIAA - "let's go sue the kids!"
*RIAA eventually looses this case as well*
RIAA - "hmmm... who are we going to sue next?.. Hey! They have a cat!"
Good thing they didn't have a baby...
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one would love to see an actual list of the "thousands of employees that have been laid off" in the music industry due to piracy, according to the RIAA. Sheesh yeah those pop stars are out begging in the street, and they're the ones that keep the SMALLER percentage of the royalties...
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Funny)
All but two [wikipedia.org] stores in the popular Tower Records chain just went out of business. They still have online sales, but I'm sure there's a lot of retail employees that lost their jobs.
Obviously, their mistake is in not raising prices to cover their losses. Maybe if they raised their prices high enough all the illegal downloaders would realize what a mistake they've made and start buying their music.
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention Sony/BMG selling music direct to consumers through their club for $6-7/CD. I'll bet Tower paid more than that wholesale for their CD's.
So the choice is free (illegal), discount (direct), discount (online), discount (walmart), full price (retail/tower).
Is it any wonder that fewer people choose to pay full price at Tower? It's the worst possible choice.
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= classical music (super hard to find in stores, amazon.com here I come)
= jazz (again, very hard to find a store with a decent selection, amazon.com)
= import world music (as if I could find this in stores,
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Yes, the trend is you have shitty taste in music. Try reading Pitchforkmedia [pitchforkmedia.com], Cokemachineglow [cokemachineglow.com] or MetaCritic [metacritic.com] and purchasing some of their recommendations. You may strike out a couple times but once you find out what kind of stuff you like, you'll be able to cross-reference it on Amazon and Allmusic and discover more stuff. You'll be amazed at how much incredible stuff is out th
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Nor was it the fact that people can download there music legally from the comfort of their ow nhome.
They are getting hit for that same reason many middle men get hit, the internet provide beeter means of delivering the product.
Not really that smart of a kid, necessarily (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Smart kid (Score:5, Informative)
It sounds to me like their short on funds, and I'm not sure what this lawyer is looking to get out of this--a judgment for attorney's fees? I guess he had to countersue for this kid if he is to have any chance of getting money out of this. It's too high profile to quit, but their is no funding to work with (except for this little fund mentioned in the linked article).
Re:Smart lawyer (Score:3, Informative)
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I don't think so Tim. Shoutcast [shoutcast.com] works perfectly fine to find new music with. Tags on the streams narrow you down to genres and from there the artist's name and song title are displayed while it is playing. So new music (and sales) is actually easier to find/generate on the Internet if you know where to look.
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Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Informative)
Cream rises to the top without a demon to drive it there.
Oh, the name of the tune? "The Rights of Man." I commemorates a little book of the same name. You might want to read it.
KFG
It's called unclean hands (Score:5, Informative)
"Unclean hands, sometimes clean hands doctrine, is an equitable defense in which the defendant argues that the plaintiff is not entitled to obtain an equitable remedy on account of the fact that the plaintiff is acting unethically or has acted in bad faith with respect to the subject of the complaint--that is with 'unclean hands'. The defendant has the burden of proof to show the plaintiff is not acting in good faith. The doctrine is often stated as "those seeking equity must do equity"."
Obviously the kid didn't think this up himself.