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 Post subject: Re: The RIAA, still being cunts..gaining SOME ground
PostPosted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 6:41 pm 
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http://torrentfreak.com/how-big-music-t ... ntfreak%29

How Big Music Threatened Startups and Killed Innovation

An unprecedented new report has detailed how the destruction of Napster chilled a decade’s worth of innovation in the music industry. Through interviews with 31 CEOs, company founders, and VPs who operated in digital music during the period, we hear how Big Music collapsed startups, turned down ‘blank check’ deals, and personally threatened innovators with ruination for both them and their families.

By interviewing 31 CEOs, company founders and VPs who operated in the digital music scene during the past 10 years, Associate Professor Michael A. Carrier at Rutgers University School of Law has produced a most enlightening report on the decade long aftermath of the Napster shutdown.

The interviewees are no lightweights. Included are former Napster CEO Hank Bank, Imeem founder Dalton Caldwell, Seeqpod founder Kasian Franks, Real Networks founder Rob Glaser, Scour VP & General Counsel Craig Grossman, former Gracenote CEO David Hyman, AudioGalaxy founder Michael Merhej, founder of MP3Tunes Michael Robertson, former RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen, and numerous venture capitalists and label execs.

The result is an unprecedented report on how the shutdown of Napster chilled innovation, discouraged investment, and led to a climate of copyright law-fueled fear that pushed technologists and music further apart.

It started with a drain on cash. Interviewees reported that venture capital funding for digital music “became a wasteland”, a “scorched earth kind of place” housing a “graveyard of music companies.” With the big labels choosing where and when to sue, funding was hard to come by.

Nevertheless, some innovators didn’t give up, although when the labels were through with them many probably wished they had. The report details instances where innovators tried to get label approval but found themselves in extremely difficult situations.

One recalled that the labels “don’t license you if you don’t have traffic” but once enough footfall is achieved then “they want to get paid for ‘infringement’ and the longer it takes to license you, the larger the ‘infringement’ number they can justify charging you.”

Another described a litigation “Ponzi scheme” whereby settlements and other fees extracted from startups were used to fund the labels’ ongoing litigation strategy. However, like all Ponzi schemes there was a problem – maintaining momentum. “Once you stop suing new people there are no new settlements to pay for the ongoing litigation,” one interviewee reported.

But the labels weren’t always unreceptive to new ideas – as long as they were bad ones. The report notes that the labels were happy to take “big, up-front fees” of “10, 20 million bucks” from startups they knew wouldn’t make it. Carrier reports that a leading officer from one label admitted that they would “cripple the companies by demanding such advances and guarantees that they go belly up.”

Established services couldn’t make progress with the labels either, even when they did everything they could to avoid copyright issues. One, that boasted several million users and “interest from top-tier VCs – really the top of the top,” was also sued by the labels.

“After they sued us, our opening offer to them was: ‘You guys made your point; we will charge anything you want to charge, and you can take any percentage you want to take,” a respondent reported. “It was literally an offer of a blank check.” The labels refused and said they wanted the service shut down instead.

But for those who didn’t give in to the threats life could get very difficult, not just for their companies, but for them as individuals. The specter of personal liability often raised its head.

One innovator was told by the labels that his company would be left alone but he would be sued personally instead. “We can make all kinds of allegations and it’s your job to prove you’re not infringing,” he was told, with the labels adding that the lawsuit would cost him “between $15m and $20m.”

One of the respondents said it was “very scary” when the labels presented a “..multiple inch lawsuit for a couple billion bucks”, one with the potential to hang over his head for “the rest of [his] life.”

The threats also extended to the families of innovators. One was told it was “too bad” he had children “..who are going to want to go to college and you’re not going to be able to pay for it.”

Astonishingly, in some cases threats turned into actual violence. One respondent told Carrier about his experiences in the rap business of “people being physically intimidated” and “being hung out of windows.”

The strength of the threats were augmented by the uncertainty inherent in copyright law. One innovator said it was like a protection racket or the way politics work in corrupt countries where everything is OK until it’s not OK.

“You do what you want until one day you can’t and they come and your tail light’s broken.”


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 Post subject: Re: The RIAA, still being cunts..gaining SOME ground
PostPosted: Tue Sep 18, 2012 5:33 pm 
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Appeals court raises damages award in music piracy case
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By Terry Baynes

Tue Sep 11, 2012 4:24pm EDT

(Reuters) - The music industry won the latest round on Tuesday in its long-running legal battle against a woman accused of illegally downloading and sharing two dozen songs on the Kazaa peer-to-peer network.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, Minnesota, reinstated a $222,000 jury verdict against Jammie Thomas-Rasset, rejecting her arguments that the damages award was excessive and violated her due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.

The decision is the latest to address the music industry's ability to use the Copyright Act to pursue individuals who illegally download music from the Internet. The law allows copyright owners to recover damages between $750 and $150,000 per infringed work.

Thomas-Rasset, from Brainerd, Minnesota, was one of 18,000 individuals sued by the Recording Industry Association of America between 2003 and 2008 in a legal assault meant to discourage people from illegally downloading songs from sites like Kazaa.

The industry organization accused her of illegally downloading more than 1,700 files. After failing to reach a settlement, the association sued Thomas-Rasset in 2006 over 24 songs on behalf of six major record labels, including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, UMG Recordings Inc and Arista Records.

The case has followed a circuitous path. Thomas-Rasset lost her first trial in 2007 and was ordered to pay $222,000, only to have the court throw out the verdict because of a faulty jury instruction.

At her second trial, Thomas-Rasset testified that her ex-boyfriend or sons, then 8 and 10, were most likely responsible for downloading and distributing the songs. The jury awarded the record labels $1.92 million in damages. But the court lowered the damages to $54,000, calling the jury's award "shocking."

Instead of accepting the lowered amount, the record companies exercised their right to a new trial, and a third jury awarded the music industry $1.5 million in damages. The district court again ruled that the maximum amount allowed by due process was only $54,000. The recording companies appealed.

On Tuesday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit reinstated the original $222,000 in damages that the first jury had awarded.

The $222,000 award was not "so severe and oppressive" as to violate the Constitution, Judge Steven Colloton wrote for the panel. Rather, the amount, equivalent to $9,250 per song, was at the lower end of the $750 to $150,000 range that Congress established.

Thomas-Rasset argued that if the labels had sued her over 1,000 songs, the damages would be clearly excessive at over $9 million. But the panel refused to extrapolate.

"If and when a jury returns a multi-million dollar award for noncommercial online copyright infringement, then there will be time enough to consider it," Colloton wrote.

Kiwi Camara, a lawyer for Thomas-Rasset, called the $222,000 damages award "punitive" and out-of-line with the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings. He said he would likely appeal the case to the high court.

The Recording Industry Association of America welcomed the court's decision. We "look forward to putting this case behind us," the organization said in a statement. The group has ended its lawsuit campaign, and now sends warning notices to users caught illegally downloading music.

In a separate case in 2011, the 1st Circuit reinstated a $675,000 judgment against Joel Tenenbaum, a former Boston University student, for 30 charges of illegal downloading. That ruling reversed a trial judge's decision to knock the award down to $67,500.

Tenenbaum appealed that case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Copyright Act was never meant to be applied to individual consumers. But the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in May, allowing the 1st Circuit decision to stand.

The latest 8th Circuit case is Capitol Records Inc et al v. Thomas-Rasset, No. 11-2820.

(Reporting By Terry Baynes; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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 Post subject: Re: The RIAA, still being cunts..gaining SOME ground
PostPosted: Tue Sep 18, 2012 5:35 pm 
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I foed px911 and this thread went down to 2 pages. The WWE and MMA thread went down to one, and the howard stern thread disappeared entirely.


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 Post subject: Re: The RIAA, still being cunts..gaining SOME ground
PostPosted: Tue Sep 18, 2012 7:07 pm 
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Skitch Patterson wrote:
I foed px911 and this thread went down to 2 pages. The WWE and MMA thread went down to one, and the howard stern thread disappeared entirely.

:lol:

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