THE RIAA HAS BEEN OUTED as a lying toad as it claimed in a letter sent out on December 23rd last year that it was discontinuing lawsuits when in fact, this was simply not the case.
Mitch Bainwol’s letter to the Congressional Committees claimed that the Recording Industry Association of America "discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August."
Of course this information was taken as red, yet after a bit of digging around, this was found to be utter tosh.
After locating the text of the letter and reading its lies some cases were found to prove the exact opposite, here are just a handful.
Arista Records v. Estrada 08-8135 C.D. California 12/10/08
UMG Recordings v. Haralambos 08-8129 C.D. California 12/10/08
SONY BMG Music v. Estrada 08-2682 D. Colorado 12/10/08
Interscope Records v. Doe 6 08-1882 D. Connecticut 12/10/08
Arista Records v. Doe 4 08-1877 D. Connecticut 12/10/08
Interscope Records v. Doe 5 08-1284 D. Connecticut 12/10/08
Interscope Records v. Doe 2 08-1878 D. Connecticut 12/10/08
As any five year old could work out, these were filed in December 2008, four whole months after the RIAA "discontinued initiating new lawsuits.”
The letter contains further tripe, such as, “When we originally initiated the litigation program some five years ago, we made clear that law suits were not our preffered response” – hundreds of lawsuits beg to differ.
The letter also claims that kids are now up-to-date with how digital file sharing works, and understand that it is illegal – it doesn’t mention however that they don’t give two hoots.
You can read the rubbish for yourself, or if you fancy something with a bit more honesty you can always pick up a copy of The Sun. μ
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"As any five year old could work out, these were filed in December 2008" Not on the UK side of the pond - they'd probably think they were filed on the 12th October.... We arrange our dates in a "sensible" order (puts on flame-proof coat). ;-)
Agreed, why can't the Americans ever get the date the right way round? Its bloody annoying.
Too bloody right! There is nothing more annoying than seeing a date and not knowing if it's in month/day or day/month. As a fellow Brit, it is always (and should always be anyway!) day/month/year. Honestly... next thing you know people will be saying it's color not coloUr and favorite and not favoUrite. Urgh!
Your tiny human brains can not grasp the simple concept of galactic time formatting! Therefore, you should be destroyed! All humans are vermin in the eyes of Morbo!
You are all wrong. No one should use d/m/y OR m/d/y, precisely because there is at least one dope who uses the other format, thus making both formats ambiguous. The only intelligent formats are yyyy/mm/dd (Japanese) or yyyy.mm.dd (ANSI). There is no format that has y/d/m, so if you see the year first, it must be y/m/d. Therefore it is unambiguous :) It would be nice if the government would legislate that all new cash registers had to use the same format. Preferably y/m/d, but at least pick one and force consistency.
How else do you think they could make everyone relax and start sharing again? Its simple business practice to increase turnover $$$$$$$$
Actually, I fully agree with the YYYY.MM.DD layout as being even more sensible than D/M/Y - as a programmer I always store dates as YYYYMMDD or date/times as YYYYMMDDhhmmss so they can be easily sorted. I also tend to avoid using any timestamp value due to stupid 32-bit limitations. Ok, so my dates are going to fail on January 1st 10000 - however, I don't think I'm going to be around quite that long...
Oh, and Dave. I was told that typing "color" always takes more keypresses for a Brit than typing "colour": c o l o u r (7 keypresses) c o l o u r backspace backspace r (10 keypresses) Mind you,I've always thought that "centre" was a very stupid way of spelling "center". ;-)
just ask their flunky Obama
Leave it to the INQ readers to once again completely miss the point of the article. It is NOT about time, dates, or colors (yes, I'm from the US). It's about the RIAA's lies. I have to disagree with Emma regarding the quote, "When we originally initiated the litigation program some five years ago, we made clear that law suits were not our preffered response". I believe the RIAA really does not prefer the lawsuit route. They would much prefer the extortion process that they have used because it costs them less money than a lawsuit. Lawsuits require more lawyers, research, and all kinds of real evidence. Extortion only requires a hunch (no evidence) that someone broke the law, one person to deliver the threat, and absolutely no research.
"Leave it to the INQ readers to once again completely miss the point of the article." Yep, that's us ;-)
Ted said p " i I believe the RIAA really does not prefer the lawsuit route. They would much prefer the extortion process that they have used because it costs them less money than a lawsuit. Lawsuits require more lawyers, research, and all kinds of real evidence. Extortion only requires a hunch (no evidence) that someone broke the law, one person to deliver the threat, and absolutely no research. /i " p LOL. p Actually, of course, they use both. First they try extortion before the lawsuit (they used to use retired cops for that). Then if that doesn't work they use a sham lawsuit as a means of extortion.
A date of 12/10/2008 could be in either December or October depending on the format you prefer but their statement was that the lawsuits stopped in August so either way it is still a lie.
Stop all the ambiguity. Just use Unix time and count all the seconds since 1970. :P
Agreed, though the British version makes more sense than the American version... I am American if anybody wondered, and it isn't just dates that makes me wonder how our country has functioned so well for so many years, there's also the lack of the metric system and ATSC...
A simple exercise, really: The lying leftwing RIAA lies to the lying leftwing Congress, who repeat the lie to the lying leftwing press, who repeat the lie to the gullible American public, who believe it.
Only the simple would construe corporate control of government as a left wing conspiracy.
Since piracy is a crime worldwide one would hope all pirates are heavily fined and jailed.
Taken as red? Is that another Americainism, missing the "a" from "read"?
Wow, I didn't realize all you bloody limeys were so into dates. But that is the important thing here I guess. My favorite date is 04 July 1776 ... any way you choose to write it. Cherrie-O dudes. Or however the frakk you write it.
I'd like to add my preference for yyyy/mm/dd simply because of how Windows likes to sort file/folder names. Someone mentioned passing legislation, funny. If legislation was passed, I'd like it to be that ALL foods must state a BEST BEFORE date in an appropriate and completely unambiguous date format. Lot's of stuff tend to have no date, or a confusing set of numbers that could be a best before date or simply the packaging date. What does this have to do with the RIAA. Absolutely nothing other than being pissed off and irate. ;)
its quite simple regarding the date order and spelling, its Englands language, you ruined it. And for the record, I am Scottish and no one hates the english more than us.
...buying music. RIAA is a dog. Their policies and their company should go the way of the Dodo.
I don't steal it either. I support open sauce artists, the ones that distribute their music online for free. When I like it, I make sure they're not associated with the RIAA and then I buy their stuff. Simple.
The major record labels have made deals with the likes of iTunes and Rhapsody to sell tens of thousands of music tracks electronically. However for most music made more than, say, 6 years ago their agreements with the artists will not license them to do this - the "and all future methods of distribution" style clause is a recent addition to their standard contracts. So, do we think these busy record executives have taken the time to go through all the agreements for 40 or 50 years of back catalog, track down all the relevant rights holders, and update/renegotiate their contracts ? Or might they just worry about the big names and otherwise assume consent, take their cut (to which they're not entitled), and pass on the remaining pittance - eventually - with the thought that these old geezers should be grateful to get anything at all. I'm sure its the former but, just to be safe, I trust that iTunes and others have included in their deals a way to recover their money from the labels if they end up being sued by the actual rights holders to a track for making money from copyright infringement.