[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I must respectfully disagree. The purpose of the RIAA is not to "be nice" to people, but to punish criminals.

No, that's the government's purpose. The RIAA is not responsible for punishing criminals. They're not even responsible for determining who is guilty/innocent (although a lot of people don't seem to understand that). The RIAA's job is to look out for the interestes of the recording industry, nothing more. Not everyone thinks that taking large segments of it's own customers to court is a very smart way of looking out for the industries best interests.

I think that, admitedly in a small number of cases, they've taken very effective action.

Actually, in every case so far their action has been anything but effective. They have essentially no proof for anything, but they are trying to scare/intimidate people into settling out of court. They're even using unlicensed (in other words, illegal) private investigators to try and track down individuals. The repercussions of that are still being fought out in motions against them.

I'm sure that Ms. Thomas will think twice before "sharing" files on the internet again!

You do realize that the one and only case they have won (against Ms. Thomas) is about to be thrown out by the judge because the RIAA was lying to the court during the trial?

Sure, they make the occasional mistake

The occasional mistake? All of their cases have been mistakes so far. The only one they did win was only ruled that way because the RIAA was lying.

but I'm a big fan of the RIAA, overall

Knowing that you're liable to lose your house if you share files illegally is surely going to make people think twice about doing it, don't you think?

People who seriously believe that losing your house is a just punishment for sharing a couple songs are the real criminals. Talk about a complete lack of objectivity/reality. I've read some really biased comments by you on this before, but that has got to be the stupidest thing I've seen in a long time.