Quote:
Originally Posted by AnotherCat
You may be thinking of the RIAA's project early this century where they decided to randomly select around 250 minor infringers to make examples of them; they had previously only concerned themselves with those who shared on a large scale.
It turned out that there were single mothers and children included (the parents of children were told that writing a cheque to the RIAA for several thousand dollars would avoid their being taken to court) and it was, of course, a public relations disaster. From the large music groups Warner Music strongly opposed the project, claiming it was silly to attack potential customers, and the longstanding head of RIAA at the time also opposed it and resigned in protest. Other music groups, particularly the main protagonist Universal, even lost artists, many of which also resented attacks of that type on their fans.
A lesson to be learned for those who have the peripheral vision of a snake in a pipe and can only see strict literal interpretations of the law in front of them; matters such as wider interpretation and actual implementation of legislation, and in business competitive strategies and marketing are hidden from them by the pipe's walls.
|
Very good point. the RIAA's court cases back then were the very definition of pyrrhic victory. They won the court case, but lost the battle. Weird Al even wrote a song mocking them. The breaking point was when the RIAA sued a grandmother whose computer(a Mac) was incompatible with the software she was accused of using.
The important thing isn't to look at the letter of the law, it's to look at the practical application of the law. The actual letter of the law for things such as copyright protection and anti-trust is actually in a practical sense, unenforceable. Fair use was originally a pure judicial invention with no basis in the written law. Congress eventually added fair use, but that was after the fact. Anti-trust law as is currently implemented has very little basis in the literal letter of the law. While the US not suppose to be a common law country, quite a bit of the law is common law (common law is law that is decided by judges rather than written by the legislature).