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Originally Posted by zerospinboson
No, it's fighting against an oligopolic industry, that is able to behave surprisingly like a cartel, without ever having really been investigated for that.
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What are you basing that on?
The nature of publishing itself is monopolistic, in a certain sense: A publishing house signs a deal with an author, and then the author's books are produced and distributed through only that house. The publisher has a monopoly on the author's work, in that sense. But that's not very different from the way it works with other products. If you want a new Viper, you have to either get it through Dodge. There's nothing monopolistic about that, in a legal sense.
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Originally Posted by zerospinboson
There was a recent judge that was very annoyed that the RIAA kept dropping cases after discovery of the names that were subpoena'ed in RIAA vs. Does cases, and then filing individual suits against those people.
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Could you explain that a little bit more? Why would they need to "discover" the names of the people they were suing themselves? Or were they being sued by John Does, and trying to find out the names of those suing them so they could countersue?
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Originally Posted by zerospinboson
See the working paper by Pamela Samuelson for more.
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Okay, thanks. The way you described it, I'm having trouble seeing it as illegal. Brutish, perhaps, but not illegal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zerospinboson
Whatever you may think of "pirates", their existence does not warrant the behavior of the RIAA towards basically defenseless people, as no individual in his right mind will take the risk to be forced to pay the costs the RIAA can force on them just by suing them. Those extortionist practices are absolutely pathetic, and only reinforce the "class justice" stereotype that is already dominant in some circles. And you will not be able to convince me that an industry that happily hires lawyers like that deserves any pity whatever.
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The behavior of the RIAA, while I might find it heavy-handed, does not in any way justify intellectual property theft. The justice system isn't based on the principle of "equal protection under the law
for nice people". It's possible to detest some of their tactics (e.g., suing junior school students) while still believing that they should have protection under the law. Regardless of what you think of the deals they make with artists, the fact of the matter is that they
have made deals with artists, and they're therefore entitled to the rights that the artists sign over. And of course, the other big issue is that, for the most part, their interests are the same. What hurts the RIAA also hurts the artists they have signed. That's unfortunate, but it's true.
I would also say that you have to make a distinction between the people
using TPB and the people
running it. If you use TPB to download a movie, that's quite a bit different from someone hosting the links to
thousands of such movies, and making money off of it, besides. I would have a very different reaction if it was some 17-year old kid who was being taken to court and found guilty.