The New York Times has an excellent 6-page article about the arrest of DJ Drama earlier in the year.
I’ve written about DJ Drama’s arrest before:
RIAA bites the hand that feeds it
-TPP
Tag Archive for 'RIAA'
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18
Feb
2007
23
Jan
2007
In a very strange move RIAA has sent their stormtroopers to visit DJ Drama, a popular hip hop DJ specializing in producing mixtapes.
Mixtapes have been instrumental in promoting up and coming rap artists for decades. In fact, all the rap legends made their start in the business using mixtapes.
DJ Drama has been arrested and faces RICO charges in Atlanta, GA.
RIAA’s cluelessness is truly astounding. Here they have someone who’s promoting music of RIAA’s member organizations’ artists essentially for free, and they still attack him.
-TPP
03
Jan
2007
RIAA sues allofmp3.com for copyright infraction in New York. They are going for the maximum penalty afforded by the law…$150K per infraction. That comes to $1.65 trillion USD.
How they can sue a Moscow based company in New York escapes me, but I’m sure the RIAA lawyers found a loophole to exploit.
The $1.65 trillion USD claim just illustrates very poignantly how ridiculous the laws governing copyright violations are.
-TPP
14
Aug
2006
RIAA sues man. Man dies before case is over. RIAA goes after the estate. RIAA wants to depose the dead man’s family.
But RIAA graciously allows 60 days for grieving.
The law firm litigating this case for RIAA is Soble Rowe Kirchbaum LLP. The asshole running the show is “Mr.” Kirchbaum:
What a delightful man. Looks so happy go lucky in that picture, too. Too bad he’s a necrophiliac.
Update: RIAA is dropping the case against Mr. Scantleberry. RIAA’s public relations release over the matter says:
Out of an abundance of sensitivity, we have elected to drop this particular case.
BoingBoing.net’s response really says it all.
-TPP
11
Aug
2006
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has released a statement regarding RIAA’s audio broadcast flag demands.
The statement feels like a smackdown. It’s like an adult putting down a petulant child in front of all his classmates.
It hasn’t been a good week for RIAA. First they got spanked by every civil liberties / free speech advocacy organization in the country, and now they’re getting chewed on by an organization they NEED as a partner to get the boneheaded audio broadcast flag into tomorrow’s radios.
-TPP
11
Aug
2006
I guess RIAA’s just been called out. The acronym combination is kind of like the royal flush of free speech / civil liberties advocates in the US. I wonder if such a combination has ever joined together against an organization such as RIAA before.
EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), AALL (American Association of Law Libraries), ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and Public Citizen have filed an amicus brief in favor of Deborah Foster’s motion to have RIAA pay for her legal fees.
RIAA sued Ms. Foster claiming she was sharing copyrighted content on a P2P network. RIAA withdrew the case after dragging the case for months when they already knew Ms. Foster wasn’t guilty (her daughter was).
The brief is fascinating reading and outlines in plain english RIAA’s legal tactics.
EFF’s press release and the brief about the brief can be found at EFF’s website.
-TPP
20
Jul
2006
It looks like RIAA’s war on soccer moms is all based on bluffing.
Debbie Foster from Oklahoma basically asked RIAA to present their evidence against her. For whatever reason RIAA failed to do so and Ms. Foster filed a motion for summary judgment in her favor and the judge did so.
It looks like RIAA is using the US courts to intimidate and blackmail people. They certainly don’t seem to have any evidence against these people that would withstand even the most elementary legal challenge. How hard would it have been for RIAA to answer the request for evidence if they did have it?
-TPP
10
Jun
2006
Wow. The ex-CEO of RIAA has this to say about RIAA’s current legal warfare against consumers:
But for the record, I do share a concern that the lawsuits have outlived most of their usefulness and that the record companies need to work harder to implemnt a strategy that legitimizes more p2p sites and expands the download and subscription pool by working harder with the tech community to get devices and music services to work better together.
Has she become a spokesperson for some consumer electronics industry lobbying group?
-TPP
27
Apr
2006
Yet another bill making copyright violations incrementally more serious hit the news today.
Entertainment industry lackeys Senators Feinstein and Graham have introduced a new bill that would effectively ban devices that record streamed digital music, primarily through satellite radio.
Then there’s the new super-DMCA introduced by Conressman Lamar Smith, someone who is so completely in the pocket of the entertainment industry that he probably doesn’t even fart without asking them if he is allowed to do that. This bill is something else. Among other things it would make posting copyrighted material on the net exceeding a value of $1,000 punishable by a 10 – 20 year prison sentence. You gotta be fucking kidding me! I can kill someone and get a lower sentence. Be sure to check the working draft of this bill that reveals the kind of edits done to it before its introduction. It’s amazing.
When the fuck did the US legislators start assuming every US citizen is a criminal and therefore not to be trusted with such awful gadgets as satellite radio receivers with recording capability? And I’m not even going to go into the way copyrights have been extended so that the original work is basically covered until hell freezes over.
Why is the tech industry sitting with their thumbs up their ass and basically letting the entertainment industry dictate the direction of technological innovation? (Update: read below…)
With the introduction of such concepts as the Broadcast Flag it’s clear the entertainment industry doesn’t want the consumers to record anything digital. Not even if you legally own it. They don’t want you to back it up or transfer it to another device so that you can listen to it while jogging. And the reason for it is not so that you’d have to buy it sevral times (although that’s a consequence), but because if they allow it, then all of us criminals will be distributing digital content wholesale. And there’s where the assumption of guilt until proven innocent comes in. Why are the US legislators buying into this sort of thinking? It goes against everything this country is supposed to stand for.
Why are organizations such as the EFF the only ones that keep making any noise about these issues?
Just north of the border, there’s a revolution going on in the music industry. Six leading Canadian record labels left CRIA, The Canadian Recording Industry Association, over disagreements on how CRIA handles copyright issues. It has left some wondering just how Canadian the CRIA is, as it seems it’s more interested in protecting the “rights” of their southern comrades than advancing Canadian artists’ interests.
Fuck’em. Just fuck all of them. Simple as that.
Update: Right on cue, CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) has upped the ante:
Please also read the press release associated with CEA’s campaign against RIAA/MPAA. Awesome!
-TPP
17
Apr
2006
I can hardly wait till RIAA sues George Bush.
Pitting George Bush against the RIAA Settlement Support Center folks would be very entertaining.
-TPP
