Record Industry Sues 493 More U.S. Music Swappers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. music industry group said Monday it had sued 493 more people for copyright infringement as part of its campaign to stop consumers from copying music over the Internet.
The Recording Industry Association of America (news – web sites) has now sued nearly 3,000 individuals since last September in an attempt to discourage people from copying songs through “peer to peer” networks like Kazaa and LimeWire.
I don’t precisely have a dog in this fight – or more accurately, I have theoretical sympathies towards both positions. First off, I don’t download nonfree stuff without paying for it. Not my bag. Not that I’m trying to claim sainthood or anything; I just tend to not indulge in that sort of sin. So, I have a bit of general sympathy for people getting ripped off…
…which promptly shrivels up and dies, because by and large the entities getting shafted are record companies, a group that I hold in quite justified loathing for the overpriced, lowest-denominator crap that they keep trying to shove into my ears. I haven’t bought an album from a mainstream company in about three years; I much prefer to make sure that my twenty bucks all goes to an actual artist, rather than to mostly the Regional Vice President for East Coast Marketing’s cocaine dealer*. But that shouldn’t mean that I should support letting them get ripped off, either.
It’s a puzzler.
Moe
*I should note that while I would deplore the artist blowing (pardon the pun) said twenty bucks on his own cocaine dealer, I am not a police officer and unless the drug deal goes on in front of me there’s not much I could do about it anyway. Besides, once I get my CD it became his twenty bucks to spend, not mine.
Just a few question:
How many cases has the RIAA brought so far?
How many cases have gone to court in front of a Jury?
How many of those have been won?
How many cases have been settled out of court?