It’s a shame US District Colleen McMahon (right) isn’t in Boston. She might have had a thing or two to say about two students, there, who’ve been coerced by the members of the Big Four record label cartel into effectively discounting the maxim, 'Innocent until proven guilty'.
Moreover, they have, to all intents and purposes, been ‘fined’ almost $4,000 by EMI (UK), UMG (France), Sony BMG (Japan, Germany) and WMG (US) without ever having been near a court or a judge.
Every time the Big Four use their RIAA to launch a Pay Us Or Else missile at someone as part of their blackly cynical sue ‘em all marketing campaign, victims are told to get further instructions from the Settlement Support Center LLC in Seattle.
Targets, always ordinary mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, as well as students, are then told by an 'official' at the centre that they’ll have to pay a ruinous amount of money to avoid being further persecuted by teams of RIAA lawyers during a civil court proceeding.
The minimum penalty for copyright infringement under the USA Copyright Act is $700 for each song, the maximum amount being $150,000 each. So even for, say, half-a-dozen songs, the minimum amount an RIAA victim might be facing if found ‘guilty’ would be $4,200 or almost $1 million at the top end.
A million dollars is a terrifying sum, but no one has ever had to pay it because not one of the victims has ever appeared in court, which doesn’t stop the cartel from using the mainstream media to suggest it’s successfully sued many thousands of people, around 14,000, at last count.
And this, in turn, further bolsters the idea that it’s impossible to resist the cartel.
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I want to make sure I understand what this article is saying. Do you mean to tell me that some of these people who are being sued by the RIAA and MPAA are not even getting a fair trial? That they are guilty without having a chance to be proven innocent? If I read that correctly, first off that is unconstitutional. What happened to due process? What happened to a trial by jury?
How can they sue someone without having any evidence?
They aren't sued, but the threat of suing. If they don't pay money to the RIAA and stop sharing then the RIAA will sue them. No one has yet been drug through the courts because who has money to do that? Money means you settle and aren't sued (and pay expensive lawyers).
What's to say a trojan didn't do the downloading, considering the technology out there that can setup botnets and a lot more...all without knowledge of the PC's owner... it's hardly an invalid excuse.
I'd fight the lawsuits... they'd have to prove it was me and not something triggered by viri/trojans. Burden of proof is on them. If I claim that my machine must've been hijacked at the time and I have no recollection of downloading anything they're giving me shit for... how can they disprove that claim?
Maybe the RIAA threat against p2p'ers indirectly resulted in someone feeling the need to hack my computer to protect themselves by turning me, effectively.. into a proxy?
||| = + |-|---------No longer lurking...
m e t h o d-----...Target aquired: BREIN
Yes transductions......it IS unconstitution, but corporations own the US now and if they can hide it from the american people or disguise it in some way then they will.Originally Posted by transduction
They believe they can do whatever the american people allow them to do. And we as a whole aren't too bright.
CAPITAL punishment for infringement is a CAPITAList's dream.
Oh, haven't you heard? The oligarchy updated our Constitution back in the Reagan era!
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