What a way to show their customer appreciation! From Yahoo/Reuters:
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, said on Friday it filed a lawsuit against popular social networking site MySpace for infringing copyrights of thousands of its artists' works.
Universal, owned by French media giant Vivendi (VIV.PA), filed the suit at the U.S. District Court Central District of California, Western Division.
The lawsuit accuses MySpace of allowing users to upload videos illegally and taking part in the infringement by re-formatting the videos to be played back or sent to others.
It follows several months of talks on music rights with News Corp.'s (NYSE:NWS - news) MySpace, which broke down late on Thursday, a source familiar with the discussions said.
It claims thousands of links to music from Universal's biggest artists, including Jay-Z and Gwen Stefani, are widely available on MySpace, even ahead of their release to music stores. It estimated maximum statutory damages for each copyrighted work at $150,000.
Earlier on Friday, MySpace unveiled an enhanced copyright protection tool to make it easier for content owners to remove unauthorized material.
MySpace later described Universal's action as "meritless litigation," saying in a statement its procedures for removing illegal downloads lived up to laws protecting digital rights.
Protecting copyrighted material is one of the biggest challenges facing entertainment companies as they try to turn a profit off the growth of digital media outlets.
Music and TV companies have been in dispute with sites like MySpace and YouTube in the last year because of the ease with which their millions of users can upload and share songs and videos without having to pay.
"Businesses that seek to trade off on our content, and the hard work of our artists and songwriters, shouldn't be free to do so without permission and without fairly compensating the content creators," Universal Music said in a statement.
YOUTUBE DEAL AVERTS LAWSUIT
In the case of YouTube, now owned by Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news), Universal Music reached a licensing agreement to give the site and its users access to thousands of music videos.
Other entertainment companies have been reluctant to take legal action against the likes of YouTube and MySpace because of the potential promotional exposure such sites may give to their artists. MySpace says it has more than 130 million users.
News of Universal's suit comes a day after News Corp. said Ross Levinsohn, the executive who led the $580-million acquisition of MySpace, had resigned from the company.
Universal Music Chief Executive Doug Morris had publicly hinted that his company could take legal action against MySpace and YouTube back in September. He said at the time that the two sites combined owed his company "tens of millions of dollars."
But the threat of legal action seemed less likely after Universal and other major record companies including Warner Music Group (NYSE:WMG - news) and Sony BMG Music signed separate music video agreements with YouTube.
Last month Universal Music sued two smaller video sharing sites, Sony Pictures Entertainment's (6758.T) Grouper and independent site Bolt.com.
_________________ "I'm almost perfect......... some of the time!" - Adam Duritz
THE Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has said that it is suing a Russian online music outfit for $1.6 trillion.
Although it has been known that the RIAA intended to sue Mediaservices, which owns AllofMP3.com and allTunes.com, for illegally flogging copyrighted music, it was not clear how much or how the recording industry lobby group intended to do it.
Now, according to Zeropaid.com, it seems that the RIAA want $150,000 for each of the 11 million songs allegedly pirated.
No one knows how much cash the site has made, but it is certainly not in trillions of dollars. The other thing that the RIAA seems to be doing is taking its court action in New York and not in Russia where AllofMP3 operates.
As an AllofMP3 company spokesman pointed out, his company does not operate in New York so the suit is unjustified. The company obeys Russian copyright laws and even pays a chunk of its profits to the RIAA's equivalent in that country.
It pays the standard 15 per cent Russian licensing fee that applies to online music to ROM, the Russian Organisation for Multimedia.
But the RIAA denies the right of ROM to exist. This is mostly because the organisation has negotiated Internet deals that would weaken the RIAA's case if they were adopted globally. It also does not like the fact that ROM wants less cash from online music deals than the RIAA deems acceptable to itself.
So the question is, what is the RIAA up to in starting a court action it cannot possibly hope to win any cash from? The answer is 'spin'. The RIAA would get a default judgement where the legal issues and the compensation issues are taken at face value by a judge. The RIAA can lobby its mates in government claiming that these evil Russian pirates owe the American music industry a trillion and a half bucks.
Nothing focuses a US politicians' attention like a few thousand zeros and means that the question will be ironed out between heads of state, rather than by the RIAA.
This whole episode smacks of overkill to me. Polices raids? Vehicle seizures? RICO violations? Jeez, don't the police, and even the RIAA have bigger fish to fry?
The New York Times January 18, 2007 With Arrest of DJ Drama, the Law Takes Aim at Mixtapes By KELEFA SANNEH
In the world of hip-hop few music executives have more influence than DJ Drama. His “Gangsta Grillz” compilations have helped define this decade’s Southern rap explosion. He has been instrumental in the careers of rappers like Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne. He appears on the cover of the March issue of the hip-hop magazine XXL, alongside his friend and business partner T.I., the top-selling rapper of 2006. And later this year DJ Drama is scheduled to make his Atlantic Records debut with “Gangsta Grillz: The Album.”
Now DJ Drama is yet another symbol of the music industry’s turmoil and confusion.
On Tuesday night he was arrested with Don Cannon, a protégé. The police, working with the Recording Industry Association of America, raided his office, at 147 Walker Street in Atlanta. The association makes no distinction between counterfeit CDs and unlicensed compilations like those that DJ Drama is known for. So the police confiscated 81,000 discs, four vehicles, recording gear, and “other assets that are proceeds of a pattern of illegal activity,” said Chief Jeffrey C. Baker, from the Morrow, Ga., police department, which participated in the raid.
DJ Drama (whose real name is Tyree Simmons) and Mr. Cannon were each charged with a felony violation of Georgia’s Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization law(known as RICO) and held on $100,000 bond.
The compilations produced by DJ Drama and his protégés are known as mixtapes, though they appear on CDs, not cassettes. Mixtapes have become a vital part of the hip-hop world. They are often the only way for listeners to keep up with a genre that moves too quickly to be captured on albums. On a mixtape you can hear unreleased remixes, sneak previews from coming CDs, casual freestyle rhymes, never-to-be-released goofs.
Mixtapes are, by definition, unregulated: DJs don’t get permission from record companies, and record companies have traditionally ignored and sometimes bankrolled mixtapes, reasoning that they serve as valuable promotional tools. And rappers have grown increasingly canny at using mixtapes to promote themselves. The career of 50 Cent has a lot to do with his mastery of the mixtape form, and now no serious rapper can afford to be absent from this market for too long.
As mixtapes evolved from a street-corner phenomenon to a cornerstone of the hip-hop industry, record companies tried to figure out ways to cash in. Mixtape D.J.’s like DJ Clue, DJ Kay Slay and others have released major-label compilations full of tracks that abide by copyright rules. But it’s not easy to turn a mixtape into something you can legally sell: part of the fun is hearing rappers remake one another’s songs and respond to one another’s taunts; a great mixtape captures the controlled chaos that hip-hop thrives on.
DJ Drama’s mixtapes are often great. He has turned “Gangsta Grillz” into a prestige brand: each is a carefully compiled disc, full of exclusive tracks, devoted to a single rapper who is also the host. Rappers often seem proud to be considered good enough for a “Gangsta Grillz” mixtape. On “Dedication,” the first of his two excellent “Gangsta Grillz” mixtapes, Lil Wayne announces, “I hooked up with dude, now we ’bout to make history.” The compilation showed off Lil Wayne more effectively than his albums ever had, and “Dedication” helped revive his career. When some unreleased tracks by T.I. leaked to the Internet, T.I. teamed up with DJ Drama for a pre-emptive strike: together, they created a mixtape called “The Leak.”
As mixtapes have grown more popular, they have also grown easier to purchase, despite that official-sounding declaration — “For Promotional Use Only” — printed on every one. Sites like mixunit.com specialize in selling them, and big record shops and online stores have followed suit. As of yesterday DJ Drama was sitting in jail, but dozens of his unlicensed compilations were still available at the iTunes shop.
Brad A. Buckles, executive vice president for anti-piracy at the Recording Industry Association of America, said, “A sound recording is either copyrighted or it’s not.” And he said the DJ Drama case, like most piracy cases, began with illegal product, which was then traced back to the distributor. Chief Baker said that before the raid, DJ Drama and Mr. Cannon were sent cease-and-desist letters from a local lawyer.
There have been mixtape busts before: in 2005, five employees of Mondo Kim’s, in the East Village in New York, were jailed after the store was found to be selling unlicensed mixtapes. But the arrest of a figure as prominent as DJ Drama is unprecedented. Record companies usually portray the fight against piracy as a fight for artists’ rights, but this case complicates that argument: most of DJ Drama’s mixtapes begin with enthusiastic endorsements from the artists themselves.
It also seems clear that mixtapes can actually bolster an artist’s sales. The most recent Lil Wayne solo album, “Tha Carter II” (Cash Money/Universal), sold more than a million copies, though none of its singles climbed any higher than No. 32 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. That’s an impressive feat, and it’s hard to imagine how he would have done it without help from a friendly pirate.
Brenda Goodman contributed reporting from Atlanta.
_________________ Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
--RIAA Opposes FAIR USE Bill (February 28 & March 1, 2007) The recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is opposed to a bill that would ease some of the restrictions imposed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The RIAA says the proposed Boucher/Doolittle FAIR USE Act, which would allow people who purchase music and movies to make backup copies for personal use, would in effect "legalize hacking." The bill would "allow consumers to circumvent certain restrictions applied to the digital copies of CDs and DVDs when those copies don't have material impact on the copyright holders." http://www.technewsworld.com/story/56037.html# http://www.informationweek.com/shared/p ... =197700216 http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/02/ ... use_1.html [Editor's Note (Schultz): The RIAA's reaction to this bill appears to be quite an overreaction. Making a copy of media containing movies or music for backup purposes or for personal use hardly comprises legal hacking. At the same time, however, easing some of the provisions of the DMCA would increase the likelihood that illegal copies of such media will be made.]
_________________ "I'm almost perfect......... some of the time!" - Adam Duritz
MPAA, RIAA Want to Use Pretexting During Investigations
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are working together to lobby state legislators to sign a proposed amendment to a California bill that deals with pretexting. The amendment would allow the trade organizations to use pretexting to enforce copyright laws.
In letters sent to Sen. Ellen Corbett, both trade groups said that the legislation would undermine their anti-piracy efforts -- investigators must be able to pose as a regular person to be able to acquire pirated material.
Both the MPAA and RIAA claim they need to use deceptive practices to help monitor and catch bootleggers on the Internet. The RIAA and MPAA both said they would not assume a person's identity to get personal information during an investigation. However, both entities want to make sure they legally are able to hide any type of industry connection when pursuing leads into the black market.
"Basically we want criminals to feel comfortable that who they're dealing with is probably some other criminal and let us in on what's going on," said Brad Buckles, RIAA executive vice president for anti-piracy.
Pretexting was brought into the spotlight after a pretexting scandal rocked Hewlett-Packard late last year. Investigators hired by HP used pretexting to get personal records of journalists and employees of the company, a move that led to a boardroom shakeup.
Late last year, President Bush signed the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006; the U.S. federal anti-pretexting bill. The law makes it illegal for people to "knowingly and intentionally" obtain phone records by any type of deception.
In addition, the FCC just set its regulations for pretexting over voice communication devices. These regulations include contacting customers and the FBI during breaches of customer privacy, as well as holding phone companies responsible for pretexting incidents.
Neither associations have a loophole in the new FCC regulation or Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act, but the MPAA has successfully lobbied similar legislation in the past. Last year, the proposed California bill to ban pretexting was shot down by a 33-27 vote in the California House. Three months prior, the California State Senate voted unamiously in favor of the bill.
Both the MPAA and RIAA claim they need to use deceptive practices to help monitor and catch bootleggers on the Internet... "Basically we want criminals to feel comfortable that who they're dealing with is probably some other criminal and let us in on what's going on," said Brad Buckles, RIAA executive vice president for anti-piracy.
Thanks, Linda. Very interesting article. And, for once, I actually agree with the RIAA (even though I still don't trust them.) I can't help but feel that, if given an inch they WILL take a mile.
As much as I despise the RIAA, I really do believe that piracy is a huge problem. Unfortunately, the RIAA cries "piracy" every time something doesn't go their way. And, half the time, what they call "piracy" is not illegal at all. (It's like the boy who cried wolf. After a while, people just started ignoring his cries.)
I'm on mailing lists for some musicians that I like and have had people e-mail me, asking me if I was into sharing live shows and (if so) was I interested in trading. I never respond to those inquiries because I always assume that it MIGHT be the RIAA (although it sounds like their doing so would be illegal.)
I really can't see how using pretext is any different than using plain-clothes officers to catch a criminal.
_________________ Don't let nobody take away your smile - Don't let nobody change your funky style. (Eric Lindell)
Music piracy crackdown nets college kids By ANNA JO BRATTON, Associated Press Writer Sun May 13, 2:50 PM ET
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — At first, Sarah Barg thought the e-mail was a scam.
Some group called the Recording Industry Association of America was accusing the University of Nebraska-Lincoln sophomore of illegally downloading 381 songs using the school's computer network and a program called Ares.
The letter said she might be sued but offered her the chance to settle out of court.
Barg couldn't imagine anyone expected her to pay $3,000 — $7.87 per song — for some 1980s ballads and Spice Girls tunes she downloaded for laughs in her dorm room. Besides, the 20-year-old had friends who had downloaded thousands of songs without repercussion.
"Obviously I knew it was illegal, but no one got in trouble for it," Barg said.
But Barg's perspective changed quickly that Thursday in March, when she called student legal services and found out the e-mail was no joke and that she had a pricey decision to make.
Barg is one of 61 students at UNL and hundreds at more than 60 college campuses across the country who have received letters from the recording industry group, threatening a lawsuit if they don't settle out of court.
"Any student on any campus in the country who is illegally downloading music may receive one of these letters in the coming months," said Jenni Engebretsen, an RIAA spokeswoman.
Barg's parents paid the $3,000 settlement. Without their help, "I don't know what I would have done. I'm only 20 years old," she said.
At least 500 university students nationwide have paid settlements to avoid being sued, Engebretsen said. Students who don't take the offer face lawsuits — and minimum damages of $750 for each copyrighted recording shared if they lose.
UNL officials have been told 32 more letters are on the way. At least 17 UNL students who did not take the settlement offer have been sued, according to the RIAA, although the university has been asked to forward only five subpoenas.
But the students coughing up the cash question why they're the ones getting in trouble.
"They're targeting the worst people," UNL freshman Andrew Johnson, who also settled for $3,000. "Legally, it probably makes sense, because we don't have the money to fight."
Johnson got his e-mail in February, with the recording industry group's first wave of letters targeting college students. He had downloaded 100 songs on a program called LimeWire using the university network.
The money to settle came from the 18-year-old's college fund. He'll work three jobs this summer to pay back the money.
Johnson compares what he did to people driving 5 miles per hour over the speed limit.
"It's not like I downloaded millions of songs and sold them to people," Johnson said.
But just one song can bring a lawsuit, Engebretsen said.
"It is important to send the message that this is illegal, you can be caught, and there are consequences," she said.
The industry realizes attitudes need changing, and money from the settlements is reinvested in educational programs schools and other groups can use to spread the word that song sharing can have severe consequences.
Some of the programs are tailored to start with third-graders.
"We do recognize that by the time students reach college, many of their music habits are already formed," Engebretsen said.
Earlier this month, members of Congress sent a letter to officials from 19 universities, including UNL, asking for information about schools' anti-piracy policies.
According to the letter, more than half of college students download copyrighted music and movies. The information requested is intended to help assess whether Congress needs to advance legislation to ensure illegal downloading "is no longer commonly associated with student life on some U.S. campuses," the letter says.
Barg is still angry about her letter from the recording industry group, which she calls bullying. But she agrees sharing music is common, and that other students don't understand the consequences.
"Technically, I'm guilty. I just think it's ridiculous, the way they're going about it," Barg said. "We have to find a way to adjust our legal policy to take into account this new technology, and so far, they're not doing a very good job."
Barg thinks the university should send an e-mail to all students, warning them that the recording industry won't look the other way.
As campus clears out for the summer, UNL officials are considering launching a new educational campaign in the fall.
"If we can do anything to help educate students about what illegal file-sharing is, we're willing and interested in doing that," said Kelly Bartling, a university spokeswoman.
Bartling said no one wants students to have to worry about how to pay tuition because of an expensive settlement. "It is a hugely expensive lesson," Bartling said.
Johnson, the UNL freshman, doesn't think the threats from the recording industry group are going to solve the problem. Friends who know he got in trouble still share music online.
"People are still going to do it until they get caught, and they can't catch everyone," Johnson said.
_________________ Don't let nobody take away your smile - Don't let nobody change your funky style. (Eric Lindell)
A court decision reached last month but under seal until Friday could force Web sites to track visitors if the sites become defendants in a lawsuit.
TorrentSpy, a popular BitTorrent search engine, was ordered on May 29 by a federal judge in the Central District of California in Los Angeles to create logs detailing users' activities on the site. The judge, Jacqueline Chooljian, however, granted a stay of the order on Friday to allow TorrentSpy to file an appeal.
The appeal must be filed by June 12, according to Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney.
TorrentSpy has promised in its privacy policy never to track visitors without their consent.
"It is likely that TorrentSpy would turn off access to the U.S. before tracking its users," Rothken said. "If this order were allowed to stand, it would mean that Web sites can be required by discovery judges to track what their users do even if their privacy policy says otherwise."
The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Columbia Pictures and other top Hollywood film studios, sued TorrentSpy and a host of others in February 2006 as part of a sweep against file-sharing companies. According to the MPAA, the search engine was sued for allegedly making it easier to download pirated files.
Representatives of the trade group could not be reached for comment.
The court's decision could have a chilling effect on e-commerce and digital entertainment sites, said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He calls the ruling "unprecedented."
EFF, which advocates for the public in digital rights' cases, is still reviewing the court's decision, but von Lohmann calls what he's seen so far a "troubling court order."
This is believed to be the first time a judge has ordered a defendant to log visitor activity and then hand over the information to the plaintiff.
"In general, a defendant is not required to create new records to hand over in discovery," von Lohmann said. "We shouldn't let Web site logging policies be set by litigation."
Many Web companies keep visitor logs, which can include Internet Protocol addresses, as well as other information. Some choose not to record this data, including EFF, von Lohmann said.
Russian download site Allofmp3.com has been shut down.
The service, which sold songs at a fraction of the cost of the other sites, claimed to be the second biggest seller of music downloads after iTunes.
The site has been the subject of several lawsuits from UK and US record labels that claimed it violated copyright law, reports BBC News.
The site's owners MediaServices maintained the site was legal under Russian law, and has subsequently set up a new service called mp3Sparks.com.
The closure of the original site has been welcomed by the record industry.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry chairman John Kennedy said: "Allofmp3.com violated copyright law in Russia and internationally by ripping off artists and creators, taking music that it had no right to reproduce and selling it worldwide. If this is the end of allofmp3.com this is good news."
Numerous lawsuits were started against the site's owners MediaServices, and the Russian government have come under criticism for its apparent lack of action against the site.
In 2006 a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Arista Records, Warner Bros, Capitol and UMG recordings. They said they were selling songs without permission.
Under increased pressure Moscow finally signed an agreement in October last year to shut down the site.
--Texas Woman Countersues RIAA
(July 5, 2007)
One woman sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
is hitting back. In a countersuit filed in US District Court in Texas,
Rhonda Crain alleges the RIAA knowingly employed unlicensed private
investigators to obtain evidence against her in the case. Crain's
lawsuit alleges the "actions constitute civil conspiracy under Texas
common law." The suit asks that the court bar the music companies from
employing unlicensed investigators in her case and in all other Texas
cases.
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/p ... =200900640 [Editor's Note (Northcutt): Wow, at first glance it looks like RIAA and
company got sloppy. The actual counterclaim can be viewed here:
http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDFfull.as ... nterclaims ]
_________________ "I'm almost perfect......... some of the time!" - Adam Duritz
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot post attachments in this forum
