The RIAA has come up with a new, improved sliding price scale that they’ll be charging students accused of P2P file sharing.  If the student engages the RIAA legal team in any way, the cost of the settlement jumps from $3000 to $7000 or even $8000.
It sounds to me like the RIAA is […]

Today, May 16, 2008 will likely be the RIAA’s Pearl Harbor. On this day, (a day that will live in infamy for the cruelly manhandled recipients of RIAA extortion letters), a U.S. District Court Judge, Michael Davis noted in a brief that he gave erroneous instructions to the jury and might require a […]

The RIAA has contended that the simple act of making music files available to file sharing programs like KaZaA constitutes infringement. 
In fact, in this particular case, Atlantic v. Howell, Judge Neil V. Wake had originally granted the RIAA a summary judgement against the Howell’s.  This judgement was based upon the premise that […]

Here’s an interesting factoid…  Rather than paying the recording artist their due the RIAA spent 2.8 million dollars last year lobbying in Washington for stricter copyright laws and and overall better legal climate.  Without that climate they certainly couldn’t have extorted more than $200,000 dollars from that woman who downloaded 24 songs off […]

In pursuit of their mission to suck the lifeblood and very souls from the musicians who provide the real product in the music industry, the RIAA is seeking to lower the royalty rate that the artist gets for each downloaded track from its current 4.5 cents per song to about 2.5 cents a song.
4.5 […]

In 1984 the Supreme Court of the United States determined in a case between Universal City Studios and Walt Disney Company vs. Sony what constituted ‘Fair Use’ for video and VCRs.  As time has gone by, the intent of the law has been modified to include many aspects of copying media.
As the MP3 player […]

It looks like the RIAA is losing favor with at least one of its corporate sponsors.  Recently EMI was purchased by the private equity firm Terra Firma and the new owners are finalizing plans to reduce its financial help to both the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the […]

As the RIAA continues to roll itself into a smaller and less impressive organization they keep making silly gestures that only reinforce my ’Oh-So-Low’ opinion of them. It seems that they have teamed up with some other backwards thinkers and created "The Copyright Alliance". Well, they had a little fete’ in DC this week that […]

A jury of her peers has found that the woman accused of downloading and sharing copywrited material across the internet is guilty and has ordered her to pay $220,000 in restitution.
This verdict was met with shocked disbelief.  As one lawyer put it, “A verdict of $222,000 for infringement of 24 song files worth a total […]