From Digital Music Forum West 2007 - Terry McBride, CEO and Founder of Nettwerk Music Group (who manages artists like Avril Lavigne and Barenaked Ladies) said that the first guilty-verdict in the 20,000-lawsuit strong campaign against illegal file-sharers is a step backwards for the music industry.
On Thursday, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) won the first of an historic campaign against illegal file-sharers and was awarded $220,000 from a 30-year-old woman (who file-shared 24 songs in question).
“I bet the RIAA is going ‘yes, yes, yes,’ but I’m like ‘no!’ You can’t sue your fans one day and then ask them to come to a concert the next day. A lot of these copyright lawsuits are done in the name of the artist (by the record labels), but the artists don’t want that (kind of relationship with their fans),” said Terry McBride.
He also spoke openly about his view that the record labels should drop any DRM-restrictions left on legal downloads immediately:
“EMI was the first label to understand that you can’t put restrictions on the part of the business that is growing, when there were no restrictions on the part of the business that is failing (the CD). All it takes is for someone to stick a CD into their computer and burn the tracks (from places like iTunes) and the DRM is gone,” he said.
Joakim Baage
Related Links
Verdict in First RIAA File-Sharing Jury Trial: Guilty
Someone was video taping Terry’s speech, as well as a few panel discussions from today. Was it you? Will you be hosting it in its entirety anytime soon? If not, do you know where I can find it.
Great, great conference.
Someone was video taping Terry’s speech, as well as a few panel discussions from today. Was it you? Will you be hosting it in its entirety anytime soon? If not, do you know where I can find it.
Great, great conference.
This case’s appeal is going to put a busted ostrich egg in the face of both the judge AND the RIAA. The instructions were clearly outside of the scope of the law, and on top of that, the RIAA never actually proved that DAMAGES occurred. Also, why has no one argued that the DOWNLOADER is responsible for infringement rather than the person “making available?” In the real world, if you make a copy of a CD for someone else, you’re infringing, but if someone makes a copy of a copyrighted item that you, the library, or a rental chain like Blockbuster lends or rents to them, THEY have committed the infringement. There is no feasible way to defeat this analogy. The actual copyright violation occurs not because of the (potentially accidental) availability of the file, but rather because the downloader, copier, or ripper willingly and intentionally chose to make a duplication of the file that would not fall under a fair use exemption.
The jury has essentially made you liable for infringement if your friend borrows a CD from you and decides to rip it without your knowledge or consent before returning it.
I would expect Blockbuster to file an amicus brief for the appeal, because if this ruling is allowed to stand, Blockbuster is “making available” a TON of copyrighted media, and they commit copyright infringement with every rental that chooses to duplicate the rented item. They made it available, after all.
The utter stupidity of the instructions is easily found when the implications of those instructions are applied to all situations that would fall under the wording of those instructions, and that’s why this is going to be one hell of an EASY appeal.
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