There needs to be a law or something that says a certain party cannot sue more than a thousand people in so-many years or something. It's absolutely ridiculous if you think about it. Who else has sued 14,000 normal people?

Before the Internet and cd's there were tapes. People have been copying music from friends or of the radio for decades. Anyway, perhaps if the music industry loses some money they will start having to find real artists with real talents! Instead of getting faces and spending millions turning them into a 5 minute hits.

Ok, just a little thought, i really dont know how the laws work in the usa, but i remember very well a movie called erin brokvich (i really dont know how to spell it neither i care) and the thing they had for pushing against a big corporation was the big number of people suing them, couldnt it be possible, for a greedy greedy lawyer in a greedy greedy law firm to see that if they go put thin 14000+ possible clients and all of them countersuit them to it be very much probable to make not even a difference, but a big big amount of money aout of indemizations due to the attempmt on degrading the quality of life of students and families due to ignorance, i mean its like if the goverment has a big big company that manages all the trash right? theyre job is to go house by house picking up the trash, so far so good but if a 10 year old kid litters in the street jus by ignorance or because he isnt really aware of what he is doing and the companny instead of telling the authorities to please do their job and tell the kid not to do it anymore or giving his parents a ticket they go with evidence to a court and suit their family for a couple thousand dollars and not only that, they make him a criminal record for that, i just think that the goverment is the only responsible for ending this $tupid suing frenzy

sorry for my spelling mistakes

STUPID RIAA.
I live in england so I don't have to worry about them, but I do have the BPI who I believe are soon/already are suing people.

I really do hope they sue me you know. I will be the one to stand up to them I won't give in and hand them thousands of pounds for a few lousy songs I downloaded, I will raise the money and take the case to the courts.

Sure I dont have a lot of money and as I see by the RIAA targeting universities they are going after people they know can't afford to hire lawyers and whatever to fight back. I will find a way to raise the money and WHEN I win I will sue them for everythign I can.

Hey you AD guys will donate me some money to fight them if they ever catch me won't you.....
Consider it an investment because when I sue them I will return your donation plus some extra for your troubles. :)

fudge the riaa

RIAA -- Raping Innocent Adults of Assets Everyone agree???

To the last comment. That is hilarious...lol i like that.

754 people, 754 families which means maybe 2000+ people directly connected to those being sued. 2000+ less customers for the greedy ones.
Keep it up RIAA. law suits will not stop progress but it will stop people from buying CD's. keep it up because the best thing that could happen to the music industry is for all your members to get out of the music business.

I for one, no longer buy Cd's. I download music, and I live in the USA or PSA as I like to call it. If the cartels sue me F@#K EM, I will stand up no matter the results. Before downloading I used tapes, what's different? greedy bastards.

Quote:

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If the cartels sue me F@#K EM, I will stand up no matter the results.

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say all that, but if $hit really hit the fan, and you were $2000/pounds short would you?? hmmm...

anyway, as nonoitall stated, us in the UK don't really have to worry at all because our bpi is less 'sue-happy' and if i am correct, have sued not even 500 people [yet].

suits me :)

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I think it's about time that our Lawmakers start doing what they are elected to do; enact GOOD LAWS. The whole legal system is flooded with lawsuits that are grid locking the entire court docket. I'd love to see just how fast those with the Sue Someone Mentality would come to a screeching halt with the passage of just one law. Enact a law that says that if you as a company or as an individual enter a lawsuit against someone and YOU lose in court or if you drop the suit without a settlement, you have to pay the legal fees of the person you sued; plus maybe a flat fee or percentage of what you were suing the person for as damages. It would sure stop these ambulance chasers and the "so you slipped on a grape" lawsuits. A neighbor was sued because someone was breaking into his garage; a ladder fell off the wall and beaned the burglar on the head. You guessed it; he got an attorney and sued the owner of the house. Of course the bad guy lost but so did my neighbor...he lost the money he had to pay his attorney, he lost the time at work to appear in court and he had to pay for the repairs to his garage door. The only one to make out in these cases is the lawyers that collect a fee if you win or loose. If RIAA is suing because someone uploaded a song then I would think they would be more then happy to show the world thru an actual court trial that they are in the right...are they? If anything, a record company is guilty of contributory negligence for not enacting safeguards to protect "their property"...after all, aren't gun manufacturers being sued and held liable because they made the gun and didn't prevent "you" from using it to kill someone? Next will be Mother Nature or God being sued for creating the rocks that were thrown.

The grounds on which the RIAA sues people are a complete joke too. (1) Let's say I buy an apple at store and come home and eat it. After I'm done, I toss the core in my compost heap. (2) One of the seeds in the apple falls on the ground and just so happens to be fertile and a tree sprouts after a week or two. In a few years, the tree begins producing fruit. (3) I eat some and share some with my friends too, since they're hungry and don't have any cash with them to buy an apple of their own.

Now, it's true - because I gave my friends apples (and they might in turn grow their own trees with the seeds from their apples), the store lost profit (maybe, though my friends could not have bought apples anyway, for lack of any money, so there's no proof the store really lost profit), but it would be ridiculous for the store to try and sue me for this. It's not like they deserve to have control over my tree because they owned its daddy, and they didn't put any work into growing the tree; it's mine to do with what I please.

You'll notice I broke down the process above into three basic steps:

1. Acquisition
2. Reproduction
3. Distribution

Don't look now, but we can adapt this principle to uploading music as well:

(1) I go to the store and buy a CD. (2) I rip the CD onto my computer. (2 & 3) I share a song with my friends on the internet.

However, the recording industry goes absolutely ballistic over this behavior. They make unfounded claims that it eats into their profits when there is no evidence of that at all (though even if it were true, that doesn't necessarily make it wrong; think back to the store losing profit).

Music, like fruit, is a wonderful creation that should be shared and enjoyed by everyone - not exploited by greedy corporations striving to gain power and control over people's recreation. It's really sad to see that the people that have been entrusted with power like the RIAA have been so childish and selfish with such a great gift.

Yes Crackers isnt it they sure a few thousand people for stealing a couple songs of the net, it goes b4 judges who are paid by the public purse,yes thats the same joe public who are in court for downloading a few shit quality mp3s,sad day indeed, why dont they do something useful and sue the president for crimes against humanity,but hey that wont happen because he is in the same boat as all those corporations making millions of the backs of the low income dudes, that same boat being hes f...ing loaded, 1 law for all not one for them and one for us.

I agree with Reagan. Media copying has been going on since cassette tapes were introduced, and it's always been 1:1 copying. I fail to see how suddenly, after 2-3 decades, there's a sudden loss of profits. Here's how I do things. When Metallica's album, St. Anger, was released, I paid $30 for it. A CD that sucked so bad, I couldn't understand why I paid so much for it. Now, because of this, I download a couple of songs at random from an album, and if I like 75% of what I downloaded, I go buy the album. The only things I really go after on P2P are B-Sides you can't get anymore (I spent 2 years getting every Iron Maiden B-Side because they won't re-issue the singles again). Anyway, because of how I do this, I've discovered a lot af good bands, awesome bands, and bands with absolutely no talent, but got contracts because of how they look. Long story short: give contracts based on talent, not appearance, lower prices on CD's (do we really need anything more than a booklet with the lyrics?). According to various articles I've read, CD's only cost roughly $0.25 to produce (album cd's, not the burnable ones). If this happened, downloading might decrease. Also, as far as legal downloading is concerned, offer alternative payment options. Not everyone has/wants a credit card!!!