5 ms·

Did someone forget to consult with the MPAA and the RIAA on this one? This is a joke of an outcome. $3k per book. How much was it per song for Napster?

tzs 2mo ago
The RIAA typically asked for around $2-4 per song to settle without a lawsuit, which would come to a total of a few thousand because they generally only went after people sharing over a thousand songs. In the couple of few where the party would not agree to a settlement and the RIAA sued, they would pick about 15 of the thousand+ songs to sue over. Statutory damages are a minimum of $750 per infringed work, so the total would now be about 3-5 times what their settlement offer amount had been. Most parties then got a lawyer, the lawyer told the party that had no chance, and they would then seriously negotiate with the RIAA and get a settlement. Only a couple would still not settle, went to trial, and did an absolutely terrible job and the judge/jury awarded well above the minimum statutory damages. The RIAA still tried to settle for well below that, but the defendants refused and kept trying to fight and did not have a happy time.
- ariwilson 2mo ago
  Weird to hear a full throated defense of the RIAA here
  - beering 2mo ago
    A summary of what happened is not a full-throated defense of anyone.
    - jamesjhare 2mo ago
      [flagged]
      - Fantosism 2mo ago
        It's pretty easy to validate that everything they're saying is accurate. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/september-8/riaa-begins-suing-individual-sharers-of-copyrighted-mp3-files https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/september-8/riaa... > in practice the RIAA offered defendants the option of establishing a “Clean Slate” by destroying all of their illegally acquired files and paying a settlement of approximately $3 per illegal song. The two notable cases were: 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thomas-Rasset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thoma... 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_Music_Entertainment_v._Tenenbaum_(2009) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_Music_Entertainment_v...
        nadermx 2mo ago
        Weird, what about this? https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaa_at_four.pdf https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaa_at_four.pdf
        user43928 2mo ago
        Could you also make the argument here instead of just linking a 25 page PDF?
        nadermx 2mo ago
        It's basically many pages refuting parent's comments framing of "It's pretty easy to validate that everything they're saying is accurate." given the PDF opening is: "On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against its own customers.1 Four years later, the recording industry has filed, settled, or threatened, legal actions against well over 20,000 individuals.2 " Which paints a different picture.
        Fantosism 2mo ago
        This entire topic is about Anthropic settling for 3k/book. The parent claimed that the RIAA settled for $2-4 a song, which is true, and corroborated by your link. These were settled prior to legal action. They even had a website p2psettlement.com where you could pay before receiving legal notice. The parent claimed that when RIAA actually sued, they sought statutory damages on a small subset of the infringed songs. Which is true. The two cases that went to trial involved 24 songs (Thomas-Rasset) and 30 songs (Tenenbaum), out of the thousands each defendant was accused of sharing. The statutory minimum was $750 per work, so a judgment on even a couple dozen songs exceeded the original settlement offer several times over. The parent claimed that most parties got a lawyer, and would then negotiate with the RIAA. This is also true, most cases settled for under 10,000. The two notable cases that went to trial were linked in my prior post. In one of them, the judge went so far as to urge Congress to lower the statutory minimum for individual, non-commercial infringers. The last claim that RIAA tried to settle below the awarded damages is also true. Here is one instance of the two cases I linked: https://web.archive.org/web/20101201221839/http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10442482-261.html https://web.archive.org/web/20101201221839/http://news.cnet.... So I'm really not understanding what you're refuting. The EFF document you linked doesn't dispute any of these facts, it just critiques the scale and fairness. The parent described accurate mechanics, and the EFF thought it was abusive. These are both true at the same time and entirely different conversations.
    - nadermx 2mo ago
      How is that classifed as a summary? Cursory search, https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaa_at_four.pdf https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaa_at_four.pdf
      - tzs 2mo ago
        Looks like I had a few memory errors. First I forgot that in the first phase, when they were able to identify people using DMCA subpoenas, they had a used a mix of suing first and offering a settlement first. Then in the second phase when they lost the ability to identify people that way they switched to filing "John Doe" lawsuits, which then allowed them to get subpoenas to identify who owned the IP address where the uploads came from. I'd completely forgotten about that. In most cases they offered a settlement once they had a name but still, there was a lawsuit. (If they couldn't get a settlement, or didn't even want to ask for one, they could amend the lawsuit to name the real person and proceed).
- jamesjhare 2mo ago
  [flagged]
- inigyou 2mo ago
  How did the 200 million dollar lawsuits for one song come about then?
  - tzs 2mo ago
    There has never been one song that has come anywhere near that over copyright infringement. For file sharing lawsuits they all ask for "statutory" damages. Those are in the range from $750 to $30000 in the US (but can be lowered to as low as $250 in the case of an "innocent infringer" [1] or raised to as much as $150000 in the case of a "willful infringer" [2]). These damages are per work infringed, so even if someone were found to be a willful infringer for sharing a song, and the court found their behavior so egregious that it went all the way to $150000, and the person had made and distributed a vast number of copies, it would still only by $150000 because it is not per copy. (Well, it might be per copy in a way...in deciding were to land on the $750-$150000 scale the court may have considered the number of copies). There have been copyright and copyright adjacent lawsuits over songs that have hit $200 million in the aggregate, but those all involved large collections of songs. Some examples: • Limp Bizkit sued their record label for $200+ million saying they had concealed that much in royalties that they owed the band. • There was a $200 million suit by music publishers against Roblox for allowing users to upload and stream commercial compositions without paying the writers. • There's a massive suit underway I believe against some AI music generation companies. As far as I know the biggest ever over an individual song was an award of $7.4 million against "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over accusations that the infringed Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give it Up". (That was reduced later to $5.3 million plus 50% of future "Blurred Lines" publishing and songwriting royalties). [1] Someone who did not know they were infringing and had no reason to know. This almost never applies when pirating things you know are commercial recordings.

tzs 2mo ago

The RIAA typically asked for around $2-4 per song to settle without a lawsuit, which would come to a total of a few thousand because they generally only went after people sharing over a thousand songs. In the couple of few where the party would not agree to a settlement and the RIAA sued, they would pick about 15 of the thousand+ songs to sue over. Statutory damages are a minimum of $750 per infringed work, so the total would now be about 3-5 times what their settlement offer amount had been. Most parties then got a lawyer, the lawyer told the party that had no chance, and they would then seriously negotiate with the RIAA and get a settlement. Only a couple would still not settle, went to trial, and did an absolutely terrible job and the judge/jury awarded well above the minimum statutory damages. The RIAA still tried to settle for well below that, but the defendants refused and kept trying to fight and did not have a happy time.

ariwilson 2mo ago
Weird to hear a full throated defense of the RIAA here
- beering 2mo ago
  A summary of what happened is not a full-throated defense of anyone.
  - jamesjhare 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Fantosism 2mo ago
      It's pretty easy to validate that everything they're saying is accurate. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/september-8/riaa-begins-suing-individual-sharers-of-copyrighted-mp3-files https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/september-8/riaa... > in practice the RIAA offered defendants the option of establishing a “Clean Slate” by destroying all of their illegally acquired files and paying a settlement of approximately $3 per illegal song. The two notable cases were: 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thomas-Rasset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thoma... 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_Music_Entertainment_v._Tenenbaum_(2009) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_Music_Entertainment_v...
      - nadermx 2mo ago
        Weird, what about this? https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaa_at_four.pdf https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaa_at_four.pdf
        user43928 2mo ago
        Could you also make the argument here instead of just linking a 25 page PDF?
        nadermx 2mo ago
        It's basically many pages refuting parent's comments framing of "It's pretty easy to validate that everything they're saying is accurate." given the PDF opening is: "On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against its own customers.1 Four years later, the recording industry has filed, settled, or threatened, legal actions against well over 20,000 individuals.2 " Which paints a different picture.
        Fantosism 2mo ago
        This entire topic is about Anthropic settling for 3k/book. The parent claimed that the RIAA settled for $2-4 a song, which is true, and corroborated by your link. These were settled prior to legal action. They even had a website p2psettlement.com where you could pay before receiving legal notice. The parent claimed that when RIAA actually sued, they sought statutory damages on a small subset of the infringed songs. Which is true. The two cases that went to trial involved 24 songs (Thomas-Rasset) and 30 songs (Tenenbaum), out of the thousands each defendant was accused of sharing. The statutory minimum was $750 per work, so a judgment on even a couple dozen songs exceeded the original settlement offer several times over. The parent claimed that most parties got a lawyer, and would then negotiate with the RIAA. This is also true, most cases settled for under 10,000. The two notable cases that went to trial were linked in my prior post. In one of them, the judge went so far as to urge Congress to lower the statutory minimum for individual, non-commercial infringers. The last claim that RIAA tried to settle below the awarded damages is also true. Here is one instance of the two cases I linked: https://web.archive.org/web/20101201221839/http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10442482-261.html https://web.archive.org/web/20101201221839/http://news.cnet.... So I'm really not understanding what you're refuting. The EFF document you linked doesn't dispute any of these facts, it just critiques the scale and fairness. The parent described accurate mechanics, and the EFF thought it was abusive. These are both true at the same time and entirely different conversations.
  - nadermx 2mo ago
    How is that classifed as a summary? Cursory search, https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaa_at_four.pdf https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaa_at_four.pdf
    - tzs 2mo ago
      Looks like I had a few memory errors. First I forgot that in the first phase, when they were able to identify people using DMCA subpoenas, they had a used a mix of suing first and offering a settlement first. Then in the second phase when they lost the ability to identify people that way they switched to filing "John Doe" lawsuits, which then allowed them to get subpoenas to identify who owned the IP address where the uploads came from. I'd completely forgotten about that. In most cases they offered a settlement once they had a name but still, there was a lawsuit. (If they couldn't get a settlement, or didn't even want to ask for one, they could amend the lawsuit to name the real person and proceed).
jamesjhare 2mo ago
[flagged]
inigyou 2mo ago
How did the 200 million dollar lawsuits for one song come about then?
- tzs 2mo ago
  There has never been one song that has come anywhere near that over copyright infringement. For file sharing lawsuits they all ask for "statutory" damages. Those are in the range from $750 to $30000 in the US (but can be lowered to as low as $250 in the case of an "innocent infringer" [1] or raised to as much as $150000 in the case of a "willful infringer" [2]). These damages are per work infringed, so even if someone were found to be a willful infringer for sharing a song, and the court found their behavior so egregious that it went all the way to $150000, and the person had made and distributed a vast number of copies, it would still only by $150000 because it is not per copy. (Well, it might be per copy in a way...in deciding were to land on the $750-$150000 scale the court may have considered the number of copies). There have been copyright and copyright adjacent lawsuits over songs that have hit $200 million in the aggregate, but those all involved large collections of songs. Some examples: • Limp Bizkit sued their record label for $200+ million saying they had concealed that much in royalties that they owed the band. • There was a $200 million suit by music publishers against Roblox for allowing users to upload and stream commercial compositions without paying the writers. • There's a massive suit underway I believe against some AI music generation companies. As far as I know the biggest ever over an individual song was an award of $7.4 million against "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over accusations that the infringed Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give it Up". (That was reduced later to $5.3 million plus 50% of future "Blurred Lines" publishing and songwriting royalties). [1] Someone who did not know they were infringing and had no reason to know. This almost never applies when pirating things you know are commercial recordings.