News: RIAA Sues 19-Year-Old Transplant Patient

[Bob Hubbard]

News: RIAA Sues 19-Year-Old Transplant Patient 2008-12-07 19:26

Posted by kdawson on Sunday December 07, @07:26PM
from the kicking-dogs-on-the-way-home dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Just when you think they've reached rock bottom, it seems the RIAA always finds room to sink a little lower. This time they've sued an innocent, 19-year-old, transplant patient, hospitalized with pancreatitis and needing islet cell transplants. Although the young Pittsburgh lady claims that she did not infringe any copyrights, she failed to answer the complaint in time, and a default judgment was taken against her. A Pittsburgh area lawyer has stated that he will represent her pro bono and make a motion to open up the default."
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[Bob Hubbard]

For the record.

I think the RIAA and their lawyers are little more than parasites on the industriy, and that their lawyers are cold hearted, scum sucking, worthless, turds.

Spend some time reading http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/ and see how they break the law, use illegal tactics, intimidation, "john doe" fishing expeditions, and worse to beat up innocent grandmothers, sick and dying people, and more.

Each time I read of another law college going head to head with them, a judge actually taking the time to put these bastards in their place and not give them free reign, I smile. Until they stop, I will not buy anything from any RIAA member. I'll buy used (which doesn't put a dime in their pockets), or listen to the radio or Youtube.

 

[exile]

Hang these ****ers with piano wire.

 

[arnisador]

Colleges are increasingly complaining that the RIAA is forcing them to do the RIAA's work, and that it's costing them money in labor and software costs (under fear of lawsuits; per a relatively recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.). My son's college forced him to install draconian nannyware in order to access their network.

The model has to change. Too many people think the law is wrong. I don't actually agree with those who say they should be able to get it for free on the grounds that what can be done should be done, but fighting it is wholly impractical. "Information wanst to be free."

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Enter the US Copyright Czar and US Copyright Police Force.

 

[MA-Caver]

Hang these ****ers with piano wire.

Hooked up to an electrical outlet...

 

[Big Don]

If people were selling music without buying it first, that, IMHO, would be a crime. Sharing is good, at least that is what I was told in preschool... Who is the RIAA to tell me who and how I am allowed to share my things with?

 

[exile]

Hooked up to an electrical outlet...

Oooh, that's a nice image, MAC! :EG:

 

[Bob Hubbard]

"Who is the RIAA to tell me who and how I am allowed to share my things with?"

They are supposedly there to protect the artists, which is why a CD costs 25 cents to make, prep, burn, n bundle, yet costs $20 at the store so that the artist can make 10-25 cents royalty.

 

[arnisador]

My textbook sells for something like $125, so who am I to talk...but I have no control over that.

 

[The Last Legionary]

Follow orders as you're told,
Make Their Yellow Blood Run Cold
Fight until you die or drop,
A Force Like Ours is Hard to Stop
Close your mind to stress and pain,
Fight till You're No Longer Sane
Let not one damn cur pass by,
How Many of Them Can We Make Die!

 

[exile]

My textbook sells for something like $125, so who am I to talk...but I have no control over that.

$125.... Arni, no... it can't be.

Tell me it's not true.

You didn't ...let... Elsevier publish it....did you???? :anic:

 

[The Last Legionary]

My textbook sells for something like $125, so who am I to talk...but I have no control over that.

E-Book! Charge the kiddies $75, and pocket the $70 profit all yourself!

 

[arnisador]

$125.... Arni, no... it can't be.

Tell me it's not true.

You didn't ...let... Elsevier publish it....did you???? :anic:

No, the cheap weasels at AW-L control my book. It's at $124. Princeton was after me for a while for a lower-level book...maybe I should've thought of them! The book I edited for Wiley was a much happier experience for me.

E-Book! Charge the kiddies $75, and pocket the $70 profit all yourself!

The publisher adds more value than most people think--getting reviews from a variety of sources, having an artist re-do the pics (which was a big help even with my computer-generated plots), having an out-of-work English Ph.D. edit it (I was told I was using Latin plurals for Latin masculine nouns and English plurals for Latin feminine nouns, and I didn't know I was doing it!), graphic layout (I'm no artist), image use rights, hiring help for problem solutions and error checking, etc. But, the trade-off is they control the material as long as it's in print.

I am giving serious thought to a web-only book. Sales of my text have been OK but it's still chump change compared to my salary and the time invested. The issue is that even though textbook publishing is valued at my undergraduate school (unlike, I presume, at exile's research U.), I need external validation to get any credit for it as prof. development. Reviews and sales numbers and a list of adopting schools and going to a second printing have made that an easy case to make...page view counters don't. I'm a full prof. with tenure so they can't fire me, but if I don't look busy it'll eventually impact my raise...and we wouldn't that.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

You know, if you stopped using all those funny symbols and the alphabet, your math book would be alot simplier and sell more. People don't like hard reads. That's why MAD Magazine sells better than Dune.

 

[arnisador]

I was talking about computers being too powerful in class recently and made a Butlerian Jihad reference--that if we did some of this stuff by hands maybe we could stave it off for a while. Only one student got it! How sad.

 

[KP.]

While I play a little jazz on the side, well enough to get a club gig now and then, it is entirely for fun.

My cousin, on the other hand is very talented, and has made his living playing professionally his whole life. I've talked with him about this many times and basically, anytime he's found himself part of an RIAA contract, it cost him more than he ever made. The only benefit was slightly larger crowds at the same clubs because of a little more publicity and radio promos. It kept the dream alive of "maybe one day . ." and allowed for him to meet some big names, but in terms of actually making him money it never did anything at all.

The RIAA may do something for larger groups, but honestly, once you have the name recognition to be considered one of the bigger name acts, why not just have your own manager and publicist handle things?

 

[exile]

No, the cheap weasels at AW-L control my book. It's at $124. Princeton was after me for a while for a lower-level book...maybe I should've thought of them! The book I edited for Wiley was a much happier experience for me.

Addison-Wesley is the publisher of Peter Salus' Quarter Century of Unix, possibly the most uninformative book per dollar ever published. It weighs in at a hefty $45 for 270 or so pages of mind-numbingly tedious information about who ported this utility to that site when. I kind of soured on them after that! They're not quite up to Elsevier standards of raw-meat swallowing-rapacity—Els. would have probably charged $200+ for your book—but they're bad enough. You might well have done better (in terms of affordability) with one of the university presses....

I am giving serious thought to a web-only book. Sales of my text have been OK but it's still chump change compared to my salary and the time invested. The issue is that even though textbook publishing is valued at my undergraduate school (unlike, I presume, at exile's research U.), I need external validation to get any credit for it as prof. development. Reviews and sales numbers and a list of adopting schools and going to a second printing have made that an easy case to make...page view counters don't. I'm a full prof. with tenure so they can't fire me, but if I don't look busy it'll eventually impact my raise...and we wouldn't that.

Yeah, at OSU, a textbook and $1.50 will get you a ride on a High Street bus... that's not quite true: a successful textbook will give a mild shine to the teaching side of your research/teaching/service triad, but if you really want to 'bring stars down on yer head', as some buffoonish admin type told a group of us new brand-new hires at a new faculty orientation meeting 20 years ago, what you want to get is—as he put it—'go out and git one o' them biiiiiig NSF grants!' Not some tiddly little $50K or $75K thing—chump change, around here —but $500K or more (preferably, lots more). And like you, I'm at full and there's not too much they can do about me, but our raises are all merit-based, every dime, so there has to be some product to show.

I agree, it's useful to have the imprimatur of a recognized press. But at the rate academic publishing costs are going up... I don't see how it can survive to mid-century. No one can afford individual subscriptions to the major journals, and even libraries are cutting back on subscriptions. Prices for scientific journals in particular are astronomical for libraries, even though these days, as we both know, the scientist is also an amateur mathematical typesetter, since so many publishers are demanding in effect camera-ready TeX copy. I sometimes think there's an unholy alliance between universities and academic publishers: the universities set tenure and promotion criteria up to force people to stick with major hard-copy publishing houses, and the publishers secretly fork over 30% of their gross profits to the universities, which disappears into the Provost's Discretionary Fund, or wherever...