BLASTED RIAA

[ChrisX]

The RIAA are soliciting money from US college students over copyrighted songs. They settled legal action with four students and the RIAA got much less than wanted.

Check out: http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,6370465%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html

The RIAA originally sought damages of $150,000 per song and this is outrageous. These young students aren’t rich and the money is their life savings.

These young students don’t understand what they were doing and with music copyright laws. I blasted the RIAA for getting a cent from these poor souls.

**** the RIAA!

I don’t support downloading and availability of any copyrighted material and is at anyone’s risk in doing so.

[Greg12]

I think the high values were more shock values, I don't think they actually expected to win full damages.

[jgcarp22]

I'd like to know how much it cost the RIAA to even bring this action about. People hours and whatnot. Bet it is more than most think.

[pacmania_2001]

This doesn't seem too smart in a PR sense for the RIAA.

Sure, they win in the short term by shutting down the p2p network and sending a message that they won't tolerate piracy by individuals but in the long run this is probably going to cost them more than they won.

Firstly, the initial bad media from sueing what many would percieve the victims (the poor college student doing it hard whilst the RIAA execs live it up).

Then the word of mouth that the 4 students pass on to their friends and family, then onto their friends and family and so forth. Word of mouth in such cases is a powerful tool.

And lastly, as an above poster said, how many man hours and legal costs went into this action just to get (in RIAA terms) a piddly amount.