Official Ares Free Download

I’m re-publishing a number of p2pnet stories highlighting RIAA depredations against Big 4 customers. And lest we forget: it’s easy to see these crimes against ordinary people, including young children, as being perpetrated by faceless corporations.

However, highly intelligent, highly educated men and women such as Jay Berman, Hilary Rosen, Cary Sherman, Amy Weiss, Jenny Engebretsen, Cara Duckworth and Jonathan Lamy, all of whom have been, or still are, dedicated RIAA troopers, have been knowingly and deliberately using the mainstream media to people they knew full well were innocent to public ridicule and embarrassment accusing them, without a shred of evidence, of being “massive online distributors of copyrighted music”.

I believe some 40,000 people were victimised in this way.

Only two ultimately reached the US civil court system, but the primary objective had been achieved:

* Create a climate of terror under which to operate a bizarre marketing campaign.

Remember: all of these atrocities — because that’s exactly what they are — were carried out in the names of artists the labels have under contract, and “rights holders”, ie, the major labels, or one of more of their scores of subsidiaries.

Thanks and Cheers!

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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p2pnet.net news:- “While the RIAA is touting a settlement percentage north of 25 percent with its recent campaign against file sharing at US colleges and universities, the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of students are shunning the insta-settlement approach,” writes Ken Fisher in Ars Technica, going on:

“According to the RIAA, some 116 students have used their new web site to settle copyright infringement claims, but that means that another 284, or 71 percent of students contacted through the program aren’t taking the easy way out.”

But is it the easy way out?

When a student pays three thousand or more dollars to Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA, he or she is also owning up to a ‘crime’ which doesn’t exist and a charge which hasn’t ever been proved in a US court.

And can the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) be trusted with the information it gathers every time a student incriminates herself? Who knows what it’ll do when, one day, it decides to re-visit these so-called file sharing ‘crimes’ and it has all those names and addresses to look to?

Meanwhile, “All I know is that the RIAA isn’t earning any friends with their tactics,” writes Tash Costa in the Nevada Appeal, going on:

Their claims of lost profit are blatantly false; the music industry is healthier now than it has been in years. I come from a family of stagehands – my father, mother, husband, sister, brother-in-law and myself have all done stage work. I can tell you that the rate of concerts coming through the area has had a marked upswing in the past few years, be they independent label or mainstream artists. Despite all of the free music hubbub, there are still people wearing band T-shirts, sporting band bumper stickers and hoodies, and hanging band posters up on their bedroom walls.

In December of 2005, RIAA president Cary Sherman admitted that all he knew about the people the RIAA is suing (over 20,000 to date) is that they had Internet access accounts. What that means to me is that the RIAA is or could be suing anyone with Internet access because they may have illegally downloaded files, and are attempting to scare them into settling out of court.

In fact, according to the MIT campus newspaper “The Tech,” the RIAA has suggested to students that they ought to drop out of college to be able to afford RIAA settlements. They’ve also sued people who don’t own and never have owned a computer.

Anyone who had an enemy in school recognizes these tactics. They’re bully tactics, designed to scare people into paying for something they might not be guilty of, or to scare them into admitting that they are guilty. The RIAA doesn’t want to go to trial – they want you to settle out of court. It’s dangerously close to extortion.

You’re dead on, Tasha, except for one thing.

This isn’t dangerously close to extortion: it is extortion, and the Big 4 are getting away with it, ably assisted by the mainstream media who continue to report it as though it’s perfectly normal and acceptable.

But what else is new?

Also See:
Ars Technica – Students largely ignore RIAA instant settlement offers, March 26, 2007
so-called file sharing ‘crimes’ – Big Music victimizes students, March 26, 2007
Nevada Appeal – The RIAA gets taken down a notch, March 26, 2007
what else is new – The real p2p pirates and thieves, November 18, 2005

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