 The Recording Industry Association Of America, or RIAA, has been filing claims and suing people left and right. Do they have the right to? Well, if you're stealing music protected by them, then by all legal standards, yes. But what about if you're not doing anything wrong and you get blamed anyway? A lot of universities are currently being watched, which almost seems like a harder job than watching your average joe. The reason RIAA states as it being necessary to watch them is that according to their numbers, more than half of college students are pirating music and movies from P2P networks. It would be tricky to specifically target one individual downloading anything on a university network given the broad range of WiFi and networking tools used today. While some universities have networks that only registered users can sign on to, most have some sort of open network for WiFi users in places like cafeterias, libraries, etc. You can see how it would be easy to be mistaken for someone doing something wrong if you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. How about Cliff Thompson?...
He's a San Antonio resident who was sued by RIAA and decided to stand up for his rights. Since it was his adult daughter downloading and not him, RIAA decided to drop the suit. Mr. Thompson, however, is now out thousands of dollars that he is trying to recoup in legal fees. RIAA has no plan on paying for their wrong doing, but instead will let it ride all the way to the supreme court and let them decide. How about going to their website to prove your innocence? Nope, try again. There is not one mention that I can find on their official website (http://www.riaa.com) that has anything to do with them filing wrongful suits and what to do in the event you have been wrongly accused. There are plenty of statistics on how much money they've lost, even after record breaking years in sales. Statistics on how many people are stealing from them and even links on how to pull a McCarthy on your neighbor, but no links as to how to resolve a dispute. It seems like they would even save themselves time and money in this case, apparently they don't agree. It also seems like since they preach about what a broad public service they offer, they would do well to provide such services to help the people who are buying music legitimately. Their focus seems primarily on collecting fees. It's almost as if they're prepared to accept people just paying some fee for what they were accused of rather than actually determining guilt justice. Unless their stance is that you can prove your innocent by paying thousands in fees to a lawyer. While legal, it seems a bit unethical. And the legal part may only hold up until we determine exactly how they come across the innocent people that are accused. The irony in all of this is how often people say they don't mind the government keeping an eye out because they're not doing anything wrong. How about corporations that can sway what the government does due to their vast financial resources? It is good to hear that after having sued many major peer to peer and other file sharing networks that RIAA has finally decided that technology is not the culprit here. As stated on their website:
“Devices and technology are not the problem. It’s when people use technology to break the law that we take issue.
Again and again, we have embraced the technological advances that have allowed millions upon millions of people around the world to enjoy the music we create. We want fans to enjoy their iPods, CD burners, and other devices, but we want them to do so responsibly, respectfully, and within the law.”
If people didn't know better about the high morality of RIAA and it's board and lawyers, this would seem somewhat double-standardish. Back to the original question – given that RIAA isn't really concerned much with whether or not your guilty after you've been accused, or whether or not it puts you out thousands in fees to defend your innocence, what is the best course of action to defend yourself against them in the event of a false accusation? The first key is to stop listening to the artists that they sign until they license their music under creative commons with the ability to use it for non-commercial purposes as much as possible. Want to know more about Creative Commons? Click here . Other than that, if you're brought to suit on false grounds, it'd probably be handy to have $5,000 or so to have a lawyer, which may not help either way. In defending yourself against the illustrious banana, it's always best to have a gun. A big one.
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