"The music-industry lobbying-and-litigation arm is protesting a federal magistrate's recommendation that it cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for an Oregon woman. Tanya Andersen, 42, says she racked up the expenses defending against an RIAA infringement lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed for lack of evidence.

The RIAA dropped the case this summer against Andersen, months after concluding her hard drive didn't contain any purloined music tracks. The RIAA sued her two years ago, alleging a Kazaa shared directory that linked to her internet-protocol address was unlawfully distributing thousands of songs -- a case Andersen's lawyers decried as "frivolous."

The RIAA is arguing in court documents that the association shouldn't have to pay defense counsel fees, because Andersen is probably guilty anyway...
Andersen's lawyers said Thursday their legal fees could surpass the $222,000..."

RIAA Fights to Avoid Attorney Fees in Dismissed Piracy Lawsuit

It will be a cold day in HELL before I buy any more music - I won't even be going to see any concerts anymore either.

If it hurts the artists, so be it. They shouldn't be doing business with these asses EITHER.

RIAA is obsolete. WE do not need them -Artists do not need them.
THey are now hurting people, terrorizing people. As a corporate entity, they must die. Now, how do we accomplish that?

Will libraries now have to stop offering CDs as this makes music available to copy? Will they take the public libraries to court?
What about sites like Cdswap.com?

We need new laws as well. NOW.
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"DULUTH, Minnesota -- Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two, was found liable Thursday for copyright infringement in the nation's first file-sharing case to go before a jury.

Twelve jurors here said the Minnesota woman must pay $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs that were the subject of the lawsuit, amounting to $222,000 in penalties.

They could have dinged her for up to $3.6 million in damages, or awarded as little as $18,000. She was found liable for infringing songs from bands such as Journey, Green Day, Aerosmith and others.

After the verdict was read, Thomas and her attorney left the courthouse without comment. The jurors also declined to talk to reporters.

The verdict, coming after two days of testimony and about five hours of deliberations, was a mixed victory for the RIAA, which has brought more than 20,000 lawsuits in the last four years as part of its zero-tolerance policy against pirating. The outcome is likely to embolden the RIAA, which began targeting individuals in lawsuits after concluding the legal system could not keep pace with the ever growing number of file-sharing sites and services.

"This is what can happen if you don't settle," RIAA attorney Richard Gabriel told reporters outside the courthouse. "I think we have sent a message we are willing to go to trial."

Still, it's unlikely the RIAA's courtroom victory will translate into a financial windfall or stop piracy, which the industry claims costs it billions in lost sales. Despite the thousands of lawsuits -- the majority of them settling while others have been dismissed or are pending -- the RIAA's litigation war on internet piracy has neither dented illegal, peer-to-peer file sharing or put much fear in the hearts of music swappers'

They didn't even have to prove she transferred anything - just...that she made it...available.

The Day the Music Died - Mom to pay RIAA $222,000 NO.

"On Wednesday, August 8th, 2007, a civil complaint was filed in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York by JOHNSON & JOHNSON and JOHNSON & JOHNSON CONSUMER COMPANIES, INC against THE AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS and its commercial licensees, LEARNING CURVE INTERNATIONAL, INC., MAGLA PRODUCTS, LLC, WATER-JEL TECHNOLOGIES, INC., and FIRST AID ONLY, INC.

The goal of this civil complaint is to restore the long-held legal boundaries surrounding the use of the Red Cross trademark."

WTF, it is the RED CROSS! Next they might go after Christ because he uses that cross symbol too. HA!

That's like the most generic 'symbol' on earth, just the color red - and they say THEY own it. Wowsers.

Interestingly, in looking at this, I find that the Red Cross didn't even 'pick' that symbol - it was assigned to them by the US CONGRESS.
SEE- section 6 and related provisions
* http://www.redcross.org/images/pdfs/charter.pdf

Johnson & Johnson Says THEY own the RED CROSS of the Red Cross

I'm not sure if I should file this under intellectual property, civil liberties, or crime. lol

This happened to me recently. I bought a copy of Rosetta Stone in March. Paid 200.00 for it. About that time, our library got it online - for free. So I sold my copy. Or tried to. Well, Rosetta Stone didn't like it, and claimed that I had bought a nontransferrable service and not software, and that it was all in the EULA, that I never saw. I've got a box of books and 3 disks that are mine forever. I looked all over their site - on all their authorized retailer sites - I don't see anything about a service, only software.

SO I, for one, and many other homeschool parents who have purchased 200-500.00 software only to be told we didn't buy software after all, just a NON-TRANSFERABLE serivce....some service resembling a Lewinsky I guess...after the fact, will be pulling for the EFF on this one.

If you take this sort of despotic thinking, and you apply it to books, movies, music, ect....there would be no more record collecting....no more used bookstores...no more libraries.

I hope the courts do right by the American consumer on this one. First-sale simply HAS to be upheld, and fortified.

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation has taken up the case of a California man who has been sued by Universal Music Group for selling promotional CDs. Like other record labels, UMG distributes free CDs to radio stations and music reviewers in the hopes of drumming up publicity. The CDs come stamped with the label "promotional copy, not for sale." Based on this notice and the fact that the copies were given away rather than sold, the labels argue that these "promo CDs" remain the property of the labels and are only leased to recipients for their personal use."

Major Copyright Case to test first-sale doctrine

I bet at least 1/3 of the computing population has copied something illegally at one time or another. The rest of the them probably can't produce serial numbers for everything they have installed.

Tech news blog - Gonzales proposes life in prison for software pirates

It did not take much investigating to follow the data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently researches her friends' medical ailments and loves her three dogs. "Those are my searches," she said, after a reporter read part of the list to her.

The detailed records of searches conducted by Ms. Arnold and 657,000 other Americans, copies of which continue to circulate online, underscore how much people unintentionally reveal about themselves when they use search engines -- and how risky it can be for companies like AOL, Google and Yahoo to compile such data.

I sense a class-action lawsuit coming on. Is there a case to be made here? Could Ms. Arnold recover damages from AOL Time Warner?

I sure do hope so. It was pretty easy to spot Tomora Torilini - http://ListedByTomora.com - too.
Her dog had really bad mange.

A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749

Reports filtering back to the Tokyo headquarters of the Japanese electronics giant NEC in mid-2004 alerted managers that pirated keyboards and recordable CD and DVD discs bearing the company's brand were on sale in retail outlets in Beijing and Hong Kong.

After two years and thousands of hours of investigation in conjunction with law enforcement agencies in China, Taiwan and Japan, the company said it had uncovered something far more ambitious than clandestine workshops turning out inferior copies of NEC products. The pirates were faking the entire company.

In the name of NEC, the pirates copied NEC products, and went as far as developing their own range of consumer electronic products - everything from home entertainment centers to MP3 players. They also coordinated manufacturing and distribution, collecting all the proceeds.

"On the surface, it looked like a series of intellectual property infringements, but in reality a highly organized group has attempted to hijack the entire brand," he said. "It is not a simple case of a factory knocking off a branded product. Many of them have been given bogus paperwork that they say gives them the right to do it."

Next step in pirating: Faking a company

I'm going to quote Steve Watson, he is much more alarmist than I could ever be about this one. :)
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After cracking down on MP3 file sharing, the music industry is to go to war against websites offering unlicensed song tabs and lyrics.

The Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents US sheet music companies, says all such sites are illegal and will begin the crackdown in 2006.

MPA president Lauren Keiser said that not only should sites carrying song tabs and lyrics be shut down but also suggested authorities should "throw in some jail time, I think we'll be a little more effective".

Such tabs and lyrics are widely available all over the internet and are often simply the efforts of fans to interpret and play their favourite and much beloved songs. The legal blurb on this website actually says The tablatures contained within this site are artists' representations of songs the 'tabber' has heard.

We are being led to believe that sharing information is illegal.

Share song lyrics? Go to jail

"In order to lock out both copied games as well as homebrew software, including the GNU/Linux operating system, Microsoft built a chain of trust on the Xbox reaching from the hardware to the execution of game code, in order to avoid the infiltration of code that has not been authorized by Microsoft. The link between hardware and software in this chain of trust is the hidden "MCPX" boot ROM. The principles, the implementations and the security vulnerabilities of this 512 bytes ROM will be discussed in this article. "

'How to fit 3 bugs in 512 bytes of security code' - Xbox

hahahahahahahAhAhAha

RIAA sues DEAd 83 year old for sharng music