RIAA wins round in file-swapping suit

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Seems like buck-passing to me...: I think the judge moved the venue to the DC court because he wants to keep his job a while longer.

The DC courts will take all the heat for what promises to be an ugly battle and the nice California judge can go back to dealing with all the lawsuits filed after "Ah-nold" gets through.

Honestly, though... The industry is still chasing little kids and stupid teenagers in the US because they are easy targets and reachable. Meanwhile, true piracy is rampant all over the world.

Case in point: Bootleg copies of a beta version of Longhorn on sale on street corners in Malasia. While not music, it is symptomatic of the real problem which is industial-strength copying of material and selling it openly in most Asian countries. You can buy very professional copies of whatever you want within days of a release (or even before)-movies, music, software, whatever! Most of these are made from legitimate releases and then copied on industry-grade hardware in some back room.

How many troops come home from overseas duty with their computers loaded with all that "really, really cheap" software and don't realize that they have copies of copies, or if they do realize it don't care? The last location I worked at had a running joke: two authentic copies of Harvard Graphics and Office with 1000 backups (most purchased on foreign soil and as buggy as it comes). Same with music. One can go to the pawn shops outside most military bases and buy the stuff or go down to any major city's foreign sector or a flea market and buy copies from a dozen different kiosks.

So, to get to the point again: this judge is not going to take the rap. By sending it to DC, it will become a show trial for the RIAA to show how some kid downloading songs is much more of a threat to their business than organized selling of bootlegs overseas. And it will get more "face time" for the agenda of making sure we never actually have control over what we are expected to "buy."; Posted by: AbsolutelyNot Posted on: 12/01/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use