Recording Industry vs The People: Good article about Billy Corgan doing the bidding of his RIAA slave masters

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Good article about Billy Corgan doing the bidding of his RIAA slave masters

Good article in "Swan Fungus" about Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, the RIAA's dancing monkey:

The Great Pumpkin Goes To Congress

Hey, I just remembered something I learned in college! Wild, right?

My 20th Century Media course taught me all about “synergy.” When corporations try to consolidate their power in a given industry by merging or acquiring other corporations, they hope to benefit financially by controlling the 13 power roles that make up a given form of mass media. For example, when Sumner Redstone and Viacom owned Blockbuster Inc., Viacom controlled the producer and distributor/exhibitor roles, and the consolidation of power benefited the company financially because stores could stock more Viacom-related films (Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, MTV Films, et al.). It behooves any major corporation to try to achieve synergy. Of course, it also behooves intelligent members of the public to fight against synergy. Generally speaking, synergy is horrible for consumers because it leads to market saturation and less choices. There are absolutely no benefits for consumers when it comes to corporate synergy.

…Which is why I am completely unsurprised to read that Billy Corgan — the frowning prince — has sent a letter to several members of Congress saying that the potential Ticketmaster / Live Nation merger is a good idea.

Complete article

Commentary & discussion:

p2pnet.net

Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

5 comments:

Alter_Fritz said...: Ray quoted the beginning of the article and I was wondering what the ticketmaster had to do with the guys that are regularly the topic of this blog.
Only a few paragraphs down the article it starts about the criminals:
In more bald Pumpkin-related news, Billy boy went before Congress last week along with RIAA chairmen and CEO Mitch Bainwol as part of the hearing on the Performance Rights Act. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a proposed law that would require radio stations to pay royalties to the musicians who play on the songs they broadcast. America is one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t already do this, but of course that never seemed to matter until the dinosaurs working for the RIAA completely fucked up the music industry. So that makes two instances already this month in which the Great Pumpkin has aligned himself with villains and criminals. One would think that it would be easy enough to stand in opposition against a a group of people who sue 10 year-old and 13-year old girls. But sweet, innocent mongoloid Billy Corgan can be coerced into anything, apparently. It mattered not that he was aligning himself with an organization facing RICO charges, charges of overt unlawful acts and collusion charges, or that the RIAA was withholding $400 million dollars in settlement money from its artists, Corgan was still willing to go before Congress to defend them. What an amiable dumb piece of shit that guy is.; March 18, 2009 at 12:03:00 AM EDT
raybeckerman said...: I tried not to quote too much, because I want people to go over to Swan Fungus and read the whole article.

The Ticketmaster part of the story is really just another version of the RIAA part of the story.

The guy is a whore, motivated only by self interest.

Why anyone would believe anything he says is beyond me. (Actually probably no one does.); March 18, 2009 at 12:28:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...: Mitch Bainwol is flat out lying when he says that half the license revenue will go to artists “regardless of any other contracts.”

The current language of the bill before Congress guarantees the 50% for artists only if the broadcaster agrees to the statutory license rates and do not attempt to negotiate a lower overall rate. If they negotiate a lower rate, ALL the money goes to the label and they get to pay the artist “according to their contracts.”

Do you think ClearChannel is not going to look to reduce it’s overall royalty obligation by negotiating a lower rate, say at 75% of the statutory rate?

Do you think the labels aren’t going to agree to that 75% rate when they get to keep almost all that money, rather than just the 50% of the full statutory rate?

The only ones screwed by this arrangement are the artists. Billy Corgan has betrayed all artists by speaking up for this scam.; March 18, 2009 at 12:00:00 PM EDT
raybeckerman said...: General rule:

The opposite of anything said by an RIAA spokesman = The Truth.; March 18, 2009 at 12:04:00 PM EDT
Anonymous said...: Who cares? Smashing Pumpkins made good music 10 years ago, but now not so much.

- JJ; March 19, 2009 at 9:01:00 AM EDT

Post a Comment

JUDICIAL QUOTATIONS

"[T]he Court is concerned about the lack of facts establishing that Defendant was using that IP address at that particular time. Indeed, the [complaint] does not explain what link, if any, there is between Defendant and the IP address. It is possible that Plaintiff sued Defendant because he is the subscriber to IP address .... As recognized by many courts, just because an IP address is registered to an individual does not mean that he or she is guilty of infringement when that IP address is used to commit infringing activity." -Hon. Barry Ted Moskowitz, Chief Judge, S.D. California. January 29, 2013, AF Holdings v. Rogers
"The complaints assert that the defendants – identified only by IP address – were the individuals who downloaded the subject “work” and participated in the BitTorrent swarm. However, the assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time." - Hon. Gary R. Brown, Magistrate Judge, E.D.N.Y. May 1, 2012, K-Beech v. Does 1-37
"The concern of this Court is that in these lawsuits, potentially meritorious legal and factual defenses are not being litigated, and instead, the federal judiciary is being used as a hammer by a small group of plaintiffs to pound settlements out of unrepresented defendants."
-Hon. S. James Otero, Dist. Judge, Central Dist. California, March 2, 2007, Elektra v. O'Brien, 2007 ILRWeb (P&F) 1555
"The University has adequately demonstrated that it is not able to identify the alleged infringers with a reasonable degree of technical certainty...[C]ompliance with the subpoena as to the IP addresses represented by these Defendants would expose innocent parties to intrusive discovery....[T]he Court declines to authorize discovery and quashes the subpoena as to Does # 8, 9, and 14" -Hon. Nancy Gertner, Dist. Judge, Dist. Massachusetts, November 24, 2008, London-Sire Records v. Does 1-4
"[C]ounsel representing the record companies have an ethical obligation to fully understand that they are fighting people without lawyers... that the formalities of this are basically bankrupting people, and it's terribly critical that you stop it...." -Hon. Nancy Gertner, Dist. Judge, Dist. Massachusetts, June 17, 2008, London-Sire v. Does 1-4
"Rule 11(b)(3) requires that a representation in a pleading have evidentiary support and one wonders if the Plaintiffs are intentionally flouting that requirement in order to make their discovery efforts more convenient or to avoid paying the proper filing fees. In my view, the Court would be well within its power to direct the Plaintiffs to show cause why they have not violated Rule 11(b) with their allegations respecting joinder. [I]t is difficult to ignore the kind of gamesmanship that is going on here.....These plaintiffs have devised a clever scheme... to obtain court-authorized discovery prior to the service of complaints, but it troubles me that they do so with impunity and at the expense of the requirements of Rule 11(b)(3) because they have no good faith evidentiary basis to believe the cases should be joined." -Hon. Margaret J. Kravchuk, Magistrate Judge, District of Maine, January 25, 2008, Arista v. Does 1-27, 2008 WL 222283, modified Oct. 29, 2008
"[N]either the parties' submissions nor the Court's own research has revealed any case holding the mere owner of an internet account contributorily or vicariously liable for the infringing activities of third persons.....In addition to the weakness of the secondary copyright infringement claims against Ms. Foster, there is a question of the plaintiffs' motivations in pursuing them..... [T]here is an appearance that the plaintiffs initiated the secondary infringement claims to press Ms. Foster into settlement after they had ceased to believe she was a direct or "primary" infringer." -Hon. Lee R. West, District Judge, Western District of Oklahoma, February 6, 2007, Capitol v. Foster, 2007 WL 1028532
"[A]n overwhelming majority of cases brought by recording companies against individuals are resolved without so much as an appearance by the defendant, usually through default judgment or stipulated dismissal.....The Defendant Does cannot question the propriety of joinder if they do not set foot in the courthouse." -Hon. S. James Otero, Central District of California, August 29, 2007, SONY BMG v. Does 1-5, 2007 ILRWeb (P&F) 2535
"Plaintiffs are ordered to file any future cases of this nature against one defendant at a time, and may not join defendants for their convenience."
-Hon. Sam Sparks and Hon. Lee Yeakel, District Judges, Western District of Texas, November 17, 2004, Fonovisa v. Does 1-41, 2004 ILRWeb (P&F) 3053
"The Court is unaware of any other authority that authorizes the ex parte subpoena requested by plaintiffs."
-Hon. Walter D. Kelley, Jr., District Judge, Eastern District of Virginia, July 12, 2007, Interscope v. Does 1-7, 494 F. Supp. 2d 388, vacated on reconsideration 6/20/08
"Plaintiffs contend that unless the Court allows ex parte immediate discovery, they will be irreparably harmed. While the Court does not dispute that infringement of a copyright results in harm, it requires a Coleridgian "suspension of disbelief" to accept that the harm is irreparable, especially when monetary damages can cure any alleged violation. On the other hand, the harm related to disclosure of confidential information in a student or faculty member's Internet files can be equally harmful.....Moreover, ex parte proceedings should be the exception, not the rule."
-Hon. Lorenzo F. Garcia, Magistrate Judge, District of New Mexico, May 24, 2007, Capitol v. Does 1-16, 2007 WL 1893603
"'Statutory damages must still bear some relation to actual damages." Hon. Michael J. Davis, Dist. Judge, U.S.District Court, Dist. Minnesota, January 22, 2010, Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset
"[T]his court finds that defendants' use of the same ISP and P2P networks to allegedly commit copyright infringement is, without more, insufficient for permissive joinder under Rule 20. This court will sever not only the moving defendants from this action, but all other Doe defendants except Doe 2."
-Hon. W. Earl Britt, District Judge, Eastern District of North Carolina, February 27, 2008, LaFace v. Does 1-38, 2008 WL 544992
"[L]arge awards of statutory damages can raise due process concerns. Extending the reasoning of Gore and its progeny, a number of courts have recognized that an award of statutory damages may violate due process if the amount of the award is "out of all reasonable proportion" to the actual harm caused by a defendant's conduct.[T]hese cases are doubtlessly correct to note that a punitive and grossly excessive statutory damages award violates the Due Process Clause....."Hon. Marilyn Hall Patel, Dist. Judge, N.D. California, June 1, 2005, In re Napster, 2005 US DIST Lexis 11498, 2005 WL 1287611
"[P]laintiffs can cite to no case foreclosing the applicability of the due process clause to the aggregation of minimum statutory damages proscribed under the Copyright Act. On the other hand, Lindor cites to case law and to law review articles suggesting that, in a proper case, a court may extend its current due process jurisprudence prohibiting grossly excessive punitive jury awards to prohibit the award of statutory damages mandated under the Copyright Act if they are grossly in excess of the actual damages suffered....."-Hon. David G. Trager, Senior District Judge, Eastern Dist. New York, November 9, 2006, UMG v. Lindor, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83486, 2006 WL 3335048
"'[S]tatutory damages should bear some relation to actual damages suffered'....(citations omitted) and 'cannot be divorced entirely from economic reality'". -Hon. Shira A. Scheindlin, Dist. Judge, Southern Dist. New York, August 19, 2008, Yurman v. Castaneda
"The Court would be remiss if it did not take this opportunity to implore Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer to peer network cases.... The defendant is an individual, a consumer. She is not a business. She sought no profit from her acts..... [T]he damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs." -Hon. Michael J. Davis, District Judge, Dist. Minnesota, September 24, 2008, Capitol v. Thomas
"If there is an asymmetry in copyright, it is one that actually favors defendants. The successful assertion of a copyright confirms the plaintiff's possession of an exclusive, and sometimes very valuable, right, and thus gives it an incentive to spend heavily on litigation. In contrast, a successful defense against a copyright claim, when it throws the copyrighted work into the public domain, benefits all users of the public domain, not just the defendant; he obtains no exclusive right and so his incentive to spend on defense is reduced and he may be forced into an unfavorable settlement." US Court of Appeals, 7th Cir., July 9, 2008, Eagle Services Corp. v. H20 Industrial Services, Inc., 532 F.3d 620
"Customers who download music and movies for free would not necessarily spend money to acquire the same product.....RIAA’s request problematically assumes that every illegal download resulted in a lost sale."
-Hon. James P. Jones, Dist. Judge, Western Dist. Virginia, November 7, 2008, USA v. Dove