Originally Posted By: eddie1261
Sorry to disagree with your assertion as to the width of the net the RIAA cast in those years, Sandra, but that law firm paid out 7 figures to keep it quiet. It was the largest law firm in my state, and as such any sort of doubt as to their character would have been quite damaging. So they paid the amount of the extortion and moved on.

I never saw a cent, by the way, for the handful of songs under my copyright, a total of 23, stored on my drive.

I sent a letter directly to Hillary Rosen asking that the RIAA disbursement logs be made public (As well as demanding payment for my 23 songs that were on that server, though I am sure it would not have even been enough to buy a Snickers bar from the vending machine) so we could see all the "good" the RIAA was doing. She declined to reply. It is only right that the artists see all the good work the RIAA was doing on their behalf. I was particularly interested in seeing settlement data from the elderly people who know nothing about computers yet were taken to task for the actions of their grandchildren.

My best guess in the case of that law firm is that one particular former employee who was terminated about 4 months prior, and escorted from the building in handcuffs by security amid a fit of violent rage, was looking for any way possible to cause damage to the firm and reported the server, as benign as it was.

Again, I hate bureaucracy in any form.

I also see that this is your first post, and typically people who come here and make one post this acerbic are trolls, though it's been fun, and thanks for playing!!



Thank you Triple John for saying what I thought. I had no idea that I was being acerbic, being a troll, or playing a game. I was attempting to point out that Eddie's understanding of how the RIAA works is very flawed. Since he accuses me of being a troll (and since his signature says that he really doesn't post here anyway) I will simply invite him to stop commenting on my posts and to report them to the administrators if he thinks that I'm trolling. I regard his posts as more typical of the true troll so I would be more than happy to have the mods review our respective posts. Mr. Eddie, I will not be speaking to you but my fellow forumites and you can go play whatever game you think your are playing with others. I'm not one bit interested in having an exchange with you, but at least you had fun and thank you for playing. Now, go away and let my humble comments be.

I'm a 10 month lurker on the forum. My husband bought BIAB for me as a Christmas present. The comments that were made about RIAA was the first time I saw something that I actually knew something about and thought I could correct some misinformation posted by a person who knows little to nothing about the subject matter. The declared assumption that RIAA was alerted to a problem by a disgruntled employee led from the building in handcuffs is just the poster's assumption, which he admits, yet talks like it is a certainty. The most likely scenario is that someone on the server fired up a peer to peer program and had files in his shared folder that were owned by one of RIAA's member record labels. These are the conditions that result in investigations of the nature described.

I worked for Ms Rosen and can tell you that she probably had a pretty good laugh at the poster's demand for royalties. The RIAA doesn't collect royalties for artists. RIAA members are the record labels and distributors. RIAA lawsuits barely cover the costs of the anti-piracy program but in any given case, its impossible to say if the lawsuit, or threatened lawsuit is being pushed by the RIAA or a member record label. I'm zeroing in on the poster's claim that his employer settled for a sum above a million dollars. That indicates to me that a specific record label or labels identified a quantifiable number of internet shares of their intellectual property either originating or ending up on the computer of the law offices. High powered law firms as a rule don't pay out damages to avoid embarrassment over something they did not do unless the shared intellectual property was particularly embarrassing, like Gay [*****]. Of course if the readers would rather accept the poster's guess that the firm was a victim of a disgruntled employee please feel free to join him in his delusional world along with the rest of the world's conspiracy theorists.

I have less knowledge about how ASCAP does business but I can share with Mr. Norton what I know from conversations with ASCAP people. As I recall, ASCAP has a standard contract that they sign with Hospitals, Nursing Homes, and other health care services that are FOR PROFIT. Non-profits as I understand it are either left alone entirely or sign a contract that costs the facility a nominal amount per year. Any facility that is FOR PROFIT can sign a contract for a standard amount when they first open for business OR they can declare that they will never use any material that is under copyright. It seems likely that Mr. Norton's facility either declared that they were a non profit, or that they were for profit and did not ever use ASCAP's intellectual property. After they were in operation for several years, ASCAP then found that whatever initial declaration they made was fraudulent. That would result in ASCSAP seeking damages for the years that the facility was in operation under a false declaration.

Sandra McG