A Letter from the RIAA
Written by Ernesto on September 20, 2006This is a nice illustration of what a letter from the RIAA would probably look like if you cut out the legal terms and restrictions.
By McSweeney
The Recording Industry Association of America has enriched your life through music since you were a baby. But now you betray us? We will destroy you. This is your notice that you will be sued for one of the following:
1. Downloading a song from the Internet.
2. Singing the “Happy Birthday” song.
3. Other.
4. None of the above.
If you would prefer not to be stripped of your home and dignity, please send us $3,750 in the return envelope. If your toddler has been named in this lawsuit, explain to them that the fruits of their labor as an adult will go to pay a debt that will ultimately lead to their death at a young age due to their inability to afford medical insurance. Toddlers never understand that, but they’ll get the point if you make them cry. If your household pet has been named in this lawsuit, it will be euthanized. If you are a 13-year-old girl, do not expect that the bad publicity in the past has made us hesitant to sue little girls—it has only made us hate you even more. If you, your household pet, or your toddler did not commit any of the acts above, then we will sue you and ruin your life forever for lying. Then we will sue you again, because it’s not about the money anymore. It’s about revenge.
If you would like to make an excuse, please mark one of the boxes below with a No. 2 pencil and return.
1. My computer was hacked.
2. I am poor and cannot afford music. That is why I download songs at the public library. Please don’t sue me or my children will starve. :(
3. One of your goons was in a van outside my house using my wireless connection to frame me.
4. Other children were singing the “Happy Birthday” song, but I was just lip-synching.
Read more at mcsweeneys.net
Previously: Azureus Adds Featured Content
Next: Swedish Elections: The Pirate Party Sails On
42 Responses
Hehe, nice one.
I download a lot of music, and i have downloaded about 150gb in 3 weeks. I’m 17 and of course live at home. And my excuse is, I’m poor. I can barely pay the internet bills, about 80$ a month, (don’t even have speakers btw), so how the hell should I be able to buy music at the prices they are selling it for? 20 bucks for one CD is way out of my lead.
The truth is, the RIAA are too greedy. Many artists have gotten rid off this link, so now they can sell theire music cheaper, and still earn the same amount, and even more money than before.
I’d also like to recommend that everyone look around for unsigned musicians, as there are many artists in whatever category you fancy, wether it’s trance, polka, jazz etc… it’s out there.
But in the end, it’a nice to have music that people have heard about.
One more thing, doesn’t these lawsuits against people cost a lot? They probably use more money than they get in these cases, so isn’t the lawyers getting a nice salary by all this?
I got a cramp in my finger now… may write more later. Ciao :o)
Dead on what a letter looks like without “legal terms” lol!
Platypus: “so how the hell should I be able to buy music at the prices they are selling it for?” That is bullshit. You don’t HAVE to download anything. If you can’t afford it, it’s your problem. Get a btter argument.
Hannes: BUT have the industri lost any money? In fact, Platypus should never been able to pay for all that music.
No, of course they didn’t loose any money from people who download music they would never buy. Hell, I do that myself. But saying “I don’t have the money and that’s why I download” is just making oneself a lame excuse. :)
ps: My english isn’t the best. So sometimes things sound much harder than I mean them to be. Sorry.
Hannes: We all have our own reasons.
It should have been a hard time for a musiclover if it wasn’t for teh internets.
no more offtopic for me
I agree with Hannes, the excuse is very poor - it’s like saying “I can’t afford a Ferrari, that’s why I steal them”, I’m sure if someone stole your iPod off of you and then said “it’s because I’m poor” you wouldn’t share the same sentiment.
Funny letter hehe
Fuck them… I download everything I can… movies, music, applications and programs… and I like it! RIAA can kiss my ass anytime… … I steal because I like to steal these fat assholes
Wel The big copmpany’s they all made money enought so they can share it equly or onto lawsuits.
Or they let people share all the things they have and wanted and still sell everything we wanted in stores for the same price , wich if you realy have made money , you can buy.
And by the way “”FINDERS KEEPERS”" and I found a lot on the net haha
And if they realy wanted to seu the people who share it , they have to start with the cd and dvd company’s wich cannot protect theyr products not enoug for copiing
sorry for my englisch qaus i’m Dutch.
[quote comment="12889"]I agree with Hannes, the excuse is very poor - it’s like saying “I can’t afford a Ferrari, that’s why I steal them”, I’m sure if someone stole your iPod off of you and then said “it’s because I’m poor” you wouldn’t share the same sentiment.
[/quote]
That’s completely different than filesharing. If you steal a Ferarri, iPod etc then they loose real money, but the loss when it comes to filesharing is purely fictional.
And if I listen to the radio, wouldn’t that be just as bad?
By the way, if you are so against filesharing, how come you browse BitTorrent search and download pages?
Fuck RIAA and Fuck the court whcih heard the plea.They cant curb flow of music,knowledge and everthing else illegally because they never have been until these jerks branded them and sold them at exponential prices.
Susatinable Societies are built on free flow of things needed for growth of human sense and common sense.
Platypus,
you can’t write it often enough ’cause there a so many people out there that are brainwashed by the mediacartels PR propaganga and now these brainwashed people confuse copyrightinfringement with stealing; nonphysical objects that can be duplicated without any loss of any (non)physical property! Comparing these noncomparable things with the loss of a physical object: a ferrari or a phonorecord for example.
First of all, salute to Platypus and kdsde.
Next, I’d like to quote something from kdsde (if that won’t get me sued _lol_):
“Nonphysical objects that can be duplicated without any loss of any (non)physical property”
Indeed. Then I’d like to ask if anybody has ever read an essay written by a former songwriter about copyrighted material. He noticed that when he and a band distributed casette tapes for free, even more people showed up for the concerts. What’s more, the MORE faithful fans will actually buy MORE records. The free stuff spreads like a “marketing virus”.
Then the writer went on giving an analogy about software piracy. Of course, software piracy is a more serious problem (in the eyes of *those* people). However, think of this: why do so many people use Windows (aside from its ease of use)? It’s because Windows is so widely pirated! “The more a software is pirated, the more likely it is to become the industry standard.”
This argument of RIAA and similar agencies against music sharing is actually an extension of that on the “Napster trend”. If only those enforcers could be less exploitative and paranoid, probably things will turn better.
well
america loves laywers,
sueing people is thé way of live,
the bill of right is a right, (not something to uphold)
you can’t turn time, why not download or buy legal, but cheap,
get organized, start a musicpublisher, contract mayor artists, sell cheap,
…
Damn it!
LOSE!
LOSE!
LOSE!
/loose.
sheesh.
“i have downloaded about 150gb in 3 weeks…”
That’s a ton of music. I don’t think music files are physical objects and should be protected either, but don’t be a hypocrit, that’s waaay more music than you need.
It is lose as in lost! 4 letters only!
It is loose as in “that woman is so loose, anyone can see her two holes [oo]“
@ Platypus
Downloading because you’re poor is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Everyone thinks they’re too poor! The real reason you download is because you don’t care if you screw someone over, or maybe you want to screw them over. Perhaps the RIAA deserve this, but (most) artists don’t. The bottom line is that you’re selfish but you don’t want to admit it. You are one of those people that deserve to get hit with a big fat lawsuit, if you did I would point and laugh. When you cried I’d laugh even harder. Stupid kid. Wait ’till you have to get a job and pay for a family, then you’ll start to respect the hard work people put into the things you buy (or don’t). The labels employee people who need that paycheck to feed their family. If you don’t like the price they charge then live without it, it’s only media. Stealing it is not some kind of Robin Hood act. You’re not stealing from the rich to give to the poor, you’re stealing from working people to give to yourself. You are a bad person.
BTW, ‘poor’ people can’t afford food. You are not ‘poor’, you’re freakin rich if you can afford an $80 inet connection and a computer.
its to the point where no one cares anymore. riaa is losing lawsuits left and right. the movie industry is sitting back and watching, noting all the mistakes the music industry is making along the way. the reason why labels are so damn scared is that they charge up the ass for that little plastic case and booklet. upwards of 25%. digital is the future, and rather than work with it, they’ve fought it at every turn. being an independant artist, this is the best thing EVER in the world. distribution is KING. those that say content is king are living in the 90s. the playing field is nearly leveled and will continue to slant in favor of the public who are now the tastemakers. download. download. download and expose yourself and your friends to as much music as you possibly can. orbis i completely agree…the more available you make the material, the greater opportunity the future holds for you.
That letter is good, and pretty true.
many of the RIAA’s techniques are in a legal gray zone, the way that they catch people downloading music can be very sketchy, and even illegal at some point.
I do not agree that the RIAA should be allowed to go all willy-nilly and sue eveyone that happens to have a some copy-written data on their computers, because lets face it, if they were allowed to look into anyones computer i am sure they could find something to sue just about everyone for.
I think that people should really support the artists, and being a musician myself, i know what it is like to get paid absolutely nothing for what i play, which to me it is alright; because it is all about the music. However, for professional musicians things are a little different. It is their livelihood.
I think that people should pay for music, but if it is just mass produced, crap; where the artist (preformer) is turned into a product to be marketed should not apply. These people do not write their own music, or their own lyrics most of the time they are just found by a record label because they look good, and they know that the musicially uneduacted masses will flock to whatever is thrown their way.
The bottom-line is that, if the RIAA wants people to steal less music they have to be willing to drop the prices below 15 dollars a cd. I mean, the digital media known as “compact disks” is no longer a new technology, and if you are going to do any research, you will notice that the record companies keep a vast amount of revenue earned from something those those corperate ass-clowns didn’t even remotely come up with. If a musician wants to be successful, they either have to sellout, or tour themselves into the ground just to make enough money to survive. Unless you are a wildly popular band that already has a massive fan base, like… The Red Hot Chili Peppers for instance… They get a nice amount of money out of the record label they are signed too, but still that lable is keeping a majority of the money made from their music.
Here’s my thought:
I wasn’t going to buy it anyway
if i didn’t buy it in the first place they’d make no money out of me, if i DL it then make no money out of me, and either way the loose no money
All,
Sure, the RIAA is a giant bully, sure the music industry fights every new technology and then makes billions off of it, sure much of it is pop cr*p that has no value, sure now that radio is dead it is hard to discover new music….however, don’t lie to yourselves…you are stealing. You play symantics games with debating the difference between digital and physical goods, copyright vs licence vs purchase. The bottom line is, they are a business, they create products, and they expect people who want the products to pay for them. You clearly want them and that’s why you’re downloading them. The RIAA isn’t the only greedy party around here — you’re greedy too by downloading multi-gigs weekly. Honestly ask yourselves, when’s the last time you bought a CD? I bet it was sometime shortly before you discovered filesharing. You think the music is over priced? Sign up for iTunes and cherry pick your fav song for a measly .99 each. Hell, you probably leave that much in the penny tray every week. You could download a song from the filesharing network and if you like it, pay for it on iTunes. You’re not doing that are you? That’s right, you’re a greedy little theif in denial. Just like the RIAA. You’re meant for each other. Me? I simply stopped consuming media. At least I’m not a hypocrite.
1. No one has EVER been sued for downloading a song.
2. This is just a silly worthless comment. You can’t use copyrighted material for profit, which includes using it as a secondary form of profit. (Like playing music in arestaurant to create ambiance.)
3. Blah blah blah.
4. Whine whine whine.
Do you realize how sad articles like this make you look?
Oh, and I love how willing Dank is to make himself look like an idiot!
You honor! The music is not good enough to buy. It is only good enough to steal.
It is amazing. Most people’s brains have a stopgap that prevents them from willingly making themsevles look ridiculous to others. People like Dank don’t.
I actually feel less intelligent after reading this. I figured there was some point to it, but no. STFU.
Hmmm… not what I expected. I wanted to see a real RIAA letter with some parts stripped out that somehow made it sound sadly immature or even more evil or something like that. Disappointing.
150 GB …. if ya gonna DL listen to it before you get the next one… otherwise youre just doing it for the sake of being ‘a cool “sharer” ‘
[quote comment="12825"]Hehe, nice one.
I download a lot of music, and i have downloaded about 150gb in 3 weeks. I’m 17 and of course live at home. And my excuse is, I’m poor. I can barely pay the internet bills, about 80$ a month, (don’t even have speakers btw), so how the hell should I be able to buy music at the prices they are selling it for? 20 bucks for one CD is way out of my lead.
The truth is, the RIAA are too greedy. Many artists have gotten rid off this link, so now they can sell theire music cheaper, and still earn the same amount, and even more money than before.
I’d also like to recommend that everyone look around for unsigned musicians, as there are many artists in whatever category you fancy, wether it’s trance, polka, jazz etc… it’s out there.
But in the end, it’a nice to have music that people have heard about.
One more thing, doesn’t these lawsuits against people cost a lot? They probably use more money than they get in these cases, so isn’t the lawyers getting a nice salary by all this?
I got a cramp in my finger now… may write more later. Ciao :o)[/quote]
I work in the music industry, I am a live sound engineer, and I download music. I have gotten to know a lot of bands downloading their music that I would never have heard otherwise, and when those bands come into town I pay to see their show, or if I get into the show for free because I know the sound tech or have worked at that venue before, I many times buy t-shirts off of them. And later on, if I really like their stuff I buy their new CDs as they come out. Its beneficial to lesser known bands, its beneficial to the spread of art, it may be harmful sometimes but the RIAA is not seeing all the beneficial possibilities filesharing has. Things are not white or black, but I believe many people can benefit from filesharing, and not just the downloaders. I really dont think my job is in danger because of this.
Those of you considering the RIAA’s position should consinder two things.
First, creating a digital copy of something is not the same as “stealing” a physical object. There are many differences; for example, stealing takes an object from one who values it more and gives it to someone who values it less (as measured by willingness and ability to pay), making the world worse off. Creating a zero cost copy of media increases the net utility in the world.
So called “piracy” is not a real transfer of resources; the underlying concern is that it disincentivizes the creation of intellectual property. I, for one, don’t believe that’s a bad thing at all. Why should music be such an immensly profitable industry? It’s abhorrent that they can even afford employ the armies of Harvard MBAs & JDs that they use to build their empire. Many speak of wanting to return to a regime where we have artists in charge of making the music. Well, that is not a viable business option when you’re competing against companies that bribe radio stations for play time and run billion dollar marketing machines. The artists don’t choose this, we force it upon them by voting for representitives that support these laws. A 70 year + life of the creator copyright regime has brought us into this bizzarre position where rappers boast of killing, drug use, and mysogyny, yet in the next breath they berate the public as immorral for the consumption of copied music.
Also, don’t be fooled into thinking that piracy, in moderation, isn’t actually beneficial to the big labels; in their board meetings, it is likely often referred to by another name: price discrimination. Microsoft and Adobe both purposely allow piracy of their products because it keeps low income consumers from switching to competitors; though music has more limited “network effects” they are still significant. Piracy is the musical field takes the consumers that are the most likely to support independent artists, as those resourceful enough to pirate music are more likely to be resourceful enough to find new music on the internet, and then satiates their desires with free, pirated music, thus preventing the competitor from obtaining revenue. The music industry doesn’t want to abolish piracy, they only want to control it so they can maximize their monopoly profits.
If u steal a car/ipod someone has lost something.
But if u steal music over the internet, nothing has been lost.
In fact the music companys earn more because of the internet.
I have myself never bought an album that I havent heard at home or with a friend.
And I would never have heard it because of the internet.
So in fact they gain more money. Its a simple argument.
I download stuff and pay for the things I like, because if the product is good.
Why not support the company to make them able to do more good stuff?
And if its bad, DONT PAY! That way everyone will be happy ^^
here’s a theory:
maybe the more music i download illegally, the less likely i am to be sued. Think of it this way. Hitler, Stalin, Hussein…they’ve killed a shitload of people in their time. other nations just stoodby and watched as this happened. they were just like: “well done! 3 million people? really? wwow…how do you have time for anything else?”
maybe if the RIAA catches me, and after they find out i’ve dowloaded well over 150gb of music (22536 files to be exact) they’ll look at each other, then turn to me and say “congratulations….we’re so impressed with you that we’re not gonna sue. you’re free to go!”
22536 x 750$ default “damage” thats some nice ~17 millions.
And because you did it willfully that would be 150000$ for each song; what small country do you want to buy from that money? ;-)
LOL FUNNY
AND TRUE
SOME GUY GOT CAUGHT DOWNLOADING 11 SONGS
LOL
17,000 SONGS AND GOING STRONG
Many of the legal sites do not have the music people want. THey have not released all artists to the download medium and now they want to legally attack people ripping their own CDs…
OMG! I’m a clone!
Solution to this problem: Leave America.
Rushing to Platypus’ defence;
Why should poor people have any less right to music than rich people?
When people can find a way to download it (torrents, lending CDs, whatever) then I wish all the power to those people.
That’s music sorted.
But when it comes to physical things, I’ve got no problem in theory with nicking a rich bastard’s Ferrari. I’d rather not count down the days to the revolution in a jail cell though.
Well. let us look at it like this: in olden days there was artists that would go around singing and performing for free. People in return would give them food, clothing, shelter and yes, money too. It used to be considered an honor to have an artist in town, children would sing their songs and the respect was taught through songs and performances.
now, today thanks to this bloody machine called RIAA charging outrageous prices for what should be within reach for everyone piracy has become the only weapon to fight back against this system.
When you see an artist today drugged beyond belief, living in mansions, owning up to 10 cars, private planes and so on do you assholes reckon that because you download a song or 1000 is gonna make any difference to them? I say fuck ‘em an let then come down to earth and reality!
you buy a dvd or cd for 30 bucks and a month later it’s sold at a “nice price”…10 bucks now! wtf is going on people??!
I say let us take what they should be giving to the people free!
it’s because of dickheads like them there is no changes in society!
4 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.