Piracy isn’t stealing, and if companies want to pretend piracy doesn’t exist and that they’re not competing with it that’s their own look out. In the immortal words of gaben, piracy is a service problem.
Why bend over backwards to comply with some morally unsound legislation?
"The phonorecords in question were not "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" for purposes of [section] 2314. The section's language clearly contemplates a physical identity between the items unlawfully obtained and those eventually transported, and hence some prior physical taking of the subject goods. Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud."
Indeed, back then there were headlines on Slashdot every day about the RIAA and Metallica band members suing random kids that downloaded music. Probably the only reason they don’t go after people often now is because people mostly use paid streaming instead of piracy, but that will surely change if piracy becomes more widespread again.
Didn't the RIAA completely ruin their reputation (along with the other AAs) by doing that? Now it seems like most people just equate them with a huge pile of lawyers in suits who care not about art.
I don't have it on hand at the moment, but I think I saw something about how the victims of those lawsuits didn't actually end up paying. Might have been related to bankruptcy, and certain things being non-enforceable. Basically the RIAA cottoned on to it not being worth their time and money to ruin their public image for little to no return.
Edit: Still can't find it, but did find this EFF article covering a bunch of people who apparently settled for some amount. Haven't followed up on the people who took things to court yet.
https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later
Edit 1: I think it might have just been a high-profile case or two that escaped paying, it seems there were oodles of people who did pay based on the EFF article.
No one in this thread used the word "stealing" before you. I know you think you're being a big tough guy standing up to your corpo overlords or whatever but there are also the people and companies out there creating the media we like to consume and I'd like to see them getting paid at least somewhat commensurate with their value. If we simply accept piracy as legitimate then that value drops to near zero. I don't think this is fair.
Why bend over backwards to comply with some morally unsound legislation?