I wanted to go buy this somewhere before Friday. It's gotta be in Toronto somewhere. I'm leaving for Cuba and I'd like to get into the mood on the plane. I have half of these tracks already. But I wanna support a fellow Canadian.
If people are downloading the shit, I would try to get IP adresses from bloggers, track motherfuckers down (or hire someone to do it), forcefully take their wallets out and take my cut which would include expenes of the whole shakedown operation. Then I would go on vacation to Cuba, smoke some cigars and start to compile my next comp.
I wanted to go buy this somewhere before Friday. It's gotta be in Toronto somewhere. I'm leaving for Cuba and I'd like to get into the mood on the plane. I have half of these tracks already. But I wanna support a fellow Canadian.
I bought my copy yesterday from Good Records NYC!
All corniness aside, this shit is banging from beginning to end. I haven't stopped listening to it since I picked it up. It's so good I had that whole, "Damn yo, I need to get more Cuban records!" thought going through my head.
A federal judge has dismissed Elektra v. Santangelo with prejudice, leaving the door open for defendant Patti Santangelo to recover attorneys' fees from the RIAA. Last month, Judge Colleen McMahon denied the RIAA's motion to dismiss the case without prejudice, ruling that the case should either be dismissed with prejudice or proceed to trial so that Santangelo could have a shot at being exonerated of the RIAA's accusations of file-sharing and copyright infringement.
Having unfortunately been intimately involved with a Federal case(NOT involving copyright infringement, but a case is a case, a dispute a dispute) that was dismissed with prejudice (effectively, we won), it is HIGHLY unlikely that she would ever recover her attorney's fees.
It depends on the case. Some statutes cover fee-shifting (attorneys fees and costs), so in those cases it is basically automatic when you are the prevailing party. If such a statute doesn't exist in your case (and you are not suing under a contract that provides for fee shifting) then you are gonna have a real hard time getting atty fees. Basically, you would need to allege a Rule 11 violation (or its state court equivalent) which says that the lawsuit was filed in bad faith. Here, there doesn't seem to be such a statute, so I think atty fees are doubtful unless they can show that the RIAA knew its case had no merit and the only purpose of the suit was to harass the defendants.
As far as that Eletrak case goes, without seeing the caselaw that the woman's lawyers cited, I would have thought the RIAA was right on the legal standard. In fact, in my posts in this thread, I think I stated that, for the parents, the liability question would hinge on whether "a reasonable parent" would have/should have known that her kids were illegally downloading music. Apparently, the courts have taken the position that if the RIAA hasn't alleged that it can prove the parents knew about the downloading, then they have no case, regardless of whether the parent acted objectively "reasonable".
A federal judge has dismissed Elektra v. Santangelo with prejudice, leaving the door open for defendant Patti Santangelo to recover attorneys' fees from the RIAA. Last month, Judge Colleen McMahon denied the RIAA's motion to dismiss the case without prejudice, ruling that the case should either be dismissed with prejudice or proceed to trial so that Santangelo could have a shot at being exonerated of the RIAA's accusations of file-sharing and copyright infringement.
Having unfortunately been intimately involved with a Federal case(NOT involving copyright infringement, but a case is a case, a dispute a dispute) that was dismissed with prejudice (effectively, we won), it is HIGHLY unlikely that she would ever recover her attorney's fees.
It depends on the case. Some statutes cover fee-shifting (attorneys fees and costs), so in those cases it is basically automatic when you are the prevailing party. If such a statute doesn't exist in your case (and you are not suing under a contract that provides for fee shifting) then you are gonna have a real hard time getting atty fees. Basically, you would need to allege a Rule 11 violation (or its state court equivalent) which says that the lawsuit was filed in bad faith. Here, there doesn't seem to be such a statute, so I think atty fees are doubtful unless they can show that the RIAA knew its case had no merit and the only purpose of the suit was to harass the defendants.
Proving the bad faith is what is the real uphill climb. I agree with your assessment, my main point to people unfamiliar with these kind of situations is that hardly anything is automatic, and virtually NOTHING is guaranteed. The only folks at the end of the day who are guaranteed to collect money are the lawyers on both sides. They earn their bread, no doubt, just saying that sometimes people think that if you get unfairly dragged into court that the law is on your side, that you can get your money back for that. It hardly ever happens that way. The way the court sees it, if you are served papers, a dispute exists. And if a dispute is acknowledged, bad faith argument loses a LOT of steam, and so do your hopes of attorney's fees. At least that's how it was explained to me.
I had someone tell me, in another forum, that they downloaded my album from (I think) Soulseek, played it, and it sucked. It was part of an argument I was in, which is not the point of this. The point was, he downloaded my album somewhere, and this was way before there were any sites like iTunes or whatever dedicated to doing that. I know some people say "if the artist complains about someone downloading their music, maybe their music is not that good to begin with", and to that person I say "yeah, but you were signed to Atlantic".
When the eBay track I did was released, I was curious to see if it was circulating, and it was. On Soulseek, there were about 600 people who had the song, and about half of that waiting to or were in the middle of a download. In a way it's good, because those people have heard my song. It's bad because I didn't get paid for those downloads. It's different to be Beyonce or Akon and not feel the bite that much. Then again, I shouldn't have been on Soulseek, and I haven't been for years (not for my song, but because audio quality of the rips were unpredictable, even those that were encoded at high bit rates).
I'm still looking for a site that does MP3 distribution, so I can put some of my past work on there to see if it generates interest, especially as I wrap up the project I'm doing now. I would prefer people buy an LP or CD, but I'd also would prefer generating income than not.
I'm still looking for a site that does MP3 distribution, so I can put some of my past work on there to see if it generates interest, especially as I wrap up the project I'm doing now. I would prefer people buy an LP or CD, but I'd also would prefer generating income than not.
This is sort of off-topic, but since you brought it up - DJ NickNack from here in Austin just launched a cool website where folks can sell their music: http://www.gigacrate.com mp3s that cater to microwave DJs....
Comments
Awesome!
I bought my copy yesterday from Good Records NYC!
All corniness aside, this shit is banging from beginning to end. I haven't stopped listening to it since I picked it up. It's so good I had that whole, "Damn yo, I need to get more Cuban records!" thought going through my head.
It depends on the case. Some statutes cover fee-shifting (attorneys fees and costs), so in those cases it is basically automatic when you are the prevailing party. If such a statute doesn't exist in your case (and you are not suing under a contract that provides for fee shifting) then you are gonna have a real hard time getting atty fees. Basically, you would need to allege a Rule 11 violation (or its state court equivalent) which says that the lawsuit was filed in bad faith. Here, there doesn't seem to be such a statute, so I think atty fees are doubtful unless they can show that the RIAA knew its case had no merit and the only purpose of the suit was to harass the defendants.
As far as that Eletrak case goes, without seeing the caselaw that the woman's lawyers cited, I would have thought the RIAA was right on the legal standard. In fact, in my posts in this thread, I think I stated that, for the parents, the liability question would hinge on whether "a reasonable parent" would have/should have known that her kids were illegally downloading music. Apparently, the courts have taken the position that if the RIAA hasn't alleged that it can prove the parents knew about the downloading, then they have no case, regardless of whether the parent acted objectively "reasonable".
Proving the bad faith is what is the real uphill climb. I agree with your assessment, my main point to people unfamiliar with these kind of situations is that hardly anything is automatic, and virtually NOTHING is guaranteed. The only folks at the end of the day who are guaranteed to collect money are the lawyers on both sides. They earn their bread, no doubt, just saying that sometimes people think that if you get unfairly dragged into court that the law is on your side, that you can get your money back for that. It hardly ever happens that way. The way the court sees it, if you are served papers, a dispute exists. And if a dispute is acknowledged, bad faith argument loses a LOT of steam, and so do your hopes of attorney's fees. At least that's how it was explained to me.
When the eBay track I did was released, I was curious to see if it was circulating, and it was. On Soulseek, there were about 600 people who had the song, and about half of that waiting to or were in the middle of a download. In a way it's good, because those people have heard my song. It's bad because I didn't get paid for those downloads. It's different to be Beyonce or Akon and not feel the bite that much. Then again, I shouldn't have been on Soulseek, and I haven't been for years (not for my song, but because audio quality of the rips were unpredictable, even those that were encoded at high bit rates).
I'm still looking for a site that does MP3 distribution, so I can put some of my past work on there to see if it generates interest, especially as I wrap up the project I'm doing now. I would prefer people buy an LP or CD, but I'd also would prefer generating income than not.
This is sort of off-topic, but since you brought it up - DJ NickNack from here in Austin just launched a cool website where folks can sell their music: http://www.gigacrate.com
mp3s that cater to microwave DJs....
Started by Shawn Fanning (Napster dude)
http://www.snocap.com/
If I was an artist, I'd be looking into this.
FAQ - Looks pretty good.
http://www.snocap.com/about/faq/
I was just about to post this. Definitely check it out.
Hey DOR , check if Slinky Music has Si Para Usted.. they probably do.
I'll look into this, and the Gigacrate site mentioned by TrueStu. Thanks.