Testimony in Minnesota File Sharing Trial: RIAA Losing Money on Customer-Suing Strategy
Of the twenty-thousand or so (I’ve heard higher) people who have been sued by the RIAA in the past four years for file-sharing, not one has ever gone to trial before this week. But this week in Duluth, Minnestoa, Capitol Records, et al v. Jammie Thomas is just about to go to the jury. Several sites have excellent coverage, and Ray Beckerman’s Recording Industry vs. the People blog has links to just about all of it.
One very interesting nugget of information has come out of the trial, when attorneys for the defense got to cross-examine Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG’s head of litigation. Ars Technica reports:
Pariser estimated the number at a “few thousand.” “More like 20,000,” suggested Toder. “That’s probably an overstatement,” Pariser replied. She then made perhaps the most startling comment of the day. Saying that the record labels have spent “millions” on the lawsuits, she then said that “we’ve lost money on this program.”
There are a several glimmers of hope that have come out of this litigation - including the possibility that the defendant just might win this one - but the fact that the record companies are losing money on this deal means that eventually, their shareholders will get fed up with the litigation and demand an end to it.
Shareholders? Time to act.
Gizmodo, I think (or Engadget) is reporting that Pariser also made the bold claim that ripping one’s CD to put songs onto one’s computer and/or music playing device of choice is theft.
So when you insert your Foo Fighters CD into your Vaio and use SonicStage to rip and encode to MP3 and load it to your B100 you’re just a big old felon.
Jennifer Pariser - too dumb for her socks or representing the actual line of thought in SonyBMG headquarters? I’m afraid to know the answer.