Looks like I had a few memory errors. First I forgot that in the first phase, when they were able to identify people using DMCA subpoenas, they had a used a mix of suing first and offering a settlement first.
Then in the second phase when they lost the ability to identify people that way they switched to filing "John Doe" lawsuits, which then allowed them to get subpoenas to identify who owned the IP address where the uploads came from.
I'd completely forgotten about that. In most cases they offered a settlement once they had a name but still, there was a lawsuit. (If they couldn't get a settlement, or didn't even want to ask for one, they could amend the lawsuit to name the real person and proceed).
> in practice the RIAA offered defendants the option of establishing a “Clean Slate” by destroying all of their illegally acquired files and paying a settlement of approximately $3 per illegal song.
It's basically many pages refuting parent's comments framing of "It's pretty easy to validate that everything they're saying is accurate." given the PDF opening is:
"On September 8, 2003, the recording industry sued 261 American music fans for sharing songs on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, kicking off an unprecedented legal campaign against its own customers.1 Four years later, the recording industry has filed, settled, or threatened, legal actions against well over 20,000 individuals.2 "
This entire topic is about Anthropic settling for 3k/book.
The parent claimed that the RIAA settled for $2-4 a song, which is true, and corroborated by your link. These were settled prior to legal action. They even had a website p2psettlement.com where you could pay before receiving legal notice.
The parent claimed that when RIAA actually sued, they sought statutory damages on a small subset of the infringed songs. Which is true. The two cases that went to trial involved 24 songs (Thomas-Rasset) and 30 songs (Tenenbaum), out of the thousands each defendant was accused of sharing. The statutory minimum was $750 per work, so a judgment on even a couple dozen songs exceeded the original settlement offer several times over.
The parent claimed that most parties got a lawyer, and would then negotiate with the RIAA. This is also true, most cases settled for under 10,000.
The two notable cases that went to trial were linked in my prior post. In one of them, the judge went so far as to urge Congress to lower the statutory minimum for individual, non-commercial infringers.
So I'm really not understanding what you're refuting. The EFF document you linked doesn't dispute any of these facts, it just critiques the scale and fairness. The parent described accurate mechanics, and the EFF thought it was abusive. These are both true at the same time and entirely different conversations.
So you're upset I showed proof of parent trying to white was the RIAA, with the "fairness" if suiing people who don't even own computers for copyright infrignment? Not sure what point you're still trying to make when its clearly refuted with your own words. And even parent later said they misremembered.
