NY Giants82 wrote:

And to those who say conservatives dont wont women to vote, and wouldnt vote for Obama because he is black, or other stupid bullshit like that, you really have no clue. No clue at all.

It was a joke. Come now, people don't think like that anymore--I hope.

I will try to explain one more time, but some of you, it seems come to this board to not only perpetuate lies, but also to attack the band which you must enjoy, which is implicit in your visitation to this board.  Here are the facts:

--GN'R had nothing, nothing to do with this legal matter--besides being ripped off.  They did not make the decision to try and get commercial publicity for his website by posting the songs. 

--The RIAA (note Wall Street Journal Article) has a team, that had to pursure these instances, due to an agreement they made in 2005 with the record industry.

--Nothing would have happened, had he not been associated with Universal--that opened up liability for Universal, and they have to protect their contracts with other artists.

--This case is not about GN'R, and is about copyright in general--there are thousands of bands involved in this, it's just this self-publicized leak perpetuated a prosectution.

--If you shoot someone, or rob a bank, and then blog about it and publicize it to the world, you give the authorities no choice but to prosecute.  The method of his distribution spelled doom.

--Trying, though, to tie GN'R to this, and then to bag on them, is insane, and some psychological disorder, where you express your own personal anger, by displacing it vicariously on something you have no control over.  When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, we did not invade Mexico, because Japan bombed us.  Quit attacking GN'R, for something that really, has nothing to do with them besides them being the "house which was randomly robbed".  Police don't care who's house was robbed, just that the person who was caught robbing it was prosecuted.

BTW, this is totally different than the Napster-Metallica deal, and you don't see Axl on TV launching an attack against this---it is out of his control.  It did not matter whose music this guy leaked, but the way he did it---if this was U2, MIA, whoever, the RIAA contractually had to pursue.

The case represents "the beginning of an effort to be more aggressive," said Kathy Loedler, the RIAA's director of investigations for the western region, adding that the industry wanted to add bite to its existing strategy. "When we tell somebody to just take it down and there's no penalty, there's no arrest, there's no fine, it's very easy for them to continue to do it."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian said the RIAA had alerted the Department of Justice to the case, and he planned to prosecute similar cases as they arose. "We take this type of crime very seriously," he said

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1219891 … lenews_wsj