RIAA to Sue Fileswappers (PART I)

[BigPoppaPump]

12,000 what a joke

there lucky if they get a dime out of me. Better yet the dirt in my backyard. Wait I live in an appartment.

[Professor Watkins]

Hate to point this out, but they don't take it out of your non-wealth now (if you don't have it). They take it out of your future earnings.

It's called Wage Garnishing. What happens is that any job you get, the RIAA (or any organization to whom you owe money) can then take out up to 1/4 of your earnings (out of each paycheck) before it gets to you. Even worse is they get to look at income taxes at the end of year, and if they didn't get their 25%, they can take it out in jail time.

To top it all off, if you get caught doing freelance and not paying the 25% wage garnishment; its considered fraud (a felony) and carries big jail time.

Not to put a downer or anything on the conversation; but I'm afraid being a poor student is no shelter from these sorts of things.

[BigPoppaPump]

dang!!

Man you really on top of it.

[Professor Watkins]

nah...just a little worried....if you know what I mean...;-)

[BigPoppaPump]

What is the worst they can do?

They can take away the fancy car.
They can take away the fancy house.
Thay can take away anything materialistic

but they can never take away my freedom!!!!!

anyways all kidding aside, life is to short to be bother by such BS, and when one passes on they will not be worried about the mpg3 songs they downloaded last year.

Don't sweat the big stuff - sweat the small the stuff, that is my moto.

[ProfClayton]

Originally posted by Professor Watkins
To top it all off, if you get caught doing freelance and not paying the 25% wage garnishment; its considered fraud (a felony) and carries big jail time.

I know that you are refferring to wage-garnishment/freelancing... but you also have to figure taxes when you freelance.

Off Topic: That's why everytime I get paid for a freelance gig, 25% of it goes into the bank for that wonderful end of the year experience!

I love my tax lady though. So far, my deductions have always outweighed my income on such things, that its balanced out fairly well... that and I haven't freelanced all that much in the few years.

... and Larry, you gotta lay off the 2 Pac... ;)

[ProfClayton]

One more thing... the guy who got nailed by the RIAA for $12,000... he made it back in an online fundraising campaign.

You can read about it here: www.chewplastic.com

[Professor Watkins]

Might be hard for all 5000 defendants (named so far) who will have to settle out of court to make that $12k back tho....you can only contribute to so many folks :-)

[ProfClayton]

Maybe Larry should start one of those 'fund-raisers' in the event something does happen... ;)

[Professor Watkins]

I'll start one for an experiment and see how much money I can get. Yee ha! Maybe I could afford a vacation to Seguin or Somerset or some exotic faraway place like that.

[ProfClayton]

Where do I send my donation!? :lol:

[BigPoppaPump]

aww

Someones dropping names, man now everyone know who I am!

OK Micheal!

[BigPoppaPump]

Making an Example? What?

Anyways just finished talking with a friend of mine, and basically he said what Adam said. That basically they might put a lean on you, and if later down the line you want to purchase a house. You must take care of the lean before they will let you buy a home. NO I do not know who they is or are, maybe the government I suppose. In any case I have never ever download a song from the Internet – and that is the story that I am sticking with. But man I cannot wait to see how far the guys are going to go with these lawsuits. How many people will they need to make an example of, before they realize that as long as it’s free, people will not hesitate to download it?

[Professor Watkins]

Here's an anticdotal story about garnishments and leins told us by our lawyer when we were suing an uninsured driver that ran into my wife:

A woman gets rear-ended by an unisured driver. She tries unsuccessfully to get the guy to pay the
$1000 bill to repair the back of her car. So she takes it to small claims court where they (the government) immediately place a lein and wage garnishment against him. He was able to weasel out of the wage garnishment by getting an employer who would not claim that he was paying the guy. But the lein remained in effect.....

So, now fast forward 15 years. The guys mother dies, and leaves to her son her home that appraises for $250,000. As he goes in to work out the paperwork, the government comes to him and says, "Oh, by the way, it looks like you've got this lein against your name, with the interest (compounded monthly) applied to the original amount, you owe $265,000. So, we're taking possession of the house, we'll sell it and pay that toward your lein; but you still owe $15,000."

So I guess we still have hope that the guy who ran into my wife will someday inherit a bunch of money (maybe in 20 years or so) and pay for our vacation to Seguin or Somerset after all.

[BigPoppaPump]

Jumping Loops my friend!

There has to be a way around that? There has to be a way to get around that and still be able to get the money or the house.

That is why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer - look at the Martha Stewart Scandel. Do you really think that Martha Stewart is going to see time - you might have a better changes taking away social security from the elder.