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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

It had to be more complicated than simple copyright infringement for the cops to get involved.

The music industry had more political power in 2001 than it does now.

The RIAA still has insane amounts of power both political and actual. They got away with successfully suing an ISP for billions over of what their customers downloaded and only lost on appeal. They've shaken down several other ISPs for settlement money to avoid going to court. Lately they've also been going after stream rippers, AI start ups, and archive.org

I think the MPAA has more money to throw around these days, but don't let the RIAA tell you that piracy is killing them. They're doing just fine (https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-Mid-Yea...)

Cox v. Sony Music went all the way to the Supreme Court. The lawsuit started in a Virginia US District Court in 2018 and the Supreme Court opinion was in 2026. [1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox_Communications,_Inc._v._So...

[2] https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/cox-communications-inc-v-so...

Or he was sharing other material that was kept quiet.

The raid being due solely to music copyright infringement is really the most likely situation. There's no need to imply it was anything else.

For example, in 2009 I worked at a record store that got raided due to such claims. The RIAA's informant claimed he had seen people selling hidden bootlegs, which absolutely wasn't happening, and that was all they needed to have cops raid the store, arrest several people and cart off boxes of not-bootlegged, sold-by-major-CD-distributors CDs. Court dates followed and the case was eventually dismissed (or settled due to being more convenient than continuing the case? I can't remember), but it still took time, money, and lawyers. And this was in 2009, when the recording industry wield less power than in 2001.

(I was running late for work that day or else I would have ended up arrested too, since I was one of the managers scheduled then. Thank god I was running late!)

As a procrastinator, I applaud you.

Tomorrow.

I don’t know, rolled into work at 10 and only saw they were giving him the perp walk to the car and I only heard about the details from coworkers, wasn’t close to him.

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