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Hadriel, owner and operator of <A href="http://www.rpgfilms.net">RPG Films</a> has provided an official response to allegations of running a hoax regarding his involvement with the RIAA. He's a <a href="http://www.camelotherald.com">DA OC</a> player from Percival, and many folks I know are able to proide a character reference in regards to his side of story being true:<blockquote>Okay,
So I just got home from work and there was messages on my home answering machine from journalists who wanted to talk to me about the RIAA taking down the site and then they were followed up with people saying it was a hoax, my server was hacked, and other meaningless trash.
The server was not hacked, the letter was posted by me for all to see.
So this is the chain of events as they happened, and I only did exactly what I was advised to do by the people around me in the know about DMCA and the RIAA.
I recieved the forwarded letter from the ISP. My ISP said that they would leave the content online as I was the one who had to make the decision to either shut it down, modify it, or fight them in court. They said this letter looks very similar to ones they have recieved in the past and it looked offical enough for them to pass it on to me.
I immediatley called a friend of mine who worked for an ISP for 10 years and recieved several complaints from the RIAA and several DMCA takedown notices. I forwarded him the email and we chated about it. He said it looked real enough to him and to take the site down right away and call the number in the email the following morning.
I took the site down, and posted the letter because at the time I was pretty pissed off. I also didn't know enough about the laws to say they were wrong.
The following day I called a local attorney and we reviewed the sitation I was in.
He looked up fair use policy and contact the RIAA and told me what penalities I would be possibly facing if I choose to put the site back up. Those are what I posted earlier.
At this point I don't know what else to say.
The law states that you can only use 10% or 3 minutes of a audio track in the fair use policy. Most if not all of the movies I hosted did not follow this so one can logically conclude that once I found this out it made sense that they were upset at their music being used illegally.
It also made sense because other people had PMed me here and in email that the RIAA had begun targetting large video files with audio in them as a way to distribute music illegally.
To sum up, everything looked real enough to me, and after speaking with several people in the online community they would have done exactly as I had done which was to take down the content per the request and to contact an attorney that would look into it further.
DMCA take down notices are guilty until proven innocent and many ISPs and web hosts will take your content down immediately as soon as the report is made.
The people reporting the infringement have 14 days to prove that their content is being published illegally after which if the content is deemed not infringment you are allowed to put it back up.
For the record I never made a case to boingboing or anyone to investigate this on my behalf, nor was I trying to make this a "federal case".
As for the future of RPGFilms.net it remains to be seen. Per the comments from the RIAA on the boingboing article they had no comment as to what if anything would be done to machinima video.
Also I would like to say that I had the reporters contact me and have had no contact from the RIAA saying it was a hoax.</blockquote>So now we really have no idea what the deal is with the RIAA. Is someone looking to give the RIAA another black eye (like they need one) or has Hadriel made an enemy? Maybe the RIAA's left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. I'm sure we'll know soon enough.
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