As RIAA suits loom, customers often confused with criminals

[boogieordie]

As RIAA suits loom, customers often confused with criminals

By Nik Bonopartis, Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal

Jesse Jordan has become a poster boy for what can happen to people who get on the bad side of the music industry.
The 19-year-old student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., was one of the first people sued by the music industry in an initial round aimed at stemming illegal online trading of copyrighted music.

An information technology major going on his second year at RPI, Jordan ran a campus search engine where music could be traded. He says he didn't have many options — or the money — to fight the lawsuit in court. So he settled with the Recording Industry Association of America in exchange for his life savings: $12,000.

"There was nothing else I could do," he said. "My parents aren't rich."

Jordan's story is just the tip of the iceberg. In six to eight weeks, hundreds of people who trade online will receive notice that they're also being sued by the industry.

The lawsuits are the latest development in an increasingly pitched battle between the music industry and people who trade copyrighted material over the Internet. Even artists like Madonna are getting involved by spamming file-sharing networks with surreptitious, profanity-laced messages aimed at their fans.

An early report suggests the lawsuit threats may have had a small effect in the first week after the announcement. Nielsen-NetRatings reported that there was a 15% drop-off in activity on the networks during the week ending July 6. However, it's unclear how much of that drop-off was because of the threats or other factors, such as the July Fourth holiday weekend.

More than 60 million Americans and more than 180 million people worldwide are estimated to make up the file-sharing community.

A company called BayTSP, working on behalf of the music and movie industries, has been keeping tabs on online file-trading networks, recording not only what's being traded and the volume of copyrighted material exchanged daily between users, but also who is trading the songs and movies.

For instance, the company can tell you that Finding Nemo, Disney's animated deep-sea adventure, was the most popular movie exchanged for free on online networks in June — and that 103,788 people had that movie on their computers, despite the fact that it's still in theaters. The company spotted people trading the long-awaited Matrix: Reloaded "several days before the official release."

BayTSP sends the information off to the movie and music industries, and the industries decide who will be sent a letter of warning or slapped with a lawsuit.

"We're like the Internet private detectives," said Mark Ishikawa, the CEO of BayTSP, which uses its MediaEnforcer software to track file-traders. "We can usually find (a movie) within a few minutes of it being put on the Internet. We find one copy, then we see 10 copies, then we see 100 copies.

"If we don't see it before a theatrical release, we typically see it the night of a theatrical release. And people have to understand that if you do that and get caught, you're going to go to jail."

Or, at the very least, get sued for significant amounts of money.

ISPs helping the industry

The music industry says it has the cooperation of Internet service providers — who can provide the identities of network users — and is bringing the lawsuits as part of a multifaceted approach to stopping a crime.

To keep pressure on people who trade music and movies, the industry says that some of the lawsuits will be random. So even small-time traders run the risk of a lawsuit.

"Making even one file available is illegal, so there's no hard and fast rule," said Amanda Collins, deputy director of the RIAA.

As for Jordan, handing over his life savings was his only option, he says. The paperwork of the RIAA's lawsuit against him listed the names of music files that were searched for or acquired by people using his search engine — along with a note that said it would cost him $150,000 per copyrighted song.

But thanks to the generosity of fellow file-traders, Jordan ended up getting his $12,000 back by donations through his Web site.

"People have been really, really supportive," he said.

Jordan notes that the search engine he built for his campus network is essentially the same thing as the popular Google engine, where users can search for any type of file. He also notes Altavista, another search site, also runs a search engine dedicated to the MP3 format, which is how most music is encoded on computers. Neither Altavista nor Google have been the target of RIAA lawsuits.

Jordan believes the music industry was making an example of him.

But many observers are unfazed by the RIAA's threats. They see the lawsuits as acts of desperation, and say that unless the music and movie industries move quickly to adapt to the new technology — rather than try to squash it through heavy-handed tactics — both industries run the risk of fading into insignificance.

"The majority of file-sharers are users who aren't in the U.S.," said Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that seeks to protect free speech and civil rights online. "Even if they somehow managed to scare 60 million Americans, file sharing would still be going on around the world."

The companies that created the file-sharing networks are already working on technology to make their users entirely anonymous.

"It's very obvious that a counter-measure will be made effective," said Elan Oren, CEO of iMesh, a file-sharing company in Tel Aviv, Israel, that uses the popular FastTrack network.

The first major file-sharing network, Napster, was shut down by industry lawsuits because it contained a centralized list of the music files available through its service. Networks such as KaZaA moved into the void created by Napster's demise by creating programs that merely search the computers of people on the network. There is no central list. Since KaZaA merely facilitates the ability to search for any file, legal or otherwise, industry lawsuits have not been able to stick.

"The (file-sharing) industry didn't want to play ball," Oren said.

Hard-core fans drive much demand

A recurring defense of the file-trading networks has come from hard-core music fans who search the networks for hard-to-find live or radio-show performances. Those fans, many say, already own legal copies of the albums of their favorite artists, and the fact that fans are looking for rare material from those artists is a testament to their popularity ... and even a free marketing tool.

The RIAA isn't buying that.

Collins said the RIAA will take action against users who trade music "that has not been sanctioned for distribution by the copyrighted owner."

In other words, if a label hasn't placed a particular recording by an artist for sale in stores, it's illegal to own that recording. Trading radio-show appearances by bands or recordings of concerts from bands signed to labels under the RIAA umbrella is illegal, according to the RIAA.

That may further accusations that both industries are alienating fans.

"It's never a successful business model to sue your best customers into submission," von Lohmann said.

But "shoplifters are customers too," Collins said. "Making files available without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal."

Some observers say the music and movie industries have vast potential to use a new distribution model to sell their products, rather than the traditional method where the industries controlled every aspect of distribution.

It is up to the industries, they say, to capitalize on the new distribution channels.

"The folks being sued by the RIAA are in fact the same people who buy music, go to music shows, and read music publications," said Stephen Fraser, marketing director of Lulu.com (lulu.com), a site that lets musicians sell their music directly to fans. "Treating them like criminals because of the development of a new technology just alienates them and hurts business. What the publishing companies seem to have missed is that the appropriate response to new technologies is the creation of new business models."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/te...-21-riaa_x.htm

Ashley

[nmskalmn]

Originally posted by AyuRocks
Some observers say the music and movie industries have vast potential to use a new distribution model to sell their products, rather than the traditional method where the industries controlled every aspect of distribution.

It is up to the industries, they say, to capitalize on the new distribution channels.

"The folks being sued by the RIAA are in fact the same people who buy music, go to music shows, and read music publications," said Stephen Fraser, marketing director of Lulu.com (lulu.com), a site that lets musicians sell their music directly to fans. "Treating them like criminals because of the development of a new technology just alienates them and hurts business. What the publishing companies seem to have missed is that the appropriate response to new technologies is the creation of new business models."

What they said.

[SheFliesHigher]

Hey Ashley, you had a thread here with a letter from the former prez of the RIAA. I had wanted to comment on it....where'd that thread go?

[Darkevil]

With this news, I don't think BoardBand access will be as useful as before.....

[Unimatrix Prime™]

Originally posted by SheFliesHigher
Hey Ashley, you had a thread here with a letter from the former prez of the RIAA. I had wanted to comment on it....where'd that thread go?

http://www.ahsforum.org/forum/showth...&threadid=7960

Supposedly, it's fake, but if it were real, you have no idea of some of the things I would've said about it...

[boogieordie]

Thanks, Jose. It was moved to the trash can for a reason.

Ashley