if you download music...

Music industry wins approval of 871 subpoenas against Internet users|

WASHINGTON (AP) — The music industry has won at least 871 federal subpoenas against computer users suspected of illegally sharing music files on the Internet, with roughly 75 new subpoenas being approved each day, U.S. court officials said Friday.
The effort represents early steps in the music industry’s contentious plan to file civil lawsuits aimed at crippling online piracy.
Subpoenas reviewed by The Associated Press show the industry compelling some of the largest Internet providers, such as Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Cable Communications Inc., and some universities to identify names and mailing addresses for users on their networks known online by nicknames such as ‘‘fox3j,’’ ‘‘soccerdog33,’’ ‘‘clover77’’ or ‘‘indepunk74.’’
The Recording Industry Association of America has said it expects to file at least several hundred lawsuits seeking financial damages within the next eight weeks. U.S. copyright laws allow for damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song offered illegally on a person’s computer, but the RIAA has said it would be open to settlement proposals from defendants.
The campaign comes just weeks after U.S. appeals court rulings requiring Internet providers to readily identify subscribers suspected of illegally sharing music and movie files. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act permits music companies to force Internet providers to turn over the names of suspected music pirates upon subpoena from any U.S. District Court clerk’s office, without a judge’s signature required.
In some cases, subpoenas cite as few as five songs as ‘‘representative recordings’’ of music files available for downloading from these users. The trade group for the largest music labels, the Washington-based RIAA, previously indicated its lawyers would target Internet users who offer substantial collections of MP3 song files but declined to say how many songs might qualify for a lawsuit.
‘‘We would have to look at historic trends, but that is a very high number,’’ said Alan Davidson of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group that has argued against the subpoenas. ‘‘It doesn’t sound like they’re just going after a few big fish.’’
Music fans are fighting back with technology, using new software designed specifically to stymie monitoring of their online activities by the major record labels.
A new version of ‘‘Kazaa Lite,’’ free software that provides access to the service operated by Sharman Networks Ltd., can prevent anyone from listing all music files on an individual’s machine and purports to block scans from Internet addresses believed to be associated with the RIAA.
Many of the subpoenas reviewed by the AP identified songs from the same few artists, including Avril Lavigne, Snoop Dogg and Michael Jackson. It was impossible to determine whether industry lawyers were searching the Internet specifically for songs by these artists or whether they were commonly popular among the roughly 60 million users of file-sharing services.
The RIAA’s subpoenas are so prolific that the U.S. District Court in Washington, already suffering staff shortages, has been forced to reassign employees from elsewhere in the clerk’s office to help process paperwork, said Angela Caesar-Mobley, the clerk’s operations manager.
The RIAA declined to comment on the numbers of subpoenas it issued.
‘‘We are identifying substantial infringers and we’re going to whatever entity is providing (Internet) service for that potential infringer,’’ said Matt Oppenheim, the group’s senior vice president of business and legal affairs. ‘‘From there we’ll be in a position to begin bringing lawsuits.’’
A spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said the clerk’s office here was ‘‘functioning more like a clearing house, issuing subpoenas for all over the country.’’ Any civil lawsuits would likely be transferred to a different jurisdiction, spokeswoman Karen Redmond said.
Verizon, which has fought the RIAA over the subpoenas with continued legal appeals, said it received at least 150 subpoenas during the last two weeks. There were no subpoenas on file sent to AOL Time Warner Inc., the nation’s largest Internet provider and also parent company of Warner Music Group. Earthlink Inc., another of the largest Internet providers, said it has received only three new subpoenas.
Depaul University in Chicago was among the few colleges that received such subpoenas; the RIAA asked Depaul on July 2 to track down a user known as ‘‘anon39023’’ who was allegedly offering at least eight songs.
There was some evidence the threat of an expensive lawsuit was discouraging online music sharing. Nielsen NetRatings, which monitors Internet usage, earlier this week reported a decline for traffic on the Kazaa network of one million users, with similarly large drops across other services.

 

Two words.
































Chewbacca Defense.

 

I agree with the RIAA but at the same time their tactics are going to cause people to not buy any CDs at all.Also they are going to help speed up the development of more secure P2P programs.I aint downloading nothing...Call me a chicken but it just is not worth being bankrupt.The RIAA needs to embrace the technology like Apple Itunes.

 

This is not right either

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31812.html

 

I think it's a bit of a gray area in my opinion though. Are they ONLY going after people who are sharing files or going after people who are simply downloading them? I download a lot of stuff off Kazaa Lite but I have disabled my sharing option ever since the RIAA started the threats a few weeks back. I also downloaded the newer version of KL just to be safe. Not too thrilled about the possibility of a settlement with these pricks.

I agree though that they're shooting theirselves in the feet in the long run. If they want to combat file sharing, how about lowering the damn prices of CD's when it costs pennies to produce them??? Maybe I'd be more inclined to buy a CD if it were $6.99 but I'm simply not paying $14+ for one that likely only has a couple good songs on it which is often the case these days. These lawsuits will create so much resentment among music fans that record sales will continue to drop even more. And groups like the RIAA will always be one step behind the techies who always find a way around the threats.

 

True but it is stealing.Im not downloading a damn thing.

 

They can go fuck themselves for all I care. When I see Mtv Cribs I don't feel much sympathy for the aritsts. And I never had any for the label to begin with.

 

They say that they are only going after those that are sharing. I think that's because they can't monitor well who is downloading what. The newer version of K-Lite doesn't allow known IPs to scan your hard drive. Plus, if you don't share any files, the whole thing dies. Which is their hope, I guess.

 

Man the RIAA is full of it....Record lables give on TONS of free promotinal music a year!!! I'm talking singles and albums. I was an intern for a local station a few years back, and they give so much music away free, that's distributed from the record lables. They beg people to take this stuff.

When most people download, they want 1 or 2 songs, not an entire album, which is the same amount of songs that would be on a free promotional ablum that the record lable gives out.

I worked with and BMG rep, and I remeber her closet being packed with cd's tapes, Records, poster, and her job is to give that stuff away, on the streets, to local radio staion, anyway she could.

So when they cry about this downloading stuff, it just makes no sense to me....