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Single mom overwhelmed by recording industry suit
Silicon Valley.com via Drudge ^ | Wed, May. 26, 2004 | LESLIE BROOKS SUZUKAMO

Posted on 05/27/2004 12:57:50 PM PDT by jjm2111

Tammy Lafky has a computer at home but said she doesn't use it. "I don't know how," the 41-year-old woman said, somewhat sheepishly.

But her 15-year-old daughter, Cassandra, does. And what Cassandra may have done, like millions of other teenagers and adults around the world, landed Lafky in legal hot water this week that could cost her thousands of dollars.

Lafky, a sugar mill worker and single mother in Bird Island, a farming community 90 miles west of St. Paul, became the first Minnesotan sued by name by the recording industry this week for allegedly downloading copyrighted music illegally.

The lawsuit has stunned Lafky, who earns $12 an hour and faces penalties that top $500,000. She says she can't even afford an offer by the record companies to settle the case for $4,000.

The ongoing music downloading war is being fought on one side by a $12 billion music industry that says it is steadily losing sales to online file sharing. On the other side, untold millions of people — many of them too young to drive — who have been downloading free music off file-sharing sites with odd names like Kazaa and Grokster and who are accusing the music industry of price gouging and strong-arm tactics.

Lafky says she doesn't download free music. Her daughter did last year when she was 14, but neither of them knew it was illegal because all of Cassandra's friends at school were doing it.

"She says she can't believe she's the only one being sued," Lafky said. "She told me, 'I can't be the only one. Everybody else does it.' "

A record company attorney from Los Angeles contacted Lafky about a week ago, telling Lafky she could owe up to $540,000, but the companies would settle for $4,000.

"I told her I don't have the money," Lafky said. "She told me to go talk to a lawyer and I told her I don't have no money to talk to a lawyer."

Lafky said she clears $21,000 a year from her job and gets no child support.

The music industry isn't moved. It has sued nearly 3,000 people nationwide since September and settled with 486 of them for an average of $3,000 apiece, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major and minor labels that produce 90 percent of the recorded music in the United States.

"Our goal in these cases and in this program (of lawsuits) that we're trying to achieve is to deliver the message that it's illegal and wrong," said Stanley Pierre-Louis, senior vice president for legal affairs for the RIAA.

Since the music industry began its lawsuit campaign, awareness of the illegality of downloading copyrighted music has increased several-fold this year, Pierre-Louis said.

"And we're trying to create a level playing field for legal online (music) services," he added.

These services sell music for under a dollar a song, and some have become well known, like Apple Computer's iPod service, which advertises heavily on TV. Others are just getting off the ground.

Pierre-Louis said the RIAA does not comment on individual cases like Lafky's, but he said the music industry typically finds its targets by logging onto the same file-sharing services that the file-sharers do. Its agents then comb the play lists for names of songs that are copyrighted and that they believe are being illegally shared.

The record companies follow the songs when they're downloaded onto computers, and they also note how many copyrighted songs are stored on that computer's hard drive memory, because those songs are often "uploaded" or shared with others through the file-sharing service.

Since January, the industry has filed 2,947 lawsuits, most against "John Does," until the record companies went to court to get names of the downloaders from their Internet service providers. Last month, the music industry filed 477 lawsuits nationwide, including two "John Doe" lawsuits against users at the University of Minnesota whose identities have not been revealed.

The industry is particularly keen on stopping people who keep their computers open on the Internet for others to share. On Lafky's computer, for instance, record companies like Universal Music Group, Sony and Warner Bros. found songs by groups they publish like Bloodhound Gang, Savage Garden and Linkin Park. Also found were songs by artists Michelle Branch, MC Hammer and country stars Shania Twain and Neal McCoy, which not only were downloaded but also available to others to upload, according to the lawsuit.

Federal copyright laws allow for penalties that range from $750 per infringement or song up to $30,000 per infringement, Pierre-Louis said.

If a defendant is found to have committed a violation "in a willful manner," he or she can be fined $150,000 per song, he said.

The record companies are willing to negotiate cases individually if someone says they cannot afford the penalties. So far, no case has gone to trial, the RIAA said.

Pierre-Louis said the RIAA isn't afraid of a consumer backlash. "We're facing a daunting challenge and we have to face it head-on," he said.

Tammy Lafky is facing her own challenge. She said she doesn't know what she'll do. "I told her," she said, referring to the record company lawyer, "if I had the money I would give it to you, but I don't have it."


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Front Page News; Government
KEYWORDS: lawsuits; music; riaa
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To: Brett66

I wonder if it gets them all.


121 posted on 05/28/2004 11:21:21 AM PDT by rwfromkansas ("Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?" -- Abraham Lincoln)
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To: TexRef

Online streaming radio usually stinks.

The exceptions are things like Launchcast and MusicMatch radio, which aren't streamed but delivered to you.


122 posted on 05/28/2004 11:25:30 AM PDT by rwfromkansas ("Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?" -- Abraham Lincoln)
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To: paul51
I never saw an industry thrive by suing it's customers.

Customer: A person who purchases a product or service from a vendor.

The RIAA isn't suing their customers, they are suing individuals who steal the music (Steal: To take without payment).

123 posted on 05/28/2004 11:49:38 AM PDT by frgoff
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To: hunter112
Steve Jobs is out there saying that iTunes is a success, but if you take away the freebies from the Pepsi promotion, it looks pretty anemic to me.

It isn't just Steve Jobs. Fortune, Infoworld, The Wallstreet Journal, Time are saying it, too.

iTunes Music Store has sold 70 million songs the past year. The Pepsi promotion counted for just over a million of those.

All competing online stores combined have sold about 5 million songs in the past six months.

124 posted on 05/28/2004 11:52:30 AM PDT by frgoff
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To: Leroy S. Mort

The RIAA isn't going after people who download. They're going after people who UPLOAD. If you have more than 1000 songs in your upload library, you get on their lawsuit list.

The RIAA simply logs into the P2P service, tracks your IP number, and serves a subpoena on the ISP to get your address.

Don't fall for the poor innocent victim single Mom in this. The daughter is a hard core music uploader with at least 1000 songs in her upload library.


125 posted on 05/28/2004 11:55:33 AM PDT by frgoff
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To: RightOnline
Why do you let them download any? Or do you think a little dishonesty is OK. After all, I guess it all depends on what the meaning of is, is.
126 posted on 05/28/2004 11:59:54 AM PDT by frgoff
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To: Lancey Howard
I have been following the music download battle for a while

Apparently you haven't been following it too well, although I will cut you some slack, since the "evil is good, good is evil" crowd have been notoriously one-sided in their reporting.

The RIAA criteria is simple. If an IP address has more than 1000 songs in their upload library, they subpoena the ISP for the address and serve the lawsuit.

127 posted on 05/28/2004 12:02:41 PM PDT by frgoff
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To: jjm2111
Copywrights should have an expiration, just like patents.

They do. 80 years after the death of the author. It used to be less, but Disney has been lobbying congress every few years to have the copyright extended to keep Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters copyrighted.

128 posted on 05/28/2004 12:04:08 PM PDT by frgoff
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To: frgoff
The RIAA isn't going after people who download. They're going after people who UPLOAD.

I think my original point was lost somewhere along the line. The story implies that the industry has some way of tracking who downloads. I say they don't.

129 posted on 05/28/2004 12:05:37 PM PDT by Leroy S. Mort
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To: frgoff
In this particular case, the thieves are current, past and future customers that have been ripped off for years by the industry. The industry would be wise to spend their resources developing a way to build their business as opposed to chasing/suing people and trying to make examples out of kids and their parents and creating counterproductive bad will.
130 posted on 05/28/2004 12:15:41 PM PDT by paul51
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To: beelzepug
I've seen people walking around inside their houses simply refusing to come to the door.

Perhaps they thought you were Mormons or JW's.

131 posted on 05/28/2004 12:52:50 PM PDT by Freebird Forever
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To: frgoff
iTunes Music Store has sold 70 million songs the past year. The Pepsi promotion counted for just over a million of those.

I stand corrected. I guess I was just thinking about an older news article.

I suppose anybody with enough money to burn on a $300 iPod with a non-replaceable battery that goes out in a year or two, has enough money to re-buy their entire music collection every couple of years, also.

132 posted on 05/28/2004 1:47:39 PM PDT by hunter112 (P. T. Barnum is STILL right!)
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To: frgoff
Ever copy a record album onto a cassette? An album that you borrowed from a friend? Ever record a song off the radio, sport?

Get off your high horse and don't pretend to lecture me.

133 posted on 05/28/2004 3:28:08 PM PDT by RightOnline
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To: AppyPappy
If the child downloaded smutty music, couldn't the mother sue the record company for distributing it to kids?

You're right --- this should work both ways --- if anyone makes a pop-up ---- unsolicited porn or smut that goes to my kids they should be sued.

134 posted on 05/28/2004 3:58:36 PM PDT by FITZ
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To: SkyRat
Given the advancments in cryptographie and anonymous peer 2 peer networks, it seems very likely that the next generation kazaa will be untraceable.

There are still some bugs to iron out. A link from one of your links: ‘Anonymous’ P2P users busted in Japan

135 posted on 05/28/2004 4:03:43 PM PDT by SauronOfMordor (That which does not kill me had better be able to run away damn fast.)
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To: MediaMole

I assume if it's on your hard drive, one of the RIAA people would actually have to download it from you to have any kind of case. I could have a file named Huey Lewis - Stuck On You.mp3 in a shared folder, and it's really a spreadsheet with a shill name. They would have to make sure it was the real deal. And, I believe in articles I've read in the past, they haven't figured out what to do if someone ripped a song from their own CD. Of course, the problem would be making it available to others, but they mentioned downloading the song and comparing it to known shared songs to look for certain "hooks" in the data.

I used to download a few songs here and there, and it did eventually add up. I would sometimes download songs I already had so I could make compilation CDs, since that's an easier way to do it than to rip the songs from my own CDs. Other than that, I would download songs I planned to buy. I know that sounds like a lame excuse, but it's literally true.

Of course, I was a leech and never let anyone download from me. ;)


136 posted on 05/28/2004 4:17:37 PM PDT by Rastus
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To: beelzepug
There was an episode of CHiPs where a woman was a process server. In one scene, she rode on the hood of a limo in order to make sure the documents were served. In another, she posed as a mannequin in a surplus store in order to catch the proprietor. That's pretty accurate to what you have to do, isn't it? ;)
137 posted on 05/28/2004 4:21:26 PM PDT by Rastus
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To: Rastus

"...posed as a mannequin..."

You gotta love TV. Let me give you an actual example. A man drove off the road and hit a car that was parked on the shoulder, permanently injuring the occupant. The court ordered regular restitution payments be paid to help with the victims long-term care. The driver subsequently disappeared and was not heard from for several years. Attorneys for the victim were unable to find this man and no payments were ever made. We were able, through a wee bit of deception, to locate this man in another state. Rather than pay one of us to travel there to serve him with a summons, the attorney elected to have a process server in that town do the service. We still got a nice little check for our detective work and justice was served. I don't understand how some think this makes us bad people.


138 posted on 05/29/2004 2:43:15 PM PDT by beelzepug (I'll take "Why Me?" for a thousand, Alex.)
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