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."
I wonder if it gets them all.
Online streaming radio usually stinks.
The exceptions are things like Launchcast and MusicMatch radio, which aren't streamed but delivered to you.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps they thought you were Mormons or JW's.
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.
Get off your high horse and don't pretend to lecture me.
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.
There are still some bugs to iron out. A link from one of your links: ‘Anonymous’ P2P users busted in Japan
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. ;)
"...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.
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