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."
"It is very easy to avoid service on lawsuits...just don't open the door..."
My wife and I are part-time process servers for a number of area attorneys and I've seen people walking around inside their houses simply refusing to come to the door. Not much you can do. I try to catch them while they're out working in the yard. As long as you can speak to them, if they refuse to take the papers from you, you can simply drop them at their feet and it is considered a lawful service. Also, if you can get one of the kids to accept them (if they're over twelve), that's also a lawful service, at least here in Washington.
Interesting.
LOL.....very good post !........Stay Safe !
In your brother's case I would have sued the towing co. for extortion. That's $916 a month. They could probably charge the expenses of disposing the car, but it would be a couple hundred bucks max.
She may have and out under the states "Foreign Corporations Law". For example, if they sued her in state court and Wisconsin is similar to several states like Ohio, she may have an out.
If the company is not incorporated in the state, or licensed to do business in the state, and are in a business not considered to be "soley interstate commerce", she can use it as a defense and have the case dismissed.
Civil laws change quite a bit over time but I (pro se)used this in 1994 in suit involving $20,000.
That's what I like about Music Match. You can buy only the good songs.
I buy oldies and some new, fringe artists.
If you read the whole article, you will see that the daughter had songs on her computer available to others to upload from her computer. You can't really do that with a dialup connection. First, the upload bandwidth is too small, and second, other people would have to be online at exactly the same time you are on in order to upload your songs, and would have to be finished before you logged off. So the assumtion here is that she had a dedicated internet connection.
That being said, a DSL connection is not that much more expensive (about $25/month) than a dial-up connection ($10-15/month).
Gee, get a room! j/k ;-)
I like it, but I wish that every artist I want to purchase tracks from were there.
Very interesting question...
Now THERE'S some interesting technology. Assuming the downloaded songs aren't in turn being shared, just how do they do that?
What more do you want for $5 a month?
You pay $5/month for Music Match? I only pay $0.99/song.
yeah really.....I thought they only went after people who share music??? Are they now going after those who JUST download it?
Nothing gets to hackers at a more basic level than bullying, since most of them were victims of it early in life. Stories like this are causing them to put more and more effort into developing whatever clandestine, encrypted networks it takes to completely screw the RIAA. That modest loss in revenues we have seen so far is only the beginning...
Not to beat this into the ground, but I only have a dial connection and have downloaded & uploaded music at the same time. Sure its slow, but Im in no hurry.
For $60/year you can listen to any song, anytime. I type in the artist I want to hear & I can then either listen to every song they have by that artist....or click artist match & it will start playing that artist first & then others like it....I never even use my stereo anymore. If a song comes up that I don't like....I click next & it is gone.
Artists will still produce if we got rid of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Unless they're running a honeypot, I seriously doubt they can do that.
The "fair" price is whatever they want to charge--although they behave that way, the record companies and distributors do not have a monopoly, and buying music is totally discretionary. Obviously there are enough people willing to pay $18 for a CD so they charge that much. They could really save themselves a lot of trouble if they could just get one person to pay $1M per CD!
I never saw an industry thrive by suing it's customers. I hope this scheme ends up breaking the back of the industry. The only ones who prosper are the scum bag attorneys as usual. This is a better scam for them than a class action suit.
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