Music Industry Sends Warning to Song Swappers

Reuters ^ | April 29, 2003 | Sue Zeidler

[Mister Magoo]

Wednesday April 30, 3:06 AM Music Industry Sends Warning to Song Swappers By Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The record industry opened a new front in its war against online piracy on Tuesday by surprising hundreds of thousands of Internet song swappers with an instant message warning that they could be "easily" identified and face "legal penalties."

About 200,000 users of the Grokster and Kazaa file-sharing services received the warning notice on Tuesday and at least one million will be getting the message within a week, according to music industry officials.

The copyright infringement warnings, which were sent by the Recording Industry Association of America, on behalf of the major record labels, said in part:

"It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer. ...When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON'T STEAL MUSIC, either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a 'file-sharing' system like this. When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified."

The music industry's campaign for the hearts and minds of Internet song swappers comes four days after a federal judge threw an unexpected roadblock to its efforts to shut down song-swapping services in court.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson on Friday ruled that the Grokster and Morpheus services should not be shut down because they cannot control what is traded over their systems. Like a videocassette recorder, the software in question could be used for legitimate purposes as well as illicit ones, he said.

"We're expecting to send at least a million messages or more per week because these users are offering to distribute music on Kazaa or Grokster," said Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA.

Sherman described the move as an educational effort to inform users that offering copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks is illegal and that they face consequences when they participate in this illegal activity.

[freepatriot32]

you may not have to sue if they do this in virginia they might go to prison

New Law Means That Spamming AOL Members May Result in Criminal Penalties For Spammers

[Not Insane]

Nobody's shooting cops here. I compare all this to speeding. When they dropped the speed limit to 55 they made virtually everyone a speeder and enemy of the police.


The impact lingers to this day, in all aspects of our culture.

And downloading a song is a smaller crime, especially when the great majority of what is downloaded is deleted or ignored.

[Poohbah]

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

[Petronski]

Go change the law or come to terms with breaking it, but stop all the specious arguments and red herrings to justify your actions.

You presume a lot. But my illustration is not a 'specious argument.' It is an example.

You're pretty fast with your accusations about breaking of the law. I'm having a discussion, you and Poohbah are making hysterical and unsubstantiated accusations.

It's unbecoming.

[Poohbah]

You're the one saying that it's OK to break the law if you personally dislike it.

Forgive me for jumping to conclusions about your personal habits based solely on what you said.

[hoosierham]

Agreed.

[rwfromkansas]

an educational activity......man the RIAA is good at putting "threat" in new, walking through the garden terminology.

[Mister Magoo]

I totally agree. Downloading copyrighted materials is illegal by any standard. And if I was an artist, I would want to be compensated for my efforts.

My point is this -- file-swapping is unstoppable, and any laws enacted to stop it, whether currently existing or not, are unenforceable. Thus, the sales of CDs will continue to decline. If the RIAA wants to service its constituents effectively, it must look for alternative means of extracting income other than CD sales.

[Petronski]

You're the one saying that it's OK to break the law if you personally dislike it.

You just keep putting words in my mouth and then pointing out my guilt based on them. That's not much of an argument, and I've had enough of it.

I'm moving over to the Tel Aviv homicide bombing thread [breaking NOW on Fox News].

[Not Insane]

"Unless you purchase a new liscense, you are pirating intellectual property under the law, not my opinion; the law..."

Interesting. When we buy microsoft software, we buy multiple licenses, as opposed to multiple copies. We own the right to operate on a set number of machines. We make backup copies and do so completely legally.

When I buy a CD, I am buying the music on the cd. Technically, I can not only make ten copies, but if I have one copy playing in the living room, and another playing in my car stereo, I am breaking the law.

And that is the problem here. Technology has so blurred what is legal, what is not legal and what is technically legal but ignored, that the individual is subconsciously given the percieved right to make up his or her own mind, based on "intent."

Because there is nothing tangible involved, and often it is something the person never would have bought, the moral lines tend to get blurred in the human mind.

Is it moral to step on an ant on purpose? How about run over a possum on purpose?

[Not Insane]

"I am a lawyer with twenty years practice experience. Anyone who thinks downloading copyrighted materials is legal is just plain wrong."

I agree.

So's speeding.

[rwfromkansas]

I didn't realize that my mp3's, some with crackles occasionally and a pop or two, are perfect copies.

[rwfromkansas]

Awesome post.

[Poohbah]

I didn't realize that my mp3's, some with crackles occasionally and a pop or two, are perfect copies.

The sole limit is the limits of the hardware used to duplicate the MP3. You CAN make copies with 100% fidelity.

[rwfromkansas]

Make sure you get Kazaa lite, without the adware etc.

[KevinB]

I am a lawyer with twenty years practice experience. Anyone who thinks downloading copyrighted materials is legal is just plain wrong.

I agree.

So's speeding.

Right, but you're being intellectually honest and saying "it's wrong, but I'm going to do it anyway because it provides a benefit to me and it's unlikely that I'll get caught."

My problem is not with people like you, but with people who get on their soap boxes and claim they have a legal or moral right to download music for free.

[rwfromkansas]

I was a dummy initially and just got the regular Kazaa, but have since put on Kazaa lite.

[hoosierham]

Does YOUR VIEW of the law permit backing up my vinyl to tape or cd or my own hard drive(not shared) ?

Doesn't the copyright law expressly permit the purchaser the making of backup copy ?

Isn't it just plain damn ridiculous that copyrights have been extended more and more in a time in which new information is discovered at an accelerated rate as compared to the slow-moving 1700s ???

[Timesink]

There's big money and brilliant minds working on this all the time.

Just like they are on cancer, and AIDS, and drug-resistant bacteria?

There will ALWAYS be a way out. Whether you believe humans got here by evolution or not, there's no doubt it exists in today's world. And anything Microsoft and Intel might come up with will simply be cracked, or purely circumvented. You want the perfect way for Apple to get back to a 25% market share and for Linux to REALLY take off, using Crusoe chips or something? Just create hardware and OSes that physically refuse to let its users do what they used to be able to do. A lot of people won't even bother hacking, they'll just switch.

[rwfromkansas]

Interesting.

I hope it takes awhile, that is for sure.