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.

[supercat]

I can see gate, music industry people and all the other players with a financial stake in this coming up with an unbreakable copyright/encryption scheme embedded in firmware, then making it the industry standard.

Will independent music producers still have the option to use existing technologies to distribute their product?

If so, I see no problem. People will decide they're more willing to pay for music that they can play on multiple devices, use in their own mixes, etc. than for music that's limited to straight playback in a single device. Divx anyone?

[lawdude]

"The RIAA will lose this battle and it's lackies will have to go out and get real jobs."

You will, of course, send me your paycheck next week because I want it and don't want to work for it!

[Not Insane]

I goofed around with Kazaa lite and like most here it finally bored me. I never did download anything I would pay for. Heck, it's MP3.

I am a musician myself and expect to earn money off live performances and other tangibles (shirts, mugs, etc).

Earning money off recorded music is an old, and dead economic strategy. The recorded music is the "free gift if you buy" from here on.

[rwfromkansas]

Indeed, it is not "free" to download on Kazaa, Pooh. You need a computer. You need a monthly internet connection. And we already pay taxes galore to the RIAA bastards on CDR media. Because of this, I am going to darn well make up for the money that I have spent.....some of it going to the RIAA tyrants despite not even going to a CD store.

[longtermmemmory]

not quite, copyright is a limited right as a statutory creation. If I figure out a way to fall into the fair use excepton then I am within the law. Copyrights expire. There may very well be music in the RIAA's claimed purview which have expired copyright and are legal to swap. Copyright laws have always calculated that the right would eventually pass into the public domain in order to enhance the creative process of society in general. This is why Disney and their team of lobbyists keep pushing to extend the expiration date of the orignal mickey mouse.

[rwfromkansas]

That's Poop for you.

[supercat]

One point someone brought up on another thread: there is no law requiring people to tip waitstaff, and yet most people do. People pay waitstaff because they respect them, and because they perceive that paying them is the right thing to do.

To what extent have the RIAA or major record companies worked to earn respect?

It used to be, and often still is, commonplace that when a respected citizen gets mugged, neighbors will come to his aid and try to catch the mugger, but when a bully gets mugged, he gets neither help nor sympathy.

[Not Insane]

"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."

With that I agree. What I have done is the equivalent of going 74 in a 70. Every cop I know has said they won't pull you over for that.

[rwfromkansas]

Of course not, you thief and godless heathen! Buy the CD again.

/sarcasm

[supercat]

There's been a solution to that issue for decades--and some of the smash-the-RIAA purists here on FR absolutely hate it, because it involved paying a small tax on CD-R/CD-RW media.

There is already such a tax on audio CD's (the only kind that can be used in audio recorders).

To what extent do you think the tax actually goes to the people whose music is being put on those CD's?

[longtermmemmory]

yes, you buy the rights not the medium. This is classic vinyl record being moved to a cassette.

[Poohbah]

What's wrong with this one? What if I bought the CD but track 3 won't play because of a scratch? Can I download track 3?

Hey, my car just had a flat tire. Firestone should give me a new tire for free, right?

[Poohbah]

To what extent do you think the tax actually goes to the people whose music is being put on those CD's?

More than the "I-want-free-stuff" crowd is willing to pay them.

[Not Insane]

"And we already pay taxes galore to the RIAA bastards on CDR media."

If that is true, then I consider file swapping COMPLETELY moral. I don't know about legal. But then It's legal to make a porn movie, but hardly moral.

[rwfromkansas]

You would have been the first to punch Rosa Parks for daring to break the law.

[Not Insane]

"Firestone should give me a new tire for free, right? "

No, nor would I need them to if I made 20 copies of the original.

[Not Insane]

"Hey, my car just had a flat tire. Firestone should give me a new tire for free, right? "

Since we're talking "intellectual property," you realize your using a completely invalid analogy?

[rwfromkansas]

After listening to the arguments on both sides, I have come to the conclusion it is morally justifiable, despite being illegal.

[Timesink]

You just can't argue with logic like this when people on the same side argue both sides of the street. So I won't.

Though I think it's a bit unfair to lump together completely different arguments from two different people, they are not mutually exclusive and do work together, to a point.

First of all, adults do still buy CDs, lots of them. And those who aren't either ancient (like 70+ years old) or utter technophobes do indeed tend to use P2P services to discover new music, which they then go out and buy. They were raised to have things matter to them like cover art and liner notes. And, of course, most adults tend to have actual disposable income that allows them to blow $17 per CD.

On the other side, teenagers (speaking broadly of course) tend to not be wealthy. Most couldn't care less about album covers or liner notes or "deep catalogs." They just want what they hear on the radio and see on MuchMusic (nobody watches MTV for videos any more) and want those song and those songs only. They also tend to be relatively amoral on issues that aren't starkly black or white and don't have a direct personal effect on them ... such as file swapping.

However, these kids will mature, both in terms of music taste and moral clarity; they will get jobs and money; they will start to see the pleasures of a well-crafted physical album (assuming the rock world ever gets around to making them again, but I have faith); etc. And they'll start to care more about sound quality too, which will make them much more likely to start seriously considering CDs, or at least desire near-CD-quality downloads (such as Apple's new AACs, which are nearly indistinguishable from CDs, and smaller than the sonically-far-inferior MP3s) ... and slowly turn into paying consumers of some form or another.

[supercat]

To what extent do you think the tax actually goes to the people whose music is being put on those CD's?

More than the "I-want-free-stuff" crowd is willing to pay them.

Really? Given that most artists have yet to receive a dime from those "royalties" I think that would be rather difficult.