Posted on 04/29/2003 1:09:02 PM PDT by 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.
There is too much money at stake here for the freeloaders to win out..
This is going to brought under control in time.
I remember FReeper Vannarox had some interesting ideas on the subject and said it was entirely possible with existing technology.
If we are to die as a nation of freemen, we must be the authors of our own destruction.
SamAdams posted
Personally, I think the music industry benefits by the trading of MP3s as more people are exposed to the music, many of which will eventually purchase the CD . . .
Mister Magoo posted
A recent Business Week article stated that over 60% of teenagers under the age of 18 get all or most of their music from file swapping. I have friends that haven't bought CDs in over 5 years.
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.
No. Do you think that radio stations don't cost a pretty penny to own, operate, and maintain their licenses?
The airwaves are NOT provided "for free."
Your knowledge of FCC licensing requirements is, to put it charitably, sorely lacking.
The industry's business model will have to change, but in the meantime you're exactly right. File sharing is clearly immoral.
Personally, I think the music industry benefits by the trading of MP3s as more people are exposed to the music, many of which will eventually purchase the CD and/or attend the concerts of the recording act in question. I also think newspapers and magazines gain a wider readership by exposure on sites like Free Republic. (Though it would help if we all got in the habit of clicking the source link so that the web traffic of the sites providing the articles are duly compensated.)
There are a number of issues here. While we conservatives may not agree with the RIAA's members on many (most/all) political stances, what's at stake here is simply protection of private property. In short, the musician or artist who creates the song lets the record company distribute it for him or her. And don't give me this nonsense about how it's unfair: the record companies take all the risk. They have the right to control distribution of intellectual property, just as book publishers have the right to control distribution of their books. If you went and photocopied a book, you'd clearly be stealing. This is basically the same thing.
As far as FR posting articles, sure it's done, but we don't post articles from places that really object. Most of the other sites that we post from probably don't mind (if they did, they'd tell us, and we could only post excerpts from then on). The sites probably don't care because it drives some traffic to their site, and with sites, traffic is what matters. I'm sure that posting articles from small town newspapers increases traffic to those sites as some people click through, whereas if there was no post here, no one would click through. If we posted articles from a site that charged for access, I'm sure most people would agree that would not be a good thing.
As far as increasing exposure to the music, that's the record company's decision, not yours. You aren't in charge of marketing Avril Lavigne's music, and EMI, or whomever she signed a contract with, has that responsibility. They may decide to release some of her music as "freeware". And then you can copy it. But if they don't, you can't. That's way beyond any fair use. It's sort of convenient that by copying all this music for free, you're really benefiting the record companies, isn't it?
Huh? One already exists. It's called the United States Copyright Act.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.