File-swappers ignore RIAA threats

Electric News ^ | Tuesday, August 05 2003 | Matthew Clark

[yonif]

Despite aggressive challenges by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to on-line music suppliers like the defunct Napster, two-thirds of Internet users in the US who copy digital music on-line say they don't care if the music is copyrighted, according to the report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The report, entitled "Music Downloading, File-sharing and Copyright," also found that 27 percent of users who download music files are concerned about copyright, while 6 percent said they don't know enough or don't have a position on the issue.

The number of users who share files on-line and disregard the copyright issue is close to that of those who copy music, at 65 percent. Similarly, 30 percent of file-sharers do care about copyright according to the report, and 5 percent said they don't care.

Indeed, the fall of centralised free music site Napster, after the RIAA won its case, was far from the end of the on-line music free-for-all; after it shut, a host of decentralised file-sharing services emerged and Internet users switched to the new systems. The recording industry sets its loss in CD sales since 1999 from on-line piracy at 25 percent.

Even though the proportion of Internet users downloading music files to their computers is unchanged between May 2003 and April 2001, at 29 percent, Pew points out that one must bear in mind the increase in the number of music downloaders in that time. In April 2001, Pew reported a downloading population of 30 million American adults, while this recent report sets it at 35 million.

More bad news came for the RIAA earlier this year when it lost a landmark case against the Morpheus and Grokster peer-to-peer software providers when a judge ruled that the software is legal even if what it is being used for, distributing copyrighted film and music, was illegal.

RIAA did win its case against Verizon in January, however, which was forced to give the RIAA names of subscribers who were suspected of copyright infringement. Verizon later appealed the ruling.

As of July 28, according to Pew's report, the RIAA had issued close to 1,000 subpoenas requesting information from ISPs to identify and contact people potentially guilty of copyright infringement.

Pew's report is based on daily tracking of Internet usage in America. The results came from telephone surveys conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates among a sample of 2,515 adults over 18.

[goldstategop]

RIAA will have a tough time suing 35 million people. What a class action lawsuit that would be.

[Lazamataz]

RIAA will have a tough time suing 35 million people. What a class action lawsuit that would be.

I believe they'll actually do it.

The RIAA is utterly evil.

[BrooklynGOP]

I am gonna pre order a nomad zen nx.. mmm...

[SamAdams76]

It does not appear that the RIAA Jihad is going to be successful. A thousand subpoenas so far out of 35,000,000+ downloaders isn't going to intimidate the average Joe. The RIAA would need to sue 350,000 people just to get 1% of them. And even then, you would have only a one in 100 chance of being caught.

The RIAA evidently thought that the fear of being sued would cause downloaders to immediately cease and desist. So far, that does not appear to be the case. Although available files have shrunk about 15% on the Kazaa network since the Jihad begain, the number of users on the network have not appreciably declined, the number of logged in users at Kazaa was still around 4,500,000 when I checked last night, about the norm. It appears that some users are no longer sharing files but are still out there looking for more. But there are still a lot of files out there, over 800,000,000 last night on Kazaa alone. At one time, there was close to one billion on Kazaa. But that's still a lot.

It will be interesting to see what happens when some of these cases start going to trial. Will juries find in favor of the RIAA? Personally, I don't think many juries will.

[GOP Jedi]

These guys are just reaping what they sowed. For years they have promoted acts that told us to flaunt authority and do what feels good, and now they are amazed that the little dears don't care about their copyrights.

What was it C.S. Lewis said about denegrating patriotism and being amazed at finding treason among us?

[yonif]

And one of the big things why they will fail is that the large file sharers are not based in the US, but abroad in places where the RIAA cannot reach.

[dagoofyfoot]

It does not appear that the RIAA Jihad is going to be successful.


I had uninstalled Kazaa a while ago because all the spyware was slowing down my computer.


Then I heard about this Jihad, so I've been reluctant to re-install it.


If the RIAA loses it's first case to an individual downloader it's going to re-open the flood gates to music downloaders, and I will be one of them....watching and waiting.

[undergroundwarrior]

Wondering if people will opt for trial by jury?? From what I have been reading, people are settling at approx $15,000 range.

If trials go forward, this could cripple the court system. How likely will juries be to vote in favor of the R.I.A.A.??

[1Old Pro]

I said it before, I'll say it again. For file sharing purposes only, music copyrights should be limited to 10 years. The drug industry has patent protection for 15 years, why should the music industry enjoy protection forever?

[mhking]

HA-ha!

Just damn.

If you want on the new list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...

[SamAdams76]

I use Kazaa Lite. It's not "authorized" by Kazaa but I've never had issues with it and it doesn't have the spyware. Just the same, I run AdAware 6.0 once a week or so to clean any spyware out. I get very few pop-ups. Kazaa Lite has some minute differences but it's basically the same.

Also, for another tip, accept the default name when you install it. Apparently this is the same default name that everybody gets who doesn't pick their own screenname. This will increase your anonymity even more.

[razorback-bert]

The recording industry sets its loss in CD sales since 1999 from on-line piracy at 25 percent.

Yea, right!

[Jhensy]

This whole thing reminds me of the paraquat scare of the late 70's, where the government claimed to have sprayed poison on marijuana crops, causing one to worry about whether his/her own weed was tainted. If I remember correctly (not easy, ahem), some people did quit out of concern, although not many in my crew.

Whatever became of that? Did the the govt. really spray paraquat? Dudes? Anyone?

[RussianConservative]

CD sales since 1999 from on-line piracy at 25 percent.

What percent from really bad bands?

[LanPB01]

I downloaded Kazaa Lite this past weekend, and it's been great. No slow downs and annoying ads such as with Kazaa. I'm currently not sharing any files, just to be on the safe side, but once this whole RIAA jihad fiasco blows up in their face, I've got a rather large library to share.

[moehoward]

"It does not appear that the RIAA Jihad is going to be successful. A thousand subpoenas so far out of 35,000,000+ downloaders isn't going to intimidate the average Joe. The RIAA would need to sue 350,000 people just to get 1% of them. And even then, you would have only a one in 100 chance of being caught."

Never happen. It would bankrupt the RIAA. As soon as one person fights this it will be over. As far as the 25%, just what kind of fuzzy math did they use to arrive at this fraction?

[longtermmemmory]

Also look into "peer guardian." Its not just a file sharing program, it is also to keep certain IP ranges out of your computer and snooping. You should also have a firewall. Try spybot, It seems to work better than adaware, but to each their own.

[lugsoul]

Agreed. KazaaLite has been good to me so far, and I'm still sharing my Kazaa files (though not my rather huge Napster and Audiogalaxy files). Screw 'em. 98%+ of my sharing involves legal files, anyway, so bring 'em on.

Let me also suggest Furthernet. This is an effort to create an entirely legal p2p network. Almost all of the content is live music by musicians with open taping policies. While you might expect this to be just Dead, Phish, etc., there are a lot more bands who are okay with this than you might imagine. In addition, most of the this trading deals in the lossless SHN format. The only downside I've seen is that most files are entire shows, and the SHN files are huge, so it takes a while to complete a download. But I've gotten some great tunes off of it, and it is a much easier way to trade SHN than the FTP server route.

[Tamzee]

The recording industry sets its loss in CD sales since 1999 from on-line piracy at 25 percent.

It's interesting that they blame ALL their loss on file sharing... I stopped buying CD's a few years ago when I found that RIAA labels had been found guilty of price-fixing. These labels only live to screw both the customers and the artists.

They are no longer needed as middlemen now that the Internet has flourished, and these companies should go the way of the horse-drawn buggy.