Music Pirate (12-year-old girl sued for downloading music)

NY Post ^ | September 9, 2003 -- | Lorena Mongelli

[dead]

The music industry has turned its big legal guns on Internet music-swappers - including a 12-year-old Upper West Side girl who thought downloading songs was fun.

Brianna LaHara said she was frightened to learn she was among the hundreds of people sued yesterday by giant music companies in federal courts around the country.

[lawdude]

""It's not like we were doing anything illegal," said Torres."

Fact is, she WAS doing something illegal.

That said, they are NOT helping their cause with this heavy-handedness!

[Chancellor Palpatine]

You get out for $8-$15 for food? Damn.

6 bucks for a sandwich, 3 for popcorn, and 5.50 a beer doesn't take long here....

[Xenalyte]

Parents, plural? I dare you to show me where darling little Brianna's daddy is mentioned in this story.

[HELLRAISER II]

To an adult one can reason that this is theft. But to a child, they didn't physically remove (steal) anything and quite honestly there isn't any flashing warning saying "Your breaking the law". It's something that definately is going to have to be put through our court systems before the outcome is known.

[MJM59]

Wow, should I be afraind of going to jail for recording songs off of the radio back in the seventies??????

[sox_the_cat]

The Boston Globe and Boston Herald charge fees to peruse old articles from their archive, aren't they losing potential revenue if people have saved old articles? What about posting articles to free republic? Aren't those sources trying to make money on those articles posted?

In the article, the 12 year old said she never keeps the download, rather just listens and deletes. Is that a crime are is that quite similar to the library analogy? Doesn't the RIAA have to prove that the download was kept and used a separate copy?

They've got a great case going against anyone that downloads and sells the stuff, not against those that never remove it from their computer.

[HELLRAISER II]

10-4 on that, I think that they can accomplish their goal without this sledgehammer lawsuit that their beating people over the head with.

[Spirited]

"'theft is illegal'

So is illegal immigration."

Excellent demonstration of the fact that in this nation currently the governing authorities do not view illegal as illegal in a number of cases.

Why, then, would the people view illegal as illegal until they know that the governing authorities are going to view illegal as illegal in this matter. This is especially true since many paying some entity to download had no reasonable way of concluding that it was illegal in any way.

[afz400]

"I'm surprised how many people in FR are taking the view that the theft of proprietary material is ok. "
It's not necessarily theft. There is such a thing as fair use.

[BlackbirdSST]

In the article, the 12 year old said she never keeps the download, rather just listens and deletes.

Why would that be any different from listening to the same song on the Radio? Blackbird.

[BigBobber]

In the library examples, there remains only one copy of the book or CD, so if you want to own the book or CD, you still have to buy it. It is not analagous to downloading music from the Internet.

It is exactly the same. My library offers to loan you a CD and you are welcome to make a copy of it on your home computer. That is exactly what one does when he makes a song available for download on a file sharing service.

Don't tell me that book publishers don't lose revenue when people borrow a book from a library instead of buying one.

Can I loan you a CD I bought, or is that breaking the law? What if you make a copy of it? Remember the big stink about reselling CDs (Garth Brooks ate it big time on that one.)

This is a gray area of the law and RIAA may lose the publicity battle if they don't tread carefully.

[Jack Wilson]

There is such a thing as fair use

Yes, there is.

[afz400]

"This is a gray area of the law."
You got that right. The RIAA is needlessly overloading our courts with this crap and the justice system instead concentrates on this spurious "illegality" and completely overlooks the illegal immigrants who are invading our country.

[kingu]

Don't tell me that book publishers don't lose revenue when people borrow a book from a library instead of buying one.

Sorry, going to tell you anyway. Book publishers make more money when more people are reading. Libraries are great sources for finding new authors for people to read, and I put it to anyone to find a book publisher who thinks that library patrons don't buy more books than those who do not go to libraries.

Baen Free Library is an example of one publisher who has enjoyed increased sales of their books by encouraging people to download and read their books for free.

[bird4four4]

I remember going to the mall with friends, Each of picked up one CD and three blank tapes. We'd go home and all have four new bands to listen to. So today you can burn them onto CD. Whats the difference here?

I do begin to see a problem when thousands of people do it anonymously, but sharing songs amungst peers has alway gone on.

[dennisw]

Mama downloaded the music ... but a 12 year old can/will not be sued so here we are. Blame the kid.

[Herodotus]

Check on that; I saw on several sources that RIAA has some way of checking the 'signature' of the song, so that they can demonstrate it did not come from your own collection...

[ladyjane]

Definitely there's a backlash that will only get worse. I'd love to see all the music lovers just stop buying any CDs for one week.

[afz400]

"But hell I still don't know that it's illegal. Yeah, yeah I know the fat cat's in music industry are calling it illegal, but we shall see."
One thing that's for sure is that it will be interesting to see what happens if one of these cases really goes to a jury trial. The RIAA is going to be hard pressed to prove the drop off in sales is due to downloading and not due to the fact that theyre trying to sell crappy music. I for one would refuse to "convict" someone for using Kazaa based on the case the RIAA has laid out. The RIAA is just using the court system to extort money from people who are not quite innocent but not quite guilty of anything worth punishing.

[citizenK]

and I put it to anyone to find a book publisher who thinks that library patrons don't buy more books than those who do not go to libraries.

Music works the same way. With the introduction of the cassette tape the record industry made similar complaints about an infringement on their profitability. However, people who make tapes listen to more music - and at the end of the day, tapers of music consumed and purchased more music.

The RIAA is acting foolishly. Instead of using the internet and technology to improve the marketing and distribution of their product, they fight technology and antagonize their customer base by labeling and treating them like criminals.

Music downloading is a crime? Technically I suppose it is. However, when the record industry was busted recently for price collusion, from my perspective they lost the moral high ground. I have absolutely no respect for the RIAA and the industry in general. It won't be long, and the recording industry will be completely different from the way it exists today. Hallelujah.