Posted on 05/27/2004 12:57:50 PM PDT by jjm2111
Tammy Lafky has a computer at home but said she doesn't use it. "I don't know how," the 41-year-old woman said, somewhat sheepishly.
But her 15-year-old daughter, Cassandra, does. And what Cassandra may have done, like millions of other teenagers and adults around the world, landed Lafky in legal hot water this week that could cost her thousands of dollars.
Lafky, a sugar mill worker and single mother in Bird Island, a farming community 90 miles west of St. Paul, became the first Minnesotan sued by name by the recording industry this week for allegedly downloading copyrighted music illegally.
The lawsuit has stunned Lafky, who earns $12 an hour and faces penalties that top $500,000. She says she can't even afford an offer by the record companies to settle the case for $4,000.
The ongoing music downloading war is being fought on one side by a $12 billion music industry that says it is steadily losing sales to online file sharing. On the other side, untold millions of people — many of them too young to drive — who have been downloading free music off file-sharing sites with odd names like Kazaa and Grokster and who are accusing the music industry of price gouging and strong-arm tactics.
Lafky says she doesn't download free music. Her daughter did last year when she was 14, but neither of them knew it was illegal because all of Cassandra's friends at school were doing it.
"She says she can't believe she's the only one being sued," Lafky said. "She told me, 'I can't be the only one. Everybody else does it.' "
A record company attorney from Los Angeles contacted Lafky about a week ago, telling Lafky she could owe up to $540,000, but the companies would settle for $4,000.
"I told her I don't have the money," Lafky said. "She told me to go talk to a lawyer and I told her I don't have no money to talk to a lawyer."
Lafky said she clears $21,000 a year from her job and gets no child support.
The music industry isn't moved. It has sued nearly 3,000 people nationwide since September and settled with 486 of them for an average of $3,000 apiece, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major and minor labels that produce 90 percent of the recorded music in the United States.
"Our goal in these cases and in this program (of lawsuits) that we're trying to achieve is to deliver the message that it's illegal and wrong," said Stanley Pierre-Louis, senior vice president for legal affairs for the RIAA.
Since the music industry began its lawsuit campaign, awareness of the illegality of downloading copyrighted music has increased several-fold this year, Pierre-Louis said.
"And we're trying to create a level playing field for legal online (music) services," he added.
These services sell music for under a dollar a song, and some have become well known, like Apple Computer's iPod service, which advertises heavily on TV. Others are just getting off the ground.
Pierre-Louis said the RIAA does not comment on individual cases like Lafky's, but he said the music industry typically finds its targets by logging onto the same file-sharing services that the file-sharers do. Its agents then comb the play lists for names of songs that are copyrighted and that they believe are being illegally shared.
The record companies follow the songs when they're downloaded onto computers, and they also note how many copyrighted songs are stored on that computer's hard drive memory, because those songs are often "uploaded" or shared with others through the file-sharing service.
Since January, the industry has filed 2,947 lawsuits, most against "John Does," until the record companies went to court to get names of the downloaders from their Internet service providers. Last month, the music industry filed 477 lawsuits nationwide, including two "John Doe" lawsuits against users at the University of Minnesota whose identities have not been revealed.
The industry is particularly keen on stopping people who keep their computers open on the Internet for others to share. On Lafky's computer, for instance, record companies like Universal Music Group, Sony and Warner Bros. found songs by groups they publish like Bloodhound Gang, Savage Garden and Linkin Park. Also found were songs by artists Michelle Branch, MC Hammer and country stars Shania Twain and Neal McCoy, which not only were downloaded but also available to others to upload, according to the lawsuit.
Federal copyright laws allow for penalties that range from $750 per infringement or song up to $30,000 per infringement, Pierre-Louis said.
If a defendant is found to have committed a violation "in a willful manner," he or she can be fined $150,000 per song, he said.
The record companies are willing to negotiate cases individually if someone says they cannot afford the penalties. So far, no case has gone to trial, the RIAA said.
Pierre-Louis said the RIAA isn't afraid of a consumer backlash. "We're facing a daunting challenge and we have to face it head-on," he said.
Tammy Lafky is facing her own challenge. She said she doesn't know what she'll do. "I told her," she said, referring to the record company lawyer, "if I had the money I would give it to you, but I don't have it."
We have a more basic problem,which I see as a lack of self-confidence such that not only teenagers, but young and not-so-young adults are afraid NOT to buy what the advertisers tell them is in. They have to listen to what's IN,even if it is absolute degenerate garbage.
And why don't the girls reject all the so-called music they says it's fine to beat and mistreat women ??? And reject the males who play that crap?
Sometimes people get what they deserve- ; they always get what they will settle for.
..........Never mind. I don't want to get banned
MusicMatch is free....and you pay 99 cents each download.
ArtistMatch allows you to listen to all the songs from the artist. Plus, I get composers so I can hear classical.
No banners & No ads....that is worth $4.95 per month to me!
Steve Jobs is out there saying that iTunes is a success, but if you take away the freebies from the Pepsi promotion, it looks pretty anemic to me.
Of course, that could be a marketing model, songs could become the great freebie giveaways to promote other products, and iTunes, etc. could just be in the coupon redemption business as their primary business model.
Real Rhapsody lets you listen to songs for two weeks free, then you can cancel. No, there are no downloads, but if you have the Total Recorder software running (or similar software) you would be able to capture the song (illegally, of course, so don't try this at home, kids!) It would also have the effect of stripping out any tracking bits that were put in a song. (oh, oh, there I go again, saying naughty things!)
why do you doubt they can do that?
If it's a peer-to-peer connection, how do they know who's downloading, unless they're one of the "peers"?
Based on what do you infer that she has broadband? Also, I've seen broadband in some cases priced competitively with dialup (which I would pretty much consider a basic necessity).
so hence my question.....are they only going after the people who share or are they going after the downloaders as well?
The article would lead one to believe the latter, but don't believe everything you read.
I didnt see anything in the articel that said she wasnt "sharing" the music with others
Leroy,
According to the article...
>> The industry is particularly keen on stopping people who keep their computers open on the Internet for others to share. On Lafky's computer, for instance, record companies like Universal Music Group, Sony and Warner Bros. found songs by groups they publish like Bloodhound Gang, Savage Garden and Linkin Park. Also found were songs by artists Michelle Branch, MC Hammer and country stars Shania Twain and Neal McCoy, which not only were downloaded but also available to others to upload, according to the lawsuit.
I read this as she downloaded the music and had it available to others.
the article says "The record companies follow the songs when they're downloaded onto computers". That's wishful thinking imho, or an outright lie.
I uploaded stuff on Kazaa a couple of years ago on dialup. It can be done but, as with anything dialup compared to broadband, it's a horrible option.
And you are right, at $27.95 my dsl connection is not really any more expensive than when I had AT&T dialup ($19.95).
High Speed Internet ($27.95)+ Online Game ($9.95)= cheap long term entertainment ($37.90 or @$1.25 a day). Cheaper than cable or a nice dinner and show.
iTunes is a loss-leader that it gets people to buy more iPods, which is a high-margin product. Given that the iPod has roughly 30% of the mp3 player market, I'd say it is working.
My personal favorite spot to buy music online is www.allofmp3.com , which lets you chose the bitrate & encoding method for your music - you can get it in mp3, aac, wma, ogg vorbis, ect. And it is cheap too - only a penny a megabyte. Of course, the site is based in Russia, and is cheap due to some quirks of Russian copyright law, but from the research I have done it seems to be legal for US citizens to buy music from them.
The Klebold's and Harris's have no responsibility for what their offspring did. That was just mass-murder. But this is about something much more important, money.
Online Game = Everquest?
Yep been there done that! Now I play AO much better game!
I actually play EQ, SWG (on a furlough till they fix a few things) and recent release CoH. Now that is a fun, fast paced game! If it wasn't for my smithing addiction, I would have quit EQ a year or more ago.
I've played em all save for Horiszons and COH.
AO is still my favorite and this September we get the Aliens invading! That is gonna be some fun. You get player made cities that get attacked by the aliens then if you beat back their attack you get to try boarding their ships and taking them on!
The reporter doesn't know what he is talking about. The RIAA goes after people who make songs available for UPLOAD. They would love to get the people who download, but I will almost guarantee you this girl had a shared folder with songs in it that were available to other KAZAA users.
It is theoretically possible to put a bug in the file swapping software to log the IP addresses of those downloading songs and report them to the RIAA, but that would take planting a trojan on individual computers.
Give Orrin Hatch a year and the Justice Dept will have the authority to spy on your computer to see if you are pirating music.
we are responsible for our children. At least we were.
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