Posted on 07/04/2006 7:00:49 AM PDT by Fawn
Louise: "No these are not my songs." They are however downloaded right onto her computer.
Louise:"I was embarrassed when they gave me a print out of these songs."
She got this printout because of lawyers. She also got this letter telling her she was being sued for copyright infringement.
Parents, there are other popular file sharing programs you need to know about:
Morpheus: morpheus.com
Kazaa: www.kazaa.com
Bearshare: www.bearshare.com
Limewire: www.limewire.com
Louise: "I was in shock..I was stunned."
The letter is part of a music industry crackdown.Singers, songwriters and music companies tired of people downloading and burning copies of music without paying.
The letter to Louise says: "Copyright theft is not a victimless crime. Not just recording artists and songwriters but session players, sound engineers, cd plant workers, wharehouse personnel, record store clerks...that depend on sale of recordings to earn a living."
Louise: "I didn't intentionally try to take money from these people...I didn't know what was going on!"
Louise says it was her 16 year old doing the downloading. But that doesn't matter--these lawyers are offering to settle for a price.
Louise: "3700....I dont have 3700."
But Louise has to pay even though she had no idea, this music has been hanging around on her harddrive. Louise says her son didn't know that downloading the songs was illegal either but because she didn't take the music industry's first settlement offer the price has now gone up: 4500 or they will take her to court.
Interestingly enough, during our investigating today, we found the country of Austrailia has banned the use of Kazaa. And guess where Kazaa's parent company is located?
You guessed it! Sydney, Australia.
Sounds like about as much of a business as teaching redneck studies at the local junior college.....
Sure they will sell it to you but it will have DRM all over it making it almost useless.
Did Napster supply you with customers in the first place, then stop providing them?
They didn't lose thier jobs to people downloading MP3s. They lost thier jobs because their business model did not recognize that a disruptive technology could enter the picture making them obsolete. That is the way things work. I have sympathy for those who lost their jobs, but they need to realize that MP3s, and file sharing, opened up other opportunities that were wide open and could have been capitalized on by someone will to do so.
Hardly a false argument, copyright protection now exceeds 100 years. The incremental extensions that congress regularly grants to copyright holders was challenged in court, all the way to the Supreme Court, where it died.
Congress has the right to extend the period anytime it wants(is paid enough) even though this clearly circumvents the purpose of the founding fathers intent when they wrote the copyright provision.
Music lovers tired of paying for singers, songwriters and music companies crappy CD's with one or two decent songs on them.
The RIAA would still have a problem with that I bet. They like Microsoft have this idea that just because you bought it, doesn't give you the right to copy it, even for backup purposes.
Just be happy the MPAA/RIAA does not hold patents on recording equipment or patents would become perpetual also.
Well, with such arrogance and bluster as you show anyone attempting to reason in any way with you is wasting their time. Churl. Chunga the Churl. I like it.
Suppose the paint manufacturers decide to license their intellectual property in the shades of color they produce. If you paint a wall in a commercial building you have to pay the paint company a royalty for viewing their "color". The designer of a color works every bit as hard as a designer of a song.
Following your beloved RIAA logic we can soon expect royalty fees on paint and wall paper, much less license fees on the use of plumbing...
Perhaps they meant to describe the true nature of most of the industry -- whorehouse. Probably were thinking that and had a Freudian slip.
Congratulations to each of you for your tortured situational ethics.
The folks at DU would be proud.
The people who get tagged for these fines deserve it, period.
A couple things worth noting, at least IMO -
1) It is not the copying of or listening to the music that the RIAA (for which entity I hold no special regard) goes after, it is the unlicensed distribution of that music.
2) The RIAA doesn't "break into someone's computer and search the hard drive"; using essentially the same applications used by those engaged in illegal file sharing, they discover files made available for illegal sharing. Effectively, the people getting busted have posted a "Here I am, come and get me" sign; if the files at dispute were not available for public sharing, they would not be detected.
3) mp3 sucks anyway, due to its inherent lossy compression; listening to most "ripped" music is almost akin to listening to it over the telephone. Even at the highest copy resolutions commonly available, the reduced frequency response, separation, and harmonics, along with other artifacts of digitizing, are objectionable to the discerning listener using decent equipment. Music copied from Broadcast FM, well recorded from a clean signal, blows away the sound quality of any consumer music digitizing scheme.
I have about 1300 songs which my brother but on here from his collection that he bought. My brother makes pop music which any body can do with a computer and a little software.
His music has been played in some of the clubs here, but for him to get it on the radio he has to pay the RIAA to get an ID number. With out the personal ID number the stations will not play his music. So he uses Kazaa and other programs and what ever else is on the web to get his music heard. The artist do not make the majority of their money of the sale of the Cd's, the RIAA and label do. The Artist make their money from touring and the sales of concert tickets( 20,000 tickets at $30 = $600,000 ) if the artist only gets 10% it is still a good nights pay.
The artist gets 1-10% of their CD sales. The RIAA or the label get about 60%, the rest is production and shipping cost and the little the music store gets.
Bull$h!t. I don't swap songs and I most vociferously oppose the RIAA.
It's a different situation when someone resells physical media, because the label has sold one copy and there is one copy in circulation. Like most software licenses say you can't copy them, but you can sell the package as long as you transfer all copies. Even so, the music pirates (the corporate ones, not the Kazaa ones) seem to resent the resale of physical media, the self centered bastages.
Okay, question. Bought a computer from a guy at a garage sale about 3 years ago. On this computer are some songs (I think MP3 files about which I am mostly clueless). If I click on them, they play the song. I have 28 of them in a folder. Should I delete them? Thanks in advance.
And so it has been. Nor does the "limited Time" known and established at the date of entry of an assertion -- a claim of patent or copyright matter -- those contractual durations may be lengthened forever and ever, so it seems. One might ask if Congress might ever shorten them? Or would that be considered "bad"? Yet lengthening the original term of contracted grant is fine and dandy. According to Scalia.
Nor, in Scalia's view, is "for limited Times" restricted by the terms "Authors and Inventors", meaning individual persons living, even when that sense is bulwarked by "their respective" and "limited times". No "heirs and assigns" in the Constitution for these grants. Grants that are a reduction in the rights of everyone else, by the way.
Yes, and jail everyone who sings "Happy Birthday to You!" too, or who hums five notes of some copyrighted tune in a public venue! Go for it, you little fascist!
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