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.
Thought about buying Queensryche's new album, based on the 89' CD "Operation Mindcrime".
That is, till they started throwing fiery daggers at Bush.
Not going to buy their album. Going to download it on Usenet.
Yes, they most certainly are. The extortion price of $3700 is no different than the mob. If Apple sells the songs for 99 cents, how can they extort more? Please music industry person, please explain to us simple folks.
I know someone who got one of these letters with a list of things they were said to have downloaded and they hadn't downloaded any of it.
And I would be inclined to believe a sixty yearold British woman living alone was not downloading Eminem, System of a Down or Christina Agulara.
Do you even know who he is? I doubt it.
That's why I really JUST DON'T CARE when the RIAA cries. I truly hope they are hurting as much as they claim.
What about used books sold between students?
Also, what's with making a different edition every 1-2 years so you can make sure to soak up more money out of poor college students?!
Well with computer science textbooks (dealing with the Web, and Microsoft Office apps) you have to update the books to keep up with the changes in the software. It keeps me busy and employed.
"No kidding! Makes those songs $0.09...or even a quarter, make sure whole catalogs are available and they'll see hundreds of my $$$$$!"
Boy do you have that right. Most of the music I would purchase would be older music which all the people in the article have long been paid for, save for royalties. It would be all gravy.
How come they never went after people who taped songs off the radio onto cassettes way back when? I'm sure it was because it would be impossible to find people who did this, but my point is that the music industry never made a big deal out it.
How do they catch these people? How do they scan their HD's and find out what they have on them?
I got a feeling it is only people who share who get caught. If you turn of sharing and only download, and have a good firewall, might a person be safe from outsiders looking at the contents of your HD?
If they hacked into a remote, non-internet shared hard drive, are they not liable for internet crimes? That is why I think they can only scan drives that are openly shared.
Anyone know any more about this? - PS I'm not advocating theft of intellectual property - just curious about the legality of what they are doing, just as much as the legality of taking music for free.
With all due respect, they did drop the price to 99 cents per track or $9.99 for an album, downloaded.
Stealing is stealing, online or in person.
If you open your hard drive to sharing on the internet then anyone can scan it legally. Do not open any portion of your computer to the internet, and at least use a good firewall. Zonealarm is popular among some freepers. Its good and its free.
These shareware programs are configured to share at least 1 folder (i.e. "My Music"). They can also be configured not to share any folder. My guess is that if you are not sharing any folder or drive with the internet, and have a good firewall, they probably cannot scan your computer without hacking it - which I think is a crime. But if you share it willingly, it is no crime.
Check out Active File Recovery 7.1 - works great unless the disk or the spindle itself has been damaged.
I had a HD that got over capacity full (how, I dunno!) - I made it a slave and that program was able to recover everything.
Why BitTorrent? Aren't you still opening yourself up to an attack by the RIAA goon squad?
I copied all of my CDs into my iTunes to put on my iPod. My favorite Creedence CD would no longer copy, so I went to iTunes and bought it from them, downloaded it and off I went.
Then my computer died. I bought a new computer and started copying ALL of my CDs again (yes, I've burned them off to DVD this time, so if it takes another crap I'm covered). Where was the CCR I'd bought from iTunes? Gone. No, you cannot download it again. My e-books were also gone - they tie them to the computer somehow (MAC address perhaps?).
No, I'll never buy e-music or books again. I re-read my books (at least the good ones) and computers WILL die upon occasion.
So, my question is - how about a right to music that I paid for and they won't let me download again?
Yes they did, and you better not lose the file (computer crash) or you'll pay again.
Nope...if you don't directly share your collection or a list of what's in it (Kazaa and similar have a "More from this user" feature) you can't be caught.
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