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Article on how to avoid being sued from RIAA, but leaves hanging note at the end on how to discover file sharing software on your computer.

Will Napster 2.0 Save Music? Now legitimate, Napster could be just what the industry is looking for. By Eric Hellweg, October 06, 2003 Today visitors to Napster.com can watch an animated cartoon in which the famous catlike Napster icon -- a Jonny Quest-level hero to many under-30-year-olds -- breaks out of jail, resuscitates itself in the hospital, and storms into a murderous record-company meeting (where fat-cat execs are fleecing fledgling online music services, natch). Firmly standing its ground, Napster demands its own deal, which is signed by the ink that splatters from a pen stabbed through another online music service's...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Several Internet "peer-to-peer" networks unveiled a code of conduct on Monday to encourage responsible behavior among the millions of users who copy music, pornography and other material from each others' hard drives. The networks also asked Congress to figure out some way that recording companies and other copyright holders can be reimbursed for the material traded online and urged users to get involved. The recording industry, stung by declining CD sales that it attributes to widespread peer-to-peer use, has taken the software makers and more recently their users to court in an attempt to squelch the practice....

MP3s Are Not the Devil Since every penny I earn depends on copyright protection, I'm all in favor of reasonable laws to do the job. But there's something kind of sad about the recording industry's indecent passion to punish the "criminals" who are violating their rights. Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government -- it creates the legal fiction that a piece of writing or composing (or, as technologies were created, a recorded performance) is property and can only be sold by those who have been licensed to do so by the copyright holder. Without copyright, once a...

Maybe kids downloading music isn't such a bad thing, relatively speaking.

File-Sharing Elevated to Threat Condition Red September 11, 2003Hamas and al-Qaeda step aside...KaZaA and Morpheus are on the attack. Teenagers sharing music files have eclipsed the likes of bin Laden and upped the national Threat Advisory level to Code Red. Under the growing threat of MP3’s hurtling through cyberspace, America is redeploying its national defense resources. A recording industry trade group has sued 261 people for swapping music files. Over 8 million illegal immigrants within our borders can rest easy tonight.With a fury not seen since the "Shock and Awe" campaign, the U.S. recording industry has taken the offensive against...

A peer-to-peer group says it will cover costs for a 12-year-old New York girl who agreed to pay record labels $2,000 to settle a file-swapping lawsuit. P2P United, a peer-to-peer industry trade group that includes Grokster, StreamCast Networks, Limewire and other file-trading software companies, said Wednesday it had offered to reimburse Brianna Lahara and her mother's payment to the Recording Industry Association of America. Lahara's mother agreed Tuesday to settle copyright infringement charges on behalf of her daughter. "We do not condone copyright infringement, but someone has to draw the line to call attention to a system that permits multinational...

WASHINGTON - A 12-year-old girl in New York who was among the first to be sued by the record industry for sharing music over the Internet is off the hook after her mother agreed Tuesday to pay $2,000 to settle the lawsuit, apologizing and admitting that her daughter's actions violated U.S. copyright laws. The hurried settlement involving Brianna LaHara, an honors student, was the first announced one day after the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) filed 261 such lawsuits across the country. Lawyers for the RIAA said Brianna's mother, Sylvia Torres, contacted them early Tuesday to...

The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) (RIAA) today said it filed lawsuits against 261 people accused of trading copyrighted songs on the Internet. The group also said that it would not sue file sharers who promise in writing not to do it again.The lawsuits, which were filed in federal courts across the country, are the RIAA's latest tactics in its war against the illegal file sharing that record companies blame for plummeting CD sales. In June, the RIAA promised to sue hundreds of Internet users suspected of illegally trading music using file-swapping services like Kazaa and...

WASHINGTON - The recording industry provided its most detailed glimpse to date Wednesday into some of the detective-style techniques it has employed as part of its secretive campaign to cripple music piracy over the Internet. The disclosures were included in court papers filed against a Brooklyn woman fighting efforts to identify her for allegedly sharing nearly 1,000 songs over the Internet. The recording industry disputed her defense that songs on her family's computer were from compact discs she had legally purchased. Using a surprisingly astute technical procedure, the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) examined song files...

August 21, 2003 ISP User Resists Record Industry SubpoenaBy REUTERS Filed at 8:40 p.m. ETLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lawyers representing a woman calling herself ``Jane Doe'' on Thursday filed a motion that ultimately seeks to retain her anonymity in an ongoing legal battle between communications providers and the music industry over Internet piracy.Glenn Peterson and Dan Ballard, lawyers with the Sacramento-based law firm of McDonough, Holland & Allen, said they filed the motion -- the first of its kind -- in federal court in Washington D.C. on behalf of a Verizon Communications (VZ.N) customer who was asserting her privacy...

A desperate American recording industry is waging a fierce fight against digital copyright infringement seemingly oblivious to the fact that, for practical purposes, it lost the digital music sharing fight over five years ago. In Canada. "On March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the (Canadian) Copyright Act dealing with private copying came into force. Until that time, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright, although, in practice, the prohibition was largely unenforceable. The amendment to the Act legalized copying of sound recordings of musical works onto audio recording media for the private use of the person who...

A Massachusetts court has blocked several recording industry subpoenas that are aimed at college song swappers, saying the universities involved are not immediately required to divulge the alleged file traders' identities. The decision comes after officials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston College challenged subpoenas from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), saying the trade group's requests for information had not been legally filed. The judge's decisions give the universities--and the anonymous students or staff file traders who are the ultimate target of the subpoenas--some breathing room. The colleges were objecting only on the technical legal grounds...

The Copyright Cage Bars can't have TVs bigger than 55 inches. Teddy bears can't include tape decks. Girl Scouts who sing "Puff, the Magic Dragon" owe royalties. Copyright law needs to change. By Jonathan Zittrain A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO I WAS TALKING WITH A LAW SCHOOL COLLEAGUE about cyberlaw and the people who study it. "I've always wondered," he said, "why all the cyberprofs hate copyright." I don't actually hate copyright, and yet I knew just what he meant. Almost all of us who study and write about the law of cyberspace agree that copyright law is a big...

LOS ANGELES - As the recording industry prepares hundreds of copyright lawsuits against online music swappers, the makers of file-sharing software are fortifying their programs to try to mask users' identities. Some of the upgrades reroute Internet connections through so-called proxy servers that scrub away cybertracks. Others incorporate firewalls or encryption to thwart the sleuth firms that the recording industry employs. "Everyone is concerned about their privacy," said Michael Weiss, chief executive of StreamCast Networks. The upgrade to his Morpheus file-sharing software has been downloaded more than 300,000 times since its release last week. Music industry officials insist file-swappers can't...

Napster (news - web sites) is set to rise like a phoenix from the ashes this Christmas holiday season, but this time with its legal affairs in check, Napster owner Roxio said Monday. The fallen song-swapping service, which was knocked offline last year after a prolonged legal battle with the record industry over copyright infringement allegations, will re-emerge as a legal paid music service Napster 2.0. At launch, the new Napster will boast access to up to 500,000 tracks through individual download, or through a monthly subscription to Internet radio, Roxio said. The service will be offering its music content...

Nervous music file-swappers who worry they may be on the list of 871 people targeted by recording industry subpoenas now have a Web site where their fears can be allayed -- or confirmed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group that fights for personal and privacy rights in cyberspace, has set up a Web site that lets users of file-sharing services check to see if their screen names have been targeted for legal action by the Recording Industry Association of America. According to information on the site, the data is gathered from electronic court records and may not be complete....

WASHINGTON - Parents, roommates — even grandparents — are being targeted in the music industry's new campaign to track computer users who share songs over the Internet, bringing the threat of expensive lawsuits to more than college kids. "Within five minutes, if I can get hold of her, this will come to an end," said Gordon Pate of Dana Point, Calif., when told by The Associated Press that a federal subpeona had been issued over his daughter's music downloads. The subpoena required the family's Internet provider to hand over Pate's name and address to lawyers for the recording industry. Pate,...

Missing RIAA figures shoot down "piracy" canard By Andrew Orlowski in San FranciscoPosted: 16/12/2002 at 20:15 GMT Research by George Zieman gives the true reason for falling CD sales: the major labels have slashed production by 25 per cent in the past two years, he argues. After keeping the figure rather quiet for two years, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says the industry released around 27,000 titles in 2001, down from a peak of 38,900 in 1999. Since year-on-year unit sales have dropped a mere 10.3 per cent, it's clear that demand has held up extremely well: despite...

SWAP A SONG - GO TO JAIL Source: YAHOO NEWS Music industry lackies Howard Berman (D - CA) and John Conyers (D - MI) want to put you in the pokey for file sharing. BIG TIME. If the RIAA gets their way, the Conyers-Berman bill would operate under the assumption that each copyrighted work made available through a computer network was copied by others at least 10 times for a total retail value of $2,500. That would bump the activity from a misdemeanor to a felony, carrying a sentence of up to five years in jail. And being a convicted...