Free Republic

I honestly believe that the threat of lawsuits against individual downloaders was and is bogus. I have not seen one shred of evidence to the contrary. I've downloaded tons of songs beginning back with Napster. It never hurt the recording industry one ounce. What hurts them is when there is no interest. Luckily for them, Napster and Kazza kept the interest alive. When Napster first came out everyone loved it and there was no talk of lawsuits. The recording industry was booming. Sales were up and I remember news pundits and other talking heads say that the reason sales of...

The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it will soon bring its formidable legal forces to bear on the individuals who share copyrighted music files through the Internet. Starting as early as mid-August, it expects to file "thousands" of lawsuits against people who make large numbers of songs available on peer-to-peer networks. The RIAA is right about three things. First, under current copyright law, the behavior of the file swappers is illegal. Second, partly (although only partly) as a result of the ubiquity of file swapping, the music industry is in crisis. CD sales continue to decline, record...

<p>What's the country coming to? It's getting so that you can't steal music any more without being busted. That's the kind of reaction coming from Internet file-swappers now that the recording industry has vowed to file lawsuits and maybe even criminal complaints against people who trade pop tunes without paying for them. Makers of file-swap software like Morpheus are urging users to write their congressfolk in protest. One imagines some sort of form letter: ''I'm a thief and I vote.''</p>

Music Labels Step Up Internet Piracy Hunt TED BRIDIS Associated PressWASHINGTON - The embattled music industry disclosed plans Wednesday for an unprecedented escalation in its fight against Internet piracy, threatening to sue hundreds of individual computer users who illegally share music files online. The Recording Industry Association of America, citing significant sales declines, said it will begin Thursday to search Internet file-sharing networks to identify music fans who offer "substantial" collections of MP3 song files for downloading. It expects to file at least several hundred lawsuits seeking financial damages within eight to 10 weeks. Executives for the RIAA, the Washington-based...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet. The surprise remarks by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, during a hearing on copyright abuses represent a dramatic escalation in the frustrating battle by industry executives and lawmakers in Washington against illegal music downloads. During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have...

Four university students on Thursday agreed to pay thousands of dollars each to settle online music piracy charges, ending the record industry's most aggressive thrust yet against individual file swappers.The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued four students separately last month for running services that searched computers connected to their college networks for MP3 song files. The students also shared copyrighted music from own machines. The lawsuits marked the first time that the RIAA directly sued students, as opposed to companies, associated with peer-to-peer piracy.The settlements will see each student making payments to the RIAA totaling between $12,000 and...

Apple Launches Paid Music Service By Leander Kahney | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 2 next 01:46 PM Apr. 28, 2003 PT SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled a slick and easy-to-use song download service on Monday that some experts said breaks down the barriers to online music distribution. At a big launch event in downtown San Francisco, Jobs showed off Apple's new iTunes Music Store, which makes more than 200,000 songs from all five major music labels available at 99 cents a download. "The Apple online music store is going to be the hottest way,...

Here's a business model with a future: sue your customers. That's what, as of this month, the recorded-music industry has been doing. It filed suit against four college students involved in Internet file-sharing (in which compressed "files" of music are swapped, Napster-style), asking for billions of dollars in damages. Yes, billions. Interestingly enough, the Bush administration, known to be opposed to frivolous lawsuits and in favor of tort reform, has weighed in on the side of the industry. Let's go after those students. That's where the money is. This strategy would suggest that lawsuits against computer makers and the manufacturers...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The recording industry is suing four students at three universities for operating Napster-like file sharing systems that allegedly offered more than 1 million copies of songs for illegal downloading on the schools' high-speed Internet networks. The Recording Industry Association of America, the music industry's trade group, filed the lawsuits Thursday seeking to shut down the networks, which the group says are responsible for distributing illegal copies of songs by Avril Lavigne, Whitney Houston, Eminem and others. The suits also seek maximum damages of $150,000 per song. The RIAA said the networks were being run by...

WASHINGTON -- As part of an uphill battle against Internet movie piracy, entertainment industry lobbyist Jack Valenti offered university students a lesson in morality Tuesday. "Too many students don't believe it's wrong to steal these movies," Valenti told students at Georgetown University Law Center. "It is fracturing the moral contract to take something that does not belong to you." The appearance was one of several that the president of the Motion Picture Association of America plans at prominent universities over the next few months. Students are among the heaviest online traffickers of illegally copied material. Since the late 1990s, a...

LOS ANGELES - The owners of the Kazaa file-sharing network are suing the movie and recording industries, claiming that they don't understand the digital age and are monopolizing entertainment. Sharman Networks Ltd. filed its counterclaim Monday in response to a copyright-infringement lawsuit brought by several recording labels and movie studios. That lawsuit accuses Sharman of providing free access to copyright music and films to millions of Internet users in the United States. The latest filing came two weeks after U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson dismissed Sharman's claim that it could not be sued in the United States because it...

Just hit the net a short while ago. More info in the link.NFO(information file) LINK

Congress asked to unpick copy lock laws By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com October 3, 2002, 4:44 PM PT A proposal to defang a controversial copyright law became public on Thursday, after more than a year of anticipation and months of closed-door negotiations with potential supporters. Formally titled the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, the new bill represents the boldest counterattack yet on recent expansions of copyright law that have been driven by entertainment industry firms worried about Internet piracy. The bill, introduced by Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and John Doolittle, R-Calif., would repeal key sections of the...

RIAA hacked – yet again Spoof press release advocates music sharing By INQUIRER staff: Saturday 31 August 2002, 15:25 THE RECORDING INDUSTRY Association of America has been hacked once more, this time with the introduction of a spoof press release on its site. The organisation, which is pursuing a relentless battle against music file sharing with the aid of some US politicians, has the spoof press release up on its Web site today, at this URL.The "press release" advocates that people should use Kazaa to share music, and has the following text above some file names "for download".RIAA to sue...

THERE IS new draft legislation in the works that could severely curtail Americans' rights to exchange files on the Internet or share copies of music or other forms of entertainment in digital and analog formats (you can download a PDF of the bill here). The same bill would also more firmly establish the legality of webcasting. It's an odd pairing, to be sure, but it makes sense when you know who's behind it. "Fair use" is the legal use of copyrighted material without permission--for instance, quoting a book in a review, using parts of a song in a parody, or...

A draft bill seen by CNET News.com marks the boldest political effort to date by record labels and movie studios to disrupt peer-to-peer networks that they view as an increasingly dire threat to their bottom line. Sponsored by Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C., the measure would permit copyright holders to perform nearly unchecked electronic hacking if they have a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is taking place. Berman and Coble plan to introduce the 10-page bill this week. The legislation would immunize groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association...

July 12 — Keith Tyler signed up for broadband Internet access three weeks ago, and did what many high-speed Net users do — he started swapping music and movies. But within days, the movie industry and his ISP tracked him down and told him to stop offering movies for download, or else. Such threats are now the weapon of choice for the Motion Picture Association of America, which says it’s slinging some 2,000 complaints a week toward alleged movie pirates. IT’S CALLED A “takedown” notice, and it comes with the eerie feeling of having been caught with your hand in...

siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/1377581 Back to Article Calif. Lawmaker Calls For P2P Vigilantism June 26, 2002 Fed up with illegal file sharing over peer-to-peer networks like Morpheus and KaZaA, U.S. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills, CA) is putting the final touches on a bill he says should help curb copyright infringement. Berman's proposed legislation calls for a myriad of measures including stronger digital rights management laws, lawsuits by copyright owners, and prosecutions against the most gregarious infringers. Additionally he calls for "technological self-help measures" including redirection, decoys, spoofing and file blocking. "I am a strong believer in the beneficial potential of...

Dr. Damn cleans house for file-swappers By John Borland Special to ZDNet News April 25, 2002, 4:30 AM PT The record companies had their Napster, and the stream of file-swapping companies that followed. The file-swapping companies now have their "Dr. Damn." For the past several weeks, the pseudonymous programmer, who says he's a male college student and declines to give his real name, has been releasing versions of popular file-swapping programs online with the advertising and user-tracking features stripped out. He's done Grokster and iMesh. And he's not alone. His work, now available through the Grokster and iMesh networks themselves,...

Celine Dion's latest release is generating heated discussions on Internet message boards. But the subject under fire is not the star's music -- it's that the CD will not play on computer CD drives. Epic/Sony released "A New Day Has Come" embedded with Key2Audio copy protection in Germany and several other European countries. According to a spokeswoman for Sony Music Entertainment, it is clearly stated on the front of the booklet and on the back of the jewel box that the CD "will not play on a PC or a Mac" in the language of the country in which it...