While many illegal music downloaders and file-sharers have been pursued by the RIAA, most have settled outside of court. This past week, the RIAA dealt with the first real trial where someone fought back and denied any wrongdoing. While I have heard of others fighting back against the RIAA, this is the first such trial involving an individual downloader against the RIAA. Regardless, that someone illegally shared 1,702 songs – 24 of which she was found accountable for. Multiply 24 by $9,250 and that’s quite a hefty fee to pay. Songs were downloaded and shared via Kazaa, making it easy for prosecutors to track her account name. Here’s my question – people still use Kazaa?
One of the reasons for demanding the 30 year old woman pay such a high fee dealt with setting an example for other illegal downloaders. Isn’t that always the excuse though? I don’t think it has helped much thus far, with the number of active file-sharers growing since the RIAA actively started issuing subpoenas. Past RIAA cases (26,000 subpeonas have been filed to date) have covered issues such as whether an IP address can be used to identify a person (it can’t). RIAA subpeonas hit close to home for me, having had close friends pursued by the RIAA and eventually settling for $3-4k outside of court. At one point, we had come up with an idea to pay for the legal expenses – selling t-shirts with “Never Forget [IP]” written on them, but that never came to fruition.
With a good portion of RIAA subpeonas aimed at universities, many schools have instituted free or cheap legal music downloading services. For example, Georgia Tech has Ruckus but it is a Windows-only program due to the type of DRM utilized and songs cease playing once you graduate or are no longer a student (last I checked). I applaud universities for the initiative but that’s just not going to cut it. As such, several of my cryptographer friends spend much of their time stripping DRM from such songs.
As for me, I think that’s all too much trouble and prefer the one-click buy method of obtaining music, especially now with Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 store (although, now that I’ve been using it for a week I’m finding it lacks a lot of music that iTunes has).
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Please excuse my ignorance, but why do people not see a difference between occasionally loaning a CD to a friend and setting your computer to share thousands of songs to anyone who wants them?
I still prefer iTunes over Amazon MP3; DRM wise: I just try to get iTunes Plus.
The artists signed to these music labels are far from starving. I, for one, can’t wait for the downfall of the music industry. Maybe then, music can get to back to its’ roots and we can send Britney far away on a yellow submarine.
Shawn: So is “well, they’re rich enough” a good enough excuse to deny them royalties? Not every artist is rolling in dough. How about the retailers, don’t they deserve to be able to make revenue from a sale so they can keep in business and employing people? Dreaming about the industry “getting back to its roots” is all good and well, but it doesn’t detract from the legalities involved in wanton stealing.
I hate the word stealing. It really just doesn’t apply to this case at all. Stealing implies you are taking something of value from another person. Like, someone has a car…and you take it. This, instead, is like if you had a magic camera that you could use to take a picture of that person’s car and make another one. The other person isn’t affected at all. “Stealing” music doesn’t cost the industry anything. I have 34.7 GB of music on my 298 GB hd. My hard drive cost 80 dollars, and 11.6% of it is taken up by music. So in a way, I paid $9.28 for this music and it cost the industry $0.
Also, how much of that $222,000 is going back to the artists?
My college has a similar music service, but it is also Windows-only. I find that iTunes is the best option right now, but the prices of Amazon MP3 are very tempting. If they can secure more artists, iTunes could lose some of dominance in the digital music industry.
Wait a minute. What does the RIAA have to do with music? That’s what I’d like to know. On their website (RIAA’s) is the claim they represent 90% of all music sold in the U.S. and that’s quoted as fact. But what that really means is that if I sing a song in the shower, hope to get paid if it goes commerical, I have to get a number from the RIAA. That’s not exactly ‘representation’ like a label.
RIAA is a TRADE organization, looking out for their own skin. Nobody else’s. Just the idea that the U.S. has been so gullible to give them the weight of the law and the F.B.I. (not even my personal data, cc# or ss# gets that) gives me the shivers of Orwell deja vue.
I am 100% behind musicians, but I am also 100% behind talent floating to the top and not overproduced overmarketed hyped up boring copycat stage shows designed for 13 years olds and I’m offered no choice. That is what this ’show-down’ is about – ENTIRELY.
An independent musician can market their product direct, retain rights to their music and produce a cd, get it heard and there are hundreds of companies doing professional production, package design, etc. catering to the new independent (sorta proving RIAA doesn’t represent 90% of sales) and the musician will make MORE money — i.e. an actual living — selling LESS than 10% of what the bloated major label can do for them.
Even the bigger artists could probably do better developing their own company than depending on a major label. The consumer did not develop the business model that major labels depend on with only a handful of “stars” producing the income for the entire industry. Emusic is doing quite nicely without a major label.
My dentist’s office was quiet. Know why? Yup. They want to charge for playing the radio now. How stupid.
Like you said, it doesn’t justify passing out thousands of copies – except when you consider the alternatives, such as what alternatives? The airwaves are locked up with major labels playlists (if there are free radio stations playing music anymore – in my town, radio is dead). They hit internet radio hard – and wanted to even harder (most of them played independent music – which independents didn’t necessarly see the royalties from – the whole pricing model is horribly obscure).
And that leaves internet sharing to take the place of discovering new music. How many of those thousands of copies distributed would have actually been purchased? VERY, VERY FEW.
Think. In college could you afford more than … 5, 10 or 15 albums? Where were all the used record stores located? Across the street from the university. (Yes, they want to shut those down too). That is what is so out of whack and out of balance about the arguement.
CD sales and music on line has been driven by the baby boomer replacing their cassettes and vinyls. That’s why P2P keep showing top requests for bands over 20 years old. The labels were reluctant to release their back catalogs. Why? They didn’t want the competition.
Well now most people have replaced their music library but labels want their sales to be the same, only with the music they want to produce – which isn’t fitting with customer demand.
Then you have the bad pr (consumerist voted RIAA has the most hated corporation – and accepted the votes even though they weren’t a corporation per se because it was so overwhelming) that it only stands to reason people are not buying RIAA intentionally – oh not to mention those nasty computer killing rootkits or tricks played so a $20 cd has limited use (usually as a surprise) $30-$50 if you like imports (more avant guarde) music.
So they even screw a person for being legit.
What is there to respect about the RIAA? Al Capone would have been envious of the cartel they developed and manipulated the law. Congress is proving to be so gullible that it’s hard to believe any of them passed basic math. Even Warner Bros execs have admitted to downloading.
In a N.Y.T. article, they listed Sen. and President Bush’s Ipod music – The Beatles, etc. Do you really think they bought and downloaded that music seperatley from the music they listen to elsewhere? RIAA thinks Ipods are full of ‘pirated’ music. So why doesn’t RIAA go after the baby boomer or Senators?
RIAA goes after populations they consider ‘easy’ targets. Welfare moms, grandmothers, college kids, those least likely to defend themselves. RIAA doesn’t even have GUTS.
They are the worst example of corporatism. The last bill pushed through by Gonzales relieved the justice department from even making the distiction between independent music and major labels. It made ‘attempts’ illegal. Huh? It also made wiretapping legal without getting approval. There are ISP’s stepping through the open cracks to monitor everyones traffic (At&t) and Verizon got caught screening text messages for ‘unsavory messages’ – pretty anonymous messages really and I still can’t figure out how they expected that qualified.
Then you have really stupid Congresspeople trying to convince the world that downloading is equal to terrorism based on insane pumped up figures from the RIAA. As it was – downloading was compared to murder(?) Stupid. Is attempted murder also the same as murder like ‘attempted downloading’ is?
The U.S. has 25% of it’s population behind bars and growing. It costs an enormous amount to house someone in prison + more than double that due to the economic loss. It’s about time society needs to rethink that and stop jailing ordinary people for doing ordinary things.
There’s more to this story than the propaganda published.
Stealing music cost to the industry. If you steal you don’t buy. I think this is not a solution for p2p share. I think the industry have to change their business with new ideas.
Hey, I have been using iTunes for about 1 year and I have to admit that I like it. I never had any problems with the DRM since it is not really restraining me from anything — I burn CDs to share/give music (that’s leagal then, right?). I don’t know. iTunes is fair. The prices should go down by the time Amazon is catching up.
I think it’s ridiculous, as some have said above, explain how it’s “stealing”. And how the hell do they justify $9,000+ per song? How do they prove she was using the computer at that IP and not someone else. The RIAA is such a crock of bull. How much of the $200k+ is going “to the artists”??? My guess, none of it. Hopefully this case gets appealed, and they make the RIAA prove they were her songs, and not someone elses. And like it was mentioned above, how is it any different than loaning a CD to a friend and copying it?
Damien: How much do you think they actually make off albums and royalties? Artists make most of their profits from live shows, touring, and advertisement. That’s why you see so many bands from back in the day doing “reunion tours.”
The only thing the music labels are doing is providing a chance for a few to become filthy rich and denying the rest an opportunity to get their music heard. It’s a middle-man that isn’t needed.
Laws are laws guys! Whether you think they are right or wrong is imaterial – you can’t just decide which ones you want to abide by and which you don’t.
Until such time as old laws can be amended to reflect modern times there are going to be issues, but they are still the laws we have to abide by.
Chris: there are lots of cases where the quantity of something differentiates between a minor offense and a more serious charge, e.g. if you’re caught with a small amount of drugs it’s a less serious offense than having a few suit-cases’ worth. If you loan a CD to someone you’re not illegally distributing copies, there’s still only one original: if your friend copies the CD then the offense is on her part, not yours, unless of course they tell you and at which point you are legally liable.
That said, yes, the $9000+ per song was rather silly, but the evidence against her was quite conclusive. Hopefully the amount will be appealed.
There will always be self-justifications for stealing music. Look, the artists aren’t “getting screwed” because they signed contracts. No one forced them to sign and I’m pretty sure most artists make tons more money after signing than they ever would have otherwise.
People are not entitled to be able to listen to what ever they want without compensating the owner of the content. The US is a market-based economy. Put your money where you want the market to head.
If you don’t like the music played by commercial radio, don’t listen to it — their market share and ad revenue will drop and they will change their business model (and play list.) Use Pandora to find new music; it learns the type of music you like and I guarantee you will be introduced to new artists you love. You don’t need to steal music to find new music; there are viable (and superior) alternative to commercial radio.
If you don’t like the price of a song, don’t buy it — go find artists that allow free trading of their concert recordings. This will encourage other artists to do the same. Spend some time looking for artists at Archive.org; these free concert recordings have gotten bands like O.A.R. where they are today.
Many websites, such as artist websites and even MySpace, offer free samples of songs. There is tons of opportunity to sample new music that way. Just because a person hates MySpace doesn’t justify illegally downloading a song so they can listen to it on their iPod instead.
I’m no fan of the RIAA or their tactics. But I also don’t approve of people taking music that doesn’t belong to them; this is what brought about the DRM nightmare that keeps me from being able to some the music/movies that I purchased and rightfully own.
Change is possible. 4 years ago, I decided I would never again purchase DRM-protected music. So did a lot of other people. Guess what, the market changed, and I can now purchase and download DRM-free music from iTunes and Amazon. Change takes time and it’s not easy. But this does not justify taking something for which you didn’t pay.
I think what the RIAA are doing is absolutely crap. 9 grand is waaaay too much for one song. At most they should probably charge double the amount, send half to the artist, and keep half for themselves. That would be more fair in my perspective.
However, that said, I dont think its ever going to be possible to curb illegal downloads. The number of illegal downloaders in the US is dwarfed by the number of illegal downloaders in Asia alone. (Most people downloading music in Asia are teens. They often dont have the money to buy the CDs, and so downloading is obviously cheaper and easier.) In asia, though there are laws against illegal downloading, they are hardly ever reinforced, so all the more reason to download.
If the RIAA really want to crack down on illegal downloading, they should target this rather than the poor guy who gets caught. I wonder which jackass came up with 9 grand per song as a solution.
Has anyone paid that much?
Burning a copy of a CD and sharing it with a friend is stealing, just less policeable.
I agree with the poster who stated that we have abide by the laws that we have, then work to change them.
With the same logic as some points above, why don’t I download paulstamatiou.com in entirety and republish it on another site? I’m not stealing anything, am I? If Paul decides to make this a pay site and I think it is too pricey, does that make it ok for me to hack it?
I may be an old fuddy, but I think the root of the Anti-RIAA, boo the big greedy corporations movement can be summed up in one word: Jealousy. ‘They can’t possibly deserve that much money.’
Copyright protection is in place (though bloated in duration, thank you Sonny Bono) for a good reason. If you put your blood, sweat and tears into creating something, you should have the right to profit from it. If you charge too much, people won’t buy it. Charging too much doesn’t give the right to steal the product.
In regards to awards like these, they’re outrageous to serve a purpose (and the law allowed for MUCH steeper fines). What would be the point of a court trial to award RIAA the $.89 per song she should have paid?
I would probably rob banks all day if all I had to do was give the money back.
Rambling away. In closing…
My mother summed these up when I was a kid (did not everyone get these?)
1. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you (that doesn’t say ‘free, take one’), it is called stealing.
2. The law is the law. If you don’t like it, change it.
3. Read a contract before you sign it (ie. record contract). Don’t sign if you don’t like it.
4. Some people are going to have more money than you.
5. If you can’t afford it, you shouldn’t buy it. (See #1)
6. Robin Hood was sweet and all, but he was still a thief.
7. If you do something wrong, own up to it. Don’t make excuses.
8. Blessed are the big-noses. (Wait, that wasn’t mom…)
9. Vote.
10. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Think about this last one. It’s the biggie to me. Imagine you have 3 kids, you struggle to make ends meet to feed, clothe, educate them. You devote a year or so of your life to write a book. You publish it and celebrate. Goodbye mac and cheese, hello Velveeta shells and cheese! You sell 100 copies a day for a week or so. Someone posts it on the Usenet. Almost immediately you sell 20 copies a day, then 10, then 5, then 1. Everywhere you go, you see your book; websites, forums, posts here and there, eBay. Back to mac and cheese. (adapted from a true story.)
Question: Did someone steal from you?
oh, didn’t you hear Damian? occasionally loaning a CD to a friend, is supposedly “stealing music” as well.. (shakes head)
I too agree that the RIAA does not have the artists in mind when they fight for illegal downloading. The artist gets paid what their contract it set at regardless, so having the Artists fight in their behaf is ludicrous anyway.
I don’t know. I mean, the only reason I know why people download music, instead of just buying it, anyway, is people don’t want to pay $20 for a CD, when you can buy a decient movie at walmart for $5 nowadays. People just don’t want to pay that kind of money for music. Thats why most people I know do it. I don’t know anyone who purposely puts up their computers for file sharing. Most people I know, just download a song or two every now and then, when they can’t find it on iTunes or Amazon or Walmart or someplace like that. I mean, iTunes, amazon, walmart, etc does not have every song ever produced, and alot of stuff from the 80’s they don’t have, for example, so yeah I use either bittorrent or emule or something every now and then, but 1,700 songs? no way. not even close.
Now my wife, she don’t buy stuff on iTunes because her player doesn’t support AAC format music. She tried Amazon DRM-Free MP3 the other day, which did work, but her player works better with WMA format. She can’t afford the big ipod’s so she just has this cheapo $60 mp3 player from walmart, and she don’t like the DRM music from the walmart store because when she formats her HD, she can no longer play any of her music. That DRM stuff sucks, you can’t reauthorize your music to yourself if you have to reinstall windows for any reason. it sucks big time, so we try to avoid DRM at any cost, because its not like we can put every single song we ever buy on our MP3 players all at once, there just isn’t the room on these little 512-1g players, so we have to move them back and forth depending on what we’re interested in listening to, and if something goes wrong with your computer and you have to reformat the dirve for some reason, you can’t just “back up” DRM music it don’t work that way. Once the HD is formatted or changed, your DRM is gone. so personally thats what I don’t like about DRM. it hurts the paying consumer more then it does the hackers, because the hackers can easily enough break DRM, or any other encryption or activation schema they could ever come up with, all this activation and DRM bullcrap, that both software and music have to supposidly prevent piracy, only hurts the consumer more then anything else, and if the consumer isn’t happy, THAT is why sales drop….
IT depends.. If I saw my book, and that place gave ME credit for writing that book, then YES I would not mind it being on there. The more the book shows up, the more credibility I get. If anything, if I saw my writing was that good, it would make me excited about writing more material, that others may want to buy.
As for going to Velveeta back to Mac n Cheese, who gives a crap, its still food, regardless of what kind it is. We all seem to forget sometimes, that music is not available everywhere on the internet. Record labels still sell million and millions of records everyday regardless.
its kinda like watching a movie for instance. I mean, yeah you could “download” a free copy of that Star Wars 3: return of the Sith, on Kazaa, but who would want to? I mean really, copies of movies on places like Kazaa are “some idiot bringing in a video camera into the movie theatre” quality at best, and who in their right mind, wants to sit up at their computer desk waching a movie? I mean common! When you watch a movie man, you want to lay on your couch or lazyboy, with popcorn in one hand, drink and remote in another. with yer feet all proped up, falling asleep half way thru it when yer done with yer snacks.. ya know that afternoon nap kinda thing? LOL I mean really guys, what kind of “geek” sits at their computer all day watching movies on a 17 or 19 inch tiny little monitor, when its much more cumfy sitting in the other room at that 60 inch plasma, er whatever, ya know what i mean? so WHO CARES if a few whiny people illegally download less the VHS quality video. They still make millions upon millions of dollars anyways, so they should just shut up and deal with it :)
besides, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to spend a year of their lives just writing a book anyway. I mean, get a real job and do that in your spare time. Also when we work for any company, and that company starts loosing money for some reason, we as workers don’t go around sueing the people that we think made us loose our jobs, because that isn’t right, because the person working for that company has no proof that we were the ones to make them loose their jobs. It could have been budget cuts within the company, it could have been the president of that company deciding to line his own pockets and get rid of some of his employees for no apparent reason, you don’t know, so ya can’t just go out and sue people putting the blame onto others, when they don’t know if that was the real reason they lost money to begin with.
like God always says, “love your neighbor as yourself” don’t go out and sue ‘em. Help Raise awareness, do research and find out what is REALLY going on, don’t take your bosses word for it, do your research, then if you do find its true, then help raise awareness so more and more people are aware of whats going on, but don’t sue people. don’t these record lables understand that is what makes record sales drop in the first place? the general public doesn’t want to see on TV one of their favorite actors or bands sueing their own family or neighbors for something stupid like being accused of stealing music. The hero worship will be gone immediately. Their friends will tell their friends and their friends will tell their friends, next thing ya know, their sales are zippo. sometime I don’t think these record labels think too well :) hehe
======== Quote Kevin Peterson ====================
0. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Think about this last one. It’s the biggie to me. Imagine you have 3 kids, you struggle to make ends meet to feed, clothe, educate them. You devote a year or so of your life to write a book. You publish it and celebrate. Goodbye mac and cheese, hello Velveeta shells and cheese! You sell 100 copies a day for a week or so. Someone posts it on the Usenet. Almost immediately you sell 20 copies a day, then 10, then 5, then 1. Everywhere you go, you see your book; websites, forums, posts here and there, eBay. Back to mac and cheese. (adapted from a true story.)
Question: Did someone steal from you
The point is no one has conclusively proven that P2P services are the reason cd sales have slowed up.
A Canadian researcher stated that P2P was less than 30% of the piracy going on (LA Times). There have been multiple studies of people using P2P showing they BUY music that they like and BUY 30% more than the average person.
Janis Ian has a nice website on line about how P2P and illegal coping reignited her music career.
Dick Dale has a short interview on UTube about it as well. NIN just told fans to ’steal’ their music (then dumped their label).
A more traditional approach is to look up Marillion’s example. There label wouldn’t promote them because they didn’t ‘need’ to. The band already had a fan base. So the dropped the label and inlisted fan support. It’s been working ever since.
Radiohead has been waiting to end their contract and now they have released their album ‘In Rainbows’ on line for whatever anyone wants to pay (starting at a dollar).
And the list continues. Oasis, Artic Monkey, in fact – no one has ever challenged whether or not RIAA actually represents the musicians they are claiming they do. The fact they only sued for 24 songs out of her hard drive holding almost 2,000 sorta says they don’t.
Even Metallica sued RIAA for non-payment of royalties. So have countless of others in unending lawsuits. Why isn’t anyone up in arms over that? There’s MUCH bigger money owed to bands there.
The problem with Allmymp3 was they paid ROM, who paid musicians direct. The amounts were …. a couple pennies lower per song. RIAA did not recognize ROM because ROM saw RIAA as a trade org. and paid bands directly – skipping RIAA. They didn’t get their cut.
There’s no law against importing music (yet). In fact, Allmymp3 more closely aligned with broadcast law since no physical property exchanged hands. That may need to be changed – but it’s not being lobbied for change by RIAA.
Allmymp3 offered people what they wanted. You paid for the QUALITY of the file. Basic, like ITunes all the way up to 320kpbs – CD like quality and larger files. It was YOUR choice of format, drm free. Whatta concept. The customer is always right.
ITunes did survive without major labels and it certainly hasn’t hurt emusic to survive without labels. Do you think people avoiding RIAA might have something to do with low cd sales?
What happens when nobody listens to what PEOPLE have to say? I don’t buy RIAA (www.riaaradar.org) but non-RIAA artists are included in their figures because they have a registration to get royalties.
It’s called civil unrest or protest. That’s what file sharing has become. When you make a copy for a friend, put together a playlist for your high school reunion, do anything with music – it’s illegal according to the RIAA. Excuse me? I’ve got memories tied to some of that music. I don’t want to give it up. They are telling me I have no right to it and no right to it in the future too.
That stopped my purchase of any RIAA associated cd. That’s why their cd sales are dead. I wasn’t paying the musician anyway when i bought a cd.
Quoting Bubazoo:
“IT depends.. If I saw my book, and that place gave ME credit for writing that book, then YES I would not mind it being on there. The more the book shows up, the more credibility I get. If anything, if I saw my writing was that good, it would make me excited about writing more material, that others may want to buy.”
Why would you get excited about writing more material? It would be stolen as well, an people wouldn’t have to buy it?
“As for going to Velveeta back to Mac n Cheese, who gives a crap, its still food, regardless of what kind it is.”
Then why work at all? Why not go on welfare, where I can feed my whole family at the expense of the taxpayers?
“I mean really, copies of movies on places like Kazaa are “some idiot bringing in a video camera into the movie theatre†quality at best, and who in their right mind, wants to sit up at their computer desk waching a movie? ”
Wait another month and the DVD rip will come out. Either it’s in convenient ISO format, or you have a DVD player that will play DIVX movies. From the digital to the TV in one easy step.
“LOL I mean really guys, what kind of “geek†sits at their computer all day watching movies on a 17 or 19 inch tiny little monitor, when its much more cumfy sitting in the other room at that 60 inch plasma, er whatever, ya know what i mean?”
How do you afford a 60″ plasma when your hard work is stolen by someone else? Imagine your Burger Barn manager saying ‘Sorry, Bubba, but I’m letting you go because I made a recording of your last week’s work, and I’ll just play that from now on out.”
“besides, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to spend a year of their lives just writing a book anyway. I mean, get a real job and do that in your spare time.”
I really have no answer to this one. I’m generally not insulting in these posts but you really don’t have a grasp on reality. Do you think Nickelback records ‘in their spare time’, or Madonna, or 50 cent, whatever your genre? Do you think Steven King, or Tom Clancy, or Cormac McCarthy should be writing ‘in their spare time’?
The bottom line. Regardless of research, focus groups, evidence, sales records, or whatnot: If you are downloading the work of another person that you are not paying for, you are stealing from them. Easy enough. If you don’t agree, I think that the concept of stealing is being misconstrued. Whether it’s data, concrete, ethereal, or whatnot, if a person is selling it, and you get through illegal channels, it is stealing.
Borrowing is fine. Let’s get real. You can borrow a CD from the library, and listen to it during the loan period. If you make a copy of it, you are stealing it. If you loan a CD to a friend, that is fine. If the friend makes a copy of it, he is stealing it.
I don’t know how many businesses I have had to tell in my professional life. Even though it’s called AVG Free, it says clearly “for personal and home use only”. You can’t run it at your business without paying for it.
The laws are there in black and white. Not liking them does not grant carte blanche to disobey them. If you don’t like them, fight them, but heed the warning; copyrights foster creativity.
I hear people all the time talking about bands that are ‘ok’ with downloading, or are ‘open’ to the new technology. I haven’t heard of a single one that have made the required statement: ‘This work is in the Public Domain”.