RIAA Warns Individual Swappers

Joey Patterson writes "CNET News.com reports that the RIAA has sent cease-and-desist letters to four individuals for allegedly pirating its music on P2P networks." They have yet to publicly release the names of who they have contacted, but 4 of the 5 were Verizon subscribers involved with their previous high profile case.

Comments

Verizon now hosts RIAA website

[wilstephens]

Anyone else find this ironic?

I don't buy CDs

[NeB_Zero]

I stopped buying CDs once this whole situation with copyrights and piracy came about. I barely download music, and strictly listen to others' CDs or stream obscure music from free sites. The last CDs I have purchased were independent, and CHEAP. I have not purchased a CD from a major music label in years, and do not plan to until prices for 10 songs goes below 20USD.

Just my $0.02 .

Re:Wow actually going against people who broke the

[tyllwin]

Yes, this is the way that they should address copyright infringers, but sad that this won't work in the way that those with a rosy-eyed view of our American legal system would hope.

Even if these people were totally innocent of any civil or criminal wrongdoing (which I doubt) the cost of successfully defending themselves would bankrupt them -- not, of course, that innocence is any guaranteee of victory.

And, if they were in fact guilty of some civil tort, they would face paying for, not the actual damage that they may have caused, but rather huge *statutory* damages.

Great system: Cause some RIAA member $1.25 in damage, and face $1.25 million in costs. Nothing like equal justice under law.

C&D for 1 file!

[k1llt1me]

I received, or I should say my ISP received a C&D from the RIAA a couple of months ago for a single file that I had downloaded over eDonkey. They are certainly not just going after the "big fish".

Correct and untampered log files still worthless

[arth1]

Logs won't really prove that you downloaded one specific file, at least not for networks like eMule. You can make a search for, say, hicksville.mp3, which you know Simon Posford released to the public, but you can't find his website anymore. You get a hit on this search from a peer, and a hash of the file content is returned to you. You then ask the network who else has the file with this hash, and get perhaps 20 replies. You then start downloading it.

As it happens, the file is named "Metallica_Enter_Sandman.mp3" on most of the clients, and the "hicksville.mp3" was renamed such by another user who wanted to hide it. You still have no idea that it's a Metallica song you download, as you searched for hicksville.mp3.
The logs of those you download from, and who might be RIAA agents, might well show that you're downloading a Metallica song, but in this case there was no intent to do so. During the download process, others can also download parts of the file from you -- before you've had a chance to check it out. Logs from the outside will show that when someone searches for "Sandman.mp3", yours is one of the hosts that share it out. So you're also sharing it out -- thing is that you might not know, and it might not be your intent!

Summing up: There's no guarantee that the file name on the sending side is the same file name as on the receiving side, or that the file-sharing user even knows that there's a discrepancy. The file name on the remote side must be dismissed as evidence.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:Wow actually going against people who broke the

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Why the quote marks, dude? They *did* break the law. You may not like the law, anymore than you like the speed limit, but it's still the law. "

Uh, not quite. It may be the way you interpret copyright and fair use law, and it certainly is the way the RIAA interprets it, but it is not as cut-and-dried as you may think. Other legal viewpoints say that fair use is still being invoked in many P2P cases, and P2P can be used for obviously non-infringing files. Ultimately things will be decided by conclusive court cases, at which point you may be able to say definitively they broke the law. Right now it's just a point-of-view that is being propagandized to the masses, and to the courts.

And to your point, the propaganda is mostly working.
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WMA is the culprit

[s4m7]

I am here to tell you that I recieved a threatening letter from the RIAA, accompanied by a "comply or we'll cut you off" letter from my ISP, Comcast. And I know exactly why

I don't have any illegal shared files in my limewire shared folder. what I do have there is a number of original tracks that I have recorded over the last year, for people to check out. I was innocently poking around on limewire, when i found a small (50k or so) WMA or ASF file ( i just know it was an MS format) titled "must have - hilarious.WMA" so i clicked, and downloaded, when i opened the file, Windows media player fired up my browser, and directed me to a website telling me that the RIAA caught me, and my isp had been notified. it had my IP address and some file names (the ones it chose to display were some tracks from my single "the family guy", which i guess they think should be incriminating evidence.

what i do know is that they even admitted that they copied files from my computer. hear me now, RIAA: Immediately delete my files, get your hands off of my hard drive, and you better believe i will be watching you for derivative works.

The Crime is Sharing, not Stealing?

[crashnbur]

To this point, it seems as though the only crime the RIAA has gone after is sharing copyrighted information. Those who take advantage of the available products aren't in the wrong, according to this logic. I think this could be a step in the right direction, since in the old days you could be thrown in jail for unknowingly purchasing stolen equipment. It makes a lot more sense to go after those making the product available versus those using it, at least if you want to contain the issue.

There is a problem, though, in that people do not realize that the digital format that makes sharing music so easy is exactly what makes it protected material, and that's what makes anyone who downloads it potentially vulnerable to being charged for criminal conduct. It isn't likely to get you or me simply because there is no money in going after individual downloaders. However, there can be loads of money in going after kids running even small warez servers... Where one CD can cost as much as $600 (and more, depending on the product), allowing multiple downloads of multiple files could quickly result in hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal copies.

Of couse, if one CD didn't cost $600 in the first place, it wouldn't be such a problem. College professors assume that everyone on the planet uses Microsoft Office, but they fail to consider how many of us use a pirated copy. Even better, how many of us use pirated software specifically because we must have it for school or work and can not afford to buy it? The problem, in this case, is that some schools literally will not tolerate other software, and some inane professors actually require students to use particular software.

Software piracy is a problem... Piracy is a result of expensive alternatives, and the alternatives' prices increase because of piracy. What do we do? Well, we can only move in one of two directions:

• Toward freer information, expanding the definition of fair use and reducing the weight of copyrights.
• Toward more restricted information, narrowing the definition of fair use and strengthening copyrights.

As technology becomes more advanced, I can hardly imagine restricting information any more without morphing the United States into a sort of prison-state where no move can be made without Big Brother's watchful eye carefully monitoring your every move. Is that what we want? Or would we rather have the freedom to trust each other?

I choose choice.