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Filesharing Up 10% After RIAA Threatens Users

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the strange-magic dept.

Moldy-Rutabaga writes "Technews says filesharing has gone up 10% on some sites such as Grokster since the Recording Industry Association of America's announcement on June 25 that it will start tracking down and suing users of file-sharing programs. Wayne Rosso, president of Grokster, commented 'even genocidal litigation can't stop file sharers'."

15 of 750 comments (clear)

  1. Anecdotal Evidence - not so good by afreniere · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was speaking to a lay-person friend of mine last weekend, and he mentioned to me that he had heard about the threat of lawsuits, and decided to quickly install Bearshare, download all the songs he wanted and then uninstall it. Apparently at least some people are spooked.

    --
    G=C800:5
    1. Re:Anecdotal Evidence - not so good by Chiascuro · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually you are wrong. There are quite a few artists around who release music that can legally be shared and more than a few individuals who use the file sharing networks to publish their works and get some form of distribution. It's much easier to cut an MP3 and stick it on Kazaa than to get a record deal.

      --
      I am a bomb technician, if you see me running - try to keep up.
    2. Re:Anecdotal Evidence - not so good by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Sounds just like the "Do not click on this link!" found on my prof's course webpage. (And yes, I did click on the link.)"

      His testing of his hypothesis is flawed. He claims that clicking that link has to do with people wanting to open every door and see everything that is concealed from them. Though his hypothesis may well be right and may even be true in a lot of cases, he's still getting polluted data. I didn't click on the link because it said "do not click on this link", I clicked on it because every time I've seen "do not click on this link" it was because somebody was trying to use reverse psychology to get more attention. Frankly, I wouldn't have clicked on it if had said "members only". I wouldn't have even cared, that that would have flown right in the fac eof his hypothesis.

      I'm not sure if I'm communicating my idea too clearly or not. So here's a test that I think would help filter out the noise: password protect the next page and watch how hard people try to figure out the password.

      Now, as for the RIAA (gotta drag myself back on topic here), I do not believe the growth is due in part to people feeling like they're 'bad-boys' about it. Rather, I believe it is a mixture of reasons. Two pop into mind. 1.) Lots of people flipping off the RIAA and saying "no, if you're going to be like this, then I'll hurt you in the way that I know best." and 2.) I better get what I can while I can.

      As for Napster's growth (I realize it was the parent poster and not you that said this), I think that had more to do with people being made aware of it than anything else.

      In any case, I'm a little off-topic. Sorry about that. The RIAA has been way off in understanding the psychology of its customers, and yes that includes file swappers too. Suing individual users will only cause music trading to evolve and resist. Sooner or later, it'll be impossible to know who's downloading what.

      The funny thing is that I think this movement can outlive the RIAA's abilities to sue it. I can't remebmer the last time I've thought that about the little guy.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  2. How? by Tuffnut · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm just curious..

    How exactly do they go about finding these people? It's not like they openly give out their names on things like KaZaa?

    1. Re:How? by usotsuki · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They sue an IP address (no, I'm not kidding).

      -uso.

      --
      Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
    2. Re:How? by C_To · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What happens if the invididual sharing the files in question is out of jurstidiction of the United States? As far as I know ISPs in Canada, Australia, England, won't give out user information without a court order. Since the DMCA or whatever law it is that allows the RIAA to get information from ISPs does not exist in these countries, these users don't have to worry (at least in theory).

      And even worse, what about those who have filenames that are similar but not exactly the same as commerical music? They're going to have to download every song they can to verify it, otherwise it will be tossed out of court (and on 56K, that can be hours if not days).

    3. Re:How? by koko775 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Get Peerguardian (windows program). It blocks IPs from RIAA, MPAA, and other IP ranges. It might not totally solve it, but I find that without fail, my IP is checked day after day, several times, by either or both the RIAA and the MPAA. I feel violated.

  3. Pointless Statistic by jolyonr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What a pointless statistic. I bet you would find a month-on-month increase in P2P usage as more non-techy people out there discover how ridiculously easy it is.

    Jolyon

    --


    Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
  4. Is copyright going the way of prohibition? by kenthorvath · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously, if enough people blatanly disobey copyright laws, if there is enough civil disobedience, it almost HAS to force a change in the law. The question, though, is how much is "enough" and do we REALLY need to go through all of the heavy handed law enforcement attempts before this happens? Can't the law makers see for once, that this is what the PEOPLE want and step up to the plate to do their job? Rant over.

  5. Artists Against iTunes by pgrote · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And from the "they keep shooting themselves in the head" department, Metallica says no iTunes do to principles. :
    "Artists hold out on iTunes on principle
    Reuters News Service

    LOS ANGELES -- The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica are refusing to make their music available as individual downloads on Apple Computer's iTunes online music store.

    That move comes in response to Apple's decision to allow users to buy single tracks and is intended to protect the future of the long-playing album, said Mark Reiter of Q Prime Management Co., which manages the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica and several other artists.

    Green Day and Linkin Park, according to a source familiar with the situation, have also refused to make their songs available as individual downloads on the Apple service, which has sold over 5 million songs. "

    -- Hey .. I have a great idea. Let's tick off our customers. They want this, but let's not give it to them. In fact, let's prosecute them. Works for me.

    Idiots.

  6. Re:Not it! by gilesjuk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I believe they already collect a tax on CD burners.

    They collect quite a lot of funds in fact, they even collect money for radio play of unsigned acts and these artists receive nothing.

    Above info collected from:

    Here

  7. Free market in action by GammaTau · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is free market in action. The artificial scarcity created by government regulation (copyright) is way out of touch with the reality so the free market, even when it has to operate as a black market, will take care of the customer demand.

    What needs to happen is serious consideration of how the supply can be kept running under these circumstances. One solution would be to allow unlimited music distribution as long as you don't charge any money for it. If the commercial exploitation of copyrighted material would still be an exclusive right of the copyright holder, I believe there is a big market where the copyright holder can make good profit. This would pretty much legalize the current practise where individual people can trade music online freely while the commercial distributors (e.g. CD sales) would have to pay.

  8. Lazy RIAA by cervo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Weiss said the recording industry should lobby for special taxes on CD burners and Internet access as a way to recoup losses incurred from file sharing, an idea that Grokster's Rosso also supports."

    Yeah right, so you can't properly secure your own cd's or whatever, so go ahead and put a tax on internet access and cd burner's to make up losses because of your own incompetence. And as we all know, no one uses CD Burners for say....backups, or transferring legitimate files from one person to another. No one uses the internet to do do legitament things like research. So of course everyone should Pay the RIAA and help them. Never mind that if they really want to stop piracy they should be better protecting their own media.

    The worst thing is that the RIAA probably has enough influence in Washington to pull something like this off!! What's next, Microsoft builds an internet monitoring meter into windows to send usage statistics to the government so they can bill you monthly. Then Linux is outlawed for not having the US government metering package?

  9. I don't understand something... by droopus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The RIAA does not own the copyrights to anything. According to the DMCA only the owner of the copyright can sue for infringement. The owner first must communicate in writing to the user's ISP, demanding that they take action.

    The ISP is bound by law to inform the user, who has the right, under penalty of perjury, to deny that he/she is offering infringing material.

    Now it gets interesting.

    If the user denies that he/she has been sharing, the ISP must inform the copyright owner, and that copyright owner has a limited amount of time during which it MUST bring suit against the alleged infringer, or the ISP MUST restore access.

    So, someone please tell me how the RIAA has the right to sue, since they own no copyrights?

    Also, if every person sued denies they are sharing, forcing the actual copyright holder to bring suit, wouldn't the sheer weight of litigation costs make this a really bad strategy?

    --
    "The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
  10. In the UK by Alan+Cox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the UK case they can go to an ISP to get the information having gathered enough evidence to get a magistrate to ok it (which isnt a huge barrier when you can show the time, the data, the files, a video of the download, the music playing and a signed testimony you own the copyright). Data protection law is not a right to do illegal things anonymously. In fact an ISP is permitted to give such data to the police without them even asking if it has good reason to believe a crime is being committed.

    I'd expect people in the UK to be dealt with by UK law, just as large scale UK video pirates were. Large scale video piracy was stopped by basically targetting the big pirates and giving them nowhere to advertise their wares either. Now its a hand to hand market or dodgy street market stalls and that keep the volume of piracy under control

    As regards file names - given a few downloads that are verified as pirate and the relevant paperwork done and affidavits filed I suspect the rest would be resolved by seizing the equipment in question and seeing what else is on it.

    I approve of the RIAA approach this time, its the first sane thing they've done for a long time. Go after the bigger copiers, instead of harassing everyone, screwing up the law and building unusable systems actually go after the criminals for once.

    What should be the real limits on "fair use" is another debate, but it will be a lot easier to have when large scale copying of copyright works is under control, and also may actually go back to the old ways - as video has where small scale copying/lending isnt a threat, helps everyone and the law is conveniently ignored by all parties .