UK Record Industry Starts Suing Filesharers

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has the story that the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has started a first set of lawsuits against UK file sharers. 23 people paid £50,000 to settle out of court. This is the first time people in the UK have been fined, and probably won't be the last. From the article: "We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."

Comments

MPAA is on its way

[moofdaddy]

This is just the start of the trends which have become somewhat commonn place in the states making the hop over the Atlantic. I think read on Drudge yesterday that the MPAA is considering a similar manuever in the UK. Insiders say that they plan on going after people who are sharing 10 movies or more. For now they are only planning on targeting those who offer up movies which have yet to be released but I would imagine they will be widening that net before too long.

Ouch

[Frogmum]

Seriously, 50,000 pounds for some music? They're so extreme with the amounts.

Re:Ouch

[a16]

This isn't £50,000 each - it's £50,000 total. To quote TFA:

The average compensation payment was £2,200 each, with one person paying £4,500.

Re:Ouch

[Rei]

Could you please point out, if you would and just for the sake of argument, who the victim is in the case between a person downloading a song illegally and listening to it, vs. not listening to it at all? I.e., the general case of file sharing, as most of the people wouldn't have bought the music if they couldn't dl it...

wi fi

[Virtual Karma]

I had a doubt. If my neighbour uses my wireless network (which I have kept open as a social service) to download copyrighted stuff, can I be sued????

Re:wi fi

[mark-t]

Downloading in and of itself isn't illegal.

Making a copy of copyrighted material without permission is what is illegal. Period. Encrypted or not. Protected or not. If it's copyrighted, and you do not have permission to copy it, and you go ahead and copy it, then you've broken the law.

Notwithstanding, there are allowances to make copies, even without explicit permission, under the jurisdictions of personal and fair use.

If the circumstances do not fit within those allowances, however, then the person who made the copy has violated copyright law.

Strictly speaking, this makes anyone who fileshares a work without permission a copyright infringer even before anyone else actually downloads it, since they have made a copy of the work (which exists on their hard disk), but that copy transcends allowable boundaries for personal/fair use, since that copy is being made available for public viewing, use, or copying, and so is in violation of copyright.

Re:wi fi

[Catbeller]

"And after an **AA person presents to the court a full audit of your network and sees your PCs as locked down but not your network...."

Read that again. The **AA is auditing my network. An industry group. Auditing. My. Network.

Not their province. I damn the laws that let INDUSTRY GROUPS conduct audits of MY PROPERTY. I gave them no such permission.

Get off of my property, varmint. Southwestern Bell doesn't get to monitor my phone conversations for defamation, and they bloody own the network. I will not stand for an industry rooting through my logs for possible cash making possiblities.

The industry needs to changes its marketing strat

[dmf415]

When will the record companies learn, if they price there product in an affordable price range, people will buy.

Apple has sold approximately 85 million songs in the first two months of 2005, surpassing Piper Jaffray's initial estimates for the entire March quarter. Based on Apple's earlier announcement of 300 million total tracks sold, Senior Research Analyst Gene Munster says that iTunes sales could account for $83.2 million in revenue in the March quarter--or about $35 million more than the firm has been estimating. The firm also believes average daily sales rate has been 1.35 million per day since late January, which very similar to the 1.43 million daily run rate (i.e., sales of songs) in the weeks following the holidays. "We had been anticipating a more significant drop off in iTunes sales from the levels seen in the weeks following the holidays."

In addition to driving iPod sales, the firm says that Apple's iTunes Music Store will also contribute significantly to the company earnings: while it estimtates that the current operating margin on iTunes is in the low single digits, Piper Jaffray says it believes iTunes profitability will begin to increase throughout 2005, with operating margins reaching 5% to 10% in 2006.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/03/02/itunes.gr ow ing.fast/

Hmm...

[Living WTF]

How many of these 23 people were under 10 or over 80 years old? And did at least half of them own a computer?

Kids these days

[Kimos]

Some parents have been genuinely shocked to discover what their children have been up to

If that's all your kids have been up to on the internet when you're not watching, you're in OK shape...

Re:Kids these days

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

If that's all your kids have been up to on the internet when you're not watching, you're in OK shape...

I know! I just found out my boy was posting on some nerd forum where they have some fetish for penguins, grits, apples, and "OSS". (I assume this "OSS" is a spelling of "ass" where the "a" is stretched disproportionately. I've seen some disturbing pictures on that site he visits!)

You try and try and try to raise them right, but....

follow the money

[MrLint]

"...make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from."

Don't most artists make only a pittance on their album sales anyway, even after they have paid back the label for their 'generous' promotional contract?

Call me cynical, but claiming that the settlement money is going to go to artists seems disingenuous. Of course claiming 'lost' profits by the labels on file sharing is moreso.

Overheard in a squalid housing estate...

[Rude Turnip]

Quick Vyvyan! Eat the hard drive!

you know...

[opposume]

why don't they just sue for the ammount of $ they have stolen (i.e. the average cost of a CD) instead of charging these OUTRAGEOUS fees? Any body?

Is this supposed to be bad?

[subreality]

So, way back in the day, everyone was outraged that the music industry was trying to fight piracy by litigating away P2P technology, instead of going after the people who were actually breaking the law.

Now they're going after the people who actually break the law, instead of trying to end P2P.

I think that the idea of fair use ought to be extended, but am I supposed to be outraged that this is happening? They're actually going after people who are breaking the law, instead of trying to end technologies with legitimate uses.

Isn't this exactly what we asked for?

Re:Before the whining starts

[dj_tsd]

The problem is that it IS NOT their property. The RIAA is NOT a rightsholder. Therefore, by US law, their lawsuits are frivolous. They are suing on the behalf of others, who are mistaken if they expect money from the RIAA. The RIAA should go back to worrying about who gets gold records.

I wonder how this will go down...

[eboot]

Hmm... How many people do you think they will sue? 10? 20? 1000? You know I don't know anybody who bothers to use p2p to pirate music anymore. There are easier ways to get old or indie albums by borrowing off of friends and everything new or mainstream is crap. My friends and I share music perfectly easy without P2P, in fact one of the first things I do with new friends is share our music collections with each other. The genie of digital copying is out of the bottle and it's going to take a lot of restriction to get it back in again. Enough restriction to destroy the music industry itself. Record sales aren't going to improve until the BPI or the RIAA stop stuffing crap down our throats, stop suing us and stop treating us like criminals, even if from their perspective we are. Society has changed, forever.

Uh...

[Dachannien]

make them compensate the artists

Bahahahahahahaha hahahaha hahahahaha hahaha haha whew.

Sorry about that.

I just don't buy any music anymore

[yodaj007]

I mean, really, I don't want to pay what I consider outrageous prices for crap. I'm not downloading anything either. If you want some good music, go down to your local coffee house and listen to a good live band and buy their CD if you like their music. For the price of a coffee, I can listen to a small live concert for several hours while I do homework. You mean you can try before you buy? Amazing! The CD's I get from the local artists (and other independent artists that come through my area on tour) are much cheaper than the record-label CD's and the quality of music is sooo worth it. While the ethics of downloading the label's music is disputed, one thing I think we can all agree on is that the labels would have no ammo if people would just boycott them instead of refusing to purchase their crap and downloading music. Boycotts do work. And boycotts 'steal' nothing from the artists.

Re:The industry needs to changes its marketing str

[AK Marc]

It's like walking into a Wal-Mart, stuffing something in your coat, walking out, and justifying it by saying that they charge too much anyway.

No, it is not. It's more like not wanting to pay $5 to rent a movie that you've heard is bad, so you walk over to your friends house and borrow it. You've just screwed the movie company out of money and should be tossed in jail for "stealing" by not paying them every time you watch it.

Re:Before the whining starts

[Kaa]

The music companies are totally right in doing this.

They do have LEGAL RIGHTS to do this, yes.

Whether they are MORALLY RIGHT is up to your particular morality, and there's a wide variety out there :-)

Yet another question is whether this is a RIGHT THING TO DO from a business viewpoint. Or from a public-good viewpoint. Again, answers vary.

hmm scary

[real_smiff]

Fifteen of the 23 used the Kazaa peer-to-peer network, four used Imesh, two used Grokster, one used WinMix and one was on BearShare.

First observations: no ed2k, no soulseek there. these are still fairly mainstream/'newbie'/old networks. all of these allow you to see a list of someone's shares? i wonder where else they're monitoring/know about - there's a lag in their learning about the newest trading methods, but there's also a lag in this sort of news getting out, so it's tricky to know.

Some questions i'd like answered:
What kind of music (artists, genres, labels) were they sharing?
Why were they singled out (uh, awful pun)- sharing >x000 songs on a fixed IP for > x days?
Are the IPs of these british organistions listed in anti-anti-P2P blocking lists? i can bet these people weren't using any blocking, but would it have helped is another question.. proper anonymous music trading networks anyone?

"Some parents have been genuinely shocked to discover what their children have been up to

yeah, there's always a quote like this. trying to make it sound so righteous. What about the parents who said "wtf, you're extorting 5 grand out of us for what?" they never get quoted.

"we have attempted to reach fair settlements where we can".

What attempt. It's pay a huge fine*, or go to court and risk paying a really huge fine. It can't be a deterrent and be fair. So admit it: it's not fair to the people caught, but you're desperate to scare people. I trust the next BPI press release will show how much the artists got from this (yes, sarcasm).
*and admit you've been naughty and promise not to do it again, of course. whatever that means.

"28 IP addresses and it was later discovered that two people accounted for four IP addresses on their list"

interesting, the fact that two people out of such a small pool were caught *twice* suggests they are looking for something very specific, like a particular list of songs (e.g. counting the matches, then taking the IPs of those with the most?). i'm guessing that these were people with dynamic IPs, rather than those sharing e.g. at home and at work.

Well i've been expecting this to happen in the UK - really, i'm amazed its taken until 2005 - and i always said "fuck it, safety in numbers" but i have to admit it is slightly scary to know you could get caught... i guess carrry on with the indie music, people! (and you know, buy some; just don't support the pigopolists, either by buying their music, or getting caught and really funding their lawyers.

btw, do they actually have to listen to your songs to see if they are the material as named? if so, maybe having a max-uploads-per-IP in the client would help you not get into trouble, as well as being fairer, spreading things around?