More Music File-Sharing Lawsuits in Europe

rfunches writes "The New York Times is reporting that 20,000 cases in 10 countries were brought against file-sharers in Europe, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). '...Users targeted for legal action included a Finnish lumberjack, a British postman, a Czech IT manager and a German judge,' according to the article. More than 70 computers were seized in Italy by authorities investigating illegal file-sharing. IFPI targeted both those who 'illicitly downloaded music' as well as uploaders serving copyrighted material on file-sharing networks. Total music sales were down 3% in 2005 according to the IFPI, with the decline in physical media (e.g. CDs) countered by 'soaring' digital music sales."

Comments

Sales down?

[Bender Unit 22]

Music industry, you know the solution, why not use it. Find need new chicks to show more skin! None of those "don't call me a chick", chicks, it does not work.

Re:Sales down?

[voice_of_all_reason]

so why not the porno copyright holders?

Because there are enough people that Don't Like Porn that somewhere in the judicial process you'll get assigned Judge Michael Holywater and that'll be the end of your case.

More realistically, most porn webmasters are probably sensible people and not the mindless horde running the music/movie corporations. They may realize that a large part of the population can't/won't buy pornography and that it doesn't hurt their business model in the slighest for these people to get the product for free.

The War On Drugs = The War on Downloading

[AudioEfex]

No one is ever going to win. Governments and private corporations are going to spend billions. The only people who are going to get hurt are those who missed last week's episode of "Vernoica Mars" and downloads it instead so they don't get behind.

If the assholes would just realize the problem is them charging $20 for a CD that 20 years ago they promised would eventually be cheaper than cassettes and vinyl ever were. If CD's cost something more commesurate with their value and production cost downloading wouldn't be an issue beyond the fringe.

AE

Re:The War On Drugs = The War on Downloading

[xtracto]

LOLOLOLOLOL LMAO (ponies if you want)

Come on fanboy that is the the most fanboist comment I have read in a while.

While you link to an illegal file (and I agree in that, downloading a copy of OSX that you do not own is Illegal), there is nothing illegal in patching your owned copy of OSX or whatever software I BUY. It is stupid, you know, I bought Windows XP, and I have notepad.exe and I cracked it to make it display the cursor line number.

I did it just for fun, not because I am a pira8ter. So what if people run OSX in their beige boxes? nothing wrong will happen to Apple, the PC is an unsopported platform, it is like running Internet Explorer on Linux with wine, Linux is not a supported platform so they [Microsoft] do not care if it breaks or if it fscks your computer.

Oh come on, really, wake up and stick that one button mouse out of your arse...

p.s. Mods, sorry for the inflammatory comment but this troll really pissed me off

Re:The War On Drugs = The War on Downloading

[Tom]

No one is ever going to win.

You assume "they" are interested in winning.

I propose that they aren't. Many more involved parties profit more from the ongoing conflict than from its resolution. That includes especially the lawyers, but also law enforcement, a large number of institutes, think-tanks, industry associations, etc. and of course the media which gets a fairly reliable source of news every now and then.

That's true for both, the war on drugs and the copyright war.

Re:The War On Drugs = The War on Downloading

[voice_of_all_reason]

+1 (Truthful)

War on drugs, war on terror, war on downloading -- it's just a boot, stomping on the face of humanity. Forever.

Re:The War On Drugs = The War on Downloading

[digitaldc]

If the assholes would just realize the problem is them charging $20 for a CD

Solution: Go to a used CD/DVD store, most CDs are fairly unscathed and you can get really good deals there. (CDs and DVDs for $5-$10) And, if there are duplicates, some are usually cheaper than others.

Re:The War On Drugs = The War on Downloading

[Mac Degger]

+1 (truthfull) to you too.

When are people going to real;ise that a war is something which will end, which has a resolution. Terrorism, copyright infringement, taxes...these are things which are ongoing states of affairs; the only way to mitigate them is to take away root causes instead of fighting the symptoms, and even then they won't stop.

Re:The War On Drugs = The War on Downloading

[pmc]

I bought Windows XP, and I have notepad.exe and I cracked it to make it display the cursor line number [nikse.dk].

While cool, it's a bit pointless as described. From the link

To edit my code i like to use Note-pad. But one disadventage of Notepad is that it doesn't show linenumbers. So when the compiler gives an error with linenumber, i have to load another editor to find the line with the error.

Obviously he wasn't aware that (ctrl)+g brings up a dialog box where you can enter the line number that you want to go to.

Re:The War On Drugs = The War on Downloading

[shark72]

"If the assholes would just realize the problem is them charging $20 for a CD that 20 years ago they promised would eventually be cheaper than cassettes and vinyl ever were."

Do you have a citation for this promise? The only place I've ever heard it is on Slashdot.

Anyway:

Typical price for a CD in 1985: $18.99. That's $33.70 in 2005 dollars.

Average price of a new CD today in the USA: around $13.

Typical price of an LP in 1985: about $8.00. That's about $14.20 in 2005 dollars. I was often paying $9 or $10 in 1985, and as much as $11.99 for some releases, but I'll use $8.00 as a concession.

CD prices are in freefall. It looks like it's been years since they learned that $20 isn't a good price for new releases. Music is cheaper now than it's ever been. Your advice for them would have been timely about five or ten years ago.

Maybe the piracy is being committed by the people who have been afraid to go to a record store in 5 or 10 years and still think that new releases are twenty bucks?

Re:The War On Drugs = The War on Downloading

[shark72]

"The rest of the cost is all in the content, and the music publishers pretty much charge whatever they think we'll pay for. But they were right, the CD's are cheaper than cassettes and vinyl ever were, and they're lining their pockets with the difference."

Are you sure about that? In the computer peripheral industry, we have to deal with:

• Disti markup -- about five or six points.
• Retailer markup -- twelve points at Amazon, 35 or 40 points at Best Buy, everybody else, somewhere in between
• Shipping costs
• Accruals for damaged goods and returns -- anywhere between two and 15 points
• Channel marketing and merchandising -- retailers ask for another four to seven points here.
• Advertising
• Plus, the salaries of everybody who touches the product, even if they're not responsible for the "content".

In other words, material cost is probably the least significant factor. If it's $1.62 by your estimate, the royalties probably cost them more than that. Then add another buck or so for production costs (if it costs $50K to produce and you amortize it across 50K pieces, but most CDs don't sell that many). With sell-in to disti at around $8 or $10 per CD, the reports I've heard -- that the music industry nets out at around 10 - 20 points -- sound accurate. At least in the PC peripheral industry I have the luxury of netting 20 points plus. If you think record companies are greedy, mouse and keyboard manufacturers must make your blood boil with an insatiable fury.

If your understanding is different, let me know.

Seriously...

[Onymous Hero]

When will this end?

Does file sharing stop? No.

Re:Seriously...

[Pogue Mahone]

No. But then murder is wrong. Copyright infringement is merely illegal.

Re:Seriously...

[XchristX]

FYI, in legal jargon, things that are "just wrong" are called "malum in-se", and things that are illegal but not necessarily wrong are called "malum prohibitum". It's from English common law, or something.

Just in case you get into an argument with a lawyer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_in_se
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_prohibitum

Re:Seriously...

[trezor]

Neither does bad analogies. Should we stop? Yes.

Re:Seriously...

[Frozen Void]

[THIS TEXT IS PUBLIC DOMAIN]
File sharing is not illegal(it not really a crime to share some song).
Its just companies want it to be perceived as crime.There is no real victim,except reduced profits for corporations/publishers.Its not theft!
People SHARE THE MUSIC, they don't Steal it(it remain in the hands of authors).
Copyright entitles publishers for "property rights" for information.Ridicolous but true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringemen t
For electronic and audio-visual media, unauthorized reproduction and distribution is often referred to as piracy or theft (an early reference was made by Alfred Tennyson in the preface to his poem "The Lover's Tale" in 1879 where he mentions that sections of this work "have of late been mercilessly pirated".) The legal basis for this usage dates from the same era, and has been consistently applied until the present time.1 Critics of the use of "software piracy" to describe such practices contend that it unfairly compares a crime that makes no victim - except for those that would have profited from hypothetically lost sales - with the violent actions of organized thieves and murderers; it also confuses mere illegal copying of material with the intentional and malicious penetration of computer systems to which one does not legally have access. As a consequence, "software piracy" is a somewhat loaded term. "Theft" or "stealing" are considered even more inflammatory, as well as legally misleading.2

feh

[kv9]

FTBlurb

IFPI targeted both those who 'illicitly downloaded music' as well as uploaders serving copyrighted material on file-sharing networks.

FTA

The IFPI's legal proceedings were aimed not at people who illicitly downloaded music but ``uploaders'' who put copyrighted music onto file-sharing networks.

so which is it?

Re:feh

[ThePhilips]

Since this is FUD campaign, they of course try to scare downloaders - so they use "downloaders" since it's much broader term.

As copyright law concerned, it's uploaders who are infriging. Uploading is distribution. If you want to distribute something - you have to acquire a permission from copyright holder.

Case for downloader is much simpler: downloader has acquired something for personal use. As long as file in question isn't used for anything what's prohibited by copyright law - downloader is clear. "Listening to mp3" is not there. "Distributing" and "profiting" is there.

I probably oversimplify the situation, but that the view I have formed after reading Lessig's blog - http://lessig.org/blog/ And c'mon - it's slashdot ;-)

Re:feh

[Pieroxy]

The real question is that most P2P programs force you to share whatever you download, so technically spaeking any downloader is also an uploader...

How does that work?

Re:feh

[meringuoid]

AFAIK, the only way the record company could know what you're downloading is if you're downloading it from them. OTOH, they can know what you're uploading by asking your P2P server 'so, got a copy of LatestBritneyShite.mp3?'

And if the record company set up a P2P app full of their music and sue whoever attempts to download it, they're on shaky ground. The music is, after all, theirs to distribute. They put it on P2P themselves. Surely there's no infringement of copyright when the copyright holder themselves is putting the stuff online?

Things might be different with BitTorrent, though. With that, if you're downloading something you're also making it, or parts of it, available to upload as you do so. In that case you're visible to the record company or their grasses.

Re:feh

[m94mni]

As copyright law concerned, it's uploaders who are infriging.

Generally, yes, in Sweden, no. According to a recent law (last July), downloading without a license is also illegal. Thus Piratpartiet.

This law is supposed to be an implementation of a EU directive, so it will be "interesting" to see what the other countries make of it...

Re:feh

[cpt kangarooski]

As copyright law concerned, it's uploaders who are infriging. Uploading is distribution.

It is correct that uploaders infringe on the distribution right.

Case for downloader is much simpler: downloader has acquired something for personal use. As long as file in question isn't used for anything what's prohibited by copyright law - downloader is clear. "Listening to mp3" is not there. "Distributing" and "profiting" is there.

Not quite. The main exclusive rights are listed at 17 USC 106. Downloaders infringe on the reproduction right, because when they download, they create a new copy.

This is pretty settled law. You can see it in cases such as Napster, Grokster, and my favorite (because it's so clear, not because I like it) Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry. As for who is responsible for the download, basically it's the person that initiated it (see e.g. Marobie-FL v. NAFED). For ordinary downloading of mp3s or whatnot, that would be the downloader. If your machine was taken over by a hacker, then it wouldn't be your fault, though it could be tough for you to prove.

Re:feh

[b0bby]

Also FTBlurb:
The New York Times is reporting that 20,000 cases in 10 countries were brought against file-sharers in Europe

FTA:
About 2,000 cases were launched in 10 countries

WTF? This summary is particularly out to lunch.

Full Text (no login)

[Onymous Hero]

Music Industry Unleashes More Lawsuits in Europe

By REUTERS
Published: April 4, 2006

LONDON (Reuters) - The music industry launched a new wave of lawsuits and criminal proceedings against file-sharers across Europe on Tuesday, part of its drive to curb online piracy and encourage the use of legal music services.

About 2,000 cases were launched in 10 countries, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said, bringing the total to 5,500 people in 18 countries.

That figure does not include the United States, covered by its sister group the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed about 18,000 lawsuits.

Among the countries targeted was Portugal, where sales of physical formats like CDs have slumped by 40 percent in the past four years amid heavy file-sharing usage, especially by college students.

Other users targeted for legal action included a Finnish carpenter, a British postman, a Czech IT manager and a German judge, the IFPI said.

``A large number of cases involve men aged between 20 and 35 and parents who have not heeded successive education and warning campaigns,'' it stated.

In Italy authorities have seized more than 70 computers in the search for evidence of illegal file-sharing.

The IFPI's legal proceedings were aimed not at people who illicitly downloaded music but ``uploaders'' who put copyrighted music onto file-sharing networks.

The IFPI said last week that digital music sales soared in 2005, but not enough to make up for a continuing decline in physical formats like CDs, sending total sales down 3 percent.

Re:Full Text (no login)

[Opportunist]

Careful there, you're about to get into trouble for copyright infringement. :(

That would be

[Spad]

2,000, not 20,000.

The summary is remarkably incorrect, even for a Slashdot story.

Re:That would be

[sosume]

FTFA: 18,000 in the US and 2,000 in the EU sums up to 20,000. But the story
headline is still incorrect.

Good, the more the better

[Baki]

As long as only a small minority is concerned, people in power won't care much. However as soon as they are themselves concerned, directly or indirectly through family, children, friends etc. they might start to think. And that might hopefully lead to a revolution in the thinking about copying, copyrights and the like.

So I am especially pleased when I read that judges and politicians are sued.

Re:Good, the more the better

[Opportunist]

Wasn't it a lawyer? The infamous Buddy of an equally infamous lawyer in Munich who is renowned for hunting down "pirates", who was finally and quite "surprisingly" caught with his hands in a pretty large FTP Server hosting "a few" files that it should not host according to some copyright law?

What happened to Bernie and Günni? Anyone know?

This is silly

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright was not designed to handle file sharing networks. Most of it was based on the idea of criminals ripping off records and making large numbers of copies and selling them. Not ordinary people sharing for free. The sheer number of people doing this indicates that people simply don't see anything wrong with it. Laws that the vast majority disagree with are not usually a good thing.

Re:This is silly

[Ilex]

Laws that the vast majority disagree with are not usually a good thing.

And the act of passing such laws which criminalize a large section of the population is usually called "Oppression"

Re:This is silly

[gameforge]

Certainly, at least partly why people justify this to themselves is simply the quality of the content.

Ever since I can remember (I'm 23) almost every CD that's come out has at BEST five tracks I actually want to listen to; usually it's two or three. I'm not going to spend much for 10 or 12 minutes of music. Of course if it's an artist I really love, I might be willing to spend $7 or $8; I'd try to find the CD used.

But really, copying anything digital is easily justified if you think about it hard enough. If you take a CD from somebody else, or from a store (i.e. steal it) that's money lost somewhere. Somebody spent money to produce it and distribute it, but you did not return that money (or any profit) in exchange for it.

If I pirate something I would never buy in the first place such as a piece of horrendously expensive software, or an obscure one hit wonder single from the 80s, there's no money lost anywhere. I wouldn't have bought it anyway... I didn't steal it from somewhere, I cloned it. Obviously of course, this can't be true if you share it with other people, or even use it to make money (such as using 3D studio for your web design business when you didn't purchase it).

Ultimately, it's still wrong, simply because if you are benefiting from somebody else's work without their permission and without compensating them fairly, you're using them in a morally negative way. And I think many people know this; but it just isn't that big of a deal to them vs. stealing money (directly or indirectly). If you could clone a Bentley, even though you already own a perfectly good Toyota and would never dream of buying a Bentley, wouldn't you at least consider it?

Of course, there's always the truly wrong people who do pirate things they would go out and buy if they couldn't have it for free, such as MS Office or Windows (especially the only copy they own, let alone multiple PCs and networks).

Re:This is silly

[richie2000]

You cannot seriously be likening laws against leeching music off P2P against the wishes of the artists to oppression.

When the lobbying groups ask for up to four year prison terms for copyright infringement and the use of covert surveillance and wiretaps to catch infringers, you bet your ass we're calling it oppression.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Bah, just forget about the labels...

[Jugalator]

Just listen to / get free music legally from The Kahvi Collective, Magnatune, music.download.com, Electromancer, ... or why not online "radio" services like last.fm or Pandora? You have to be pretty strange these days to like overcommercialized music but not anything from any of those.

Re:European news by NYTimes?

[teslar]

I can give you the link to the heise story. Doesn't mention the specific cases in the NYT article though, just 'eine neue Klagewelle'. Babelfish for whoever's interested.

"illegal fire-sharing" ?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Didn't know it was illegal to share fire.
Must be some new anti-smoking law.

Re:"illegal fire-sharing" ?

[Wylfing]

Didn't know it was illegal to share fire. Must be some new anti-smoking law.

Yes, haha, very funny. Did you know that when you "share" fire you are stealing? That's right! Every time you let someone kindle their fire from yours, you are taking food from the mouths of hard-working match manufacturers. Not to mention the butane industry -- why, it is quite probable that the higher prices we see at the gas pumps are due to offsetting drop in hydrocarbons demand that occurs from "sharing" fire. You see, we all suffer from this kind of theft.

Well...

[Kawahee]

They missed me... :)

All together now!

[Timberwolf0122]

I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay I sleep all night and download all day IFPI: He's a lumberjack and he's not okay were going to sue him like the RIAA I pirate songs, I eat my lunch I go to the Lavatory. On Wednessday I got summonsed for my acts of pi-rac-ie IFPI:He pirate songs, He eats his lunch He goes to the Lavatory. On Wednessday he got summonsed for his acts of pi-rac-ie Chorus: He's a lumberjack and he's not okay were going to sue him like the RIAA ..............

All together now! take 2 with formatting!!

[Timberwolf0122]

I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay
I sleep all night and download all day

IFPI: He's a lumberjack and he's not okay
were going to sue him like the RIAA

I pirate songs, I eat my lunch
I go to the Lavatory.
On Wednessday I got summonsed
for my acts of pi-rac-ie

IFPI:He pirate songs, He eats his lunch
He goes to the Lavatory.
On Wednessday he got summonsed
for his acts of pi-rac-ie

Chorus: He's a lumberjack and he's not okay
were going to sue him like the RIAA ..............

Careful now!

[PinkyDead]

The law is a dangerous tool to play with.

At the moment there is a lot of grey area with copyright and the internet (IANAL) - which is why 'legal' music sites like allofmp3.com have disclaimers regarding local laws rather than concrete advice. In my own local jurisdiction the law appears to be clear about importing copyrighted material (and it's quite similiar in most other places) - i.e it's ok for personal/domestic use.

When the rights organisations test these laws the outcome might not be the one they want - and it will send a message to the mainstream users, who up to this point have been terrorised into not downloading music, that it is actually safe to do so.

They are playing with fire - and their time would be far better served coming up with a better business model than trying to defend an outdated one.

Unwittingly apt pun

[srussia]

See the Wikipedia entry on fire-sharing

The are going to breed new generation networks

[burbilog]

Things like I2P and freenet are going to get a boost. Currently only a few whackos toy with freenet & co, but if you force enough people to consider their safety something is going to evolve. And then they will have a very tough task to ban cryptography...

Civil suits in Germany -- according to c't

[january]

Some weeks ago in the German magazine c't there was a feature on the legal situation of copying / downloading / sharing music and movies in Germany.

Apparently, the law firms have worked out a nice scheme to get the money out of people using p2p for downloading music / movies. It works as follows. Please forgive me my lack of law-related terminology in English.

First, one company tracks down the p2p users and files mass criminal suits against them. The charges get dropped by the court very quickly (unless it concerns someone dealing music / videos big time) -- but now, they have names and addresses, as they are not allowed to inquiry them directly at the provider.

Now what happens is this: some weeks after, a law company representing the big corps sues the user for some $BIGNUM of euros. The given user has a short time in which she or he has to react, contact a lawyer, file a protest etc. -- otherwise, the charges get lawful. Some angry letters later they propose to settle for a moderate amount -- 1-3 kEUR. Most of the people pay it just for the sake of getting out of the situation, and out of fear of having to pay $BIGNUM.

The whole process seems to be almost automatic and pays well off.

j.

A lumberjack

[KeensMustard]

Users targeted for legal action included a Finnish lumberjack, a British postman, a Czech IT manager and a German judge,

I can understand arresting the postman, the manager and the judge. But the finnish chap, he's a lumberjack, and he's ok. For sure that was a mistake.

Re:A lumberjack

[OldManAndTheC]

he's a lumberjack, and he's ok

and he would never have time to listen to pirated music anyhow, seeing as he sleeps all night and he works all day...

I-F-P-I...

[shigelojoe]

...Users targeted for legal action included a Finnish lumberjack, a British postman, a Czech IT manager and a German judge,'

All we need is a Spanish construction worker and we'll have the Euro-Village People!

OH yeah, stop me swapping 4.5gig DVDs!!!!

[cheekyboy]

Downloading?

Its quicker to swap a stack of 25 4.5 GIG dvds of MP3s!!!

It takes one day to swap, then 12mins/dvd = 300mins, easy going.

Face it, all 250 years of music is in within easy reach of everyone for zero cost + $12.95 for some blanks.

Sure musicians are artists, but they dont deserve more money than the creator of a cpu or a car. Its only music, its not
a cancer cure.