Music Industry Sends Warning to Song Swappers

Reuters ^ | April 29, 2003 | Sue Zeidler

[Mister Magoo]

Wednesday April 30, 3:06 AM Music Industry Sends Warning to Song Swappers By Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The record industry opened a new front in its war against online piracy on Tuesday by surprising hundreds of thousands of Internet song swappers with an instant message warning that they could be "easily" identified and face "legal penalties."

About 200,000 users of the Grokster and Kazaa file-sharing services received the warning notice on Tuesday and at least one million will be getting the message within a week, according to music industry officials.

The copyright infringement warnings, which were sent by the Recording Industry Association of America, on behalf of the major record labels, said in part:

"It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer. ...When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON'T STEAL MUSIC, either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a 'file-sharing' system like this. When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified."

The music industry's campaign for the hearts and minds of Internet song swappers comes four days after a federal judge threw an unexpected roadblock to its efforts to shut down song-swapping services in court.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson on Friday ruled that the Grokster and Morpheus services should not be shut down because they cannot control what is traded over their systems. Like a videocassette recorder, the software in question could be used for legitimate purposes as well as illicit ones, he said.

"We're expecting to send at least a million messages or more per week because these users are offering to distribute music on Kazaa or Grokster," said Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA.

Sherman described the move as an educational effort to inform users that offering copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks is illegal and that they face consequences when they participate in this illegal activity.

[Mister Magoo]

Talk about an exercise in futility. The RIAA is fighting a war that has been decided before it was even fought. Even if a specific statute was enacted criminalizing file-swapping, it would be unenforceable. The music industry will simply have to adopt new economic models.

[Paleo Conservative]

I bet they approve of wife swappers.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Is it just me or does the RIAA look like they are trying to squeeze water from a rock and like look like a bad guys as they are doing it.

[Poohbah]

Talk about an exercise in futility. The RIAA is fighting a war that has been decided before it was even fought. Even if a specific statute was enacted criminalizing file-swapping, it would be unenforceable. The music industry will simply have to adopt new economic models.

If owned an RIAA affiliate company, I'd leave that organization...after a while, no one would be swapping any of the songs in my catalog.

After the word gets around that pirating Poohbah Records material is a great way to get yourself arrested and convicted for swapping kiddie porn, the world would understand the high cost of "free."

[dennisw]

The RIAA will lose this battle and it's lackies will have to go out and get real jobs.

[martin_fierro]

The record industry opened a new front in its war against online piracy on Tuesday by surprising hundreds of thousands of Internet song swappers with an instant message warning that they could be "easily" identified and face "legal penalties."

I wonder if that act constitutes some sort of actionable trespass.

[Poohbah]

I wonder if that act constitutes some sort of actionable trespass.

You have to endorse an extremely twisted interpretation of the law to (a) make distribution of copyrighted material legal and (b) sending an instant message to someone illegal.

[canuck_conservative]

After this action, I assume the RIAA is preparing to have its website hacked relentlessly from here on.

[k2blader]

Bump.

[martin_fierro]

Do tell, Counselor.

[Poohbah]

Beware.

The RIAA may simply insert a Trojan into Kazaa and Grokster clients in revenge.

Imagine, one day, finding that all of those MP3s on your hard drive that you're illegally sharing out have been replaced by kiddie porn and email encrypted with your private key...said emails detailing your involvement with al-Qaeda operations...and a last email to the FBI, digitally signed by yourself, sending them some of your kiddie porn.

Kazaa and its ilk are for 100% Grade-A idiots. Read the Kazaa license carefully. You basically give Kazaa complete control over your computer--FAR more than you allegedly cede to Microsoft when you install and activate Windows XP.

[Poohbah]

Simple. Please explain how sending someone an instant message is actionable. However, distributing copyrighted material when you don't own the copyright IS illegal.

[Mister Magoo]

What most Kazaa & Morpheus users and fans tend to ignore is that the RIAA is, under current law, correct. By swapping files they might otherwise have purchased, they are getting something for nothing. This deprives the RIAA's constituents -- labels, songwriters and musicians all -- of the financial benefit they have come to expect.

But the RIAA, by attacking the most blatant symptom of its problem, is not solving the problem itself. Historically, distributors of creative property rebel against new technology that shifts their paradigms. Record labels once wanted reimbursement for allowing radio stations to broadcast their music. The film industry expected videocasette recorder sales to destroy movie-ticket sales.

[unixfox]

This message will be considered SPAM and most likely dumped before it is even read.

The genie is out of the bottle and refuses to go back in.

[battousai]

So RIAA in their eternal wisdom has decided to use... SPAM in their battle against "piracy".

They still don't get it....

STOP gouging your customers RIAA et al!

[LurkedLongEnough]

Warning to Song Swappers: "We are the RIAA. Ozzie bit the head off a dove for us. We have been ripping you off for years and will use every legal means necessary to continue to do so.

"Never mind that we only make CDs of artists that our friends love, and we lowball even them until they sue us for breach of contract. Never mind that we undercut the number of songs that you can buy on a legitimate CD so we can sell more CD's, and we bleed you dry on their price. Never mind that we split up popular songs across multiple CD's until they stop selling; then we issue 'Best Of' CD's that might be similar to ones you would make yourself.

"Never mind that we've been approached by several companies wanting to help migrate us to the online music paradigm. There is nothing to see here. Move along."

In short, the RIAA is kinda like, well, a pompous idiot.

[El Conservador]

I just have some words for them:

F*** RIAA!!!

Swapper of the world, unite!!!

[ARCADIA]

OK. So when do we start a counter suit charging The RIAA with producing and conspiracy to produce SPAM. I couldn't care less about people downloading this stuff, but I am not going to fund the tax dollars for a massive police effort to hunt down and prosecute millions of teenagers. If these idiots want to protect their property they can do so on their own dollar; not ours.

[Poohbah]

If you can have a copy of 100% fidelity for "free," there's no way that any distributor can compete with that price.

Methinks that when the RIAA "gets it," as the "information-wants-to-be-free" community keeps demanding, they'll stop lobbying Congress.

If the RIAA suddenly backs off, I would advise P2P users to deinstall the software soon as possible--because the RIAA will simply use extralegal means to get their way, and if you're stealing and fencing copyrighted material, you really can't go to the cops.

[martin_fierro]

Ah, OK. Just as I suspected.

You don't *have* any authority for your comment about text messenging.

Just an attitude.