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A federal jury found Wednesday that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, of Brainerd, must pay $62,500 per song — for a total of $1.5 million — for illegally violating copyrights on 24 songs. This was the third jury to consider damages in her case, and each has found that she must pay — though different amounts. And after each time, the single mother of four has said she can't pay. "I can't afford to pay any amount. It's not a matter of won't, it's a matter of 'I can't,'" Thomas-Rasset said Thursday. "Any amount that I pay to them is money that I...

Of all the songs Whitney Harper of San Antonio downloaded from online file-sharing networks, the one that could best sum up the college student's situation now is Hanson's “Save Me.” A federal appeals court that covers Texas has ruled the 22-year-old must pay a total of $27,750 to five music companies for 37 copyrighted songs she accessed through Kazaa and similar sites when she was a teenager. Last week's opinion by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower ruling that awarded the five recording companies $200 for each of the songs. The appeals...

MINNEAPOLIS — A replay of the nation's only file-sharing case to go to trial has ended with the same result — a Minnesota woman was found to have violated music copyrights and must pay huge damages to the recording industry

Louise: "No these are not my songs." They are however downloaded right onto her computer. Louise:"I was embarrassed when they gave me a print out of these songs." She got this printout because of lawyers. She also got this letter telling her she was being sued for copyright infringement.Parents, there are other popular file sharing programs you need to know about: Morpheus: morpheus.com Kazaa: www.kazaa.com Bearshare: www.bearshare.com Limewire: www.limewire.com Louise: "I was in shock..I was stunned." The letter is part of a music industry crackdown.Singers, songwriters and music companies tired of people downloading and burning copies of music without paying....

WHITE PLAINS, New York - It was Easter Sunday, and Patricia Santangelo was in church with her kids when she says the music recording industry peeked into her computer and decided to take her to court. Santangelo says she has never downloaded a single song on her computer, but the industry didn't see it that way. The woman from Wappingers Falls, about 80 miles north of New York City, is among the more than 16,000 people who have been sued for allegedly pirating music through file-sharing computer networks. "I assumed that when I explained to them who I was and...

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - A court ruled Monday that popular file-swapping network Kazaa breaches copyright in Australia and gave the service's owners two months to modify their Web site to prevent further piracy by its millions of users. Although the ruling is only enforceable in Australia, the record industry hailed it as a victory that would resonate around the world. "The court has ruled the current Kazaa system illegal. If they want to continue, they are going to have to stop the trade in illegal music on that system," record industry spokesman Michael Speck said outside the court. "It's a...

Company claims ability to wipe out file-sharing Music, movie sharing doomed, say Finns By : Monday 18 April 2005, 12:13 A FINNISH COMPANY, Viralg Oy, says it can wipe out file-sharing in an instant. The company says it has developed digital rights protection software that can be incorporated into digital movie, music or software releases and set to play havoc with P2P networks on which releases may appear. Viralg says it has a "virtual algorithm" which is capable of, "mixing together files in P2P networks in a way that the illegal downloader will end up downloading useless garbage instead of...

Jan. 19, 2005 Justice Dept. gains first P2P piracy convictions By Brooks BoliekWASHINGTON -- The Justice Department on Tuesday notched its first-ever convictions for copyright piracy perpetrated on P2P networks as two suspects nabbed by the G-men in the department's "Operation Digital Gridlock" pleaded guilty to felony intellectual property crimes. William Trowbridge, 50, of Johnson City, N.Y., and Michael Chicoine, 47, of San Antonio each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit felony criminal copyright infringement before Judge Paul Friedman in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The men made available millions of dollars worth...

Hey, people!!! We just bought a new PC (a cheap-ass Compaq Presario, but it's good enough for us basic users). I'd like to install music downloading software like Kazaa or sumthin' like that, but I don't want to plague the new machine with spyware that took the life of Ol' Sparky (the previous computer). What can you recommend to avoid spyware, and, in general, keep the computer healthy. Thanks for the anwsers you could provide me!!!

If you own a movie or record copyright, and someone else "induces" people to start infringing it, should you be able to sue the inducer? Senator Orrin Hatch thinks so, and it's possible his bad idea could become bad law. Granted, he's trying to address a real copyright problem. Music labels and movie studios are playing a frustrating game of whack-a-mole, with new Internet file-sharing networks popping up faster than the recording industry can protest. The newest networks, including KaZaa and Morpheus, are run as for-profit piracy havens but have found ways to skirt copyright laws. They display advertising on...

<p>TUCSON - A federal judge has ruled that the recording industry can force the University of Arizona to identify four people accused of using its computers to violate copyright law by downloading music.</p> <p>Federal Magistrate Jacqueline Marshall signed the order allowing recording companies to subpoena the university to provide the names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses for four defendants referred to in the lawsuit.</p>

A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says online music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales. For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they wrote.

<p>SYDNEY -- The makers of Kazaa, the peer-to-peer file sharing software, failed to quash a court order Thursday that allowed the music industry to raid its Sydney-based offices, prompting a furious response from its chief executive.</p> <p>In February, the music industry was granted an Anton Piller order, which grants copyright holders the rights of search and seizure, allowing it to raid 12 sites across Australia to seize documents and data. Sites raided included the offices of Sharman Networks, the home of its chief executive, several universities and other companies that were believed to be holding information relating to Kazaa.</p>

The folks who brought you Kazaa have a new hit called Skype—and a plan to set phone calls free. If the telcos want to fight back, they'll have to find them first. Near the center of the walled medieval district of Estonia's capital, Tallinn, sits the NoKu bar. It's almost impossible to find, on a cobblestone street behind a pair of old, unmarked wooden doors that unlock only with a magnetic keycard, and up a set of rickety stairs. In Estonian, "NoKu" is an acronym for "young culture"; the private club is full of twentysomethings in jeans, drinking local Saku...

Recipient Information:Customer Support, DMCA ComplaintsGoogle Inc.Mountain View, CA, 94043, USA Sent via: Federal Express Re: NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENTLadies and Gentlemen: We act on behalf of Sharman Networks, Ltd. (the "Owner"). As required under Sections 512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §§512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3)), we are instructed to place you on notice that: 1. The Owner is the exclusive owner of the copyrights in and to the Kazaa Media Desktop software (the "KMD"); and 2. Utilizing the search query, "kazaa," at www.google.com, the following search results (the "Infringing Material") contain unauthorized copies of the KMD...

AMSTERDAM/LONDON (Reuters) - The Dutch supreme court on Friday threw out an attempt by a music copyright agency to put controls on popular Internet file-swapping software system Kazaa, a ruling the music industry attacked as flawed. The decision is a fresh blow to the media industry, which has fought to shut down file-sharing networks they say have created a massive black-market trade in free music, films and video games on the Internet. "The victory by Kazaa creates an important precedent for the legality of peer-to-peer software, both in the European Union as elsewhere," Kazaa's lawyers Bird & Bird said in...

Hollywood Takes Anti-Piracy Message to School By Ron Harris Associated Press Writer Published: Oct 23, 2003 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - As part of its campaign to thwart online music and movie piracy, Hollywood is now reaching into school classrooms with a program that denounces file-sharing and offers prizes for students and teachers who spread the word about Internet theft. The Motion Picture Association of America paid $100,000 to deliver its anti-piracy message to 900,000 students nationwide in grades 5-9 over the next two years, according to Junior Achievement Inc., which is implementing the program using volunteer teachers from the business...

<p>LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Turning the tables on record labels, makers of the most popular Internet song-swapping network are suing entertainment companies for copyright infringement.</p> <p>Sharman Networks Ltd., the company behind the Kazaa file-sharing software, filed a federal lawsuit Monday accusing the entertainment companies of using unauthorized versions of its software in their efforts to root out users. Entertainment companies have offered bogus versions of copyright works and sent online messages to users.</p>

Sarah Ward was stunned when the record industry sued her for being a music pirate. Mrs. Ward, a 66-year-old sculptor and retired schoolteacher, received notice on Sept. 11 from the Recording Industry Association of America that she was being accused of engaging in millions of dollars worth of copyright infringement, downloading thousands of songs and sharing them with the world through a popular file-sharing program called KaZaA. Mrs. Ward was deeply confused by the accusations, which have disrupted her gentle life in the suburbs of Boston. She does not trade music, she says, does not have any younger music-loving relatives...

The recording industry has withdrawn a lawsuit against a Newbury woman because it falsely accused her of illegally sharing music -- possibly the first case of mistaken identity in the battle against Internet file-traders.... The lawsuit claimed that Ward had illegally shared more than 2,000 songs through Kazaa and threatened to hold her liable for up to $150,000 for each song. The plaintiffs were Sony Music, BMG, Virgin, Interscope, Atlantic, Warner Brothers, and Arista. Among the songs she was accused of sharing: "I'm a Thug," by the rapper Trick Daddy. But Ward, 66, is a "computer neophyte" who never installed...