The New York Times Recording Industry Is Accusing 532 People of Music Piracy
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"``Our campaign against illegal file sharers is not missing a beat,'' said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America. ``The message to illegal file sharers should be as clear as ever.''

"Although the lawsuits have generated a harsh response and bad publicity, recording industry officials said that by other measures the industry's tough approach was proving successful. By some measures, file trading on peer-to-peer networks has dropped, at least in the United States, while awareness that trading music violates the law ``has shot through the roof,'' said Mitch Bainwol, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association."

Wired News Did Big Music Really Sink the Pirates?

" The Recording Industry Association of America's lawsuits against online song swappers are aggressive, but do they work? Two widely cited surveys seemed to show that legal action, which began in September, was chilling file-sharing activity."

"Trouble is, those surveys provide a relatively narrow view of the file-swapping universe. BayTSP, a Silicon Valley watchdog that works for three of the major record labels, tracks the number of songs available for download worldwide. It sees just a 10% drop since July and also notes steady migration from older, virus-ridden programs like KaZaA to hipper peer-to-peer networks such as eDonkey and Bit Torrent -- which were absent from comScore's tally."

redux [09.10.03]
Wired News Schoolgirl Settles With RIAA

"Brianna Lahara won't be sharing music files anymore. Less than a day after the recording industry announced its lawsuits, the 12-year-old Manhattan schoolgirl and her mother settled their case for $2,000.

"I am sorry for what I have done," Brianna said in a statement released by the Recording Industry Association of America on Tuesday. "I love music and I don't want to hurt the artists I love.""

News.Com P2P group: We'll pay girl's RIAA bill

"A peer-to-peer group says it will cover costs for a 12-year-old New York girl who agreed to pay record labels $2,000 to settle a file-swapping lawsuit."

""We do not condone copyright infringement, but someone has to draw the line to call attention to a system that permits multinational corporations with phenomenal financial and political resources to strong-arm 12-year-olds and their families in public housing the way this sorry episode dramatizes," said Adam Eisgrau, the executive director of P2P United."

redux [08.19.03]
Wired News RIAA: We'll Spare the Small Fry

""RIAA is in no way targeting 'de minimis' users," wrote Cary Sherman, the group's president, in a letter the subcommittee released Monday. "RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted music.""

"Sherman said that in cases it brought last year against college students who were illegally distributing tens of thousands of songs, the RIAA settled cases for $12,500 to $17,000 each."

redux [08.11.03]
The New York Times Internet Providers Question Subpoenas to Stop File Swapping
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"Arguing that the record industry is trying to force its members to become the "police of the Internet," a group representing over 100 Internet service providers plans to deliver a letter to the industry's trade association today. The letter asks a series of pointed questions about plans to sue people suspected of illegally trading music files online.

""There has to be a better answer than litigation," the letter says."

The Register Did Loyola University Chicago lose its innocence to the RIAA?

"A U.S. law professor has exposed the feeble backbone of Loyola University Chicago - an institution that handed its students' names over to the pigopolist mob's subpoena machine without so much as a grumble. The precedent set by the university's nonchalance toward privacy bodes poorly for students should the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) get its way and place the children before a court of law.

""A school or university should consider carefully whether it wants to be co-opted into the law enforcement business," D'Amato wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times."

SFGate Download warning 101

"Next week, incoming students at UC Berkeley will receive more than just campus maps and classroom tours: They'll learn about the perils of sharing digital music and movies files online.

Specifically they'll be warned they can lose their Internet access or get slapped with a costly copyright infringement lawsuit if they aren't careful about uploading and downloading files using programs like Kazaa."

redux [07.28.03]
Time Downloader Dragnet

"Bob Barnes never dreamed that the long arm of the music industry would reach into his personal computer. Sure, the bus operator from Fresno, Calif., had used Napster to grab music files off the Internet. And when that file-swapping service was put out of business, he switched to its most popular successor, Kazaa. But he was careful not to leave a trace, transferring all his downloaded songs to separate discs. A visiting teenage grandson wasn't so careful, however, and last week Barnes, 50, was slapped with a subpoena from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It alleged that he had posted online -- for the world to steal -- digital copies of songs by Savage Garden, Marvin Gaye and the Eagles. "This is like shock and awe," says Barnes. "Blitz them until they submit."

Barnes may be a pirate, but he has plenty of company."

The New York Times Subpoenas Sent to File-Sharers Prompt Anger and Remorse
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"Those on alert include several college students, the parents of a 14-year-old boy in the Southwest, a 41-year-old Colorado health care worker and a Brooklyn woman who works in the fashion industry.

"They could have used some other way to inform people than scaring the bejiminy out of them," said a mother who received a copy of the subpoena last Wednesday, listing several songs that her 14-year-old son had made available for others to copy from his computer. "If someone had sent me a letter saying `this is wrong,' you can bet your sweet potatoes that would have gotten my attention. This just seems so drastic.""

SecurityFocus "Copying is Theft ..."

"As the war over P2P downloading heats up, and the record companies launch the novel marketing technique of suing their customers, I think it is an appropriate time to settle some of the pervasive myths about U.S. copyright law which fuel both sides of the debate."

redux [07.10.03]
BBC File swappers 'buy more music'

"The survey's findings oppose the music industry's long-standing argument that internet downloading is responsible for a slump in CD sales, with album sales falling 5% in the last year.

Market research company Music Programming Ltd (MPL) said 87% of its respondents who downloaded music admitted they bought albums after hearing tracks through the internet."

redux [06.25.03]
Wired News RIAA Threatens Orgy of Lawsuits

"A recording-industry trade group said Wednesday it plans to sue hundreds of individuals who illegally distribute copyright songs over the Internet, expanding its antipiracy fight into millions of homes."

""The RIAA, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to not only alienate their own customers but attempt to drive them into bankruptcy through litigation. So therefore they probably won't be able to afford to buy any music even if they want to," said Grokster President Wayne Rosso, who added he does not support copyright infringement."

redux [03.18.02]
Matt Haughey The future of music

"Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s."

"Given the ubiquity of mp3s among consumers, the continued rise in popularity of the format despite anything that's been put in place to stop them, and the millions of dollars being spent on mp3 encoding/decoding software and hardware, I no longer think the RIAA operates solely on fear. At this point, they're simply running on stupidity."

redux [05.02.00]
Infoworld Napster sends a message to music industry: 'Your customers aren't happy'

""The Recording Industry Association of America wants to educate consumers with the message, "Artists deserve to be compensated -- artists won't make music if they can't make money." I can only imagine the public service announcements with multimillionaire artists pleading for their right to a seventh Porsche in the driveway.

There's no rationalization for piracy; it is what it is. However, rampant music piracy online indicates that the music industry's distribution and pricing model is out of whack with what people want. The problem isn't the piracy; the problem is unhappy customers.

And the music industry had better do something about it. This is a dinosaur moment -- with the big rock looming overhead -- where the music industry needs to ask itself how it will adapt."