This is sad and pathetic - Dallas-Mavs.com Forums

Nash13 · 09-09-2003, 04:57 PM

Sued for a song
Tue Sep 9, 7:08 AM ET Add Local - New York Daily News to My Yahoo!

By SONI SANGHA and PHYLLIS FURMAN
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

A shy Manhattan schoolgirl who gets a kick out of nursery songs and TV themes was among 261 people sued yesterday for downloading music from the Internet.

Brianna LaHara, a curly-haired 12-year-old honor student who started seventh grade yesterday at St. Gregory the Great Catholic school on W. 90th St., couldn't believe she's one of the "major offenders" the music moguls are after.

"Oh, my God, what's going to happen now?" she asked after hearing of the suit. "My stomach is all in knots."

Told she may have to go to court, Brianna's eyes widened behind wire-rimmed glasses and she said, "I'm just shocked that of all the people that do this, I'm on the list."

The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) said the suits filed yesterday included about 60 that targeted suspects in New York who downloaded more than 1,000 songs.

The group blames computer users such as Brianna, who use software programs to trade music with others on the Internet, for a 30% drop in music sales.

Each person sued yesterday could be liable for fines up to $150,000 for each poached track.

'Appropriate action'

Experts had predicted a large number of the suits likely would name youngsters.

"Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation, but when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action," said Carey Sherman, president of the recording association.

Sherman warned that the group may file thousands more lawsuits against people who use programs like KaZaA, Grokster, Gnutella (news - web sites), Blubster and iMesh.

Brianna's mother, Sylvia, 40, director of a nurse placement agency, said her daughter was helping her 9-year-old brother with his homework when the Daily News arrived at their apartment on W. 84th St. with word about the suit.

"For crying out loud, she's just a child," the mother said. "This isn't like those people who say, 'My son is a good boy,' and he's holding a bloody knife. All we did was use a service."

The mother said she signed up for KaZaA, paying a $29.95 fee. "If you're paying for it, you're not stealing it, so what is this all about?" she asked.

She said Brianna downloaded music by Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey, along with the themes to television shows like "Family Matters" and "Full House" - and even the nursery song, "If You're Happy and You Know It."

"That's really threatening to the music industry," she scoffed.

"If this was something we were profiting from, that's one thing. But we were just listening and sometimes dancing to the music," said the mother.

She vowed to get a lawyer to fight the suit, which she termed "ridiculous." With Robert Gearty Originally published on September 9, 2003

RIAA, while i agree with what they are trying to do, which btw i hope they don't get me, but it's ridiculous to sue a 12yr old girl for download Tv show themes and nursery songs.

Dooby · 09-09-2003, 05:06 PM

Do you really think she just downloaded a few songs? No, she probably downloaded hundreds and her mom probably did the same. after all, the mother paid for the service. I bet she has hundreds of Dooby Brothers songs on her Ipod.

Psychedelic Fuzz · 09-09-2003, 05:09 PM

How many times will this happen until people realize they should stop keeping tons and tons of files in the shared folder(s). If you only keep a few, you're inconspicuous, and if you rotate those files with ones you're not sharing every so often, everyone wins.

Uhhh...I mean, stealing is bad.

MavsFanatik33 · 09-10-2003, 08:44 PM

No that I've never done it, but I really do think stealing music is wrong. It can be okay if it's a compilation cd with different artists, but if you steal a cd, that just doesn't seem right to me. Think if you were an artist trying to make sales. Yeah, that do make a lot....but save the music!

Mandyahl · 09-10-2003, 08:53 PM

i may be in the minority here, but i actually think i buy more cds because of sevices like napster and kazaa because i find out about random groups that i probably wouldn't have otherwise. i have never, and i never will, download a whole cd...just go out and buy it if you like it that much. i honestly don't download that much stuff...the one time i downloaded a whole bunch of songs that i knew i had no intention of actually buying was when i made a mavericks mix cd with all the songs they play at the aac during the games. i honestly don't really feel bad about doing it either...i mean, i guess it is stealing technically, but it's not like i could have bought that cd anywhere, and i wasn't about to buy 20 cds to get one song off of each. it's just so easy to do that it really doesn't feel like stealing, and i really do buy several overpriced cds a year, so i don't feel guilty when i do download the thunder song and sit at my computer thinking about how i wish the season would start already!

MavKikiNYC · 09-10-2003, 09:22 PM

WHO PAYS FOR KaZaA?

Recording industry execs are a bunch of dinosaurs, with disproportionately small brains. Instead of finding a way to use the technology to their advantage, they come up with the brilliant PR fiasco of prosectuing minors.

File swapping is no more stealing than using a photocopier to copy passages out of a library book; no more stealing than videotaping Sex in the City and passing it on to your friend; no more stealing than taping songs off the radio and converting it into a party tape--all of which have been done for years.

These pin-headed hypocrites will be hoisted on their own petards. I haven't bought any CDs this year, nor do I plan to, thank you--I have everything I need already, all on legally purchased CDs. Besides, the best Beethoven recordings have already been made, and the classical offerings on p2p are pretty thin.

veruca salt · 09-10-2003, 09:36 PM

Mandy i'm with you. I bought lots of CDs anyway..but i definitely buy more.
I also use it to download things that are rare....that i can't find for love nor money.
But as the Fuzz said....just get it off your putie [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

I'm not overly concerned about stealing..anyone know how much it costs the record
companies to produce a CD? They've been robbing us blind for quite sometime now.

MavKikiNYC · 09-10-2003, 09:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by: veruca salt
Mandy i'm with you. I bought lots of CDs anyway..but i definitely buy more.
I also use it to download things that are rare....that i can't find for love nor money.
But as the Fuzz said....just get it off your putie [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

I'm not overly concerned about stealing..anyone know how much it costs the record
companies to produce a CD? They've been robbing us blind for quite sometime now.

And ripping off the 'artists' for even longer.

veruca salt · 09-10-2003, 10:33 PM

yeah...this is true..though i don't really believe in the arguement i made
i just made it for the sake of it...well actually no, i do believe in the arguement
i made...but i'm not trying to use it as a justification for downloading stuff.
I download it because I want to...really...

FilthyFinMavs · 09-10-2003, 10:42 PM

I have a cd burner and buy cds on a regular basis. Its clear what the RIAA is doing. they are going after the people with the most music shared. Common sense should tell you to either delete some of your songs or don't share some of them or don't download at all I guess. I don't knwo what the RIAA is trying to do here but this doesn't make me want to buy any more records than I currently do. Bootlegging will always be here. If people are not downloading songs they are buying it from people on the corner. RIAA will never stop this free music situation they have so they should just go with it. Did anyone here about cds are now costing 9.99? Thats a start I guess.

Just211 · 09-10-2003, 10:56 PM

i agree with mandyall. there are some Cd's that i've bought, that i would have never bought before these sites. They open you up to more choices.
and maybe, just maybe, sales are down because the radio stations and TV only play about 12 bands, just shoving them down your throat. And most of the time these record companies ruin any band you like(with over producing them) by the time they release their second CD.

seelenjaeger · 09-11-2003, 05:05 AM

All this hype about "the Music Industry losing Billions of money" is crap.

If I do hear a song on a Movie and I just fall in love with it - would I really go that far and buy the CD? Now if I find this song somewhere in the Sharing Fields, wouldn´t I get far more interested in the Artist than I was before?

It´s like the big Tobacco unions telling people over and over again that smoking wouldn´t cause cancer just for keeping the image alive. Sure, Kazaa is ruining the poor poor Artists, robbing their money ... Of course, it isn´t the Music Industy itself by paying Lawyers to sue kids ...

Usually Lurkin · 09-11-2003, 06:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by: MavKikiNYC
WHO PAYS FOR KaZaA?

Recording industry execs are a bunch of dinosaurs, with disproportionately small brains. Instead of finding a way to use the technology to their advantage, they come up with the brilliant PR fiasco of prosectuing minors.

File swapping is no more stealing than using a photocopier to copy passages out of a library book; no more stealing than videotaping Sex in the City and passing it on to your friend; no more stealing than taping songs off the radio and converting it into a party tape--all of which have been done for years.

These pin-headed hypocrites will be hoisted on their own petards. I haven't bought any CDs this year, nor do I plan to, thank you--I have everything I need already, all on legally purchased CDs. Besides, the best Beethoven recordings have already been made, and the classical offerings on p2p are pretty thin.

All this is true, but it doesn't mean that copying songs is not stealing. It's my understanding, too, that under these services, you can't control whether or not your computer becomes a distributor.
If you're photocopying tons of articles and books at the library, and/or distributing copies to anyone who asks, you might be in violation of copyright laws.

All this stuff about the record companies charging too much for their cds is crap.
If something is too expensive, that's not an excuse to steal it.

No doubt, the pin-headed dinosaurs have had a bad plan for dealing with new technology, and are compounding matters with the law-suit. But stealing thousands of songs is wrong. And paying somebody like KaZaA to steal for you is also wrong, and anybody doing it should know it's wrong.

MavKikiNYC · 09-11-2003, 08:05 AM

As usual, lack of information leads to lack of analysis.

1) KaZaA is free. If this woman is paying $29.95 she's getting ripped off.

2) No, users CAN control whether or not they share files or not, although the default setting is for file sharing.

Quote:

f you're photocopying tons of articles and books at the library, and/or distributing copies to anyone who asks, you might be in violation of copyright laws.

3) Doesn't matter whether it's one article or a thousand. The notion of 'stealing' doesn't depend on quantity. If you lift a buck out of the company coffee jar (even if you intend to pay it back later), it's stealing just as sure as if your name were Andrew Fastow. <RUN: irony.exe>

Of course, it's simplistic to drone that stealing is stealing and users should know better. By that logic, it's stealing whenever someone posts an article on this forum from a pay service and other users read it--guilty sinners one and all. While the technology and format of the information sharing is slightly different, the principle is indistinguishable. Of course, no one is rushing over to PayPal to send royalty pennies to ESPN, or the WSJ, or any other for-pay outlet. Is it similarly stealing to post pictures from other sources on a message board? Without a royalty? Is it plagiarism to cite information with out citing the source? Is it stealing to post information from a site that requires user registration but doesn't charge a fee? The 'fee' those entities charge is 'user data'. If you read a copy of that information without having provided 'user data', are you stealing? By the stealing-is-stealing argument, yes.

If those entities want tighter controls of the "sharing" of their product, they will find a way to limit its replicability. Obviously they understand there are benefits to be dervied from making their product available to a wider audience, and they've figured out that the benefits of exposure offset and outweigh the cost of a lost 'royalty'.

veruca salt · 09-11-2003, 08:20 AM

Well said Kiki.

No one can tell me it's a coincidence that the most recent Eminem
album, which was supposedly kept under lock & key suddenly was 'leaked
ónto the net..causing a hugely covered record company uproar.
Then album was then released a week early and went on to sell
record breaking numbers in its 1st week...
OK, call me cynical, but you tell me how a record company gets better
publicity for an upcoming release than that.

The bands that complain about loss of income are the bands that
make million from record sales anyway (your Metallicas, your Eminems)
I know a lot of people in bands who think it's the best way to get
their music out there...as someone else already mentioned in this thread, it's
not like radio airplay is easy to come by these days.

Usually Lurkin · 09-11-2003, 09:12 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by: MavKikiNYC
As usual, lack of information leads to lack of analysis.

If this is a personal statement, you've got some weird ego issues.

Quote:

1) KaZaA is free. If this woman is paying $29.95 she's getting ripped off.

Yes, that would make her dumb. Dumb for paying for stolen property. Dumb, too, for paying for it when she could get it for free.

Quote:

2) No, users CAN control whether or not they share files or not, although the default setting is for file sharing.

Ok. It was just a description I heard from someone else. Can they control whether or not their computer becomes a "group leader" that holds the directory listing? I can imagine someone making the argument that that might be distribution.

Quote:

3) Doesn't matter whether it's one article or a thousand. The notion of 'stealing' doesn't depend on quantity. If you lift a buck out of the company coffee jar (even if you intend to pay it back later), it's stealing just as sure as if your name were Andrew Fastow. <RUN: irony.exe>

yes it does matter. And it matters what kind of copyright the material has. It matters very much according the the fair use policies that are in place at most libraries, and are adopted by publishers. And remember, the libraries paid for the material before they made it available. If you take the book or journal to a photocopy place, you may have to pay extra fees due to copyright laws. The file-share users don't pay for the material at all or didn't pay the copyright fees before receiving or distributing copies. And the libraries I've been in won't let people make copies of what's in their music collections.

Quote:

Of course, it's simplistic to drone that stealing is stealing and users should know better. . . .

Obviously the new technologies blur some lines concerning intellectual property. But there have always been lines drawn. As far as I know, making a mental picture of something has never been considered copyright infringement. The broadcasters of professional sports, though, always make the statement that copying and broadcasting their programs is illegal. The same kind of warning appears at the beginning of movies on video. I assume they can make these statements because it is indeed illegal to copy and broadcast the material. The P2P networks are closer to copying and distributing copyrighted video than they are to taking mental pictures.

Quote:

If those entities want tighter controls of the "sharing" of their product, they will find a way to limit its replicability. Obviously they understand there are benefits to be dervied from making their product available to a wider audience, and they've figured out that the benefits of exposure offset and outweigh the cost of a lost 'royalty'.

An interesting (and deliciously cynical) point. Maybe a governmental conspiricy is in on it.

MavKikiNYC · 09-19-2003, 10:28 PM

Music File Sharers Keep Sharing
By AMY HARMON with JOHN SCHWARTZ

Despite the lawsuits filed last week against 261 people accused of illicitly distributing music over the Internet, millions of others continue to copy and share songs without paying for them.

Last week, more than four million Americans used KaZaA, the most popular file-sharing software, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, only about 5 percent fewer than the week before the record industry's lawsuits became big news. One smaller service, iMesh, even experienced a slight uptick in users.

The sweeping legal campaign appears to be educating some file swappers who did not think they were breaking the law and scaring some of those who did. But the barrage of lawsuits has also highlighted a stark break between the legal status of file sharing in the United States and the apparent cultural consensus on its morality.

In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted this week, only 36 percent of those responding said file swapping was never acceptable. That helps explain why the pop radio hit "Right Thurr," by Chingy, was available to download free from 3.5 million American personal computers last week, while two million file swappers in the United States shared songs from rock icons like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, according to the tracking company Big Champagne.

The persistent lack of guilt over online copying suggests that the record industry's antipiracy campaign, billed as a last-ditch effort to reverse a protracted sales slump, is only the beginning of the difficult process of persuading large numbers of people to buy music again.

Mitch Bainwol, the new chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, which brought the suits, said in an interview that the group had succeeded in communicating that file sharing is illegal and would have consequences. But he acknowledged that shifting attitudes would be the next battle in what he conceded was more an effort to contain file swapping than to wipe it out.

"It's a two-step process," he said. "I don't think anyone has an expectation that file-sharing becomes extinct. What we're trying to drive for is an environment in which legitimate online music can flourish."

The record industry argues that sharing songs online is just like stealing a CD from a record store. But to many Americans, file sharing seems more like taping a song off a radio. The truth, copyright experts say, may lie somewhere between.

And instead of significantly damping enthusiasm for file sharing, the record industry's lawsuits appear to be spurring increasingly sharp debates about how the balance between the rights of copyright holders and those of copyright users should be redefined for a digital age.

"Law, technology and ethics are not in sync right now," said Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican who has called a hearing on the subject for later this month. "I presume these lawsuits are having some impact, but they're not solving the problem."

Soli Shin of Manhattan is not waiting for lawmakers to act. She gave some thought to the ethics of file sharing after hearing of the lawsuits and took her own library of 1,094 songs offline, because she knew they were aimed at people who "share" their music files with others. But she saw no reason to stop getting new music for herself.

"It's really a great convenience," Ms. Shin, 13, said. "If I like what I download maybe I'll buy it."

According to The Times/CBS News poll, adults under 30 are more inclined to consider music sharing over the Internet to be acceptable: 29 percent of them say the practice is acceptable at all times, compared with 9 percent of people older than that.

But the file-sharing trend, which includes many school-age people, has spread across nearly every demographic group, with 27 percent of Internet users between the ages of 30 and 49 involved, according to a survey released in July by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Even 12 percent of those over the age of 50 participate in file sharing, the survey found.

Pew also found that among the 35 million adults that its survey indicated download music, 23 million said they did not much care about the copyright on the files they copied onto their computers. Among the 26 million who made files available for others to copy, 17 million did not care much about whether they were copyrighted.

In interviews last week, many file swappers said they were more wary of copying music since the wave of lawsuits was announced. But there was a strong current of defiance, even among those who said they had stopped.

Dr. Steve Vaughan, 35, a Manhattan physician who said he had downloaded about 2,000 songs over the Internet in recent years, said he stopped only because of the "fear factor" after hearing about the lawsuits. He said he might try one of the new legal online music services, though he doubted it would enable him to sample as wide a range of jazz, blues and folk to help him decide what to buy on CD.

Those options may be expanding. In addition to Apple Computer's iTunes and a new legal service called BuyMusic that recently began selling songs online for 99 cents, several competing online music stores are set to open this fall.

"If they give me a full selection, and I could sample what I want and it was well organized, I would love that," Dr. Vaughan said. "I'm not doing this to save money. I'm doing this because the music industry doesn't give me what I want."

At the root of the resistance for many — besides a perhaps decisive fondness for getting things free — is a complaint that the record industry is trying to take away the ability to make copies of music to use personally and to share with friends — a practice that Americans have long enjoyed.

Added to that is a deep-seated resentment of the big record labels, which music fans variously accuse of pricing CD's too high and producing too much bad music.

But Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of communications studies at New York University, said he told his students that distaste for record company practices was not a justification for making unauthorized copies of their music.

"If everyone would cool down the rhetoric we might actually have some helpful discussions," Professor Vaidhyanathan said.

"It would be nice to stop demonizing people who think they're doing reasonable legitimate things in their homes and stop demonizing people who are trying to make a living and recoup an investment," he added.

Society, Mr. Vaidhyanathan added, has to reconcile the desire to make personal copies with the new ability to make millions of perfect copies with the click of a mouse. "Suddenly we have this powerful copying technology in our own homes, and we haven't confronted exactly what it means."

The largest number of respondents to The Times/CBS News poll, 44 percent, said sharing music files over the Internet was sometimes acceptable, if a person shared music from a purchased CD with a limited number of friends or acquaintances. Conducted by telephone on Monday and Tuesday this week among 675 adults, the margin of sampling error in the poll was plus or minus four percentage points.

Lorraine Sullivan, a student at Hunter College in New York, paid $2,500 to the record industry association earlier this week to settle the lawsuit it filed against her. But she said she still saw nothing wrong with her use of file-sharing software. She downloaded Madonna songs that she already had on CD, for instance, so that she could have them on her computer and not have to change CD's while she cleaned her apartment.

"I still feel that if you use downloading to sample a CD or a song and you go buy the CD, it's O.K.," said Ms. Sullivan, who has set up her own Web site asking for donations to help pay her fine.

Fear of being sued or fined can help shape a new moral sensibility — as happened with sexual harassment laws, seat belt requirements and no- smoking laws — despite considerable initial public skepticism. Some legal experts and ethicists say the music industry's enforcement of copyright law against Internet file sharers may eventually catalyze a similar change in attitudes.

But many experts argue that legal prohibition alone is rarely effective in getting people to behave differently if it runs counter to strong societal beliefs.

"When efforts to ban behavior fail, like with the Prohibition, they may need to be changed," said Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University in Washington.

Several legislators, including Senator Coleman, have called for a re-examination of the notion of "personal copying." Some critics have have suggested that Congress could force the record companies to license their material and find a way to tax Internet users to pay them, essentially legalizing file sharing.

The number of Americans using KaZaA, the leading file-sharing software, from home has dropped about 15 percent since late June, when the record industry announced its plans to sue suspected copyright violators, Nielsen/NetRatings said.

"This slide down over a short period of time coincides with the record industry's effort to lower the boom on its users," said Greg Bloom, a senior analyst with Nielsen. "But there are still a lot of people using these services."

Software like KaZaA, Morpheus, Grokster and iMesh lets Internet users find and retrieve files on one another's computers, rather than from a central Web site. To "share" songs on peer-to-peer networks, users put them into a folder on their computer that they open to others. Others searching for those titles can then download copies onto their PC's.

"The record industry needs to win back the hearts and minds of record buyers, because they can't win a technology war," said Eric Garland, Big Champagne's chief executive.

Meanwhile, many recalcitrant file swappers are simply sizing up the odds: "How many people are they suing?" asked Carlo Lutz, 13, a Bronx High School of Science student, who was listening to rap music he had uploaded to his MP3 player on the subway last Thursday.

"There are millions of us," he added. "It's only a drop in the bucket."

Chiwas · 09-20-2003, 01:19 PM

NYTimes

Students Shall Not Download. Yeah, Sure.
By KATE ZERNIKE

TATE COLLEGE, Pa., Sept. 17 — In the rough and tumble of the student union here at Pennsylvania State University, the moral code is purely pragmatic.

Thou shalt not smoke — it will kill you.

Thou shalt not lift a term paper off the Internet — it will get you kicked out.

Thou shalt not use a fake ID — it will get you arrested

And when it comes to downloading music or movies off the Internet, students here compare it with under-age drinking: illegal, but not immoral. Like alcohol and parties, the Internet is easily accessible. Why not download, or drink, when "everyone" does it?

This set of commandments has helped make people between the ages of 18 and 29, and college students in particular, the biggest downloaders of Internet music.

"It's not something you feel guilty about doing," said Dan Langlitz, 20, a junior here. "You don't get the feeling it's illegal because it's so easy." He held an MP3 player in his hand. "They sell these things, the sites are there. Why is it illegal?"

Students say they have had the Internet for as long as they can remember, and have grown up thinking of it as theirs for the taking.

The array of services available to them on campus has only encouraged that sense.

Penn State recently made the student center, known as the Hub, entirely wireless, so students do not even have to dial up to get on the Internet. In comfortable armchairs, they sit clicking on Google searches, their ears attached to iPods, cellphones a hand away. A swipe of a student ID gets them three free newspapers. They do not need cash — only a swipe card, the cost included in their student fees — to buy anything from a caramel caffè latte to tamale pie at an abundance of fast food counters. There is a bank branch and a travel agency, and a daily activities board lists a Nascar simulator as well as rumba lessons.

Many courses put all materials — textbook excerpts, articles, syllabuses — online. Residence halls offer fast broadband access — which studies say makes people more likely to download.

"It kind of spoils us, in a sense, because you get used to it," said Jill Wilson, 20, a sophomore.

The ease of going online has shaped not only attitudes about downloading, but cheating as well, blurring the lines between right and wrong so much that many colleges now require orientation courses that give students specific examples of what plagiarism looks like. Students generally know not to buy a paper off the Internet, but many think it is O.K. to pull a paragraph or two, as long as they change a few words.

"Before, when you had to go into the library and at least type it in to your paper, you were pretty conscious about what you were doing," said Janis Jacobs, vice-provost for undergraduate education here. "That means we do have to educate students about what is O.K. It's the same whether you're talking about plagiarizing a phrase from a book or article or downloading music — it all seems free to them."

Last year and again last week, the university sent out an e-mail message reminding students that downloading copyrighted music was illegal, and pleading with them to "resist the urge" to download. It also warned students that it had begun monitoring how much information students are downloading, and that they could lose their Internet access if their weekly use exceeded a limit administrators described as equivalent to tens of thousands of e-mail messages sent.

This year, all students had to take an online tutorial before receiving access to their e-mail accounts, acknowledging that they had read and agreed to university policy prohibiting the downloading of copyrighted material.

At the same time, realizing the difficulties of stopping downloading, Penn State's president, Graham B. Spanier, is hoping to try out a program this spring where the university would pay for the rights to music, and then allow students to download at will.

To students, the crackdown seemed like a sudden reversal.

"Up until recently, we were not told it was wrong," said Kristin Ebert, 19. "We think if it's available, you can use it. It's another resource."