This has gone too far- Grandads, roommates being sued over music downloading!

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Senator starts investigation into recording industry crackdown on music sharing
Star Tribune Washington Bureau Correspondent

Published August 1, 2003

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., launched a Senate investigation Thursday into the recording industry's tactics in cracking down on Internet file-swapping of copyrighted music.

Coleman, chairman of the Senate's Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, asked the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for details of 900 subpoenas it has obtained in federal courts. In a letter, he expressed concern that innocent people's rights may be violated in the industry's attempt to rein in what it contends is rampant on-line piracy costing recording companies billions of dollars.

While acknowledging the industry's legitimate concerns about copyright infringement, Coleman wrote: "As a former prosecutor, I know firsthand the power of a subpoena, and I am concerned about the potential for abuse in the current system."

The RIAA, which said its members produce 90 percent of the music recorded in the United States, began obtaining the subpoenas in June under authority granted by Congress in 1998. The subpoenas order Internet service providers to disclose information about their customers to the recording industry.

A landmark music industry suit shut down the popular song-swapping site Napster in 2000. Now, the RIAA is targeting users of so-called "peer-to-peer" file-sharing services that link individuals' computers directly without use of a central storage site. Because these hookups do not review what kinds of files their users are exchanging, they have avoided Napster-style suits.

In announcing the crackdown, RIAA President Cary Sherman said the industry "cannot stand by while piracy takes a devastating toll on artists, musicians, songwriters, retailers and everyone in the music industry."

The industry contends that as many as 5 million file-sharers are online at any time, but loosely organized defenders of file-swapping say those numbers are exaggerated. Kazaa, the largest of the file-trading services, said users have downloaded more than 230 million copies of its software, including 3.1 million in the last week.

In his letter to Sherman, Coleman said that although the RIAA pledged to sue only users who traffic in "substantial" numbers of copied music files, its "shotgun approach" has subpoenaed defendants for sharing as few as five songs.

"The RIAA subpoenas have snared unsuspecting grandparents whose grandchildren have used their personal computers [and] individuals whose roommates have shared their computers . . ., " Coleman wrote. "This barrage of RIAA subpoenas is creating such a backlog at the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia that the court has been forced to reassign clerks to process the paperwork.

"Surely it was not Congress' intent when it passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to short-circuit due process protections, relegate a U.S. District Court to providing 'rubber-stamp' subpoenas, enable the music industry to collect information about consumers with little or no restrictions, and place numerous average consumers at risk of bankruptcy," he said.

Coleman asked the RIAA to submit to his Governmental Affairs subcommittee by Aug. 14 copies of all of the subpoenas, disclose how it decides what users to target and describe how it protects innocent computer owners.

An RIAA spokesperson said its response will show the enforcement program to be "an appropriate and measured response to the problem of blatant copyright infringement."
 
zoney, i just heard about that last night on MPR. I'm not the biggest fan of Coleman in general, but it looks like he's got some things right. :yes:
 
sulawesigirl4 said:
zoney, i just heard about that last night on MPR. I'm not the biggest fan of Coleman in general, but it looks like he's got some things right. :yes:

:yes:
I will always have a place in my heart for Coleman (although, Wellstone would have been my choice...)!
 
Has anyone thought about cassette tapes? Or VCR's? I just recorded Friends through ER last night, and I certainly didn't get NBC's permission. Let's say I lend it to a friend who also missed it. Shouldn't I be in legal trouble? I always thought it was illegal to make money off of recorded material. If it's wrong to make unauthorized copies of something, then why in the world is it so darn easy to do so? Oh well...


And, as always, U2 rules.
 
something has to be done here... the recording industry is out of control. this whole thing really started picking up steam when lars and metallica started attacking napster... when it was fans sharing metallica tapes that really got their career started in the first place. it's completely out of control. i mean what's next? finger printing on CDs so that only the buyer can listen to them, making it impossiable to lend a friend a CD? that sounds silly but it's the same damn thing when you think about it. when will they stop? we need a boycott of ALL cd's from major lables. even with a new u2 cd comming out within probably a half year, i seriously doubt if i'm going to buy it. i'm so sick of this. they pump up the price of CDs, ever dropping them... major radio stations across the nation are owned by the same companies, who standardize their playlist so that you never get to hear anything new or rare anymore... and now they're suing their biggest fans. just f'ing wonderful. forget about the crappy music on the air... there's always been crappy music. but in the past we had an option on the radio. now it's the same crappy songs on each station. i turned on the radio the other day and the same friggin j-lo song was on 3 different stations. mp3's were our only other option... and now they're trying to end that. i'm not making money off of the mp3s i have... i rarely share them with anyone except for maybe family members and a couple of close friends. i make no money off of downloading mp3s. in fact i've SPENT money on CD-R's, portable mp3 players, an mp3 stereo for my car, etc. etc. and who makes all these things? the same company's that make the music the RIAA is trying to protect. it's the biggest oxy-moron in the world. we're going to give you all these products to buy that encourages and embraces mp3 technology... but we're going to sue you if you embrace mp3 technology yourself. unbelievable.
 
Buy CD's cheap. That way you have the music, the artist gets the money and the RIAA can't complain that the # of CD's sold has gone down.
 
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