RIAA cracking down on file swappers

[Jonbo298]

File swappers, beware. The RIAA may sue you.

Yeah, yeah, you've heard this warning before, right?

Think again.

In a surprise announcement Wednesday, the Recording Industry Association of America issued its strongest warning yet to file swappers: It's watching who's downloading and uploading music online, and it's set to sue lawbreaking song swappers.

Tonight on "Tech Live," get the very latest on this story, including reaction from the industry, digital rights advocates, and song swappers.

'The law is clear'

According to an RIAA statement released Wednesday, the industry is ready to use lawsuits to stop people from illegally downloading music with file-swapping software such as KaZaA and Morpheus.

"The law is clear and the message to those who are distributing substantial quantities of music online should be equally clear -- this activity is illegal, you are not anonymous when you do it, and engaging in it can have real consequences," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in the prepared statement. "We'd much rather spend time making music then (sic) dealing with legal issues in courtrooms. But we cannot stand by while piracy takes a devastating toll on artists, musicians, songwriters, retailers, and everyone in the music industry."

The statement was endorsed by dozens of popular recording artists, including Sheryl Crow, The Dixie Chicks, Peter Gabriel, and Missy Elliot.

The RIAA says it's beginning to gather evidence in order to bring lawsuits to the doors of file swappers. Lawsuits could begin as soon as mid-August.

To gather evidence, the RIAA says it's using software to scan public directories available to any user of a P2P network. The software then downloads information on users who make files available to the P2P networks, recording data such as what file is being offered and when it was made available. The only way to ensure you're not a target of the RIAA is to disable your software's ability to trade files, or get rid of the software altogether.

Rep. Mary Bono (R-CA) recently founded the Intellectual Property Promotion and Piracy Prevention Caucus to address piracy concerns. Bono's name has also been named as a possible successor to Hilary Rosen, the RIAA's outgoing chief executive and top lobbyist.

Today on Capitol Hill, Bono responded to the RIAA's announcement by saying the government is committed to finding solutions based on what's best for all parties involved.

"We want to meet these growing needs and grow with the internet as it grows," she said, "but still protect private property and intellicutal property rights."

Using ISPs to target individuals

The RIAA will then identify users and contact them through subpoenas served to the users' Internet service providers.

This same tactic was used in the recent case that made it easier for the RIAA to go after individual downloaders. In the RIAA's case against Verizon, a federal appeals court ordered Verizon to hand over the names of four of its ISP customers pursued by the RIAA as illegal song swappers. Verizon has given the RIAA the customers' names, and the RIAA has sent the four song swappers cease and desist letters. Verizon is appealing the decision.

"Once we begin our evidence-gathering process, any individual computer user who continues to offer music illegally to millions of others will run the very real risk of facing legal action in the form of civil lawsuits that will cost violators thousands of dollars and potentially subject them to criminal prosecution," Sherman said in the statement.

The statement goes on to cite the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (PDF) as giving the RIAA permission to directly pursue song swappers.

The RIAA says it has worked with a number of companies to provide consumers plenty of legal opportunities to download good-quality music from the Internet.

http://www.techtv.com/news/news/stor...463091,00.html

Looks like they are finally serious this time around. But this won't affect me at all because of this thing called (in KaZaa) "Disable sharing of files with other KaZaa Media Desktop Users". Unless the RIAA has a way around it, which I doubt. But they have said they are going after people with large amounts of music files, and I'm not one with large amounts of files. I wonder what will happen if they find someone with hundreds of songs on their HD and they try to sue the person. Then the person countersues because he has the original CD's and uses the service sometimes because his CD's are scratched. I'd like to see the look on their faces when the RIAA hears that