Friday, October 5, 2007

Record companies sue single mom for illegal file-sharing--and win (and other thoughts on P2P)

Is this the beginning of the end of file-sharing? Last Thursday, record companies Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc. won a lawsuit against a 30-year-old single mom Jammie Thomas, from Minessotta for illegal file-sharing of copyrighted music files through Kazaa. Read the rest of the article here.

The ruling is significant because “It was the first time one of the industry's lawsuits against individual downloaders had gone to trial. Many other defendants have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars, but Thomas decided she would take them on and maintained she had done nothing wrong.”

“The record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn't have a Kazaa account.

“Since 2003, record companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits over file-sharing, which has hurt sales because it allows people to get music for free instead of paying for recordings in stores.

“Thomas was ordered to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs in all.”

So that’s $222,000 all in all. Ouch. Since the days of Napster, which began back in 1999, the record industry had been waging legal wars against P2P file sharing networks. At first, the targets of their wrath were the P2P software developers and file-sharing administrators, hoping to nip the problem in the bud. That didn’t go so well. The latest US Supreme Court decision on P2P, namely the 2005 case of MGM v. Grokster, held, “[O]ne who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.” The ruling implies that, as long as P2P software developers and network administrators do not “take affirmative steps to foster infringement” or, in other words, actively foster online piracy, then they are okay. Thus, P2P continues to flourish to this date. This did not sit well with the record industry, who continue to lose oodles of cash as potential earnings, or so they claim, thanks to the wonders of Internet and the proliferation of P2P. But it seems, they are not yet done with their fight with P2P, and this time they are targetting individual consumers. I wonder if the record industry will eventually win in their battle. But it will be a difficult one, since the battlefield is not just the USA but the entire planet. Keep in mind, file sharing is not illegal in all countries (i.e. Sweden). Not yet, anyway.


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