These kinds of heavy-handed policies are the stuff of rebellious
tension... or resigned despair. Depending on the surrounding social
climate. And the "noise" created around it.
Ken.
--
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he
lives with, insists on boring future generations.
-- Charles de Montesquieu
--- cut here ---
RIAA's Lawsuits Meet Surprised Targets
Single Mother in Calif., 12-Year-Old Girl in N.Y. Among Defendants
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 10, 2003; Page E01
Heather McGough thought it would be nice to listen to music while she
was working on her Gateway PC at home in Santa Clarita, Calif. So, a few
months ago, when a friend of McGough's 14-year-old cousin told her she
could get the Gateway to play songs, McGough told the girl to go ahead.
The teen girl downloaded software by Kazaa, a file-sharing Internet
service. Kazaa let McGough grab digital songs by Tracy Chapman, Avril
Lavigne, Norah Jones and Marvin Gaye and others and put them on her
computer's hard drive for listening. Also -- and this is the part that
McGough said she didn't know -- it let everyone else on the Kazaa
network get a look at the songs on her computer and pick which ones they
wanted. In the eyes of the music industry, she was an "egregious
uploader" of copyrighted material.
Which is why she was one of the 261 song sharers across the nation sued
Monday by the major record companies with the help of the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA), the music industry's trade
group. The RIAA is targeting what it calls "major offenders" of
peer-to-peer digital song sharing, which it considers to be a violation
of copyright law. Federal law allows penalties of up to $150,000 per
copyrighted work, or, in other words, per song.
Like Kazaa members, investigators at the RIAA looked into McGough's
computer. Instead of seeing songs they wanted to listen to, they found
someone they wanted to sue.
Song sharing exploded into the mainstream in the late '90s thanks to
Napster, which allowed computer users to download and swap songs for
free. The music industry went to court to successfully shut down
Napster, but other free services such as Morpheus, Grokster and Kazaa
sprang up in its place.
Kazaa, the most popular, had more than 7 million users in May. More than
60 million Americans engage in file sharing, according to companies that
track Internet use.
"I watched the whole Napster thing on TV; I read about it in the
papers," said McGough, 23, a single mother of two girls, ages 5 and 2.
"I just assumed that if Napster was down, why would something be up that
was illegal? I wouldn't intentionally put something on my computer that
was illegal."
McGough received a copy of a subpoena in July from Comcast
Communications Corp., her high-speed Internet service provider, telling
her that the cable company had handed over her name and address to the
RIAA, which reported it had looked into her computer on the afternoon of
June 26. "I wasn't even home," said the auto repair shop office manager.
The next day, she took her Gateway to a local computer club where
members erased the song files from her hard drive. It was only then that
she found out that Kazaa's software allows others to see which songs she
had. "I don't even know how many songs I had," she said.
Comcast included an 800 number in the subpoena to call for more
information. But when McGough called it, she said no one knew what she
was talking about.
"I asked for supervisors, everything," she said. "It's not like they
weren't giving me the information. They didn't have the information."
The stories of the RIAA 261 are emerging across the country. Many
defendants say they are surprised by the suits, that they were unaware
that such song swapping could be illegal, or that they were ignorant of
the activities of others using their computers, such as children.
The defendants included a 71-year-old grandfather in Texas and a
father-and-son combo, ages 50 and 29. They include Boston area teenagers
and adults, men and women from Los Angeles, and a Yale University
photography professor.
More song swappers will find themselves facing lawsuits in the coming
months, as the RIAA has promised to take legal action against thousands
more, aiming at people who have made an average of more than 1,000
copyrighted songs free to other Internet users.
Critics of the RIAA's lawsuits have repeatedly said such vigorous legal
action could lead to consumer backlash, further crippling an industry
already suffering a steep slump in sales. Since the rise of Internet
song sharing, sales of compact discs have dropped about 10 percent per
year. The industry attributes the losses to piracy, but others point out
that many consumers likely were driven away from record stores by CDs
priced at $18.
The poster girl for such potential backlash appeared on the cover of
yesterday's New York Daily News alongside a headline reading: "Internet
Music 'Thief' Sued -- SHE'S 12!" Brianna LaHara, a Catholic school honor
student who lives in Manhattan, used Kazaa to download songs by
Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey, as well as theme songs to
television shows, such as "Family Matters," the Daily News reported.
Yesterday, Brianna's mother, Sylvia Torres, settled with the RIAA for
$2,000. In a statement distributed by the music industry trade group,
Brianna said: "I am sorry for what I have done. I love music and don't
want to hurt the artists I love."
Recently hired RIAA Chairman Mitch Bainwol said he is pleased that one
of the first lawsuits was quickly settled.
"We're trying to send a strong message that you are not anonymous when
you participate in peer-to-peer file sharing and that the illegal
distribution of copyrighted music has consequences," Bainwol said. "And
as this case illustrates, parents need to be aware of what their
children are doing on their computers."
Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which
opposes the RIAA suits, said yesterday: "It's a disaster, PR-wise.
Putting a 12-year-old defendant on the front page is not a way to lure
people into the record stores."
Michael McGuire, an analyst with GartnerG2, believes that some form of
copyright enforcement needs to be carried out, but added, "You've got to
wonder at some point how many of these do you get away with before you
get people saying, 'Hey, stop picking on children.' "
The RIAA represents the world's five largest music companies --
Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, BMG
Entertainment and EMI.
As for McGough, she has two choices, as she sees it: Hire a lawyer, or
"walk in there and try to defend myself against a multimillion-dollar
company and say, 'Hey, look, here was the situation.'"
