http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/story/D7D1DFD50628988D862574AC00029FE0?OpenDocument
Ironically I found this while reading the newspaper after our first class. I thought it fit it perfectly with what we discussed since it referenced a person who settled a lawsuit with record labels for what she illegally downloaded on Kazaa.
Also I found it ironic that she tried to argue her side of her use of the Kazaa program since many users don't feel that it is illegal to download music for free. I have a friend who previously used Kazaa but moved on to other sites to avoid getting caught and sued like this woman did. My friend and one of my co-workers use the bit-torrent method to obtain music these days.
It is hard to believe this woman had to pay $756 per song in the settlement. And to think she could have just paid $7.92 to itunes or any other "legal" downloading site for the same eight songs.
Alan
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5 comments:
It seems that most of these cases settle out of court rather than end up in a lawsuit. Partly because the accused downloaders are mainly preteen and college persons with little to no finances. I guess they are just trying to make their point and scare people into paying for their music downloads.
I was naively under the assumption that many of these download lawsuits involved hundreds of stolen songs. I was surprised that this case only involved eight songs. Nevertheless, it is illegal copyright infringement and many in the music and movie business are suffering financially from these infringements. I also believe these lawsuits are meant to act and will act as deterrents to others.
With technology ever evolving I think it is unfair to sue those who download. I am not a downloader in a sense that I have not down loaded thousands of songs. I see the harm that it has cause the music industry and understand their point. But my point is simple. Most of these tracks are put out there by people in that related industry and such. It's a violation of trust. Trust of those in which you create music with. I argue that the music companies should sue within to stop those who are in charged of "handling" over the music to the public. The public should have free range over music downloads.
The Chicago office of a major public relations firm (Edelman PR)has had the media relations account for the music industry, with the objective being to "make examples" of those who download illegally. The first couple of years, story placement was fairly regular and reporters were interested--and the goal of dramatically slowing illegal downloads was achieved. I understand that now, many reporters are tired of the story line (and also aware that many young people downloaded relatively few songs). Christy
My daughter attends Missouri State University. She roomed with 3 other girls in her dorm. Someone in the dorm was illegally downloading songs and when the university discovered this they froze the internet access of the dorm room and brought all 4 girls up for disciplinary action. Since my daughter offered to have her computer searched to show that she had not downloaded songs she didn't suffer any consequences, but two girls in the group refused to do so and were told that their actions were tantamount to an admission of guilt and would become part of their permanent college records. I don't know what that means in real terms, but I do believe that universities are cracking down because they are concerned that the music industry will hold them responsible for allowing downloads by not maintaining a policy against it that has teeth.
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