WARNING! Fines coming.....
 

I live in Dayton Ohio. 2 of my 4 local TV stations just reported about several people from our area being sued for downloading music. One of these people was using Limewire. This person is being sued by the National Association of Recording Artists for 70,000 !! She has only used Limewire and has downloaded a little over 6,000 songs. Needless to say, she is devastated! The reporter said this is happening more and more everyday and that the Recording Artists are generally setteling out of court for 3 to 4 thousand dollars. Do any of us have that kind of money lying around. This woman thought she was "protected" from any type of legal action because she had paid 18 dollars to limewire for their "pro" version. Not so. Beware !

She had to be either naive or stupid.


Shark Chum

HUH? Stupid?
 

What do you mean...naive or stupid? This woman was doing nothing more than all of us do. She was searching for songs she enjoyed and then downloading them to her computer. You got a bettewr way?
Lucky Dawg

Yea mm sharing over 6,000 songs u must be dum of course your dum in way of the world.Way in the world would you whant to share that many any way.In no i would not because there is a chance that you or i will get busted.

Link To AVG Free Anti Virus
http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0....ee%20&tag=srch

Chris B........

I hate these worms.
Im Geting my blade ready......:butcher 2:


http://prolarp.org/
Pittsburgh Roleplaying Organization
A Live Action Role-Playing group

It IS a P2P sharing program.
If it weren't for her and people like her, you wouldn't be getting the songs you want to download.
:(

Xcom46...nowhere in the original post does it say she was sharing these files... Isn't downloading 6,000 songs enough? I mean, at the going rate of 1 dollar a song, that's...wait a minute...I think I've got it...$6,000!

Just because she is no different than you (so you say) doesn't mean that she wasn't stupid! I bet she just feels unlucky (like you or I would feel if we got busted).

If you break the law, you may get busted! Maybe not right away, but if you do it long enough or excessively enough, you will eventually get caught!

It's a risk we take if we download copywrited material...we all need to ask ourselves "how much is this worth to me...is it worth the risk?"

Just something to think about: at my local library, I can check out commercial films for free. FILE-SHARING? Looks like it to me. I hope my library doesn't get sued! :tease:

Dano

she was downloading and sharing over 6,000 copyright protected songs... of course she will get sued.

Using the library as an example is flawed logic.

In many cases libraries DO pay more for their initial copy of a book or movie because they are going to share it. However, comparing libraries with millions sharing copyrighted material for free without compensation to the artists/producers/etc. doesn't work.

As for Sure. It's called BUYING your music and movies. People have been doing it for decades. Only in the last few years did we somehow decide we were entitled to something for nothing.

As someone upthread said, you (don't) pay the price, you take your chances.

I don't feel all that sorry for the woman in Dayton. She got something for free (some 6000 songs). Now if she pays even half that much (assuming .99 cents per song for even the cheapest music legally) she got off easy right?

I was not aware of this. You say "In many cases"...in what cases do libraries pay more (or pay less)? What about books, movies, etc. that are donated to libraries?

Can you tell me where I can find out more?

Thanks :)

Dano

well, sucks for her

I can’t believe anybody really thought paying eighteen dollars to Limewire bought any immunity from anything. Anyway, however naive she has been it still seems excessive to sue her for so much. We are in danger of getting royalty figures out of proportion, because of publicity of the huge figures the plaintiffs always seem to sue for: its only when a record or CD is first bought that royalties are normally paid, if you buy one second-hand you won’t find royalties being claimed or expected. The current price at auction for ‘ordinary’ LPs (ie non-collectable vinyl) is around one english pound (plus twenty four pence auctioneers commission) for one hundred LPs. If royalties account for twenty per cent of the price of a record, with twelve tracks to one LP the royalty per song would be one fifth of one twelfth of one hundredth of a pound. Put a copyright song from one of those LPs in the Limewire Shared File and someone downloads it then what does the copyright holder really lose?- it equates to sixty downloads for one English penny royalty. You might say that if they couldn’t download it free they would go out and buy it new - no they wouldn’t, not usually. But even if they did - I bought two CDs at the weekend, brand new, city High Street music shop, thirty four tracks total, price £1.97 each CD, so even brand new the royalty on them was only two pence per track, (though the author might have a safeguard of a minimum per track or per unit). I have no wish to deprive copyright holders of their just dues but don’t lets get actual lost royalty payments out of perspective.

Perhaps a songwriter or singer would append on this post the current royalty rates. In the USA a few years ago the ‘compulsory licence’ royalty rate was 7.1 cents per composition or 1.35 cents per minute of playing time, whichever was greater, per CD/record. On this figure and if as the poster above says tracks cost 99 cents on-line then the actual royalty in the USA is less than 10%. So although the lady is being sued for 70,000 dollars, even if every one of the six thousand songs she shared had been uploaded once the actual royalty figure lost has been 426 dollars (and that is presuming that every uploader would otherwise have bought the song).

In my opinion, the woman is just playing dumb.

Besides, I've been reading up on the RIAA a little...Wikipedia says that music sales went UP when Napster was active and music sales went DOWN when the RIAA started litigating.

I also read that the RIAA is suing some Russian website for something like 1.5 TRILLION dollars! They're claiming something in the are of $150,000 of damages per song! Too bad Russia is not accountable to the RIAA...a little out of their jurisdiction, I think.

People are settling out of court because they would rather pay $3,000 than risk a full judgment, even though most cases have been dismissed. The RIAA relies on scare tactics.

Would I be scared if someone was suing me for $70,000? You bet! :yikes:

I've shared over 5000 files before .. I don't anymore because OSX's Java can't handle it. And I've seen others share up to 15+ k files or something.

I agree that the lady definitely has room to appeal against such a fine. It's an exagerated fine. They do this for propoganda reasons to show to the media to try to scare people. But they won't report court appeals that knock the fines back to a small $ % of the original fine.

Me to be nice i think it's mostly a bowl of crap.But i think the reason she got busted is because she left her Lime Wire on all day what do you think.

Chris B.....

I hate Worm's
Im geting my blade ready...... :butcher 2:

http://www.prolarp.org
Pittsburgh Roleplaying Organization
A Live Action Role-Playing group

xcom46
 

Lol if ya using a p2p it dont matter if ya left it on all day or all week, they know what data ports are open (your ISP that is) so why not jsut changed the default ports to something different makes it a bit hard for your ISP.

being sued for what ?
 

If I own a cd , do I not have the right to give it to anyone I wish ? Or sell it to anyone?
If I go to the flea market or ebay or wherever else and buy a used cd there is no royalty being paid to anyone and that seems to be legal.
What is next ? Are they going to make selling used cd's illegal ?
Sure we all should give back something by buying music from stores or download sites sometimes. Hey the artists do not do it for free. But if you you are just listening to music on your pc and not burning cd's for sale then that should not be illegal.
If I go to your house and listen to a cd am I ripping off the artist because I do not own it ? I think not.

The artists probably make a majority of money on tours anyway

The moment the record industry get into their skulls, that they need to encode their music in better quality and drm free, their sales will pick up even more.

Not that it will help getting the people to start buying from them that they alienated all these years, and by doing that forced them into other ways of obtaining good quality music.

If you get sued just go to court saying that you just couldn't stand the crap encodes and drm they offered :D

Have an actual news article? Was she sharing 6000 songs or did she download them?

This reminds me of something I posted last summer. Everytime someone upgrades from 45 to LP to CD to whatever comes next... the RIAA has been collecting an immoral windfall. I think it's time to ask what they owe us!
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showthread.php?t=59951

Good point? How much money have they been making off of the way that data is transfered from them to us, and now that we have some control over it, they cry? When I finally have some control over the technology they want to take it away from me because I might share it. Boo Hoo! I have been through 8 tracks, vinyl, cassettes and now cd's abut one new format every 8-10 years and I'm sick of it. A lot of people I know stopped buying music because they cannot keep up with all the techno changes. They just listen to the radio or don't listen to music at all.
As for movies, anyone I know that actually collects DVD's (a junk piece of shiney plastic if you ask me) buys them used from movie stores or ***** from Wally world and the like, but those people want the original, with the extra features and the pretty box. People who don't care about that stuff will rent them. And it seems to me that more and more people are renting from the net based companies or getting them from p2p sources. Point being? the way media is distributed is changing, and someone is going to get left behind, and for once, it aint us.

This is similar to what has happened so many times in history. A new technology comes along displacing an old one and subsiequently reducing some financial flow and so the people who are loosing money go to the government (courts) and *****. Hey, I got an idea, how about we send these guys all of our cassettes and 8 tracks and vinyl (ok not really the vinyl, but I have to through it in there just for example) and ask for some $ back?

Just out of interest...........
 

How on earth do they find out where you live to be able to sue you?? I live in England and Im pretty certain there is no way of anyone being able to trace me? I havent downloaded anything like this many tracks but if there is a way of being traced then to hell with it I QUIT!! :tease:

If you click on the monitor tab in Limewire you will see all of the peers that you are uploading your files to...
This is where the authorities can catch you, they see your IP address and then link it to your ISP, your ISP then gets a notice from them and passes it onto you about sharing copyrighted files...And boom your busted...

I think it's outrageous that this one individual would get sued just because she happens to be using LW to get the songs she wants. Heck, I've been using LW Basic, but you don't see me getting sued YET (that being the keyword). Then again, I'm in WV. I have yet to see such a case right here in WV, but I don't doubt one bit that there are certain individuals from recording studios (as well as stores that sell such recordings) who get very peeved at the thought of someone obtaining music in a manner deemed questionable.

So how can you prevent them from seeing that IP address?

To be honest with you, I don't know how to answer that. People have ways of finding out your ISP address. If hackers can do it, so can legal authorities. If there is a way to hide your ISP address, I haven't heard it.

And they can link that to your home address?? Sorry I am a little ignorant about these things. I had no idea! :yikes:

They can link that to your ISP which in turn links it to you...
Do you have Peerguardian2, if not it's wise to have it...
http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/

i just don't see what's so illegal about sharing

:blink:

is music not free on the radio?

It depends on who you ask. Though LW is a P2P program, the mere idea of sharing copyrighted songs is what's troubling the music industry. I personally believe that if you share songs that don't have a license (or the copyright has long since expired), then you should be fine. However, I could be wrong. I've had people online tell me that by obtaining and sharing songs through LW, I could very well be breaking the law. I want to argue with them by telling them that according to what I've heard from this forum, it IS NOT against the law to obtain and share songs from LW.

You guys are hilarious :lmao:

Look at YOUR, keyword being YOUR, local laws. If they say it's allright. Then it's allright. If they say it's illegal, then chances are that you are one of the unlucky ones that gets sued.

Don't read on some forum and think that's the law. Look it up for Gods sake, like people have asked users to do countless times on THIS FORUM.

Whether the laws are any good, that's a whole other story. But I can assure you that if your laws say it's allright to share, then nothing more can happen then the RIAA convincing your ISP that they should terminate your connection.

Well, I'm just stating my own opinions, and at times I have a tendency to speak my mind. It's just that the idea of being sued over sharing songs through LW is outrageous, from my point of view. Then again, I probably have a narrow-minded view of laws regarding what should/shouldn't be shared on LW. I do know that selling copyrighted songs is illegal, so I'd like to think I'm not totally ignorant on that fact. However, I (as well as others) don't intend to sell music, we only intend to obtain music for our own private and personal use. Isn't that what P2P is all about? If not, then perhaps I need an explanation (or I need to read the stickies posted on the rules/regulations regarding sharing songs).

Sharing of copyrighted songs on p2p was not illegal in Australia. Selling copied songs as in piracy was. But since the recent USA/Australian trade agreement, unfortunately things have changed a little bit. :( As Sleepless pointed out, check your local laws.

If people can't get copies of copyrighted songs from p2p then they will just copy off the radio (or friends.) Duh! Wake up! Anti p2p sharing laws will make very little difference to them. The recording industry is simply too slow to keep up with new technologies & searching for scapegoats & looking for excuses to explain to their investors, etc. They have been caught out in the dark ages & now crying.

(Wish You Were Here album by P.F. is old but still very valid. lol :rofl:)

I got it now! Many thanks :xeri_ok1ani:

And where would one go to read the law? I am in the U.S. by the way.

lol @ giant Google :D

Hehe:xirokrotima:

This is from the website of the United States Copyright Office at
U.S. Copyright Office

(This excerpt is from
U.S. Copyright Office - Can I Use Someone Else’s Work? Can Someone Else Use Mine? (FAQ))

Is it legal to download works from peer-to-peer networks and if not, what is the penalty for doing so?

Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution. Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 for each work infringed and, if willful infringement is proven by the copyright owner, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed. In addition, an infringer of a work may also be liable for the attorney's fees incurred by the copyright owner to enforce his or her rights.

Whether or not a particular work is being made available under the authority of the copyright owner is a question of fact. But since any original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium (including a computer file) is protected by federal copyright law upon creation, in the absence of clear information to the contrary, most works may be assumed to be protected by federal copyright law.

Since the files distributed over peer-to-peer networks are primarily copyrighted works, there is a risk of liability for downloading material from these networks. To avoid these risks, there are currently many "authorized" services on the Internet that allow consumers to purchase copyrighted works online, whether music, ebooks, or motion pictures. By purchasing works through authorized services, consumers can avoid the risks of infringement liability and can limit their exposure to other potential risks, e.g., viruses, unexpected material, or spyware.

Sooo...

According to this, you can be charged between $30,000 and $150,000 for EVERY FILE THAT YOU DOWNLOAD!

There may be stricter legislation in the individual states...

Hope this helps (and wakes you up) :shoot:

Dano

Yeah that helps.