Music Probe Subpoenas mount

[Discomanic]

Here we go again...from San Antonio Express News this morning...The music industry has won at least 871 federal subpoenas against computer users suspected of illegally sharing music files on the Internet, with roughly 75 new subpoenas being approved each day, US court officials said Friday. The effort represents early steps in the music industry's contentious plan to file civil lawsuits aimed at crippling online piracy. Subpoenas reviewed by the Associated Press show the industry compelling some of the largest Internet providers, such as Verizon Communications, Inc., and Comcast Cable Communications, Inc., and some universities to identify names and mailing addresses of users on their networks known online by nicknames. The RIAA has said it expects to file at least several hundred lawsuits seeking financial damages within the next eight weeks. US Copyright laws allow for damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song offered illegally on a person's computer. But the RIAA has said it would be open to settlement proposals from defendents. However, music fans are fighting back with technology using new software designed specifically to stymie monitoring of their online activities by the major record labels. Verizon, which as fought the RIAA over the subpoenas with continued legal appeals, said it received at least 150 subpoenas during the last two weeks. There were no subpoenas on file sent to AOL Time Warner, Inc., the nation's largest Internet provider and also parent company of Warner Music Group. Earthlink, Inc., said it has received three new subpoenas.

[NickNack]

Discomanic,

Seems you and I are on similar wavelengths. See my "Risky Changes" post. :)

[Discomanic]

Hi Nick:
Congrats on your new position at Discomusic.com. I think we are on the same wave length. It's funny when I posted I noticed you had posted a similiar message about a minute apart I think by the time. Oh well, at least we got the message out hopefully......take care...again congratulations.

[Discomanic]

Nick: Correction that was 4 minutes apart. LOL

[QUINNY]

I sincerely hope that neither of you think that downloading and sharing of thousands of music files is anything but immoral. Copyright laws are immoral also, but that's another story and as it stands, the law's on the music industry's side.

[Discomanic]

Quinny:
Speaking for myself....I have no comment on the issue because it's been covered before in the forum. Just wanted folks to know what's been going on with regards to file sharing.

[NickNack]

Quinny,

This topic caused such an outrage before on the board I was leary about transcribing that page. But, I was getting the impression it's about to come to a head so I thought we'd all be interested. I will say only that I don't do it. That shouldn't be a surprise seeing I didn't know squat about Winmx or Soulseek. :oops:

A question to you and others: Are there similar laws in place or being put in place in countries around the world? Does the music industry have similar clout outside the USA?

[K-Bee]

Nicknack:
The US is definetely not the only country dealing with this stuff.
Something similar was going on over here about 6 months ago.
The danish record association has formed an Anti Piracy group in order to stop file sharing. There's a rumour that they deliberatly put out some very popular danish music out on Kazaa and when people started downloading the stuff they got busted. Apparantly, the anti piracy group located the IP adresses and then talked the internet providers into giving away the names and adresses of the people in question.
The fact of the matter is that if this rumour is true, The piracy group did act just like they were the police (which they are not). A lot of accusations has been going on talking about invasion of privacy - just like breaking into somebody's house without a search warrent.
Anyway, some filesharers (mostly students living at dormitories and sharing on private servers) have been fined over here but the court sessions are still going on at the moment. They just can't figure out how to deal with the whole invasion of privacy thing and since the p2p networks constantly are developing new ways to block out the corporate music industry, I guess this thing will go on forever.

[Discomanic]

Just in case you are interested and most are on :o Kazaa:
The following site contains the user names that were pulled from subpoenas filed with the US District Court in Washington, DC. A total of 253 RIAA subpoenas were listed as of July 22 through the federal court system's paid online database, PACER. The actual subpoenas are available to view online in about half the cases.
The court documents don't show individual users' real names. They do show file-sharing network user names, the user's ISP, the user's IP address, and a sampling of copyright songs the user allegedly made available for download.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/article.../07232003g.php