RIAA sues 12 yr old girl for $2000

[thomas7g]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/09/09/music.swap.settlement/index.html

I thought this was pretty ugly of the recording industry.

The RIAA successfully sued 12 year old Brianna LaHara for sharing music on Kazaa.

The record industry is pleased with the results. They are going after another 260 such cases. They blame users like LaHara for the decine in sales of their CDs.

I think it was overzealous and extremely coldhearted of the industry to target and make an example of a 12 year old. They could have made the case with a college student or something.

This is making the RIAA look alot more like a cold hearted greedy oversized machine. I don't like it.

[jjrakman]

Ahh, remember the good ol' days of Dual Dubbing Cassette Decks, with no record keeping or tracking of your copying activities?

[The Blue Mule]

Money minded businessmen are sick.


Rich

[The 14th Colony]

That story is sickening. Big powerful recording companies in their grand effort to combat file sharing, pounce on a 12 year old girl. Going after Napster and similar sites is understandable, but slap-fining a 12 year old girl for something she probably didn't know was a crime (and is too young to fully understand the ramifications of it anyway) and ripping 2,000 from her financially middle or lower class family, is simply dispicable. They seriously ought to be ashamed of themselves.

[nightscape2112]

i hate the riaa, they are shotting thier selfs in the foot. we are thier market and they are sueing us. in will take a guess and say the people in the united states buy 80% of thier product yet they are going to take us to court for sharing music.

if they get the people in america to stop sharing music, that will not stop people in europe from sharing. they will continue to share and get the music for free, while we are sued for sharing.

when metallica came out against napster thier career ended. they went from selling millions of albums/cd's to the low thousands.

it is the record companys fault for making the digital media that we share in the first place. they switched from albums to compact disk. the reason was money, it cost 7 dollars to make an album while it cost them .50 cent to package a c.d. for sale. the albums were selling for 10 dollars while they can sell a cd for 20. the profit margin is so much greater for cd's than abums they wanted to make them. i like the way an album sounds, i believe they sound better than a cd, but thats just me.

they unleashed the digital beast, now they want to control it in a digital age.

i remember back when they said the same about cassette tapes, how that was damaging thier record sales. it was bull crap then and it is crap now.

i hope that people boycott all music sales, when they see thier sales drop 80% in a week amybe they will stop suing fans.

nightscape

[The 14th Colony]

Here's what I don't get. File sharing is wrong since it's using someone's product that was intended for sale, and thus denies them the profits of that sale, of course. But this girl, and others like her, was simply sharing the files, not selling them, not distributing them to a mass market, not profitting from them. She did it for fun, not for money, so why are her parents 2,000 poorer for it?

[nightscape2112]

what i dont like is that when people started copyrighting things the copy right lasted for (i think) 12 years (if not right close), then when that 12 years was up it could be freely traded. well different industries have gone back and extended the copyright untill it is like it is today. which is 75 years and they are looking to extend that.

money hungry greedy record industry people are going to kill thier companys by bringing fans to court. they blame the 31% drop in sales to the file sharing services, i dont think that hurt them. i think it is people who are pissed at all the crap they are doing and are not buying cd's anymore.

just a couple cubits thrown in to the ring,

nightscape

[thomas7g]

add to the fact that we all know that burning a cd can be done for 50 cents. I'm sure mass production can reduce that to a nickle or so. So why are the RIAA charging us $16.00 for it?

And then suing a 12 year old? :(

[repcisg]

I think anyone who love music should boycott any music company that is supporting the RIAA.

[nightscape2112]

excatly tom, they are greedy bums that run the riaa. when they started making compact disk they said the price would come down. that they would have to charge more in the begining, but that they would bring the price down to where it equalled the price of an album. well that was 20 years ago and still the price has not come down.

then they get the artist to complain about file sharing, living in multi million houses, and they are going to say how us sharing is taking food from thier homes.

to me it is no different from taping a song from the radio. i can call a radio station and request any song i want. when it comes on, all i have to do is hit record. the only difference is they can track how many people are downloading from the net.

all it does is give them a bad name. i hope it kills them.

nightscape

[nightscape2112]

amen repcisg. i want thier profits to go from millions to zero.

nightscape

[thomas7g]

Well... I think they do deserve a healthy profit. But the claim that we are taking money away from the artists rings a little shallow for me. Especially since its money out of ordinary people's wallet where every dollar counts.

I'm not a music listener. Not really. haven't listened to music radio, bought a CD, or watched MTV in a loooong time. But I am kinda appauled by the really high prices I see when I pass the CD racks. And as a poor working stiff, I kinda believe the industry is too bloated. It needs to learn to cut costs and deliver a quality product at competitive prices.

[dvo47p]

Plus it makes the National News, if that 12 y/o was had a dial-up internet connection, it would not have happened. This kid dd not get busted for downloading but for uploading, the Peer to Peer (P2P) sharing that is in Kazaa, nailed the kid.

Go to www.cnet.com Kazaa is one of the biggest downloads.

Two things about Kazaa, when you go online so does Kazaa, the Peer to Peer file sharing stays open, what downloaded can be Uploaded (downloaded to a different computer that is running Kazaa)

So anyone may upload songs from your computer without you opening Kazaa.

Look on the drop down menu, first go to File drop down and click on Disconnect, this stops you from downloading to your computer, now go to Actions on the drop down menu, click on Stop. If you have Kazaa, make sure you have done both Stop & Disconnect even to access email & post on say CF. This has to be done everytime you boot up your computer.

I read this on a School newspaper online, this was for ADSL that loads up when the browser does, as well as a Cable connection that stays on all the time. This University, Wake Forest is wireless. As is The Naval Academy, Some Midshipmen got into a great deal of trouble.

[jjrakman]

I don't buy CD's anymore unless it's something I really really like. The last CD I bought was the soundtrack for Queen of the Damned. But it doesn't have anything to do with me downloading music, hell I have no idea how to work Kazaa or the other stuff.

For me, they're just to damned expensive. $20 for a CD is just too much. Plus I get bored with music easily. Most people my age like to listen to hits of the 80's. Personally I'm bored to death with 80's music. I've heard those one time wonders played more in the 90's than I ever did growing up in the 80's. And after 20 years of hearing the same songs over and over again, they just loose their oomf.

I much prefer to listen to new music, so every 6 months or so I listen to my local FM radio stations to see what's new. After I get sick of hearing the stations over play them, I go back to talk radio for another 6 months. But there's really no point in someone like me buying a CD, especially if I only like one song. I'd get bored with it to quickly, unless I really really like it.

As far as the Metallica issue, I think they really did shoot themselves in the foot. And I wonder if maybe that's why the bassist left the band.

[Proximo]

Interesting thing to note: if CD prices had fallen at the rate of other luxury goods in the same sort of bracket, you'd be able to buy a new album for $8 today. The RIAA kept prices artificially inflated because they saw it as a really fast way to make money. Music profits have been up year on year for the last 15 years, but now have taken a dip - along with every other commodity on the market - due to the economic slowdown of the last couple of years. Second interesting thing to note: CD sales dropped faster in the weeks after the RIAA announced it was going to satrt suing shares than at any other tim ein the last 3 years, but sales had been rising with the general upward trend of the conomy. Overall, the RIAA took only a 10% hit in actual sales, despite reduing the number of new acts, and keeping prices high, and also despite the "fact" that sharing had somehow caused people to stop buying anything. Most other luxury goods took a >30% drop. A lot of companies in the IT sector nearly died last year yet the RIAA, making higher profits than at any time in its history, likes to complain that it's the end of the music industry. Just like they did with cassette tapes, and just like their predecessors did with the invention of the 78 and the Edison Phonograph.

[Senmut]

The RIAA is like alot of dinosaur groups...can't adapt to changing technology, so they flail outwards in their dying, and hurt others in doing so. They picked on a 12 year old to frighten others. It will only harden resolve.
To give you an idea, I have some old 78RPM records, labelled as "Not Licensed For Broadcast". They tried to prevent people hearing music on the radio, in order to "save jobs". Well, we all know how well that worked out!

[nightscape2112]

dvo,

what i am telling my friends is to move the bulk of thier media out of the "shared folder" in to a folder that is not being shared by the p2p network. if they leave 100 or so songs in their file they won't be identified as a major offender, there by not targeted by the riaa (atleast not yet).

nightscape