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RIAA to Expand Attack on File Swappers

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

July 28, 2005, 3:21 PM

The RIAA on Thursday announced another round of lawsuits on Thursday against 765 "Internet thieves" across the United States, emboldened by last month's decision by the Supreme Court that said file sharing networks can be held responsible for their users' actions.

The "John Doe" lawsuits -- where the filing litigant is given a set amount of time to positively identify the defendant -- were filed across several federal district courts in eight states.

In addition to Thursday's actions, 176 named defendant lawsuits were filed last week in 25 states, which all came out of previous John Doe suits. The names of the individuals were obtained through Internet service provider logs.

RIAA President Cary Sherman also issued an ominous warning to any file sharers who continue running software such as Morpheus and Kazaa, saying the record industry plans to up the ante in its war on illicit song swapping.

"In the coming weeks and months, we will significantly expand our anti-piracy efforts for those who have ignored the Court's message," Sherman said. " We know that our education and enforcement efforts have made a real impact."

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By spiffyjeff

edited Jul 31, 2005 - 11:17 PM

"...warning to any file sharers who continue running software such as Morpheus and Kazaa..."

Using the programs is not illegal, it's certain material you share that puts you at risk.

filtering your shares through www.riaaradar.com should help a bit. I am getting more into independant artists too, thanks to RIAA's actions against sharers.

Score: 0

By ds0934

edited Jul 30, 2005 - 10:44 AM

What happened to "performing" for a living? Back in the 60's, 70's and even some of the 80's "artists" relied more on live performance than on packaged recordings for making an impact. Watching MTV cribs it doesn't seem like the file-sharing has had *ANY* negative impact on their rather elaborate houses, cars, toys and lifestyle. Musicians should get off their lazy asses, put down the DAT recorder and hit the road more. We used to average 12-18 live concerts in my area per summer. It's now about 2-3.

As for file-sharing technology: ultimately, if you can play it, someone will be able to record it. If it can be recorded, it can be shared. The genie is out of the bottle. Time to adapt and stop waging a futile battle. The industry created this "mess" by charging WAY too much for CD's that only have 1 or 2 good songs. People are fed up. The 99 cent downloads should have happend years ago. If they kept the prices realistic and required more "quality" from their artists, this whole issue wouldn't be news at all.

Score: 0

By bleh427

posted Jul 31, 2005 - 4:13 AM

I hear what you are saying but the artists on MTV Cribs are a big exception to the rule. They are the 1% minority that has made enough money to live that kind of lifestyle. 99% of the music community has to actively tour and the lionshare of artists signed to major labels are forced to tour constantly to pay off the label fees. But the reason you are not seeing big success with these tours is because number 1 most of that money still goes to the labels, number 2 the labels killed the independent music scenes in the 90s by signing every single band with an audience-attracting sound and then bankrupting them..3 only signing "copycats" that sound exactly the same.4 return of the label-created and trained orangutan pop star... People do not want to pay 60 dollars to go to a concert

Score: 0

By cousinkix1953

edited Jul 30, 2005 - 2:59 AM

Some of the artists I mentioned earlier contract with somebody in the Mid-West called Munck-Mix. They take advanced orders for CDs and use only those resources necessary. A machine which burns copies six at once costs about $1500.00 on line.

They've cut costs and retail prices by not wasting money!

The RIAA burns too many first editions, then must sell cheaper CDs of last years stuff and they'll end up with a lot of merchandise that doesn't sell any more. A "Dark Side of the Moon" is a one-in-a-million that remains popular for many years...

Score: 0

By bleh427

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 5:32 PM

They are busy bankrupting artists while promising them millions to fuel their lawsuits against innocent citizens. Cut out the middle man and cut off their funds, keep file sharing alive.

Score: 0

By Mystiqq

edited Jul 29, 2005 - 10:38 AM

Whatever.

This is the fuel for new and improved file sharing networks/software. Thanks RIAA and MPAA.

Score: 0

By Maxwolf

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 9:59 AM

"We know that our education and enforcement efforts have made a real impact."

These people are a joke. I hope they run themselves into the ground with this crusade against the evil of Internet theives!

Score: 0

By nightops

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 3:45 PM

Don't worry, they will. Legal MP3 purchasing is on the rise...but those who want it for free will continue to thrive.

Score: 0

By mike518

edited Jul 29, 2005 - 1:08 AM

"dam the little guy with their theivery... while ignoring the theivery of the big monopoly on the block." Our countrys new motto... Ignore Enron, or in this case the RIAA until enough little people get screwed and outraged.

You wanna talk about theft, how about selling an album for $25 and giving pocket change to the artist.

Score: 0

By athome

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 9:11 AM

The little guy isn't getting screwed at all. They are the ones stealing. Stop saying "poor artists." Like you downloading MP3's is helping their effort. If you don't like the price of the records, don't buy it. If you want to give money to artists, do it directly.

This is the true way to hurt the record industry. DO NOT BUY!. Holding onto the belief that the "little guy" or "poor artists" are getting screwed is idiotic. Just because you don't feel that a record should cost $25 or $10 isn't up to you, but you can directly influence that cost by not purchasing the music. Cost vs Demand - did you not learn anything in your high school economics class?

Score: 0

By spiffyjeff

posted Jul 31, 2005 - 11:23 PM

Hmm, I used to get illegal music, and when i liked it (quite often) i would buy it over again. Don't buy a car without test-driving it.

I also agree, STOP BUYING from riaa!! again, i use www.riaaradar.com to determine if i'm going to buy a cd or not. Check out your local public radio programming, they might have a music theme that you are into, reggae for example. I've looked up many artists i heard/liked on riaaradar, and often they return "safe" for non-riaa. Yeah, i'm going to be buying some Thievery Corperation! ha ha, nice band name for this subject too!

Score: 0

By nightops

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 3:48 PM

Right on the nose... Good analysis athome...you are 100% correct. Over 94% of artists make approximately 83% of their income from tours, promotions, commercials, etc... Very little do they actually make from the sales of all those CD's.

Score: 0

By mpact007

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 5:38 AM

How about you instead talk about that 1 out of 3 records SOLD is a pirate copy? I mean, no one is going to listen to you when you wine about that. Dont buy it if you think its expensive BUT when you want to be legit, the chances are that you buy a counterfeit is quite great so tell you senators and congressmen/women that RIAA should go after those people that copy discs and sell them in stores first. THey got more money to gain there.

Score: 0

By the Troll

edited Jul 29, 2005 - 2:08 AM

And on that note; what has happened to all the "fines" collected (read: extorted) from all those Mom & Pop & their kids, that the RIAA's been "suing"?

Score: 0

By TC17

posted Jul 28, 2005 - 7:13 PM

The courts said NOTHING about the file sharers, all they mentioned was about the file sharing software author itself.

This is just more misleading lies by the RIAA/MPAA.

Score: 0

By cousinkix1953

edited Jul 28, 2005 - 6:18 PM

Retailers used to sell the latest 45 RPM singles for 99 cents each in the 60's and 70's. Songs went off the charts a few months later. They wound up in the "3 for 39 cents" sale bins at discount stores. Fools believe that the newest I-Tunes downloads will decrease in price; when they're no longer played to death on the radio.

Some artists actually sell their music directly to the public. It started with coffee house folk singers, who peddled a few CDs after their concerts.

Neo-psychedelic jam bands like Dark Star Orchestra, String Cheese Incident, and Phish are releasing commercial albums pressed by small companies and not those 4 big corporate labels.

Yeah, I'll buy some CDs from the Grateful Dead's private hippie record company because they don't like the frigging RIAA's bully tatics either. We can support artists, who aren't jerks and boycott those greedy ba$tard$ too...

Score: 0

By dragon2611

edited Jul 28, 2005 - 5:41 PM

Riaa are stupid if they disbanded riaa which must cost record companies thousends (probably more than the piracy) then maybe they could lower prices

heck get rid of the record companies all together we all know that the execs get all the money

i reckon if artists sold the cds direct and offered their music in download form theyd make more money than any record company would give em!

Score: 0

By nightops

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 3:51 PM

dragon2611, that's not a 1/2 bad idea...only 1 problem: the RIAA and record labels have mass-production capabilities that would increase the cost of production per CD if each artist had to make/market their own CD's...so the cost would almost negate. As a matter of fact, that's the reason why we have record labes: artists got sick of the exhorbitant fees for producing records/tapes/etc..., so many of the big ones got some people together so they could produce them in conjunction with each other to lower the cost and increase the distribution of their records.

However, if you switched EVERYTHING to digital downloads, the initial cost would eventually be absorbed and the cost per song would drop drastically since the medium of delivery and amount of marketing would be more based on the consumer.

Score: 0

By gsbrock

edited Jul 28, 2005 - 3:39 PM

"We know that our education and enforcement efforts have made a real impact."

Wrong, what's had the real impact is the emergence of a couple of decent legal download services such as iTunes. The better these services get, the more illegal file swapping will decrease. All the "Crack down" on illegal file swapping has done is caused people to make better, more reliable, less traceable means of sharing.

Score: 0

By justinb

posted Jul 28, 2005 - 3:53 PM

so true, so true......

Score: 0

By w0rd

edited Jul 28, 2005 - 4:22 PM

It's had an impact alright:
http://tor.eff.org/

Score: 0

By mike518

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 1:18 AM

hey i was looking for a good proxy server to use when i went to BU (Binghamton). Are you sure its safe though? seems so... and it mentions nothing about piracy or the like, so odds are it wont be accused of such, but still -- have you used this, and is it reliable and safe?

Thx, Mike...
sorry to be such a newb. about this kindda stuff, with RR i never needed a proxy before.

Score: 0

By DoobyDo

edited Jul 29, 2005 - 5:29 AM

If it is coming from the EFF you can be reasonably sure that it's a big step forward in privacy ;)

Some new BitTorrent clients, like Azureus have full support for Tor and I2P built in now. I can't say that I've used either because I don't personally need to, but they're only a right-click away.

Score: 0

By Kamika007z

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 3:16 AM

it's good

Score: 0

By nillinu

posted Jul 28, 2005 - 4:23 PM

i know instead of killing people who swap illegaly why don't they give people reasons why not to! i mean a dollar still is alot for one song, if they were to be say 50 cents a song so many more people would stop using illgeal file swaping because for one most illegal versions of songs are not very good quality take forever to get and cause more problems with viruses coming with them than it is worth. I would pay 50 cents just to save me that trouble of having to do all that work! Come on people give us a reason not to download illegaly!

Score: 0

By forgie

posted Jul 28, 2005 - 7:26 PM

50 cents a song would actually get me interested in purchasing songs legally and I haven't bought an album for years. I'm not trying to brag, but once something is worth the price it costs, I'm interested. A movie costs around $6 to go to and costs typically millions of dollars to produce, why must albums continue to cost $10-$18? New artists in every genre are a dime a dozen and everybody including the RIAA and the artists know that. /rant

Score: 0

By drumcat

posted Jul 28, 2005 - 8:02 PM

I'm with you guys. Maybe 30-50¢ would tip the scale for me. Ensured quality and no strings, with a good server, I'd pay for that. Until then, why?

Score: 0

By Maxwolf

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 10:02 AM

I agree! 30¢ sounds much more like it. Then you could be sure of the quality, speed, and know the song will be on the server.

Score: 0

By Neoprimal

posted Jul 29, 2005 - 2:48 AM

Top be honest, I don't even mind a dollar for a song now. It's not a bad deal. Being able to get a song or 4 without paying 12 makes me happy - though I agree it could be cheaper! And considering tha artist actually only gets like 5-10c per song, it's completely unecessary (I wonder who all the money goes to after all the overhead comes out *cost of videos, CD production, etc. etc. etc. etc.) is paid off?) I'd sure love to know. And also considering that mp3s have no overhead, I wonder who the money goes to for that? Apart from ofcourse the actual service selling it and the artist. Hmmmmm....

Score: 0

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