Recording Industry Keeps Fighting Illegal File Sharing With Even More Lawsuits
On Sept. 8, 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America launched its first lawsuits against individuals who had downloaded music files on the Internet without paying for them.
At the time, critics argued that a campaign to sue music lovers was not just bad public relations, but perhaps unfair and illegal. But more than two years later, the campaign has survived at least one serious legal challenge and has become an unstoppable litigation machine.
So far the RIAA says it has filed more than 17,000 suits and continues to file another 700 to 750 a month. The group says there are 13,000 active suits, and it has settled thousands of others for an average settlement of $4,000.
Opponents of the RIAA strategy like to play up horror stories about the campaign. A report released last November by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focusing on Internet rights, includes stories like that of a single mother in Minnesota who faces $500,000 in penalties for her daughter’s alleged downloading. Recently, Candy Chan became one of a very few people to persuade a court to toss an RIAA suit when she argued the likely culprit was not her but daughter Brittany, then 13.
The RIAA agreed to drop the suit, but it then turned around and filed a new suit against Brittany.
“The recording industry should be focused on better carrots than just using the stick,” says Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney with the EFF. “It’s incredibly unfair for a very small number of people to be disproportionately punished. It’s not fair that one kid in a class will be punished, when the 20 other kids around him do the same thing.”
Details here from the ABA Journal.
Recording Industry Keeps Fighting Illegal File Sharing With Even More Lawsuits
On Sept. 8, 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America launched its first lawsuits against individuals who had downloaded music files on the Internet without paying for them.
At the time, critics argued that a campaign to sue music lovers was not just bad public relations, but perhaps unfair and illegal. But more than two years later, the campaign has survived at least one serious legal challenge and has become an unstoppable litigation machine.
So far the RIAA says it has filed more than 17,000 suits and continues to file another 700 to 750 a month. The group says there are 13,000 active suits, and it has settled thousands of others for an average settlement of $4,000.
Opponents of the RIAA strategy like to play up horror stories about the campaign. A report released last November by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focusing on Internet rights, includes stories like that of a single mother in Minnesota who faces $500,000 in penalties for her daughter’s alleged downloading. Recently, Candy Chan became one of a very few people to persuade a court to toss an RIAA suit when she argued the likely culprit was not her but daughter Brittany, then 13.
The RIAA agreed to drop the suit, but it then turned around and filed a new suit against Brittany.
“The recording industry should be focused on better carrots than just using the stick,” says Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney with the EFF. “It’s incredibly unfair for a very small number of people to be disproportionately punished. It’s not fair that one kid in a class will be punished, when the 20 other kids around him do the same thing.”
Details here from the ABA Journal.
Recording Industry Keeps Fighting Illegal File Sharing With Even More Lawsuits
On Sept. 8, 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America launched its first lawsuits against individuals who had downloaded music files on the Internet without paying for them.
At the time, critics argued that a campaign to sue music lovers was not just bad public relations, but perhaps unfair and illegal. But more than two years later, the campaign has survived at least one serious legal challenge and has become an unstoppable litigation machine.
So far the RIAA says it has filed more than 17,000 suits and continues to file another 700 to 750 a month. The group says there are 13,000 active suits, and it has settled thousands of others for an average settlement of $4,000.
Opponents of the RIAA strategy like to play up horror stories about the campaign. A report released last November by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focusing on Internet rights, includes stories like that of a single mother in Minnesota who faces $500,000 in penalties for her daughter’s alleged downloading. Recently, Candy Chan became one of a very few people to persuade a court to toss an RIAA suit when she argued the likely culprit was not her but daughter Brittany, then 13.
The RIAA agreed to drop the suit, but it then turned around and filed a new suit against Brittany.
“The recording industry should be focused on better carrots than just using the stick,” says Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney with the EFF. “It’s incredibly unfair for a very small number of people to be disproportionately punished. It’s not fair that one kid in a class will be punished, when the 20 other kids around him do the same thing.”
Details here from the ABA Journal.
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