Re: Music Industry Group Sues College File Swappers

(Forwarded from Pho list)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: pho: Re: Music Industry Group Sues College File Swappers
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 08:45:35 -0500 (EST)
From: Michael Papish <[email protected]>
To: Brad Hill <[email protected]>
CC: [email protected], <[email protected]>

> Holy smokes. This is it. The first time individuals are targeted by name and
> sued for file-sharing. 

not necessarily. while not having read the actual complaint yet, this
appears to be more of a hybrid claim against an individual who is aslo
deemed an operator of a file-sharing network.

following the link from Fred, it appears that one of the students is
responsible for actually munging the code to allow file-searching (and
therefore swapping) via Windows OS on a local network. i assume the other
students named are responsible at their specific schools for
installing/distributing the software.

while true that individuals are named and threatened with huge damages, i
would expect the RIAA to spin this as just another attack on those who run
file-sharing networks a la KaZaa, Napster, etc.

when we get a copy of the complaint, it will be interesting to see if the
charges are for copyright infringement, contributory infringement or a
combination of both.

the following is an interesting excerpt from Aaron's paper:

--

FlatLan and Celery were designed as tools to locate files on a network, and
were not designed to break Copyright laws.  Although there are Copyrighted
materials shared on the network, there are also many files created by
students that are meant for free distribution.  In addition, whereas
Gnutella and Napster create a direct interface to copy files between each
other, FlatLan and Celery use SMB, and work without any additional software
besides Windows.

Having said that, below is a quote from Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the
recording industry discussing Phynd (Phynd uses the same end model as
FlatLan and Celery).

"[T]he software appears to facilitate the unauthorized copying and
distribution of music and other protected content."

"We find this extremely disturbing -- simply restricting this kind of file
sharing to a particular network does not make it any less wrong. We would
hope that the faculty of the university, who understand the value of
protecting copyrighted works, would help put a stop to this. We will discuss
this and decide what the best follow-up course of action is."

As of now the RIAA has not contacted anyone from Phynd, Celery, or FlatLan
to discuss the issue further.

--

michael


> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hal Bringman" <[email protected]>
> To: <[email protected]>
> Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 6:59 PM
> Subject: pho: Music Industry Group Sues College File Swappers
> 
> 

> http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=H4KLWRNIJZMZ0CRBAE0CFEY?type=technologyNews&storyID=2505231

Music Industry Group Sues College File Swappers

Thu April 3, 2003 05:46 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A music industry group on Thursday said it has filed
lawsuits against the operators of private computer networks on three college
campuses where it claims the networks are being used to illegally trade
copies of digital music files.

The Recording Industry Association of America said its member companies
filed suit against two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and
against one student each at Princeton University and Michigan Technological
University.

The RIAA has actively used the courts to pursue digital music pirates after
a 9 percent dip in CD sales in 2002 that it blames for the most part on
online file sharing.

In a statement, the association compared the file-sharing systems, which are
open only to students on the universities' internal networks, as miniature
versions of Napster -- the software and network that led to the explosion of
music file swapping.

The four networks were offering nearly 2.5 million files, it said, including
more than 1 million files on the largest network alone.

The complaints ask for the legal limit on damages in such cases, $150,000
per each copyright infringed.

The defendants named in the complaints are Daniel Peng at Princeton, Joseph
Nievelt at Michigan Technical, and Jesse Jordan and Aaron Sherman of
Rensselaer.

None of the four could be immediately reached by phone or e-mail. A personal
Web site listed for Sherman on the Rensselaer site was not loading as of
Thursday afternoon.

Last month the RIAA sent letters to 300 U.S. companies, across a variety of
industries, warning them of specific evidence of illegal music swapping on
their networks and the potential legal consequences of allowing it to
continue.

The RIAA represents the world's major music companies, including Vivendi
Universal, Sony Corp., AOL Time Warner, EMI Group Plc and Bertelsmann AG



Hal Bringman
HBPR, LLC
V: +1.323.650.1328
F: +1.323.372.3986
E: [email protected]
AIM: hbringman
MSN: halbringman
Yahoo: halbenz


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