Sued for a song: recording industry cracks down on music pirates

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Most people wouldn't walk into a music store and steal armloads of CDs. But raft lions of people download tunes from the Interact without paying. Isn't that stealing?

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) thinks so. That's why the music industry trade organization recently filed suit against 261 people who have downloaded and swapped more than 1,000 songs each. The RIAA says those people are in direct violation of copyright law, which makes it illegal to copy without permission "works of authorship," such as recording, writing, and drawing.

Brianna LaHara, a 12-year-old From Manhattan, had to face the music. She was one of the unlucky music lovers sued by the RIAA. Like the other 260 people who were sued, Brianna had downloaded and swapped, more than 1,000 songs (including "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap your Hands") without paying for them. When the mostly pop fan got the bad news in the form of a letter from the RIAA, she burst into tears. "I got really scared. My stomach was all in knots," she told New York's Daily NEWS. Brianna said that she taught it was OK to download music from the Internet because her mom had subscribed to Kazaa, a popular peer-to-peer network that allows for the sharing of digital files called MP3s.

Rather than face a costly lawsuit, Brianna's mom settled with the RIAA for $2,000. Not a bad deal, since copyright law permits damages from $750 to $150,000 per song copied without permission.

The lawsuits targeted young and old alike. Grandpa Durwood Pickle has got himself in, um, a pickle. The 71-year-old Texan said his grandchildren Used his computer to illegally download songs. "I'm not a computer person," Pickle said. "[The kids] come in and get on the computer. How do I get out of this?"

Is the End Near for Peer-to-Peer?

The RIAA said the lawsuits were a last resort and vow that more are on the way. The association sponsored antipiracy commercials on television and radio, ran full-page warnings in newspapers, and sent out more than 4 million instant messages to Kazaa users, explaining to them that they were in violation of copyright law.

"Nobody likes playing the heavy, but when you are victimized by illegal activity, there are times when you have to step up," said Cary. Sherman, president of the RIAA. "This activity is illegal, you are not anonymous when you do it, and engaging in it can have real consequences," said Cary.

The RIAA blames online song swapping for a 25-percent drop in compact disc sales since 1999, when file sharing first became popular. The RIAA estimates that 60 million people use file-sharing services. Teenagers are thought to make up half of that number

The RIAA's lawsuits strike a chord with many performing artists. "I understand why people download music, but ... when you make an illegal copy, you're stealing from the artist," said hip-hop mogul P. Diddy.

Madonna isn't so polite, She stocked peer-to-peer networks with prank MP3s. Anyone who tried to download one of her songs got a nasty invective instead. She didn't have the last word, thought. Song pirates retailed by hacking into her Web site and making tunes there available for free.

The Flip Side

The RIAAs lawsuits hit a sour note with some music lovers. Courtney Fitzgerald, a 14-year-old being sued by the RIAA, thinks she's being targeted unfairly "All my friends do it, yet I'm the only one being sued for it."

Adam Eisgrau, of P2P United, a peer-to-peer lobbying group, compared the RIAA to the winged monkeys that have terrorized generations of young Wizard of Oz watchers. "It's time for the RIAA's winged monkeys to fly back to the castle and leave the munchkins alone," he said

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital-rights group, supports peer-to-peer networks. "More lawsuits [are] not the answer.... File-sharing networks represent the greatest library of music in history, and music fans would be happy to pay for access to it, if only the recording industry would let them," said EFF attorney Wendy Seltzer.

The EFF says that the recording industry needs to catch up with technology Lots of artists, including the Beastie Boys, Ice T, and Chuck D, make money on the Internet "without suing their fans" by selling their songs or CDs on their Web sites. "The problem in that there is no adequate system in place that allows music lovers access to their favorite music while compensating artists and copy fight holders," states the EFF Web site.

Fast Forward

Some major players in the recording industry are already trying to change their tunes. To lure people back into record stores, Universal, which controls about 30 percent of the CD market, recently slashed CD prices by 25 percent. And pay-to-pay sites are also cropping up. Apple's iTunes, for example, offers 200,000 downloads and charges 99 cents a song.

Many experts say the recording industry is going to have to adapt to stay in the game. "The industry is going to have to create legitimate alternatives," said Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research.