"I thought it was a scam"

A middle-aged New Hampshire woman is baffled to be accused of downloading songs like Jigga My Nigga using BearShare, and she ignored a host of court papers because she thought they were some kind of scam. That decision nearly cost her a massive amount of money.

By Nate Anderson | Last updated March 16, 2009 10:34 AM CT

Though the RIAA says it has stopped its large-scale litigation strategy against suspected file-swappers, the music trade group has decided that it will continue those cases that were already in process before last winter. When put this way, the whole process sounds antiseptic and rather boring, but it continues to affect real people like middle-aged New Hampshire woman Mavis Roy, who was baffled when the music labels accused her of sharing songs like Real Niggaz, Jigga My Nigga, and Da Rockwilder using BearShare. Unable to afford a lawyer, Roy was confused by the legal documents she received.

"I thought it was a scam and I was being pressured to send them money for something I have never done," she eventually wrote the court in a letter.

The case was brought early in 2008. Roy was served with papers; she never responded. Within a few months, she was in default in a federal court case, and all that remained was for the judge to agree with the labels on how much money Roy would pay.

Fortunately for Roy, at this point she replied. She personally wrote the court a letter, explaining that she had not understood the notices, thought they were some kind of scam, and could not afford a lawyer to look into them. "I have never downloaded nor do I even know where to go to download," she wrote. "I feel they should have to show me something that proves this was done by me." She didn't know what to do next.

What a delightful ring "IP Enforcement Coordinator" has to it, eh? It brings to mind stuffed teddy bears and picnics in the park with old friends.

Our pals at idolator, along with cnet, have the lowdown on "a new piece of RIAA-backed legislation... heading through Congress [that] would create an office within the White House for someone called the 'IP Enforcement Coordinator.'" It could happen very quickly.

Yikes!

Re: Intellectual property: Isn't it time for Mickey Mouse and Scrabble and Meet the Beatles to hit the public domain? They're all at least 45 years old, and Mickey is 80, for crying out loud. I don't know what a good number for the amount of time something is protected by copyright should be -- 5 years? 10 years? 25 years? -- but 45 to 80 is absurd.

From idolator: "The American Library Association was less excited, stating 'There is absolutely no reason for the federal government to assume this private enforcement role.'"

It has always seemed ludicrous for the music industry to be taking on customers one at a time the way the RIAA is doing it, when there are honest-to-god counterfeiters out there ready to sell carloads/truckloads/boatloads of fake CDs and DVDs for injection into the distribution channel: folks that make a real business out of piracy.

And Germany seems to realize that. Per tech.blorge

[I]n Germany... law enforcement officials from several states have declared that the vast majority of illegal file-sharing will simply be ignored from now on. It seems that while the big players will still be pursued with the full force of the law, small-time sharers need not worry about being prosecuted.

According to Janko Roettgers at the P2P Blog, the toning down of pursuing file-sharing lawsuits was first mooted last week by the state prosecutor of Nort-Rhine Westphalia. Speaking to German site Jetzt.de, he openly stated that file-sharers will not have to worry about legal proceedings unless they share files on a “substantial, commercial” level.

Obviously this begs the question: what constitutes substantial or commercial levels of file-sharing? It seems that not all files are equal, and that it’s not only a question of the number of files shared but also the specific value.

The economic value of a music file is about one Euro, whereas a movie is valued at about 15 Euro. Based on that we define a commercial level as damages greater than 3000 Euro.

But that doesn’t mean you can safely share 3000 music files in Germany without fear of prosecution, as the commercial infringement involved is affected by the nature of each individual file. For instance, sharing a movie that hasn’t been commercially released in Germany at that time could spell trouble regardless of your other activity.

From slashdot:

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 12, @10:55PM
from the quarter-taped-to-the-tone-arm dept.

eldavojohn writes "While the RIAA is busy changing its image to a snake eating its own tail, one man is busy digitizing out-of-print 78s. 'There's a whole world of music that you don't hear anymore, and it's on 78 RPM records,' he stated to Wired. Right now, you can find about 4,000 MP3s on his site, with no digital noise reduction implemented yet."

Broadband Internet customers of cable television giant Comcast should be free to use file-sharing software, the Federal Communications Commission says.

The commission voted Friday to order Comcast to stop blocking its Internet customers from using BitTorrent, an online software application that enables users to share large movie, TV show and music files, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Commission Chairman Kevin Martin split with his Republican colleagues to join the two Democratic members to produce a 3-2 vote against Comcast. The (NASDAQ:CMCSA) precedent-setting decision was hailed by supporters of so-called net neutrality, which maintains Internet service providers should be barred from discriminating among various types of traffic.

"It was unreasonable for Comcast to discriminate against particular Internet applications, including BitTorrent," Martin wrote in his majority opinion. "They delayed and blocked customers using a disfavored application even when there was no network congestion."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes

"I guess the RIAA is getting nervous about the ability of its 'national law firm' (in charge of bringing 'ex parte' motions, securing default judgments, and beating up grandmothers and children) to handle the oral argument scheduled to be heard on Monday, August 4th in Duluth, in Capitol v. Thomas. So, at the eleventh hour, it has brought in one of its 'Big Guns' from Washington, D.C., a lawyer who argues United States Supreme Court cases like MGM v. Grokster to handle the argument. This is the case where a $222,000 verdict was awarded for downloading 24 songs, but the judge ultimately realized that he had been misled by the RIAA in issuing his jury instructions, and indicated he's probably going to order a new trial. But, not to worry. A group of 10 copyright law professors from 10 different law schools and several other amici curiae (friends of the court) have filed briefs now, so it is highly unlikely the judge will allow himself to be misled again, no matter who the RIAA brings in as cannon fodder on Monday."

From an Information Week story:

Yahoo's experience with shutting down its music store highlights the problem DRM technology can have on consumers. While Apple still uses the technology to ensure music can only be played easily on its iPod player, others have switched to selling DRM-free music, including Amazon.com, RealNetworks, and Napster.

Now, that may be true, but as 5omebody pointed out to me, "I don't recall anyone shutting down the postal service back in the days when people mailed porn."

And that's the equivalent of what they're doing. Some ISPs are chucking the complete alt.* hierarchy, of which www.newsguy.com lists 34,000+ groups. Some are "only" eliminating the alt.binaries.* list of groups (5,800 groups), Roadrunner is going to stop carrying newsgroups completely (81,000 groups).

Ay yi yi! Is this really the way to deal with the problem of child abuse?

CNET had a good article about a month ago when this hysteria started building. The EFF posted a good article yesterday, "More ISPs Decide to Filter Usenet Newsgroups". And Slashdot has a good discussion, "Why ISPs' "Stand" Against Child Porn Is Actually Not a Stand Against Child Porn."

Some commercial Usenet providers are making special offers to potential customers of the ISPs who are now limiting access:

• Newsguy.com
• Giganews.com

Other commercial services include:

• Supernews.com
• Usenet.com
• Newsdemon.com

Broadcasting music without payment is akin to piracy, the industry says.

The Industry is getting ever more frantic in their flailing about for the insane revenue stream they enjoyed for a good 25 years for CDs, and 50+ years for other formats.

The test is here, but it's often too busy, so you may have to hit their site (over in Germany) a few times before you get to test your connection.

Somebody somewhere (where did I hear about this thing? probably on slashdot), pointed out that all an ISP has to do is white-list the Glasnost servers as it becomes aware of them, but I don't think they're smart enough to implement that, nevermind motivated enough.

The U.S. leads the world in torrent-blocking ISPs, with Comcast [surprise!] and Cox the main culprits.