"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.'"

Is this an opportunity for somebody? I want a hemi-terabyte model, and they'd been getting bigger and bigger. But now they got smaller, and one size fits all.

Our good friends at dvice capture it pretty well:

Apple discontinues 160GB iPod Classic, new model holds only 120GB… WTF?

What just happened? Apple's iPod Classic — the one that looks the most like the original — used to come in two sizes: 80GB and 160GB. Today Apple upgraded the smaller model to 120GB ($249) but discontinued the larger one? Huh?

Have we reached the upper limit of how much space someone's music collection can possibly take up? That's doubtful, and in any case, we could use more room for storing our songs in lossless format, thanks very much. Why no 240GB version, Apple? Then you'd still be the big dog, and we'd still be on our way to a 1TB iPod. Stop trampling on my dreams!

Apple also introduced Genius, a new feature that automatically creates playlists from songs in your library, based on user preferences about which songs go great together. Additionally, you can synchronize your Genius playlists with Apple's own iTunes 8 servers, which will then analyze and combine your information with other users' Genius playlists. iTunes 8 will handle your Genius playlists anonymously. The master plan is simply to use this feature in order to come up with targeted buying recommendations for you, based on a large database of Genius playlists.

The hipsters at the WSJ do a compare-and-contrast of Brian Wilson (and Lucky Old Sun) and Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver and Starling Electric:

Long a staple of rock and pop, but sorely missed in recent years, soaring, shimmering vocal harmonies are staging a strong comeback this year. Among the terrific releases so far: Clouded Staircase (Bar-None) by Starling Electric; Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop), a quintet's self-titled debut; and "For Emma, Forever Ago" by Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar).

Caleb Dillon of Starling Electric and Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes said they were inspired by the work of Brian Wilson, whose new album, That Lucky Old Sun (Capitol [!!]), was released this past Tuesday. When I called Mr. Dillon in Ann Arbor, Mich., he told me that 10 years ago, when he was 17, he first heard a bootleg version of Mr. Wilson's Smile album, which he studied for its complex vocal harmonies and shadings. (Recorded in 1966 and 1967 by the Beach Boys, which featured Mr. Wilson and his brothers Carl and Dennis, that Smile was never officially released, but Brian Wilson recorded a new version that was issued in 2004.) With a four-track tape recorder, the teenager made his own version of Mr. Wilson's composition "Child Is Father of the Man," building vocal harmonies by singing the four parts himself.

[....]

As for Mr. Wilson, I met with him in June at his home in Beverly Hills to discuss That Lucky Old Sun, but it was a fruitless endeavor. His responses seemed overly programmed, and we never achieved a conversation. (The closest we came was when he suddenly said I reminded him of Burt Bacharach.) Too bad, for the brief recording is his best new material since his self-titled release in 1988, and I wanted to know how it came about.

No one arranges voices like the 66-year-old Mr. Wilson, and the backing vocals on That Lucky Old Sun are a delight. A little five-minute suite near the album's end showcases his gift: "Been Too Long" is reminiscent of the vocal arrangement on the Beach Boys' somber "'Til I Die," then gives way to "Midnight's Another Day," wherein the choir reaches a stirring, layered peak. The a cappella introduction to the title track is a thrill. Held together by narratives written by Van Dyke Parks and recited by Mr. Wilson, the album's overarching concept is an overview of life in California. But very near the surface are allusions, in song lyrics, to Mr. Wilson's descent into, and recovery from, debilitating mental illness. "At 25, I turned out the lights 'cause I couldn't handle the glare in my tired eyes/But now I'm back drawing shades of kind blue sky," he sings in the rocker "Goin' Home." "Took the dive but couldn't swim, a flag without the wind. . . . All these people make me feel so alone" is how he puts it in "Midnight's Another Day." Mr. Wilson told me that he wrote the original lyrics, and that Scott Bennett, a member of his band, polished them.

Where did I hear about this Velvet Underground torrent site, http://www.velvetunderground.be? DaisyGlaze? And how did I run across it again?

It has only taken me eight freakin' months to glom on to this, and I only did that cause Mellie woke me up to say I was snoring, but if you're like me (and you should thank god you're not), you will flip.

Highly recommended, btw, is the Firefox extension, DownThemAll! Otherwise you're going to be doing a heap of right-clicking and file-saving-as.

"We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision," said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. "This is like a last stand for webcasting...."

This week, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) is trying to broker a last-minute deal between webcasters and SoundExchange, the organization that represents artists and record companies. The negotiations could reduce the per-song rate set by the federal panel last year.

The two sides appear to be far apart, however, with Berman frustrated.

"Most of the rate issues have not been resolved," Berman said. "If it doesn't get much more dramatic quickly, I will extricate myself from the process."

"We're losing money as it is," said Westergren, a former acoustic rocker. "The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money."

I probably won't be up there for any of them, but those July shows sounded great and I'm sure these will, too.

Here's the schedule:

• Sat 09/20/08, Brooklyn, NY, Music Hall Of Williamsburg
• Sun 09/21/08 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom
• Fri 10/10/08 Northampton, MA, Academy Of Music
• Sat 10/11/08 Boston, MA, The Roxy

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.