RIAA & copyright..

[m mouth <failsafedefault@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=2653695

Music Industry Sends Warning to Song Swappers
Tue April 29, 2003 04:54 PM ET
By Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The record industry opened a
new front in its war against online piracy on Tuesday
by surprising hundreds of thousands of Internet song
swappers with an instant message warning that they
could be "easily" identified and face "legal
penalties."

About 200,000 users of the Grokster and Kazaa
file-sharing services initially received the warning
notice on Tuesday and millions more will get notices
in coming weeks.

"We're expecting to send at least a million messages
or more per week because these users are offering to
distribute music on Kazaa or Grokster," said Cary
Sherman, president of the Recording Industry
Association of America.

The move comes days after a federal judge delivered a
stunning setback to its efforts to shut down
song-swapping services, and a day after Apple Computer
Inc. unveiled the latest industry-endorsed commercial
service aimed at wooing users from the free networks.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson on Friday
ruled that the Grokster and Morpheus services should
not be shut down because they cannot control what is
traded over their systems.

While recording and movie officials said they will
appeal the ruling, they at least found solace in the
judge's opinion that the users themselves are
violating copyrights.

Sherman said the messaging effort was planned long
ago, but that the timing was fortunate because users
may misinterpret Wilson's ruling to think copyright
infringement is legal.

Others agreed. "The industry needed to step up their
campaign after the unfavorable ruling last week, but
at the same time its a natural extension of their
efforts to educate consumers on copyright violations,"
said Lee Black, analyst with Jupiter Research.

Its not the first time the industry has targeted
individual users. In April, the RIAA sued four
students who were operating networks on three college
campuses where it claims the networks were being used
to illegally trade copies of music files.

The warning on Tuesday was sent by the RIAA on behalf
of the world's big record labels owned by AOL Time
Warner Inc. , EMI Group Plc, Bertelsmann AG,Vivendi
Universal . and Sony Corp.

DON'T STEAL MUSIC

The message said in part: "It appears that you are
offering copyrighted music to others from your
computer. ...When you break the law, you risk legal
penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk:
DON'T STEAL MUSIC, either by offering it to others to
copy or downloading it on a 'file-sharing' system like
this. When you offer music on these systems, you are
not anonymous and you can easily be identified."

Sherman described the move as educational, aimed at
informing users that offering copyrighted music on
peer-to-peer networks is illegal and that they face
consequences when they participate in this illegal
activity.

The message was designed by a third party who utilized
the existing capability of the peer-to-peer networks'
instant message systems. The RIAA said by using song
titles, it was identifying users who were posting
songs for others to download as targets for the
message.

"We have a designated list of major copyrighted works
and we're sending (them) to designated users to let
them know that we know they are offering these songs
on these networks and that they are not anonymous," he
said.

Sherman said there was no plan to take further action
against these users for now. "There is no next step.
We are just letting them know it's illegal and they
are not anonymous," said Sherman.

"The (our) computers will maintain a list of who it
went to, but it's unrelated to any other program," he
said.

"We're not going to change behavior overnight. The
only way we can measure this is to see if fewer people
are offering files on Grokster and Kazaa," he said.

Some experts doubted its effectiveness. "I think a
small number of users will be deterred by this effort.
It's not going to come as a surprise to them the RIAA
finds it unlawful," said Jonathan Band, a copyright
lawyer for Morrison & Foerster.

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