RIAA targets students in new file-swapping suits
By John Borland, CNET News.com
Friday, October 29 2004 10:08 AM
The Recording Industry Association of America filed on Thursday another round of lawsuits against alleged file-swappers, including students on 13 university campuses.
The 750 suits come just a few days after Internet researchers released a study that found peer-to-peer traffic had remained constant or risen up to the early days of 2004, despite the pressure of recording industry lawsuits.
But the RIAA said its lawsuits were helping build a foundation for the growth in authorized music services such as iTunes, Napster and others.
"In order for legitimate services to continue their growth, we cannot ignore those who take and distribute music illegally," RIAA President Cary Sherman said. "There must be consequences to breaking the law, or illegal downloading will cripple the music community's ability to support itself now or invest in the future."
The music labels' trade association is a little more than a year into its strategy of suing individual file-swappers for copyright infringement, a campaign it hopes will sharply curtail the rate of MP3-swapping on networks such as Kazaa and eDonkey.
The lawsuits have dramatically raised awareness of the legal problems with trading copyrighted files online, and some reports have found steep decreases in the number of people trading music.
A recent study by NPD MusicWatch Digital found that the proportion of MP3 files on people's hard drives, as compared to music formats used by Microsoft or Apple Computer software, was falling. Analysts said that people were still downloading MP3s quickly, but were deleting them even faster from their hard drives--possibly a sign of fear over the record industry lawsuits.
The recent peer-to-peer study was written by researchers at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis at the University of California, San Diego, along with several other universities. It found that a full analysis of peer-to-peer traffic, including protocols that masked themselves as Web traffic or were otherwise difficult to find, found that aggregate file-swapping traffic had not declined between August 2002 and January 2004.
"We find that, if measured accurately, P2P traffic has never declined," the researchers wrote. "Indeed, we have never seen the proportion of P2P traffic (on networks) decrease over time...in any of our data sources."
But the study did find that traffic patterns had shifted. As earlier reports have shown, the FastTrack network used by Kazaa had decreased substantially, while BitTorrent--a program used widely for very large files such as movies or games, rather than individual songs--had grown considerably.
The RIAA declined to comment on the study.
The latest round of RIAA suits brings the total number of people sued to 6,191. The record industry association also said that it had filed new suits against 213 individuals who had previously been sued as unnamed "John Does," after finding their identities through the litigation process.
The details of that process are still being worked out in some cases. Earlier this month, a court in Philadelphia ruled that the RIAA could issue subpoenas for the identities of anonymous file-swappers, but those people must be notified by their ISP of the RIAA's action within seven days.
Movie industry to sue file sharers
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Taking a cue from recording companies, Hollywood movie studios are preparing to file copyright infringement lawsuits against computer users it says are illegally distributing movies online, a source familiar with the studios' plans said Wednesday.
The lawsuits will target movie fans who share digitized versions of films over peer-to-peer networks, with the first wave of litigation planned for as early as Thursday, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Like the recording industry, which began suing individual music file-sharers last year, the movie studios plan an ongoing litigation campaign, the source said.
The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the major film studios, declined to comment Wednesday. But the organization issued a release saying its chief executive would be making ``a major announcement regarding illegal file sharing of motion pictures on peer-to-peer networks'' early Thursday.
The movie studios were still finalizing how many lawsuits would make up their initial filing, but it would probably be around 200 or so, the source said.
Videotaped copies of films in theaters often are digitized or burned off DVDs and then distributed on file-sharing networks.
The MPAA claims the U.S. movie industry loses more than $3 billion annually in potential global revenue because of physical piracy, or bogus copies of videos and DVDs of its films.
The MPAA doesn't give an estimate for how much online piracy costs the industry annually, but claims the health of the industry is at stake as the copying and distribution of movies online continues to grow unabated.
Along with the recording industry, movie studios have tried to shut down companies behind file-sharing software through litigation with little success.
The movie industry has also tried to battle piracy by running ads in movie theaters and elsewhere designed to dissuade people from file-sharing films by stressing the risks of identity theft and liability.
Up to this point, the studios have stopped short of taking legal action against individuals.
My business is going down.
I dont know how long ago this took place but i work in a music store and sales here have been great so i dont know whats going on with the boycott but it hasnt hurt sales here.
RIAA’s Grand Total: 10,037 - What are Your Odds?
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) began their lawsuit campaign against alleged music pirates in June of 2003. When the first RIAA lawsuits began rolling off the assembly line, an enormous media frenzy accompanied this event. Since that time the lawsuits have become second-rate news, as the chances of becoming another RIAA statistic is relatively low – very low.
So what exactly are your chances of being sued by the RIAA? In our news story last Wednesday, Slyck reported the number of online file-sharers was approximately 9 million users. Among other networks, this number did not account for the BitTorrent, WinMX, Manolito, Warez/Ares, Gnutella2 or SoulSeek populations. If we did include those users, we would be looking at a much larger population – perhaps as many as 15 million users. For the purposes of this article, we will split the difference and approximate there are 12 million P2P users online at any given moment.
With this number in mind, there have been 10,037 people sued by the RIAA since June of 2003. According to the web log “ RIAA Watch”, 6,523 people were sued by the RIAA in 2004. What exactly does this mean?
If we divide the total population of the P2P community (~12 million individuals), by the total number of lawsuits in 2004 (6,523), we get 1,840. In other words, your chances of being sued are 1 in 1,840 for all users (regardless of network) per year. How does that stack against all other odds of dying from an intentional or non-intentional injury? According to the National Safety Council, one’s yearly chances of dying from all external causes were 1 in 1,755 in 2002.
Basically, your chances of dying from all causes of external injuries, whether from a car accident, motorcycle accident, plane crash, murder, etc was 1 in 1,755 – fairly remote odds. Although the odds were remote, they still were not as remote as specific causes of death – such as lightening strikes, suicide, “fall on and from stairs and steps” or being electrocuted. In some cases, your chances of dying from contact with a sharp object were 1 in 2.8 million.
So let us examine the chances of being sued by the RIAA a bit further. The main focus of the RIAA lawsuits have been against the FastTrack network. The effects of this campaign has crippled FastTrack, dropping its population from ~4.5 million to ~2.5 million users. From the last capture of the proportion of networks under the RIAA’s gun in November of 2003, 150 users of FastTrack were sued, compared to 5 Blubster users. Since the RIAA cannot subpoena individuals anymore, we unfortunately cannot provide a more current proportion. However, common knowledge dictates that FastTrack remains a priority, and on November 13 of 2003 it represented ~96% of those being sued.
If we were to eliminate 96% (proportion of FastTrack users) of the 6,523 sued in 2004, the odds of being sued changes dramatically. If we consider only those using a non-FastTrack P2P network, the total number of lawsuits drops to only ~261. In other words, you then have a 1 in 45,977 chance of being sued if you do not use FastTrack. Comparatively, according to the National Safety Council, you have a better chance of being killed in a transportation or non-transportational accident, death from suicide, death from assault or death by legal intervention (such as execution or being shot by a police officer.)
However this assumes the RIAA has remained consistent in which network users are being sued from. Let's say the RIAA was more diverse in which networks they pursue. If we assume half of those sued in 2004 were using FastTrack, that leaves us with 3,261 non-FastTrack related lawsuits. You would then have a 1 in 3,679 chance of being sued. That still places you above all external cases of mortality (1 in 1,755), but below all transportational accidents (1 in 5,953.) However, you would still have a better chance of being killed in an unintentional accident (1 in 2,698), then being sued by the RIAA.
Although these numbers are hardly an exact science, they do reflect the odds of being sued are little different than the risks one takes by simply living day-to-day life. But if we were to get real specific, the odds of being sued by the RIAA for non-FastTrack users (1 in 3,679) is still much greater than death by contact with a venomous snake or lizard (1 in 95 million.) So just watch yourself.
SOURCE:
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=769
Internet piracy fails to sink film profits
Despite fears that internet piracy would dent its profits, Hollywood has had a buoyant year.
Worldwide revenues from cinema tickets, videos and DVD sales, as well as television rights, reached a whopping $44.8bn (£24bn) last year, up 9% from 2003.
Record DVD sales fuelled the increase, up 14% in the US and 46% worldwide, but most other sectors did better than last year. The only exception was cinema ticket sales outside America. These did fall, but by a relatively modest 1%.
The figures are from a report by the Motion Picture Association, part of the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood studios.
For the past year, the MPAA has mounted an aggressive anti-piracy campaign in the US, claiming that studios lose around $3.5bn (£1.8bn) in potential earnings each year.
In February, it launched its third wave of lawsuits in four months against anyone illegally up- or downloading movies through internet file-sharing programs. The MPAA has also taken to sending guards sporting night-vision goggles into cinemas, in a bid to catch the pirates red-handed.
SOURCE:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/stor...475482,00.html
