HEATHER
NEWMAN: Those who swap tunes face suits FREE
PRESS COLUMNIST If you're one of the thousands
of people who share songs online with your computer, watch your back. The
Recording Industry Association of America is looking for you. The industry group will search
music-sharing services starting today, looking for people to sue for
violating what it calls "substantial" numbers of its members'
copyrights. Altogether, it plans to sue several hundred people using
services like Grokster and Kazaa in the next eight to 10 weeks. A court decided several weeks
back that the file-sharing services themselves were not legally
responsible for any copyright violations. The RIAA's president, Carey
Sherman, said tens of millions of Internet users of popular file-sharing
software after today will expose themselves to "the real risk of
having to face the music." "It's stealing. It's both
wrong and illegal," Sherman said. Alluding to the court
decisions, Sherman said Internet users who believe they can hide behind an
alias online were mistaken. "You are not anonymous," he said.
"We're going to begin taking names." The association said it is also
considering criminal prosecution of file-sharing users. Those who support the moves --
the latest in a series of legal battles by the group -- say they're
protecting the artists, record stores and labels who make their money
creating the music we love. It's their product, they say, and they should
be able to charge what they like. But opponents contend the RIAA
has, in one masterful stroke, managed to treat its best customers like
children, angering and irritating millions of Americans. "This latest effort really
indicates the recording industry has lost touch with reality
completely," said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer for the Electronic
Frontier Foundation. "Today they have declared war on the American
consumer." Said Sherman: "You could
say the same thing about shoplifters -- are you worried about alienating
them? All sorts of industries and retailers have come to the conclusion
that they need to be able to protect their rights. We have come to the
same conclusion." Ironically, the RIAA
announcement came days after a news conference touting the success of the
first legitimate, flexible service for distributing digital songs in the
history of American music. That service is Apple Computer
Corp.'s iTunes Music Store. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said iTunes
customers have downloaded -- and paid for -- more than five million songs
in just two months of doing business. What makes Jobs' announcement
especially striking is that Apple computer users represent a tiny fraction
of all PC owners in America -- 3 to 5 percent, depending on whose
estimates you believe. So just as customers were
demonstrating by the millions why legal online music services work, the
industry once again raised questions about whether it's ready to accept
digital music as a legitimate distribution channel. Mass-produced CDs containing a
predetermined lineup of songs are dead as a mass-market medium within five
years. As the success of iTunes demonstrates, consumers want the ability
to buy just the songs they want and then to mix and match them for
themselves. But instead of embracing a new
way of making more money and getting more customers each year -- as
opposed to the plummeting income it's now getting from CDs -- the industry
has turned to scare tactics to frighten customers into paying up for last
millennium's media. Country songwriter Hugh
Prestwood, who has worked with Randy Travis, Tricia Yearwood and Jimmy
Buffett, said the lawsuits would be like the effort of a roadside police
officer on a busy highway. "It doesn't take too many
tickets to get everybody to obey the speed limit," Prestwood said. That's a heartfelt argument,
and one that most people would consider reasonable. I'm certainly in favor
of copyright law -- I make my living by it. The only problem: There's no
legitimate alternative to file sharing for people who want flexible music
to use with their modern lifestyles. It's as if the only way you could get
to your destination was by speeding: How many of us would fudge a few
miles an hour then? If you want to read this
column, you have alternatives. You can subscribe to the paper for a month,
or a year. You can buy a single copy at the newsstand at a reasonable
price. You can read it online at www.freep.com. But not so for most computer
users. Apple's store won't be available for Windows users -- the vast
majority of PC owners -- until at least this fall. The legitimate music
services available now to people with Windows computers limit the number
of songs you can download, what you can do with them after you've
downloaded them or a number of other factors that you don't have to deal
with if you buy a CD. If you buy a CD, you're paying
for all the songs on the album, even if all you want is one. Or you can
pay $8 a song to buy a CD single to get the freedom to use one song the
way you want it. No wonder the majority of
America's computer users have music files on their PCs -- but only a tiny
fraction have tried the current paid music subscription sites. It would have made a lot more
political sense to wait until the iTunes Music Store was available to
everyone this fall, and then used the suits as a stick to drive people to
the legitimate outlets. So what should you do if you
have downloaded music on your computer? There's a slim chance that the
RIAA could get the logs from the service that you accessed and track you
down. But realistically, only future users need to worry. Don't run the
file-sharing program again. And if you have the program set up to run
automatically when you turn on your computer, disable that feature. And in the meantime, tread
carefully. The RIAA has not set a limit on how many songs it takes before
you get sued, and while it's indicated a willingness to settle its cases,
it was only a few months ago that they sued one college student at
Michigan Tech for $98 billion. |
