p2pnet.net news view:- A very serious problem exploding in senior schools across America will inevitably spread to teaching institutions in Europe and elsewhere.

Students who download and/or share music copyrighted by EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US) are being held up by the industry and school staffs alike as criminals and thieves who must comply with Big Music online ’settlement’ options if they’re to avoid appearing in court.

School administrators are systemically failing to respond appropriately to corporate allegations, instead handing over, on demand, details of students to the Big 4’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for ‘punishment’ without cases ever having been made or proved in or out of court.

Nor are mainstream print and electronic media reporting on what’s happening in a fair and balanced manner. Instead, they’re relying almost solely on one-sided corporate press statements and spokespeople for material.

Associated Press states, “The Recording Industry Association of America sent letters offering discounted settlements to 400 computer users at 13 universities in late February. Another batch was sent out this week. Association spokesman Jonathan Lamy said Friday that, so far, 116 settlements were reached after the first round of letters went out.”

Is this OK? AP doesn’t wonder at it. Is it acceptable for publicly funded institutions to be used in this way by a purely commercial organisation answering to vested interests? AP doesn’t ask.

The Big 4 labels missed the mp3 online music boat in the 1990s and now, instead of stepping back to see how they can remedy the situation and regain lost ground and consumer trust, they want their customers to bail them out, both literally and metaphorically.

Billions of digital music files are moving around the Net every hour of every day, but only a fraction, so tiny as to be unmeasurable, are being bought from sites supplied by the Big 4.

Most of the music traffic is on the p2p networks and independent sites because: management is wholly out of touch; marketing decisions are based on outdated and outmoded models; corporate files are seriously over-priced; corporate catalogues are scant; the quality of corporate product is, generally speaking, poor; and, the music industry persists in treating its customers as though they’re all would-be criminals.

But that’s never mentioned or written about.

Instead, “In the association’s latest effort to curb music piracy, colleges are given letters to forward to students suspected of music piracy, Lamy said,” states AP, going on, “Students are urged to contact the association to broker a settlement before a lawsuit is filed.”

Copyright infringement is a civil, purely commercial, matter.

It isn’t a crime, or anything close to it, and people who infringe copyrights aren’t criminals by any stretch of the imagination.

To date, not one person, student or otherwise, has appeared in court to be found ‘guilty’ of the non-existent crime of file sharing.

And that’s the way the labels want it to stay.

Why bother with the nuisance of courts, where they’d be forced to actually prove their allegations and have to pay hefty legal fees and expenses, not to mention the added, and very real, risk of losing, when they can prosecute people in the mainstream media with guaranteed results? And all for free.

Additionally, thanks to the settlements, students not only voluntarily incriminate themselves, they also supply the labels with invaluable personal information and data which can be re-used by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG for many different, often questionable, purposes.

Moreover, the ’settlements’ are pulling in significant amounts of money, none of which goes back to the artists.

“Patrick McGee, an attorney Ohio University arranged to meet with its students, has said $3,000 is the standard settlement offer, though cases have settled for as much as $5,000,” says AP.

“Years ago, college students were our best customers,” said RIAA president Cary Sherman recently. “Now they’re among our worst customers.”

Is that possibly because years ago, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) weren’t trying to sue students into buying ‘product’?

But students aren’t alone.

In the latest travesty, the RIAA is now pursuing a 10-year-old girl.

JN

Slashdot it!

Also See:
online ’settlement’ options – RIAA college settlement plan, February 28, 2007
Associated Press – Recording industry group says piracy students are settling, March 23, 2007
worst customers – Students ‘worst customers’: RIAA, March 22, 2007
latest travesty – RIAA targets 10-year-old girl, March 25, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

---

rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site

---

Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 1392 times