p2pnet.net News:- Most Americans say the music industry shouldn’t sue people who "illegally" download music, says a new FindLaw poll, paradoxically going on to support, in effect, Big Music’s sue ‘em all campaign.

For ‘downloaders’ read ‘file sharers’.

Since last September the Big Five record labels’ RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has sued 3,429 men, women and children claiming damages of up to half a million dollars each and so far, at least 600 cases have been settled out of court.

That’s because the RIAA victims are all ordinary people who know they don’t stand a hope in Hell of successfully standing up against the hugely rich music industry. To even initiate a defence is well beyond the means of most ordinary Americans and if they lose, they stand to be fined $750 for each song downloaded, plus costs, and et cetera.

Not a single case has been before a judge.

In other words, the Big Five record labels which own the RIAA, and only one of which is actually American, know perfectly well that their offer to victims to settle out of court will be accepted.

According to FindLaw’s national survey, 56% of American adults oppose the lawsuits while 37% support them. Seven percent had had no opinion.

Opposition to music industry lawsuits was much higher among younger people and nearly two-thirds of those between the ages of 18 and 34 said the music industry should not sue people who illegally download music.

"Many of the people who have been sued are college or high school students and their parents," says FindLaw. "The RIAA has been pressuring colleges and universities to limit students’ ability to download large files through campus computer networks. Opposition to the lawsuits was also higher among people with lower incomes."

Legal actions to combat illegal music downloading may increase, it guesses, pointing out that "Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently introduced legislation that would allow artists to sue the makers of file-sharing software used to illegally download music."

‘No such thing as cost-free music downloading’
However, "Although the RIAA’s lawsuits are unsettling to many, they are based upon sound law because it is a clear violation of copyright law to make a verbatim copy of a protected sound recording," it quotes St Paul, Minneapolis, law professor Sharon Sandeen as saying.

"The underlying public policy at work is the notion that without copyright laws, musical artists would be less inclined to create music and, as a result, there would be fewer sound recordings. So the individuals who complain about the lawsuits should ask themselves: ‘Would I rather live in a world with freely distributed but less music, or pay for the music I enjoy so that there will be more of it’?"

"I suspect that many people, when educated about the purpose of copyright law, support the law," Sandeen says. "Public opposition to the lawsuits may be due, in part, to what some people consider hard-handed tactics by the RIAA."

And, "In the end, there is no such thing as cost-free music downloading," it has rofessor Marci Hamilton at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law saying.

"The freewheeling early years of the Internet led adults and teenagers alike to believe that whatever came across their computer screen could be and ought to be downloaded cost-free. In many ways, downloading is like shoplifting: an exciting and slightly risky diversion, a seemingly petty vice in an otherwise law-abiding life. But like shoplifting, illegal music downloading violates the law and exacts a cost on society."

Do those words ring a bell?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2004 at 9:09 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.

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