Big Music cartel sues 11,552
p2pnet.net News:- The Big Music cartel’s IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) has lodged 963 lawsuits against people it says shared music with each other online without its permission in 11 countries in Europe and Asia.
And it boasts it’s using Spim (instant messaging spam) to threaten other potential victims.
Twelve million, “such warnings have been sent to individuals on file-sharing services in 12 countries outside the US,” it states.
Meanwhile, the IFPI – part of the Hollywood entertainment conglomeration – says it’s nailed a German judge, a French cook and a British councilor for file sharing, bringing the total number of lawsuits brought by EMI (Britain), UMG (France), Warner (USA) and Sony-BMG (Japan and Germany) internationally to 11,552.
And “More waves of legal actions in more countries will follow,” it says, continuing with nonsensical claims to the effect that its lawsuits are making an impression on p2p and p2p file sharers.
It’s even taking to profiling “litigation targets”. It says:
- Most of the cases involve file-sharers aged 25 to 35, with a very small minority number under 20. Over two thirds are men.
- There is a very wide range of occupations, including teaching and other professions, public sector workers, technology workers and students. There is a tendency towards IT-related professions, but settlements have also involved a judge, a doctor, a cook, a nurse, a truck driver, a car salesman, a DJ, a company director and a local councillor.
- Most live in large towns and cities.
- They uploaded predominantly top 50 chart hits
- “Typical excuses”: “My kids did it, I wasn’t aware what they were up to”; “KaZaA is 100% legal, I don’t understand why I’m being sued”; “I only used KaZaA to catalogue and play my music”; “I’m not a major uploader”; “I should pay less as I limited it to one download at any one time”; “Others upload more than me: I’m being victimized”, “Why are there no warnings on the KaZaA website?”; “I knew it was illegal but it was easy, and it was free”.
In the real world of online music …
The cartel’s BPI (British Phonographic Industry) also says it’s taking legal action against another 33 people in the UK, bringing its total to 90.
And while the Big Four labels fume and rage helplessly against p2p, the numbers of file sharers globally and in the US continue to rise, disingenuous cartel misinformation reports to the contrary notwithstanding.
In March, 2004, the average number of p2p users online at any given moment around the world was 7,370,644, says p2p research firm Big Champagne.
This year, in March, the number had risen to 8,282,986.
And in the US, where students and teenagers are the principal targets, in March, 2004, an average of 4,603,571 people were on the p2p networks at any given moment.
In March, 2005, the number had soared to 6,016,247.
And yet, “File-sharing is being contained: traffic on P2P networks which would have spiralled out of control a year ago has, in fact, began to slow down,” states IFPI boss John Kennedy unblushingly.
Also see New RIAA attack on schools in which the cartel goes after students in the US.
Stay tuned.
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April 13th, 2005 at 1:30 am
# There is a very wide range of occupations, including teaching and other professions, public sector workers, technology workers and students. There is a tendency towards IT-related professions, but settlements have also involved a judge, a doctor, a cook, a nurse, a truck driver, a car salesman, a DJ, a company director and a local councillor.
# Most live in large towns and cities.
As you can see, they do not understand that they are messing with the next generation. They are trying to convince everyone that the future is not here and they want to preserve the integrity of their profiteering and schemes. Hopefully soon they will go out of business but with these lawsuits, its like they decide when they want to get paid meaning when they want more money, they just sue more people. It sounds like a great business plan that they have. (Not)
April 13th, 2005 at 2:13 am
Hi,
This is absolutely crazy – decent people getting sued because they are doing what everybody else is doing online.
It’s these morons in the music industry that created this situation with inflated CD’s with one or two decent tunes if that on them and manufactured music formulas.
Why not flood the market on p2p networks with poor quality legal product and then have high quality product (high clarity recordings) for itunes type prices. That way they wouldn’t alienate everyone especially if they allow us the fair use we enjoyed when using VHS, Pay-Per-View TV etc.
hell everybody copied the odd film and nobody was a criminal – I’m sure these moronic rip off merchants that are members of the RIAA also did exactly that growing up
April 13th, 2005 at 6:25 pm
And the only people who said the bussiness is hurted are them. Please read this http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_4/geist/
In this article (from a University Professor at Canada) is demostrated that not olnly the P2P networks is not hurting anyone’s bussiness but “ou contraire” is helping several other bussines!!
It’s just about greedy and ignorance, the RIAA excecutives (and all the executives in this infamous industry, except the artist) are seeing their “just sit here and see the money raining” bussiness model menaced…so what to do? instead look for renovation of the model, better sued several school students to see if with the fines they can pouchase another house in the France Riviera….
Typical of the “american way” : I want more, more, more, better said : I want it all!!!
April 13th, 2005 at 7:34 pm
This is a case where both sides are wrong – but no one wants to have discussion. That’s the problem with our whole society.
First off – it offends me that you used the word terrorism in your editorial. Terrorism is the use of violence by states or political entities for political purposes. It is one of the most misused and misunderstood terms. Being slapped with a lawsuit is a bummer, but it can’t be compared to being blown to bits or maimed by gunfire, bombings and the like. Making such a comparison is actually very offensive and doesn’t do a lot to encourage dialogue.
The record and movie companies on the other hand have hardly been willing to either face the future or discuss ways to make sure that artists are protected – primarily becuase they don’t really care about the artists.
To me, the two groups that need to have a dialogue are the artists and the consumers. The true fans know that if there are going to be more LOTR’s, Stars Wars or whatever – money is going to have to change hands. That if people are going to be able top make great music they will need to be compensated. There are some creeps out there that don’t care – but I don’t think most fans begrudge there favorite artists making a living.
And most artists want their art to get out there and be appreciated – they just want to be fairly compensated for it.
It is the pirates that we must stop and the P2P community needs to start figuring out how it can either police itself, or find ways to compensate their favorite artists or they will end up with no art to swap becuase their favorite performer will be so busy working construction or making lattes to make any new art for anyone to swap.
My question is when is someone going to have that important discussion?!?
April 13th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
” The record and movie companies on the other hand have hardly been willing to either face the future or discuss ways to make sure that artists are protected – primarily becuase they don’t really care about the artists.”
The most important element of the above statement is, “they don’t really care about the artists”. In order to destroy the RIAA, two steps must be taken here. First, stop buying the RIAA membership’s music product. As long as consumers are willing to purchase membership artist’s product, the Labels will force artists to help them support this marketing channel. This marketing strategy is not ment to benefit artists or consumers and the only way artists (and consumers) can ever be free of the RIAA and its membership is for consumers to destroy this channel. Second, Help artists understand they don’t need the Labels by encouraging artist to market directly to consumers. Artists can produce quality music and using p2p find a vast market for their products and services.
Once this marketing channel is destroyed it will no longer be a viable meanes of income development. The sooner this marketing channel can be destroyed and the sooner artist develop direct artist-to-consumer marketing strategies the sooner the RIAA will be able to fade into history. Everyone (artist and consumer) will be the better off. AFreeMan
April 14th, 2005 at 2:54 am
but they aren’t losing any money because of files sharring… so there will always be movies and music…
April 14th, 2005 at 3:02 am
“There is a very wide range of occupations, including teaching and other professions, public sector workers, technology workers and students. There is a tendency towards IT-related professions, but settlements have also involved a judge, a doctor, a cook, a nurse, a truck driver, a car salesman, a DJ, a company director and a local councillor.”
Yea, they keep sueing, and eventually their gonna sue someone famous/popular/rich and their gonna have a big problem! Cause that person is gonna fight back, and will have as much support and money and good loyars as they do!
And in that case, since it will actually to court for once, maybe they will finally rule that Filesharring isn’t Illegal, cause its not stealing and its not bootleg-selling/pirating and they aren’t losing any money over it!
And after that happens, there might be a few more cases… with simmilar outcomes, and in the end, they will have to rewrite those terrible copywrite laws to fit this situation better.
Its too bad the copywrite laws weren’t made correctly the first time… They should have stated in someway that as long as no one is loosing money, because of something like sharring… or no one is gaining money off of someone elses product…
FIGHT BACK!!
April 14th, 2005 at 6:53 pm
I can’t wait till this case actually happens! XD
April 16th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
The problem with you argument is it is on too small a scale and takes the assumption that people who download music will subsequently not buy music. As has been shown in other stories p2p is having a negligible effect on total sales, and it appears that the limited choice is the most important factor. Further, the artist are no where near the point at which they have no money, most are millionares and I find it hard to feel any sympathy for somebody who makes more in a day than i make in a year, although people should be paid for their work, the big artists do not need to be paid so much and many children could not afford to buy all the music they want to listen to. I think the ideas of paying a p2p tax, paying for lossless format files or paying nominal charges (around those of allofmp3) are all much better. Why does a downloaded song cost the same as one in a shop, when it comes with restrictive DRM, low quality audio, no physical unit, no shipping charges, etc. The only artists who would be at risk of being hurt by p2p downloading, are smaller ones who are trying to make ends meet, but they are the people being helped most to reach a wider audience. Most of the above arguments apply to movies as much as music…
just my 2 cents