Big Music: pay or go to jail!
p2pnet.net News:- Pay us £4,000 ($7,290) by July 1.
Or go to jail.
That’s the message from the BPI, the Big Four record labels’ UK enforcer, to the mother of 14-year-old Emily Price who downloaded songs from the Net without her mother, who’s 53, knowing, says the Gloucestershire Echo.
“I don’t know where I’m going to get the money from,” Mrs Price is quoted as saying.
The BPI (British Phonographic Industry) has been carrying out a campaign of terror and intimidation on behalf of its owners, EMI (UK), Sony BMG (Japan, Germany), UMG (France and WMG (America).
Does ‘terror’ seem a little strong?
“I’ll have to go to prison because I haven’t got that kind of money,” says Mrs Price in the Echo story. And all over music for which the labels have already been paid.
The tracks Emily downloaded are low-fidelity copies of songs already published on retail CDs and for which the corporate music services are now demanding a further $1 or more each.
Working on behalf of the labels, the BPI has been able to con major British newspapers such as The Times into carrying false and misleading information which says file sharing is devastating its owners.
Not at all incidentally, a The Times story recently led a story with Is your child an internet pirate? That’ll be £4,000, as the headline.
File sharing, where no money changes hands, has never been proved to have caused lost sales, say various academic and other reports.
“According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy,” said The Economist. Nor is this recent news. The Economist report dates back to last October.
“No-one knows how much weight to assign to each of the other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself.”
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
Gloucestershire Echo – EMILY, 14, IS CAUGHT OUT OVER INTERNET, June 20, 2005
That’ll be £4,000 – File sharing: The Big Lie, p2pnet, June 17, 2005
The Economist – Music’s brighter future, October 28, 2004
June 21st, 2005 at 12:54 am
omg… this is terrible… wtf…
for one, they shouldn’t be attacking their customers like this…
and second… her 14 yo daughter did it… and how can you hold her accountable for what a child did??? and how can you charge a child for that? O_o leave them alone! >_>
AND why the fuck are you gonna fill the prisions full of 50 yo women, because they can’t pay $7,000 for a few songs her daughter dled… and where will the daughter (that didn’t know any better) live now?????
damn it bloody hell… I wish there were enough of us out there to form a resistance against this crap!… screw protesting… lets go bomb all the Big music offices!!!
June 21st, 2005 at 9:37 am
I feel sorry for this woman, who is being threaten to be sent to jail.
This is a funny situation, because on One side we have the Entertainment industry,where its people live in castles and have tons of servants, and on the other hand the Customers of this industry who live in shitty houses, have shitty jobs, and what they earn they eat. Because the Entertainment industry have alot of money it can corrupt the G8 governments to work for her and harras their cititzens.
Something tells me that even the Live 8, Some money will go to the big **AA companies or its just their idea to earn some money for which is supposed to be a chartity even,why don`t the artists who are going to sing/take part of that concert give a percentage of their yearly earnings to those poor people of africa! Thats true charity, not just by singing for 5 to 10mins on a stage.
June 21st, 2005 at 11:56 am
There is no such thing in the UK as Debtors Prison. This is just a load of rubbish. Someone should get in touch with this woman and let her know.
If she has no money to defend herself, she’ll even get state provided legal aid. If she loses the case and she’s on a low income, the Court will just ask her to pay a few pounds a week. She is NOT going to prison. Geeeez. I’m hacked off now. Cheating, lying…..
June 21st, 2005 at 1:28 pm
When nonviolent protest becomes impossible, violent revolution becomes eneviable. I would not feel bad if any of these thugs were bombed. They brought it apon themselves.
June 21st, 2005 at 7:06 pm
Some tips for the defense:
A person that downloads a files has no way of knowing any of these facts:
a. That the music is or is not in publc domain. Imporantantly, what is and what is not in the public domain is impossible to establsh because vast amounts of music in the public domaing are copyright registered and registered with the performance rights organization through publisher tricks, such a slight revisions, registered arrangements, annotations, addition of illustrations to music scores, “corrections”, etc. The list of tricks is endless.
b. That the song or the recording has a valid copyright registration. Many copyright registrations are simply invalid.
c. That the owner of the copyright objects or does not object to the sharing of the digital file version of the recording.
c. The laws of what countries apply, the downloading country, the uploading country, the copyright registration country?
d. What is fair sue? Does fair use allow downloading?
d. What law prohibits dowloading?
e. How many time you have to download the same song before the judge says that that song was infringed? For exampl, if 1000 different songs were downloaded, but each song was downoaded just once, is it fair use because only one copy was made (of each song) or is it not fair use because 1,000 different songs were downloaded? A note about this last question: To the best of my knowledge this issue has never been raised, let alone resolved, in court. My gues is that if the issue were raised, the court will have to decide in favor of the downloader by determining that there were 1,000 instances of fair use copying and that there wa no infringement by the downloader. As for the uploader, if each of his/her downloaders only did fair use copying, then there is no infringement either for the uploader n matter how many times fair use copying was made thought his/her uploads. Just a guess.
If anyone has any ideas or see wrong in these ideas, please come forward.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
http://www.gvenegas.com.
June 21st, 2005 at 9:24 pm
in modern society, ignorance of a law (or laws) is not a valid legal defence.
also, in the UK and elsewhere, the parents of minors who who break laws are ofzen liable for damages and/or financial reparations – including jail time for their child’s repeated truancy, vandalism, etc.
as there is no debtor’s prison in the UK – and these court cases we read about are civil cases – NOT criminal cases – this woman should have no worries about going to prison. it’s not gonna happen. even tracker owners who are sued face only civil proceedings.
the only country i know of that still sends people to prison for unpaid debts is the USA.
June 22nd, 2005 at 3:23 pm
“in modern society, ignorance of a law (or laws) is not a valid legal defence.”
There is nothing modern about the doctrine that ignorance of the laws is not a valid defense. It is an idea that belongs to the dark ages. Some support facts:
a. Most laws cannot be understood by lawyers after a simple reading. To understand the laws you must be familiar with the related jurisprudence.
b. Jusrisprudence is a dark hole that only lawyers can enter.
b. Jusrisprudence varies (changes) with location of the court, the datails the cae, and the color of the ties that the lawyers wore.
c. Go to three lawyers to get a legal opinion about copyright and they will produce three different opinions. The ignorant seeker of the opinion then must decide which lawyer, if any, knew what they were talking about.
d. Some of the parents being sued because of downloading by their children simply did not know that the downloading was being done, so it is a matter of being ingnorant of the alleged theft but being ignorant of what a minor was doing.
e. If “we the people” are to be made responsible for complying with the laws, then those that made the people responsible are not part of “we the people” and are merely tools of the controlling minority dictatorship.
f. Regarding the Canadian Copyright bill, said Russell McOrmond on a recent comment on P2P: “The bill is extremely convoluted, hard for even the technical and legal savvy to understand, and it is uncertain how a judge will interpret the confusing language used.”.
the proposition that an average Joe is responsible to know the law as was just described by Russell McOrmond is absurd.
Certainly there comes a point where people have to be responsible for their action and violations of the law. Copyright infringement cannot be a responsibility of an average citizen. The law, the legal system must differentiate between an average citizen, an ignorant parent and a music publisher, for example.
Note: Whilr my comments are based on personal experience with the American legal system, is there any reason to ask why it is different in Canada? Does anyone have a comment?
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas
June 22nd, 2005 at 4:37 pm
“d. Some of the parents being sued because of downloading by their children simply did not know that the downloading was being done, so it is a matter of being ingnorant of the alleged theft but being ignorant of what a minor was doing.”
CORRECTION: The above should have read:
d. Some of the parents being sued because of downloading by their children simply did not know that the downloading was being done, so it is a matter of being ingnorant of the alleged theft and not og any law law that makes downloading illegal (if there were such a law).
An added note: Can anyone imagine a sharp 12 year old downloader and his/her 70 year old grandfather (the custiodian) plumber arguing about fair use, court decision, copyright ownership, ISP responsibility, etc. What is the granfather to reply to the kids question: Why if it is not legal I can download the songs? Why if it is not legal to make copies of CDs did you buy me the box of blank CDs that I asked for Christmas? Why do they sell CD burners if they cannot be use? What should I tell my friend, the son of the judge, that gave me copies of CDs?, that I don’t take gifts fom thiefs? Have you ever seen the stupid law you are talking about? Are you giving me legal advise even though you are not a lawyer? … and so on.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
June 22nd, 2005 at 5:16 pm
To go to prison you have to be found guilty of law breaking in a court of law, has this woman gone to court? Has she been found guilty of breaking any law?
As far I can tell she has been guilty of not knowing what her daughter has been doing on the internet, many parents have no idea what their children are up to on the net, so what!
Even if this is compared to parents being punished for their children’s truancy from school, this only happens after the parents have been repeatedly informed of their children’s behaviour and then subsequently having failed to ’sort it’ out.
So in this case it is not pay up or be jailed, it is to inform that the minor has been involved in possible copyright infringement, please educate them and ask them to stop these activities, furthermore if these activities do not stop THEN further action will be taken, which MIGHT include criminal prosecution. (With burden on the prosecution to provide evidence of criminal activity)
June 22nd, 2005 at 9:31 pm
Clearly a jail threat for the purpose of getting a payment not ordered by a court is extortion.
Is extortion legal in the UK?
June 24th, 2005 at 2:02 pm
A better question is how did they know it was her daughter? If they got IP records then the ISP breached the Data Protection Act, which could cost the ISP its license and the act of coercing someone to breach the act is in itself illegal (illegal to make someone do something against the law), so whoever got the information is also liable for a prison term. In any case the data was retrieved illegally which makes it null and void so the mother cannot be charged with anything by anybody using that information.
June 29th, 2005 at 9:33 am
To anyone that would care to hear my side of this please listen close and think hard before decideing weather I’m right or wrong. I’m not a know it all I’m just a 33 year old male that really feels bad for this mother and daughter. First off why lock mom up? The only thing I see she did wrong was not knowing what EMILY was doing in her bedroom on the pc. Is that a crime? If so then whhy stop here. Why not lock up every mother and father that owns a pc in there home where their child can get on the pc. Emily has did nothing that every child that gets on a pc at some time or another and that is download a file.Weather it was music,data,software ect……… and not only children but most adults do it also. Did Emily know she was doing wrong? Well with all the fuss about P2P sharing on the news and the net I would have to say she didn’t . Reason being you can read up on it right now to this date 6-28-05 and the avage person will still not be sure what the answer is because one site will say it’s all legal where another may say it’s not. As for me being 33 years old I’m grown and know the best thing to do in a case like this is to stay clear of it all. As for Emily were talking about a 14 year old child that happens to run across a web site saying it’s legal or maybe not saying any thing either way but that you can download free songs here. I’m not a big music fan myself but for someone that is how would you think they would react. I know they would react the same as I would if I went by a store and saw a sign that said free cd-burners here. I would go in exspecting a free cd-burner with no catches. ( and yes they do this at times with rebates) Take this website right here and look at it I see over 5 site advertiseing free downloads for music. Is it free? Sure it is unless you get caught at it. No where on any of these advertisments does it say free downloads although beware jail can follow if you get caught. If it is ellegal to download the music then shut down the sites that are drawing people to them. Oh yeah right you tried that but it didn’t go through with the court so then you decide to go after poor Emily knowing there was no way she could hire a big fancy lawyer like u big cmpanies have on pay roll everyday. So I see where your coming from you figure hey lets get her what do we have to loose our lawter is on payroll anyway lets give him something to do. You know Emily can’t pay this fine so why not get mom. Good thinking Lets lock mom up and support her for ever how many years you think she should get while we are at it we will need to provide home care for Emily so lets pay for that to. In the end what do we have. Well it’s not what we have it’s what you created and thats this little girl that has growed up blaming herself for sending her mom to jail for something she may have never had a clue was wrong. Don’t forget about mom now who use to be a law abideing person. She is now getting out of jail with a whole new look on life. She use to work like everybody else and live a normal life. What does she have now I’ll tell you she has a messed up life that no one will ever be able to fix. You have taking her from her family put her in jail with a bunch of animals and now set her free thinking well she got what she deserve. When the truth be known mom did nothing wrong but buy her child a pc for her to do home work on. She even asked Emily if she was doing anything wrong after she sw it on the news. Emily didn’t jump up and run to her room and destroy her hard drive or say oh god mom yes i have. Instead she was calm and said no mom I don’t do it like that meaning and ilegal way she stated I do it the way all my friends at school do it. By the way have you locked up or fined all her freinds parents. Sounds like she gave you reason to suspect all her friend of doing the same. I’m sure you haven’t though being as you really only needed to select one person out of the millions doing it to make a point. Do you think you have made your point yet. I don’t think so be as how I see more and more psp sites popping up everyday. Someone has to be downloading or else they wouldn’t stay on line. I understand that in a case like this a company has to say at some point enough is enough and try to put a stop to it. But to scare this lady by saying you will go to jail over some music that I remind you at sometime was paid for. You all talk about loseing so much money on cd’s because of p2p sites how do you think software companies feel. I mean one full cd is worth what maybe 18.00 where one software people download may be worth 4,000.00 but I don’t hear them saying they are loseing so much money. We all know that record companies can’t be loseing but so much or they would be closeing the doors. I have yet to see one singer that appeared to be hurting for money in any kinda way. If we all are honest about it Emily may have download many songs but did she cost you sales? No because the chances are she wouldn’t had bought all those songs anyway. Another way to look at this is say Emily goes buy a cd and uploads it to share and john does the same well there is 2 cd’s you sold. P2P sites I feel have made younger people get into music more these days because they can get more songs by sharing them. Who knows if it wasn’t for P2P sites Emily and John both may have not went and bought any cd’s so theres 2 sales you would have missed. I know some people don’t buy any cd’s they just download them all well that is the case with evverything in life you go at. Now take a look at what you are saying this chid did . The way I understand it your saying this child is a internet pirate. How can you say this has she sold any of the music she downloaded. Do you people know he real meaning of this word if not I will give you the meaning of it. The word PIRATE (COPY) verb {T} means to illegally copy a computer program, music, a film, etc. and sell it. If you notice it doesn’t say copy or sell it. It says plan as day to copy AND sell it. Do some reserch on that word for your self and you will see the true meaning of it I found this one at http://www.freesearch.co.uk/dictionary/pirate+(copy) . I have no idea what the jugde handleing this case will do but this is one time I wish I was in his shoes I could promise you no one would go to jail as for the fine well there would be a fine to whom wrongfuly acuse this young girl of her commiting pirate. Also there would be some kind of settle ment to mom for her worries and for being threating by going to jail. Although I don’t see it going that far but if it ws to I hope someone out there knows how to reach Mrs Price and send her a copy of this letter asking her to please get in touch with me as I will see to it she will never even see what the inside of a jail looks like. I may not be the richiest man nor the smartiest but I do have a little and I know right from worng and this is WRONG. Please feel free to email me at LIMINATOR29@HOTMAIL.COM IF i CAN HELP IN ANY WAY Mrs Price AND I ASK IF ANYONE COMES ACROSS THIS THAT KNOWS Mrs Price TO PLEASE GIVE HER MY INFO THANK YOU
PJ
July 6th, 2005 at 11:20 am
Two words. Encrypted P2P
Welcome to the revolution.
http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/
Or if you can find it MyGudio
Regards
Dacarlo