Week in review: Swapping on the ropes

Recent court activity suggests that illegal song swapping may be facing its swan song.

A Chicago woman who downloaded songs for free from the Kazaa file-sharing network violated copyright law and has been ordered to pay a $22,500 fine to the record labels. In what appears to be the first U.S. case of its kind, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Cecilia Gonzalez's arguments that she was merely "sampling" downloaded music to see which CDs she might want to purchase and that her sampling was protected under copyright law's "fair use" exception.

Gonzalez's claim that "she obtained 'only 30'--or 'only 1,300'--copyrighted songs is no more relevant than a thief's contention that he shoplifted 'only 30' compact discs, planning to listen to them at home and pay later for any he liked," the court said.

Meanwhile, the masterminds behind Kazaa could face time behind bars in Australia after the record industry initiated contempt of court proceedings, claiming an earlier ruling wasn't adhered to. Record companies allege that Sharman Networks, the owner of Kazaa, didn't comply with an Australian Federal Court order to modify the software to ensure 3,000 keywords would be filtered by Dec. 5.

However, the judge in the case did not appear to be in a big hurry to put Kazaa's owners in jail.

"Contempt proceedings are fairly rare in this court and I've never yet sent anyone to jail," Justice Murray Wilcox said in the Federal Court in Sydney. "I've threatened to a few times, but there's always a first I suppose."

The number of United States households that swap music illegally online has dropped significantly since the Supreme Court's summer ruling against peer-to-peer software companies.

However, the number of actual music files being traded has stayed high, indicating that the most active downloaders remain online. The drop of 11 percent--from June, when an estimated 6.4 million households downloaded at least one music file, to October, when 5.7 million households downloaded at least one file--seems to show that the entertainment industry's campaign against file swapping is gaining momentum.

New voices in online music
While the record industry goes after illegal downloads, new players are raising their voices in the legal download arena.

Social-networking site MySpace's growing role as a powerful force in the music business is sparking followers that are offering broader features for bands and music fans in hopes of attracting the giant's audience. Relative newcomer TagWorld launched its own music ambitions with the support of a core group of popular indie rock groups, including The Shins and Death Cab For Cutie.

Like MySpace, TagWorld offers a home for bands to post songs and connect directly to fans. But TagWorld is hoping that its design attracts viewers more specifically interested in exploring and listening to music.

Social-networking rival Friendster itself struck a deal with peer-to-peer multimedia-sharing service Grouper Networks several months ago, aiming to add music and video to its portfolio.

Google dived in with a new service intended to give searchers fast links to song lyrics, musical artists and CD titles on the main search results page. Google Music will allow a person to type in the name of a band, artist, album or song in the main Google search bar, and results will appear at the top, accompanied by icons of music notes, said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.

Items that can be purchased will have links to merchants for online ordering or downloading, she said. Initial merchant partners include Apple Computer's iTunes service, RealNetworks Rhapsody, eMusic and Amazon.com.

Meanwhile, after promising to launch a digital music service for several years, MTV said it is close to releasing an online music mart that will throw it into competition with

Yeah, like anyone intelligent

uses major public distribution methods to gain access to music/movies/files/apps. It's called PRIVATE SERVERS.

No one who knows how to get around these nazi-like organizations uses kazaa or public torrent sites.

Swapping dead? I think not.

[Luke_Cage]

Smells like propaganda?!

The file swapping article sounds like spin to me. the drop in file sharing only reflects the fact that many major artists only released greatest hits albums this year. No one of top caliber even attempted a full blow release for this holiday season. RIAA counting victories in a market dip. watch what happens in the spring, when the artist with longevity hit with summer concerts on the horizon, numbers will return to normal. Plus downloading gets old quick when b-side artists and one hit wonders dominate the airwaves. It just becomes easier to buy for the legal sites for those singles.

[SeizeCTRL]

Complete BS!!!

30 songs will never be worth $22,500. The RIAA is no better than the Mafia. If anything, the court should have made her buy each one of the CD's for each of the 30 songs.

What about music and movies that are out of print? How do we go about getting those legally?

There are so many private torrent sites, private FTPs and private DirectConnect hubs... not to mention countless IRC servers, usenet etc... So many ways of getting copyrighted content other than the infamous KAZAA.

The MPAA / RIAA simply does not have the resources and manpower to constantly monitor the entire internet 24/7/365.

[Eskiegirl302]

I THINK YOUR RIGHT JOEY....I

Have been researching and studying up on torrents. I think I would like to try this, but to me, trying to figure out how it works is confusing to me. Do you download torrent software and then just download? How do you know which files you still need? and when you download all these, does the BT software connect them all so that you can then listen to the music? or am I way off base? I have found in my research just how these files travel, but not what to do with them. Any help would be appreciated.

Esk

[Bill Dautrive]

Ironic

It is ironic that thieves(MPAA, RIAA) are complaining about "theft" against them.

[bobby_brady]

Don't support the RIAA download from allofmp3 or p2p

RIAA is a pro-Nazi like organization.

[viperpa]

No matter how you butter it up

Even if this article is true, RIAA has seen no increase in sales. Infact they are still losing money. So the campaign of suing everyone is not working. It is only giving the RIAA and the musicians bad PR as we seen in Sony's case.

[unknown unknown]

Don't be so quick to declare a winner

As far as the number of filesharers go IDT says they're down while Big Champaign says the number are up. Let's not forget that it's hard to get an accurate picture for these decentralized networks.

Not only that...

But much filesharing these days would be via secured channels that are even less prone to observation. I would assume that illicit file-sharing is probably booming, it's only that those doing it have adapted faster than the music/movie industry.

Historically, no anti-piracy measure or campaign has had a positive effect for an industry. In the best case scenario, they've been ineffective, and in the worst case scenario they've alienated consumes (like Sony's DRM has done recently, or region codes on DVDs).