iLounge

“The Deal
You keep all the rights to your music.
You just lend us the right to be your digital distributor: to get your music to legitimate music services like Apple iTunes, Listen.com, and more.”

“Record sales are down, music piracy is up and the pop charts are at an all time low. When piracy threatened profits, the record industry destroyed Napster but created a void into which Kazaa has stepped with the ultimate weapon of mass distribution: peer-to-peer file-sharing.

Yet music is more important now than it has ever been.

Freed from the living room, it exists on your computer, in your car, in your pocket, at work, on TV, in shops, in bars, in clubs.

It’s everywhere. Music is not dying, it’s just going through the biggest revolution since Woodstock.
Do you have the kit to make the most of it?”

“The Recording Industry Association of America said it has sent cease-and-desist letters to five people whom it suspects of illegally offering massive amounts of copyrighted music through peer-to-peer networks. 

The RIAA learned of the swappers’ identities after a protracted legal battle with Verizon Communications, which unsuccessfully fought attempts to unmask its subscribers, citing concerns about privacy and legal liability.”

“The music industry has won at least 871 federal subpoenas against computer users suspected of illegally sharing music files on the Internet, with roughly 75 new subpoenas being approved each day, U.S. court officials said Friday.

The effort represents early steps in the music industry’s contentious plan to file civil lawsuits aimed at crippling online piracy.”

“A new bill was proposed Wednesday that would send a person to jail for five years and fine them for $250,000 for uploading just one file to a peer-to-peer network.

The bill was introduced by representatives John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.).

The bill, called the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act of 2003 would allocate more money to the justice department to investigate copyright crimes and would also enable information sharing between countries to help in copyright enforcement abroad.

The bill states that uploading a single file of copyright content qualifies as a felony.”

“These guys call themselves rock musicians? Where, I ask you, is their sense of storming the Establishment ramparts, of thumbing their noses at authority? Instead, by refusing to let Apple (AAPL ) sell their music online at the new iTunes Music Store, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are leading a vanguard in the wrong direction. They might as well put their clothes back on.

In truth, opposition makes little sense. Even some execs from the biggest labels have signed on to iTunes. Says Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris, one of the album format’s inventors: ‘iTunes is pushing us into the future of how music is produced and consumed.’”

“Buy.com will unveil a new music download service next Tuesday with a $40 million promotional campaign and launch celebration in New York’s Times Square.

Like the iTunes Music Store, Buy.com will sell individual music tracks without collecting an up-front monthly subscription fee; even though it has yet to secure licensed music from all five major record labels, knowledgeable sources say.”

“Both Kazaa K++ and Kazaa Lite, two very similar modifications to the Kazaa file-sharing system by Sharman Networks, now contain several features designed to foil scanning attempts by the RIAA. Both updates were published to the Web at the end of last week. [...]

Neither developer released any official statement explaining the addition of the new features designed to defeat the RIAA’s scanning efforts, which the agency reportedly began at the beginning of this month in an attempt to discover which users are illegally sharing copyrighted files. Once the IP addresses are matched to individual users, the agency will begin filing copyright infringement lawsuits this fall.”

“Could I be sued for swapping a few songs?

Theoretically, you could. But the RIAA says it is suing file swappers who have consistently trade large amounts. 

It recently took action against a college student in Michigan who ran a network offering more than 650,000 files - the equivalent of more than 43,000 albums. They have chased other users who have again uploaded thousands of files.”

“The RIAA’s president, Carey Sherman, said tens of millions of Internet users of popular file-sharing software after Thursday will expose themselves to “the real risk of having to face the music.”

“It’s stealing. It’s both wrong and illegal,” Sherman said. Alluding to the court decisions, Sherman said Internet users who believe they can hide behind an alias online were mistaken. “You are not anonymous,” Sherman said. “We’re going to begin taking names.”“

“Among the heaviest downloaders, those who have downloaded more than
100 music files (about 16% of 12-44s), reported purchases of CDs has dropped an incredible 61% from last year’s study (28.9 CDs, on average per person, purchased last year compared with 11.3 CDs purchased this year). [...]

71% of heavy downloaders say that “Instead of buying a CD they have burnt someone else’s copy of a CD,” and 48% of them say ‘They no longer have to buy CDs because they could download music for free over the Internet.’”