RIAA Decides To Criminalize Its Best Customers

Here’s the LawMeme discussion along with a nice synopsis by Lisa M. Bowman for CNET:
File-traders in the crosshairs.

From CNET article:

Jennison thinks the RIAA will target people in their late 20s or early 30s who
are making available massive numbers of files that are current and popular. The
RIAA may also look for people who could otherwise afford to buy CDs but instead
choose to play the free-swapping game, she speculated.

Others suggest that the industry would pursue, as University of Wisconsin’s
Vaidhyanathan called them, “hacker types,” or people who look like they might
spell trouble to mainstream Americans. Already, similar tactics have been put
in play by the movie industry, which successfully convinced several judges that
the operators of hacker publication 2600 aided copyright infringement by
providing links to code that could be used to crack copyright protections on
DVDs.

The record industry also could lean on law enforcement to do its dirty work for
it, said P.J. McNealy, a research director at Gartner. “One of the problems
with file-sharing right now is consumers aren’t afraid of police knocking in
doors and seizing computers,” he said. However, criminal copyright charges,
which usually must involve monetary losses or an intent to make money, often
are hard to prove in cases involving individuals.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *