MN mom expects $0 penalty for file-sharing

It has been a big news week for file-sharers, music fans, and copyright lawyers. Days after a judge reduced the file-sharing penalty for Minnesota mother of four Jammie Thomas-Rasset from $1.92 million to about $54,000, the recording industry offered to settle for $25,000, but Thomas-Rasset turned the offer down, CNET reports. "Sibley and Camara had already said that they planned to challenge even the lowered amount set by the court. Sibley told CNET last week they have always sought a $0 award." US District Judge Michael Davis had said earlier in his ruling that "the $1.92 million fine ... was 'monstrous and shocking'," the San Jose Mercury News reported. "Davis wrote in his ruling he would have liked to reduce it further but was limited in doing so. He said the new penalty is still 'significant and harsh'," but he denied Thomas-Rasset's request for a new trial. The $1.92 million in damages awarded the RIAA last summer "are eight times more than Thomas-Rasset ... was ordered to pay the first time she faced six record companies in court on claims that she downloaded more than 1,700 songs," the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported last summer. "The judge granted a retrial after deciding that he had wrongly instructed the jury." The Star-Tribune added that, of the more than 30,000 suits brought by the RIAA against alleged file-sharers, Thomas-Rasset's was the only one to go to a jury trial, much less two such trials. Meanwhile, here's a thoughtful "letter" from a professional musician to a mom worried about her son's file-sharing, among other things distinguishing between privacy and file-sharing, and The Guardian recently declared "The strange death of illegal downloading." [See also a New Yorker interview with Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood on the "MP3 generation."]

A lesson in US lawmaker's call for P2P ban

Whether or not even feasible, a call in Congress for a ban on P2P file-sharing by government workers is very instructive for households where kids share a lot of music. The main takeaway: A lot more than music can get shared. But let's back up. The story is that Rep. Edolphus Towns (D) of New York, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is calling for the ban because of "an embarrassing security breach [that] revealed details of dozens of ethics investigations," the Washington Post reports. "The information came from a committee document that a junior staffer had exposed on her home computer, which was using peer-to-peer technology. A non-congressional source with no connection to the committee accessed the document and gave a copy to The Post." Clearly the file-sharing software on her computer wasn't configured to share only music files. And clearly a huge mistake. But if not at the federal level, the solution at the household level is simple: With any file-sharers at your house, look at the preferences and see how they're configured. See which folders on the computer are designated for sharing files – hopefully not income tax files, household budget files, family correspondence, medical files. Personal security breaches have been known to happen. See "P2P's risks: New study" and "FTC on P2P."

Student ordered to pay $675k for file-sharing

Though illegal file-sharing seems to have eased (see this), a story out of Boston this past week certainly underscores that the legal risks haven't. Admitting in court that he had downloaded and distributed 30 songs, Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum was ordered to pay $22,500 for each song to four recording companies, the Washington Post reports. "Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful." Tenenbaum's lawyer said he would appeal the decision because he wasn't allowed to argue the case based on fair use. Tenenbaum said he'd file for bankruptcy if the decision stands, but nearly 100 people have already offered to help pay his legal fees if his appeal fails.

Teens' illegal music downloading going down

It's great to get free music, TV, and film off the Internet, but it's even better when you can get it fast – and that it's legal too maybe be a bonus but isn't a key issue. That's my take-away from a passel of recent stories and blog posts. Which spells a turning point for the music industry: piracy may have peaked. Thirteen-year-old Josh in New York may've said it all. His dad, a VC and a blogger, asked Josh how he's seeing all the episodes of his favorite TV show, "Friday Night Lights," afraid Josh will say "BitTorrent," the file-sharing technology millions of people use for free illegal downloading, but Josh just said "BitTorrent's too slow." He streams the shows with the family's Netflix's $24.95/mo. subscription. His dad wrote: "The good news is that, as the media business wakes up and puts all the media we want out there in streams available on the Internet (paid or free - this is not about free), we see people streaming more and stealing less." [Brad Stone of the New York Times picked up this story.] The Guardian cites a survey showing that Josh is not alone: "The number of teenagers [14-18] illegally sharing music has fallen dramatically in the past year." They're "using services such as YouTube and Spotify [the latter with 6 million users in Europe and now trying to break into the US market]." The Times also mentions MySpace Music and imeem among popular sources of licensed media streaming. In December 2007, 42% of teens were illegally downloading music, down to 26% this past January, The Guardian adds. Another study by NPD Group in the US found that teens 13-17 "illegally downloaded 6% fewer tracks in 2008 than in 2007, while more than half said they were now listening to legal online radio services like Pandora, up from 34% the year before," the Times reports. Here's similar coverage from ZDNET.

RIAA to stop suing 'pirates'

After suing some 35,000 people since 2003, the RIAA apparently has decided to stop going after individual file-sharers for pirating music - well, most of them. What the recording industry trade association "should have said," CNET blogger Greg Sandoval reports, "is that it won't go after most people who illegally file share. My music industry sources say that the RIAA will continue to file lawsuits against the most egregious offenders - the person who 'downloads 5,000 or 6,000 songs a month is still going to get sued'." The main strategy now, reportedly, is to get Internet service providers to do the policing. The RIAA says it has preliminary agreements with some ISPs but won't say which, the Wall Street Journal reports. "Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.

Supreme Court justice's P2P security breach

No, Justice Breyer wasn't using a file-sharing network himself. But a guy at his investment firm was on LimeWire and inadvertently shared "the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of about 2,000 of the firm's clients, including a number of high-powered lawyers and Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer," the Washington Post reports. This isn't just about file-sharing in the workplace. It's about how private family records and information can be made public on P2P networks if file-sharers and music fans at home aren't configuring the software correctly. It's only one key topic for family discussion about file-sharing, others being the ethics of file-sharing and the potential for parents being sued by the RIAA for pirated music shared on family computers (at least go into the software with your kid and see how Preferences, Options, or Sharing is set up).

Retrial for music P2P case?

A woman who was ordered by a court to pay $222,000 in the US's first trial involving P2P file-sharing "may get another chance with a jury," the Associated Press reports. "The issue is whether record companies have to prove anyone else actually downloaded their copyrighted songs, or whether it's enough to argue that a defendant made copyrighted music available for copying." In the original trial, a federal judge "instructed jurors that making sound recordings available without permission violates record company copyrights 'regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.'" Last week he said "that may have been a mistake." The recording industry has sued at least 30,000 people for distributing music online, the AP adds. "Some cases have been dismissed, and many defendants settled for a few thousand dollars." Meanwhile, The Register reports that the file-sharing of free music online "soars" while "licensed music [purchasing] flatlines." But that's not the explanation for the decline in music revenue, it adds. The reasons are cost-cutting by big retailers (e.g., Wal-Mart in the US and Tesco in the UK), "people burning CDs at home, and the unbundling of the album." In timely news on the subject of how digital music gets bought in the US, DMWmedia.com reports that 82% of Americans (69% of those under 35), still buy all (62%) or most (20%) of their music on CD. The numbers are from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Here's a guide for parents and educators on P2P file-sharing from NetFamilyNews.org's London partner, Childnet International, and a report on it from the BBC.

Euro kids unfazed by P2P risks

"Everyone's doing it," is the rationale European kids use for their P2P music-downloading, Reuters cites a "major survey" by the European Commission as finding. "Other excuses included: the download is for personal and private purposes; the Web sites presumably remunerate the artists; claims of harm inflicted on artists lack credibility; and DVDs and CDs are simply too expensive." The vast majority of the young people surveyed in 27 EU member countries, Norway and Iceland said they planned to continue downloading music through file-sharing services. The survey also found that most European teens go online several times a day and, "while Internet use is to some extent limited by parents, most own their own mobile phones, the use of which is largely unsupervised." For more on file-sharing risks, see "File-sharing realities for families."

Downturn in P2P downloads

Illegal file-sharing by US youth has dropped sharply in the past few years, a new study sponsored by the Business Software Alliance has found – though music remains the biggest reasons for P2P file-sharing. The percentage of US 8-to-18-year-olds “who acknowledged illegal downloads of software, music, movies or games fell from 60% in 2004 to 36% in 2007, Australian IT reports. Last year it was 43%. The reasons? Accidentally downloading a virus (62%), getting into legal trouble (52%), downloading spyware (51%), and getting into trouble with one’s parents (48%). “The survey found 66% of young people said their parents set rules on what they could do on the Internet.” Another study, by NPD Group, found that “unauthorized sharing of digital music remains a huge issue for the global music business,” but maybe now not so much from file-sharing as from CD-burning, ArsTechnica.com reports. Then you read headlines like: “P2P breaking Internode’s bank” about how the Adelaide ISP is struggling to keep up with file-sharing customers’ demand for bandwidth (in Australian IT).

P2P's risks: New study

After Jon Dudas, director of the US Patent & Trademark Office, read this study, he decided to send out an official USPTO report because so many file-sharers (or parents of file-sharers) who think they’re just downloading free music are actually jeopardizing the security of very personal info on their computers. He was also motivated to because, he says in the Foreward, he’s a dad who “manages a home computer.” Two key takeaways from this 80-page report (press release here): 1) research has found that 45% of popular downloaded files contained malicious software code, and 2) “At least four of the [five popular P2P file-sharing programs the study analyzed] have deployed partial-uninstall features: If users uninstall one of these programs from their computers, the process will leave behind a file that will cause any subsequent installation of any version of the same program to share all folders shared by the ‘uninstalled’ copy of the program. Whenever a computer is used by more than one person, this feature ensures that users cannot know which files and folders these programs will share by default.” In other words, parents of file-sharers need to look at the preferences or options of any P2P software on the family PCs to see what folders are designated for sharing the files in them. See this on the FTC’s thorough P2P study.

Piracy genie won't return to bottle

Heard of 1Dawg.com? It’s a video-sharing site that claims to be growing 40 times faster than YouTube, Forbes reports. Then there’s DailyEpisodes.com. Its users “vote for their favorite portal, so that when lawyers manage to shut down one copyright-breaking link site, viewers can quickly flock to the next best,” according to Forbes. But far more than these or US-based YouTube as a media-companies’ headache is Sweden-based ThePirateBay.org, which is basically the global nexus for copyright infringement. This “world's largest repository of BitTorrent files … helps millions of users around the world share copyrighted movies, music and other files” for free, with the help of Sweden’s easygoing copyright laws. The Pirate Bay has also “distributed its servers to undisclosed locations and is even soliciting donations to purchase a small island where it can avoid copyright laws altogether,” Forbes says. It’s a fascinating, well-reported article that illustrates very effectively how tough it is for laws, governments, companies, or parents to control what users do on the Internet. Meanwhile, CNET writer Declan McCullagh reports that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is “proposing a new crime: ‘Attempted Copyright Infringement’." Here’s a San Jose Mercury News blog’s tongue-in-cheek version of the story.