Those of you that are avid file swappers stand by, if you aren’t scared you should be. The RIAA cases are going to go down very similar to how the people that have been stealing Direct TV service have been sued
Your going to be subject to a civil lawsuit and possible other charges and like the Direct TV crackdown you will have to get a lawyer and you will end up paying the RIAA a lot of money, they have already been collecting 12,000 dollar and up from college students..
Folks this is real and the RIAA is serious they have easy pickings to go after 100’s of thousands of people and they do not care one little bit. They are going to be taking peoples money in unprecedented amounts.
1. They already have a court ruling clearing the way to force ISP’s to give up customers names.
2. They have already settled with several college students for sums 12,000 and up
3. They are currently sniffing the networks and admit that they are going to sue the general public.
They are desperate so desperate in fact that they want to litigate. They have millions of dollars and artist support to do this. The truth is the Genie is out of the bottle and the music industry will have to change, no amount of litigation is going to save the music industry as it is now. There sales will continue to slide and people will take file sharing underground. But for the poor souls that have to get there checkbooks out don’t say you were not forewarned. [ZDNet]
The purpose of the screaming is to inform the uninformed and hopefully rally them to fight back in a way that the know best. I agree whole heartedly with your comments.
They can try to sue Usenet or IRC too, for all the good it will do them. If we learned one thing from Napster, it is that technology which gives the people what they want – a cheap (even free) downloadable source of music – is not so easily killed. Like the Hydra, you slice off one head and three spring up in it’s place. I’m not afraid of the RIAA, and I’m not planning on stopping sharing music or anything else I have available anytime soon, neither is anyone else I have talked to. Scare tactics, whether done by the industry or by bloggers like yourself who run around screaming “the sky is falling” at any little news announcement by the RIAA, are both pathetic and largely ineffective. I/we are the internet, and we don’t scare easily. The loud screaming that you hear and interpret as coming from thousands of users chittering in terror is actually the dying moans of an industry that has sucked the life out of music for far too long and is now failing due only to its utilization of an outdated business model. At this moment, I look on Kazaa and see 4,389,161 other users, they don’t seem to be stampeding for the exits anymore than I am. We are the internet, give us what we want or wear our footprints as we walk over your face. Come on out, stop being afraid and enjoy the sunshine, the file-sharing is fine.