FILING A LAWSUIT

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When in doubt, sue. Lawsuits often depend less on a question of law than on who has the most money to pay for the best lawyers over a longer period of time. Given the massive financial backing of the music industry vs. the limited resources of Napster, it was inevitable that Napster would get pummeled in the courtrooms and be forced to shut down. The mistake Napster made was having a single computer keep track of all the songs available on other people’s computers. To find a song, someone first had to contact Napster’s computers and then needed to connect to the personal computer that actually held a copy of the song. Because Napster played an active role every time someone copied a file over its network, the courts ruled that Napster had the legal responsibility to block copyrighted material from being traded over its network.

However, suing file sharing networks no longer works because the latest-file sharing networks don’t use a central computer to keep lists of available songs. Instead, the new file sharing networks simply provide people with the software to probe everyone else’s computers for songs. Then people connect to each other’s computers to copy the files they want, leaving the file sharing company itself completely out of the transaction. Because the file sharing companies play no active part in any copyright infringement, the crime is shifted to the individuals themselves.

Because it couldn’t sue the latest file sharing networks, the music industry tried a new attack, suing the individuals sharing copyrighted files from its computers. This next wave of lawsuits wound up catching several hundred people, including a 71-year-old grandfather, a Yale University professor, and a 12-yearold girl who lived in project housing.

The music industry hopes that the threat of lawsuits will strike fear in users’ hearts, frightening them into abandoning file sharing networks. In addition, the music industry contacted large-scale file sharers directly over different file sharing networks and sent them the following warning:

It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer. . . . When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON’T STEAL MUSIC either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a ‘file-sharing’ system like this. When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified.

While fear and intimidation might stop some people from sharing copyrighted files over the Internet, it’s also fueling the popularity of new file sharing networks that protect users’ identities. Making people abandon file sharing networks is completely different from making people buy more CDs.

To read the latest legal cases pending against various file sharing companies and individuals, visit the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) website (http://www.riaa.com), shown in Figure 17-1. To read an opposing point of view, visit the Boycott RIAA website (http://www.boycott-riaa.com), shown in Figure 17-2.

Figure 17-1: The RIAA website provides news and information about file sharing from the music industry’s point of view.

Figure 17-2: The Boycott-RIAA website contains news about file sharing that tries to undermine or contradict the RIAA’s claims.

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