MetaFilter posts tagged with filesharing and lawsuits

"Suing our fans is destructive and hypocritical"

Johnny Assay — Fri, 05 May 2006 12:00:44 -0800

Canadian musicians protest file-sharing lawsuits. The Barenaked Ladies, Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, and many other Canadian artists have formed a coalition to protest the hard line taken by the recording industry against file-sharers, and call for copyright reform. Is there a better way to protect intellectual property rights than suing file-sharers?

I just want what's mine!

ashbury — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 12:58:51 -0800

The file-sharing fight continues.
Recording industry associations in Denmark, Germany, Italy and Canada have filed lawsuits or taken other legal action, aiming mainly at heavy users accused of offering a large number of songs online.

In other news, A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says online music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales.

RIAA sues... (again)

sixtwenty3dc — Wed, 21 Jan 2004 10:30:34 -0800

RIAA sues... (again): The RIAA has just issued a new lawsuit against 532 more "illegal filesharers" only this time, they're also using the "john doe" approach meaning that they dont have to have ascertain your name by strongarming ISPs, but by suing your IP address, they let the judicial system take care of that little detail.

Fair and Balanced p2p uses

mecran01 — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 08:23:33 -0800

Don't kill p2p because of a few bad eggs Peer-to-peer networks can be used for legal or illegal purposes. So can the telephone, a newspaper or a church's bulletin board. People are responsible for their own actions and there are laws designed to prosecute people for illegal actions.
The legal uses of P2P are rarely heard, because they are not 'sexy' or political. P2P allows artists and listeners to connect directly. The proliferation of unique works created and distributed on the Internet is staggering.(not the best letter to the editor, but the best I could find)

Ok, so in theory, p2p apps can be used for purposes other than downloading coprighted music and porn. But seriously, does anyone actually use it for legitimate purposes? What do you search for on Kazaa/Gnutella/BitTorrent that is useful, legal, and interesting?

RIAA sues college students

oaf — Thu, 03 Apr 2003 21:20:17 -0800

The RIAA has filed lawsuits against four college students who ran file search services on campus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Michigan Technological University, and Princeton University. These "local area Napster networks," as the RIAA calls them, contained about 2.5 million files.

Copyright Laws

tljenson — Tue, 28 Jan 2003 15:13:21 -0800

Justice for Consumers "The owners of the KaZaA file-sharing network are suing the movie and recording industries, claiming that they don't understand the digital age and are monopolizing entertainment." Quote from article by Associated Press. I don't about you but I'm sick and tired of big businesses writing all the new laws in this country. Now maybe the people can get some justice for a change.

mathowie — Wed, 06 Sep 2000 14:04:42 -0800

mp3.com ordered to pay Universal $118 million for copying CDs to the Mymp3 service, a service designed for owners of those CDs (mp3.com made distribution agreements with the other record labels trying to sue). On the flip side, Yahoo scored a deal with the RIAA to let them webcast music. It's a wacky week in online music [via davenetics].

aflakete — Sun, 18 Jun 2000 01:10:41 -0800

Napster retains (ahem) counsel. The right move I think. Along with the DeCSS case, this may be setting the precedent for what "intellectual property" and "public domain" mean in the 21st century. Hopefully, things will turn out better than in Sterling's "Distraction". Either way, things will never be the same.

daveadams — Thu, 11 May 2000 08:09:22 -0800

Napster throws Metallica a curveball. Napster has been pointing out to its kicked-off users a certain provision of the DMCA: If an ISP kicks a user off a service for violating copyright, that user may file a counternotification if they believe they were wrongly accused. The plaintiff (Metallica) then has 10 days to respond with a lawsuit directly against that user. If they choose not to respond, the ISP must restore the account. If enough users (among the 300,000 blocked) file counternotifications, Metallica may wish it had never begun this process.