Friday, December 02, 2005

First RIAA "illegal downloading" trial

It's going to happen; a New York mother of five children is not going to pay the 3,000 - 4,000 dollars to settle with the RIAA (a.k.a. Big Music: Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI) over some songs that she's accused of having downloaded.

Here's the list of songs:

* Lit "Happy"
* Incubus "Nowhere fast"
* Third Eye Blind "Semi-Charmed Life"
* UB40 "Can't Help Falling in Love"
* Godsmack "Whatever"
* Foo Fighters "Breakout"

Value? Probably about $6 dollars (Apple's iTunes sells songs online for 99¢ each).

"We haven't seen a trial on this issue yet because the RIAA has generously offered to settle the suits for amounts in the US$3000-4000 range, rather than the tens of thousands they would demand if they prevailed in court. To date, more than three thousand people have coughed up. Santangelo vows to fight on, though, claiming that the likely culprit is not her but a friend's child who used her computer."

"I'm willing to take it as far as I have to prevent other innocent people being dragged into frivolous lawsuits," she told p2pnet.net. "It's wrong."

See the full posting here: First RIAA p2p file share trial

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