File-sharers scoff at lawsuits
By Shawn Langlois, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 6:51 PM ET Sept. 8, 2003
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- The recording industry continued to push mounds of paper Monday, filing suit against 261 people for allegedly pirating songs on file-sharing Websites like Kazaa.
That leaves about 59,999,739 to go.
But if the countless tune-swappers trolling through cyberspace were intimidated by the spate of lawsuits, you wouldn't know it. The consensus message from a bounty of cavalier posts aimed at the Recording Industry Association of America became abundantly clear: Bring it on!
Nanuk, for example, heartily pounded his chest along with his cronies on Yahoo: "You can take away my MP3's when you pry my mouse out of my cold dead hands."
It's all about the money, according to Tnintbubse: "Consumers will not tolerate their price gouging and they need to come up with something else besides suing college kids. The industry has gone unchecked too long and has passed the cost down to us. Now they are crying."
Howler24 drew a line of futility between what he feels are two ill-fated crusades: "Yes, you can cry and moan about the 'evils' of drugs and file sharing. But when you're through foaming at the mouth, you have to realize that they are BOTH here to stay. No law, no court can change that. The best thing to do is to control it and make it profitable, instead of driving it underground."
Needless to say, the RIAA's option for file-sharers to turn themselves in didn't go over to well. See full story.
From Rmonster: "I have a feeling that anyone who signs up for this 'amnesty' is going to find themselves up the creek. Sending a notarized copy of your ID and statement that you did, in fact, break the law (in their eyes at least) does not sound like amnesty, but suicide."
As Apophis sees it, the RIAA is out of touch "It's time for the RIAA as we know it to go away and an agency more in tune with the 21st century needs to be put in its place. One that looks forward and not stuck in decades old business practices."
Though greatly outnumbered, some did play devil's advocate --AndyCane, for instance, didn't see much wiggle room for the virtual apologists: "I'm no huge fan of the RIAA, but they have a right to protect their copyrighted material and (neither) you, nor I, nor anyone else, has the right to 'share' it without paying for it, at least not on the scale that it's done on file-sharing sites."
Then, of course, there was plenty of cheeky advice. This morsel from SkyPilotTB: "Stop book sharing. Sue libraries."
And WWWFairfield hinted at hopping aboard the Justin and Britney bashing bandwagon with his take: "Look at the top ten -- THAT explains why sales of CDs are lacking. Stop looking for pretty faces and recruit real musicians to record and sell music."
Finally, ArbaCadarba painted the picture just about everyone on line has been clamoring for since the rise and fall of Napster: "Now what I would love to see is all music artists selling their stuff directly to music lovers, bypassing the music industry completely.
"That would bring more money to the artists, more music to the people, and the extra pleasure of watching rich music industry execs pulling their hair out."
Shawn Langlois is a reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com, and the editor of its community message boards.
