Here’s today’s “So 5-minutes-ago” news
Here’s something cool. Today’s blog comes to you from somewhere over the east coast as my daughter and I fly to Florida for a couple of days. In the air using gogoinflight.com and it only cost me $2.49.
I’m starting a running series I’ll call “So 5-Minutes Ago” – which, pretty literally means that this particular topic or web address was the most popular at the time I wrote this piece.
This morning when I began this (at around 10am) this was the top story, according to website Alexa.com. A federal jury ruled against a Minnesota woman named Jammie Thomas-Rasset in our country’s first music file-sharing case to ever go to trial. Others have all been settled where the accused pays a fine to the extent that it causes some moderate to severe discomfort; just enough to ensure they won’t make the mistake again of sharing music files that they do not have the rights to.
Thomas-Rasset was accused by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and various subsidiaries of the major record labels including Sony, EMI, Universal & Warner. She had, unlike others before her previously accused of similar “crimes” – elected to go to trial and take on this Goliath-like opponent in court as opposed to agreeing to pay a monetary settlement to make the lawsuit go away. Others have paid on average approx $3500 to settle their suits and move on, but Thomas-Rasset took her chances at trial.
She was accused of sharing 1700 music files on a service called Kazaa where, for just $19.98 per month you can download as many songs as you like and play them on up to 3 PCs for the life of your subscription. One catch – you cannot load this music onto an IPOD or other personal listening device.
Kazaa didn’t always charge for this service. Just a few short years ago, Kazaa and others like it was a free file-sharing platform where users uploaded files to share with other users. This is when the alleged “crime” took place. Needless to say, the record companies didn’t like this, and I’m sure the musicians were torn between loving the fact that there music was in wide circulation and being really bummed that they weren’t getting their due royalties.
In all fairness, internet-based laws have been slow to catch up with the technology that drives the need for them and so the debates will continue to rage on.
The ruling in the case? The suit only addressed the sharing of 24 songs and awarded the record companies $80,000 per song – or $1.92 million. A little footnote – this was the second time Thomas-Rasset went to trial on this. Initially heard by a judge in 2007, she lost that time too and was ordered to pay only $222,000. A new trial was ordered when the original judge decided he’d made a mistake in giving the jury instructions.
If you’d like to visit the “hottest” url on the web (as of this writing) and get the full story, click here.
Off for a weekend full of family 
Happy Father’s Day and welcome to all of our new Mutt Media fans!
This has been your Daily Bone
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Accuracy Jones on 06.27.2009
“it was a free file-sharing platform where users uploaded files to share with other users. ”
This is actually not 100% accurate. The older version of Kazza worked by making the music folder on your computer an open share when you were connected to the Kazza service. There was no uploading on the user part nor did the company store any of the music files. Essentially running this software made your entire music collection available to anyone using Kazza directly from your computer. This is where the legal issues arise …..if Kazza was not actually storing the copyrighted materials, only enabling users to share files stored on their own computer….how could they be liable? Especially when their user agreement states that you can not use Kazza to share copyrighted materials?
These sort of P2P sites (peer-to-peer) – the most notiably being Napster – were at the legal focus of the mp3 music revolution. Many of these services have changed their business model so they could function legally, and many failed when they did so……..but many survived who did not (Bit Torrent being one) … and now the new target is not the music industry but is Hollywood and the film industry. Perhaps lessons can be learned from sites like Napster and Kazza to avoid the craziness of that time.