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Recording Industry Gearing Up for Lawsuits
Aired June 26, 2003 - 14:33 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: You can't say we didn't warn you. The music industry is set to crackdown on MP3 freeloaders, and those folks who share their massive music collections online.
The Recording Association of America doesn't like it and they're coming after you. CNN's Daniel Sieberg is going to explain to you how RIAA plans to do this. Give us a recap, Daniel.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Hey Kyra, yes, The Recording Industry Association of America -- we're going to trot out a fairly tired cliche here. We're talking about these music, the music sharers online facing the music.
And basically the gist of it is that the Recording Industry Association of America, the lobby group for the music industry, has said that they will be filing hundreds of lawsuits against these people who are sharing music on line.
Now we're not talking about people who are downloading music online we are talking about people making it possible to share all of this music online.
Critics have come out and said though -- the recording industry saying, their CD sales are down, and that they need to do this -- critics are saying it is pretty heavy handed and it's going to be fairly unpopular with a lot of people who are out there online. So what are these file sharing sites we're talking about? We can at least show you what the sites are and what the companies are.
The first one we can show you here is Morpheus. All of these sites, or most of them anyway, are free and meant to be easy to use. One thing we should point out, is that these sites are not considered illegal. The activity that goes on them is considered by many of to be illegal, but the sites themselves are not.
This is Kazaa, another one. Some of them are facing some lawsuits by the Recording Industry. But in April, a Los Angeles federal judge decided that there are some legitimate uses for these file sharing sites, not just some of the illegal activities.
So those are three of them there: Morpheus, KaZaA, and Grokster. Now, on the legal or legitimate side, we have the ones from Apple, most eventually Apple's iTunes service which allows people to get songs for a dollar each. Also Rhapsody's Listen.com, another place to go, and music.net with its site, there's also Pressplay. We should point out that AOL Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, is also part of this music industry backed initiative. But they are going to have an uphill battle, Kyra, trying to track down some of these users that are online. It is not necessarily going to be as easy as finding them and then filing this lawsuit. There is going to be some sort of legal process they have to go through, gathering evidence, and so on and then through the Internet service provider.
PHILLIPS: Alright, let's talk about these lawsuits. A bit frivolous, yes. Because we talked last week about this one young man with a lawsuit settled for 12 grand and raised the money on the Internet to pay for it. I mean, how effective is this going to be?
SIEBERG: Well, a lot of the critics are saying that these lawsuits are frivolous on the one hand, but also just being used as a scare tactic to try and put the fear of the music industry into a lot of these users who are doing it.
You mentioned the $12,000 settlement. There were four college students who settled recently, with the recording industry. You can almost think of them as guinea pigs for this sort of tactic or strategy that's being used by the recording industry.
You heard me mention the case back in April with the federal judge who decided that some of these sites weren't illegal, what that did is it forced the Recording Industry to try to change their strategy a little bit. Change their tack. So instead of going after these services so much, they are now going after the individual user. They see as pirating and sharing this music illegally. So they are changing their tact a little bit, frivolous or not, depending on which side you are on.
PHILLIPS: They are coming out with a lot of ads to and instant messages, right?
SIEBERT: That's right, there is an ad today in the "New York Times" that is suggesting that if anyone is going to be sharing music online they should also download a list of attorneys.
This was an ad placed by the Music Industry. They have also been sending instant messages and warnings to a lot of the users online, saying you better watch out, because we are going come after you. You can no longer be anonymous and hide online.
A lot of users might still feel, thought, that they can hide behind a sort of veil of anonymity being online. That there are millions of users that use these file sharing services and they simply may not be found or that it would be too hard to go after them.
So, we'll have to see where this plays out and how many of these lawsuits will be settled for each song, Kyra, the recording industry could go after them for thousands, if not millions, of dollars but likely most people can't afford that so it will be settled for much less.
PHILLIPS: Daniel Sieberg, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired June 26, 2003 - 14:33 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: You can't say we didn't warn you. The music industry is set to crackdown on MP3 freeloaders, and those folks who share their massive music collections online.
The Recording Association of America doesn't like it and they're coming after you. CNN's Daniel Sieberg is going to explain to you how RIAA plans to do this. Give us a recap, Daniel.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Hey Kyra, yes, The Recording Industry Association of America -- we're going to trot out a fairly tired cliche here. We're talking about these music, the music sharers online facing the music.
And basically the gist of it is that the Recording Industry Association of America, the lobby group for the music industry, has said that they will be filing hundreds of lawsuits against these people who are sharing music on line.
Now we're not talking about people who are downloading music online we are talking about people making it possible to share all of this music online.
Critics have come out and said though -- the recording industry saying, their CD sales are down, and that they need to do this -- critics are saying it is pretty heavy handed and it's going to be fairly unpopular with a lot of people who are out there online. So what are these file sharing sites we're talking about? We can at least show you what the sites are and what the companies are.
The first one we can show you here is Morpheus. All of these sites, or most of them anyway, are free and meant to be easy to use. One thing we should point out, is that these sites are not considered illegal. The activity that goes on them is considered by many of to be illegal, but the sites themselves are not.
This is Kazaa, another one. Some of them are facing some lawsuits by the Recording Industry. But in April, a Los Angeles federal judge decided that there are some legitimate uses for these file sharing sites, not just some of the illegal activities.
So those are three of them there: Morpheus, KaZaA, and Grokster. Now, on the legal or legitimate side, we have the ones from Apple, most eventually Apple's iTunes service which allows people to get songs for a dollar each. Also Rhapsody's Listen.com, another place to go, and music.net with its site, there's also Pressplay. We should point out that AOL Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, is also part of this music industry backed initiative. But they are going to have an uphill battle, Kyra, trying to track down some of these users that are online. It is not necessarily going to be as easy as finding them and then filing this lawsuit. There is going to be some sort of legal process they have to go through, gathering evidence, and so on and then through the Internet service provider.
PHILLIPS: Alright, let's talk about these lawsuits. A bit frivolous, yes. Because we talked last week about this one young man with a lawsuit settled for 12 grand and raised the money on the Internet to pay for it. I mean, how effective is this going to be?
SIEBERG: Well, a lot of the critics are saying that these lawsuits are frivolous on the one hand, but also just being used as a scare tactic to try and put the fear of the music industry into a lot of these users who are doing it.
You mentioned the $12,000 settlement. There were four college students who settled recently, with the recording industry. You can almost think of them as guinea pigs for this sort of tactic or strategy that's being used by the recording industry.
You heard me mention the case back in April with the federal judge who decided that some of these sites weren't illegal, what that did is it forced the Recording Industry to try to change their strategy a little bit. Change their tack. So instead of going after these services so much, they are now going after the individual user. They see as pirating and sharing this music illegally. So they are changing their tact a little bit, frivolous or not, depending on which side you are on.
PHILLIPS: They are coming out with a lot of ads to and instant messages, right?
SIEBERT: That's right, there is an ad today in the "New York Times" that is suggesting that if anyone is going to be sharing music online they should also download a list of attorneys.
This was an ad placed by the Music Industry. They have also been sending instant messages and warnings to a lot of the users online, saying you better watch out, because we are going come after you. You can no longer be anonymous and hide online.
A lot of users might still feel, thought, that they can hide behind a sort of veil of anonymity being online. That there are millions of users that use these file sharing services and they simply may not be found or that it would be too hard to go after them.
So, we'll have to see where this plays out and how many of these lawsuits will be settled for each song, Kyra, the recording industry could go after them for thousands, if not millions, of dollars but likely most people can't afford that so it will be settled for much less.
PHILLIPS: Daniel Sieberg, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
