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American Morning

Music Downloading

Aired May 07, 2003 - 08:42   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.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: The music industry says sales are tumbling because of the growth of Internet file swapping. The industry has stepped up its efforts now to pursue that swapping, including a recent legal action taken against four college students. Hilary Rosen is chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America. She's live in Washington.
Thanks for taking time with us today, Hillary.

I know that you know we had the other side on yesterday, one of these four college students who has agreed to pay out $12,000 based on this crackdown launched against him and three others.

His name is Jesse Jordan. Here is part of his story from yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESSE JORDAN, COLLEGE STUDENT: I don't believe that their intimidation is really going to work. Just like the recent rulings about Grockster (ph) and Morpheus, I think that the search engine that I ran is legal. And I do plan to bring it back within the next day or two.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: Hillary, he calls this intimidation. Is it?

HILARY ROSEN, RIAA: Well, certainly if Mr. Jordan feels intimidated that he hired a high-priced lawyer, they negotiated with our high-priced lawyers and reached an amicable settlement. If he doesn't want to settle, he doesn't have to. The good news for music fans, though, this week, Bill, is Apple music store opened to an extremely successful launch of legitimate online music, and has joined several other online music operations, listen.com and pressplay, and where there really are places for people who want music online to go.

And that's the whole point of all of these efforts, is that there's going to be a lot of investment by artists and record companies and technology companies and bringing fans the best music that they can possibly find. And a complement to that has to be that those who are stealing it and offering it for distribution illegally are going to have to face some consequences.

HEMMER: I want to get back to that in a moment, Hilary. First of all, the software that's been talked about now, some sort of magic bullet that may go into computers sometimes disengaged in computer, prevents people from sharing or swapping files or software. What is the legal jurisdiction right now? There is a big debate as to whether or not this can be even done by law. The position from the RIAA is what?

ROSEN: Well, there is no silver bullet that can go into people's computers and do that. There's certainly nothing that record companies or we would engage in.

You know, obviously, the biggest problem with these peer-to-peer networks are the security and privacy risks that people willingly open themselves up to. They're open networks. There have been viruses. There have been identity thefts. There's certainly a lot of porn being pushed through. None of those are things the record industry has anything to do with, but when people use these P-to-P systems, they are vulnerable to all of these things.

HEMMER: Got it. The point on Apple computers, 99 cents a song I think is the price right now online. Would you support that going forward?

ROSEN: Well, I think any -- it's been extremely successful, a million tracks have been sold over the past week, and that shows that people really want legitimate, high-quality music. And those that are offering it illegally are going to have to recognize that that's not a situation that the music community can tolerate.

HEMMER: Hilary Rosen, live in D.C., thank you much for that.

ROSEN: 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 May 7, 2003 - 08:42   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: The music industry says sales are tumbling because of the growth of Internet file swapping. The industry has stepped up its efforts now to pursue that swapping, including a recent legal action taken against four college students. Hilary Rosen is chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America. She's live in Washington.
Thanks for taking time with us today, Hillary.

I know that you know we had the other side on yesterday, one of these four college students who has agreed to pay out $12,000 based on this crackdown launched against him and three others.

His name is Jesse Jordan. Here is part of his story from yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESSE JORDAN, COLLEGE STUDENT: I don't believe that their intimidation is really going to work. Just like the recent rulings about Grockster (ph) and Morpheus, I think that the search engine that I ran is legal. And I do plan to bring it back within the next day or two.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: Hillary, he calls this intimidation. Is it?

HILARY ROSEN, RIAA: Well, certainly if Mr. Jordan feels intimidated that he hired a high-priced lawyer, they negotiated with our high-priced lawyers and reached an amicable settlement. If he doesn't want to settle, he doesn't have to. The good news for music fans, though, this week, Bill, is Apple music store opened to an extremely successful launch of legitimate online music, and has joined several other online music operations, listen.com and pressplay, and where there really are places for people who want music online to go.

And that's the whole point of all of these efforts, is that there's going to be a lot of investment by artists and record companies and technology companies and bringing fans the best music that they can possibly find. And a complement to that has to be that those who are stealing it and offering it for distribution illegally are going to have to face some consequences.

HEMMER: I want to get back to that in a moment, Hilary. First of all, the software that's been talked about now, some sort of magic bullet that may go into computers sometimes disengaged in computer, prevents people from sharing or swapping files or software. What is the legal jurisdiction right now? There is a big debate as to whether or not this can be even done by law. The position from the RIAA is what?

ROSEN: Well, there is no silver bullet that can go into people's computers and do that. There's certainly nothing that record companies or we would engage in.

You know, obviously, the biggest problem with these peer-to-peer networks are the security and privacy risks that people willingly open themselves up to. They're open networks. There have been viruses. There have been identity thefts. There's certainly a lot of porn being pushed through. None of those are things the record industry has anything to do with, but when people use these P-to-P systems, they are vulnerable to all of these things.

HEMMER: Got it. The point on Apple computers, 99 cents a song I think is the price right now online. Would you support that going forward?

ROSEN: Well, I think any -- it's been extremely successful, a million tracks have been sold over the past week, and that shows that people really want legitimate, high-quality music. And those that are offering it illegally are going to have to recognize that that's not a situation that the music community can tolerate.

HEMMER: Hilary Rosen, live in D.C., thank you much for that.

ROSEN: 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