File Sharing Case Fines woman $1.2 Million

In Prof. Kagan's 5th lecture when we were reviewing Music Downloading and Peer to Peer Networks it was mentioned that it was hard to find and sue the large foreign P2P network sites responsible for illegal file sharing because new sites are constantly popping up and the file downloading is between computer to computer with servers outside the US. A comment I was thinking about during the lecture was that it is still easy to place the blame on individuals and it seems that continuing suing individual people could provide a scapegoat to attempt to reduce the number of illegal downloads. In class it was discussed that "despite all of the advances in online music sales, tens of billions of illegal files were still swapped in 2007 maintaining the ratio of unlicensed tracks downloaded to legal tracks sold at about 20:1.

Well, it seems that is the tactic of a music industry on its heels, as a verdict of $1.2 million dollars in damages was awarded to the Recording industry Association of America (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tec_music_downloading) in a jury settlement that claimed that a Minn woman who illegal shared 24 songs was responsible for $80,000 per illegal shared song. In 2005 the RIAA declared, "Pretty much everyone who uses such services is now a target of the IFPI. Initially, it is chasing what it calls "uploaders", who let files on their machine be available for download by anyone else using the services."Age doesn't seem like a deterrent to the RIAA as well. When a woman denied downloading illegally and said it was actually her 13 year old daughter, the RIAA dropped the case and instead decided to go after her daughter!

While this is a long heated debate, this hefty fine should ripple throughout the community in the coming weeks. While the $3,500 settlements hardly deterred P2P sharers, I think this example will scare the parents out there , who's kids might cost the family a lot of money and troubles, into opening their wallets a bit wider and using the traditional means of purchasing music. In addition, the music industry has had some success in attacking the large P2P sites and having them convert to a legal distribution model, however, going the personal route might be the most effective means though this could lead to a backlash by programmers and lead to even newer technologies to get music.