"I guess people didn't take it seriously, but we really are very serious about this," said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America. "We want the message to get across to parents that what their kids are doing is illegal. We are going to file lawsuits." Fear created by threat of disproportionate punishment creates resentment and hatred - sowing the seeds of love they are not.
- some legal experts argue that the tactic is risky, particularly if the industry appears to be concentrating on families with no resources to defend themselves.
"The practice of filing thousands of lawsuits is a game of chicken, and not a sustainable model for the industry or the courts," Mr. Zittrain said. "The overall puzzle for the industry is how to truly convince the public that this is in the public interest."
He said there was no obvious historical analogue to the scattershot subpoenaing of individuals in copyright law enforcement, which has traditionally been aimed at businesses or people who are profiting from illegally copied material. He likened it instead to raids during Prohibition, or red-light cameras that catch drivers disobeying traffic laws when they think they are unobserved. Both have given rise to social outcry, Mr. Zittrain said, even though they were used simply to enforce the law.
....Some lawyers who were contacted by people who received notices from their Internet providers say the cases raise many questions because of the way the software in question works.
Some versions of KaZaA automatically designate certain folders on a computer as "shared," so users may not have realized their personal music files, copied from legally purchased CD's, were available to others.
Daniel N. Ballard, a lawyer with McDonough, Holland & Allen in Sacramento, Calif., said he was representing a Brooklyn woman who believed she had prevented her files from being accessible to the KaZaA network. He said computer intruders may have rearranged the files on his client's hard drive without her knowledge.
Mark Rasch elaborates on some of the legal angles in the Register:
- The U.S. Constitution permits Congress "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Under intensive lobbying by the movie, publishing and recording industries, Congress has nudged that "limited" time from the original 17 years in 1789, to the publisher's life plus 75 years today — a time limit that the U.S. Supreme Court recently approved.
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