Friday , March 29 2024

Talking Tough, Anonymously

File sharing traffic has changed little since the RIAA threat of last week, and users are talking tough but not revealing their last names to reporters. What we need is an overt deep pockets challenge to the suits. The NY Post:

    Catch us if you can!
    That seems to be the attitude of hip young New Yorkers who download tunes from the Internet, despite threats last week from the Recording Industry Association of America to stop them in their tracks by launching “hundreds” of lawsuits against music pirates.

    With the RIAA saying it could seek up to $150,000 in damages and reimbursement for each stolen song, most local music downloaders are reluctant to reveal their identities.

    But they are open in their resolve to continue to seek and swap music online through several popular song-sharing software applications.

    “The cat’s out of the bag, and it’s too late to recover; people are addicted to it,” said Michael, 28, a resident in Woodside, Queens, who says he has downloaded about 2,000 music files.

    ….Industry observers say last week’s threats have had little effect on the number of downloads in recent days.

    Kazaa, the most popular software for file sharing, reported a slight downturn in usage in the 10 hours after the RIAA’s decision Wednesday, but normal flow returned by Friday.

    Grokster, another medium, said downloads increased by up to 10 percent the day after the RIAA announcement.

    FastTrack, a network that supports Kazaa and Grokster, said traffic from Wednesday afternoon to Friday fluctuated between 3.4 million and 4.4 million users, according to figures supplied by Kazaa and reported by The Associated Press.

The whole system is just broken. I want to see artists get paid, the 2,000 songs this “Michael” has is more than a “sample” as he put it. I just can’t see any way around starting all over again with digital rights and coming up with some kind of broadband licensing system. Anything short of that will be unfair to artists, consumers, civil liberties or all of the above, which is about the way it is now.

About Eric Olsen

Career media professional and serial entrepreneur Eric Olsen flung himself into the paranormal world in 2012, creating the America's Most Haunted brand and co-authoring the award-winning America's Most Haunted book, published by Berkley/Penguin in Sept, 2014. Olsen is co-host of the nationally syndicated broadcast and Internet radio talk show After Hours AM; his entertaining and informative America's Most Haunted website and social media outlets are must-reads: Twitter@amhaunted, Facebook.com/amhaunted, Pinterest America's Most Haunted. Olsen is also guitarist/singer for popular and wildly eclectic Cleveland cover band The Props.

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