PYL prize music...

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'tommycharles\' date=\'Jul 23 2003, 10:06 AM\'] Now - what exactly can they do (excuse me if I'm underestimating technology here) if they do find said illegal songs on your computer - and you claim that you have every song there on CD's that you legitimately bought at retail price? Do you really have to pull out your CD collection to prove it?

Also, don't we start hitting privacy invasion like never before if the RIAA starts "sniffing around on your computer"? Does owning a PC start constituting grounds for a warrant? [/quote]
 Excellent questions both.

I would IMAGINE, if the RIAA were smart (and again, don't ever think for a second that I'm giving them anywhere near that much credit), that they could obtain sufficient evidence to merit a search warrant, if they could somehow obtain network traces of a LARGE number of copyrighted files being transferred from a single IP address which is then traceable to a single PC. And by \"LARGE NUMBER\" I'm thinking hundreds, maybe thousands, because I can't see a judge issuing a warrant for a pissant few dozen file transfers.

In order to accomplish this, they would need to get the cooperation of the ISP of the person in question, to be able to slap a packet sniffer on the guy and see what traffic he's producing. It might take more than that to convince a court.

For the most part the RIAA, if you ask me, is blowing a lot of smoke. They're puffing out their chests about what they CAN do, and for the most part, yes, they CAN do it, they are within their legal rights to do so. The question becomes, then, how much legal expense it incurrs on their part to go after someone, and how big a target you have to take down to merit that expense. After all, the RIAA can't go around begging \"poor\" because people are sharing MP3's and then drop a couple hundred G's to bring down some 14-year-old kid and his collection of 37 Metallica songs.

There are some foolish people out there who are sharing entire record stores full of copyrighted music. These people should be a little concerned. But Joe Average with a couple hundred songs have nothing to worry about.

[tommycharles]

That's Queen, not Metallica...

Anyway, thanks for the answer, it cleared things up.

[Matt Ottinger]

An article in Thursday's USA TODAY says that the first wave of RIAA targets (at least 871 of them) have been sent warnings by their internet providers.  To give you some sense of the scope, the article says that some of the people who've contacted a defense group are \"parents whose 12- and 13-year-olds were sharing six to eight CD's worth of songs.\"  So (if these parents are being honest) even people with dozens of downloads to their credit have cause for concern, not just those with hundreds or thousands.

The defense, as it always seems to be, is that the people who were doing the swapping didn't think they were doing anything wrong.  If the goal of the RIAA is to change that mindset, it would appear that they're well on their way.  I think Chris is right about the \"blowing smoke\", it's not going to look too good when the lawyers question little Billy on the stand, and I doubt they'd ever let it get that far.  But in the meantime, if the continued publicity gets more people to recognize the activity for the illegal act that it is, then I betcha the RIAA will be satisfied that it's done its job.

In the meantime, one thing I certainly would NOT be doing these days is bragging on a message board about all the downloading you've done, and how you really hope that they come after you.