Ok, is this sueing kazaa and other programs going on in U.S or in all over the world? I'm guessing that it's only in U.S right? And if it's in U.S.A, they will be fining ppl who download "U.S" music, not jap anime or music. Is it like dat or wha? Pwease tell me. >
-- Anonymous, July 07, 2003

Answers

i dont know about other P2P programs, but KaZaA cannot be sued because they have no control over what the users send/recieve using that program
i think the RIAA has already tried that route
i also think that the RIAA has their hands in like, 90% of all music in the states, so its a possibility that they work with japanese artists

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2003

actually they can sue kazaa, cos they managed to sue napster remember? and kazaa is really nothing without its illegal files.

as for the type of music, i dont think it matters what type of music it is as its all illegal, but since its an american base company doin it to help protect the american economy, i reckon their main coverage area would be to do with u.s. music e.g. recent hits like evanescence.

riaa wont announce whhat their specific intentions are cos then people could counter/prepare for the consequences in some way, but i speculate mainly american stuff for above reason.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2003

i think this "US" thing is bcos the big music companies r located in US, so they'll take action in US court first or track down US users first i suppose. once US users r targeted, ultimately the rest of the world will be affected, esp if they decide to sue Kazaa the way they deal with Napster. just that it seem like they are now targeting the users instead of forcing kazaa to shut down cos that would mean a long n complicated trial.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2003

They can try suing Kazaa all they want, but it is not going to happen at all because Kazaa is not from US, but from Austailia which isn't in the US at all.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2003

They can't sue kazaa. And I hear they're only searching for US copyright material.

In other words if you dl say "heart of Sword" from Rurouni Kenshin, if they caught you(not that they can, don't think so newayz) they might be able to fine you since it might be copyright by MediaBlasters/AnimeWorks(i don't know if their contract included rights to RK songs, i'm assuming it does tho).

But AW would decide to actually sue u in that case, if I'm making no sense please tell me, cause I'm starting to get a headache. probably due to lack of sleep ;.;

Also that would mean that dling a song by say Gackt, i don't think that'd be illegal(well it isn't in the US) because no1 has brought gackt's music here officially(I don't think so newayz). And the people in Japan can't do nething to US users either way. besides I think they see it as good plublisity(sp?).

Besides I usually end up buying what I dl as soon as I get enough money ^.^;;

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2003

so...shall i stop using kazaa lite?

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2003

not yet i dont think

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2003

Ack, just don't share those many american music files.

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2003

i think if u dont share ur safe

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2003

if u dun share u're selfish n shouldn't even expect pp to give u their files.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2003

Disinformation runs rampant. It'd be nice if people would spend thirty seconds looking at Google or factual news articles before posting...

Some general factoids that people reading this thread should be aware of:

1) Under international copyright and intellectual property law, downloading any protected file that you don't already own a legal, paid-for copy of is illegal, unless you have the owner's (of the rights, not of the file) permission. This is true in ANY country that is signatory to the agreements that established these, which is to say, almost every single nation on earth. Under these laws, people breaking them can, in fact, be quite successfully sued and/or prosecuted, even if they're in other countries, either under the court system of the sue-er or of the sue-ee, and sometimes both.

And none of the nations involved are disputing that trading files which either or both parties do not own is illegal. Ethics and morality and artists' rights and users' rights aside, the law enforcement authorities involved ALL consider it to be breaking the law. There IS some question as to whether creating a program that is designed to facilitate this (like Napster and KaZaA) is legal or not - but most courts apparently are inclined towards 'not', or Napster wouldn't have successfully been stifled.

Legality-wise, it doesn't matter whether you're sharing or not - downloading a file you don't have a legal copy of is just as illegal as supplying it.

Understand that the only thing saving individual users from getting prosecuted for sharing and/or downloading files is that there's no way to do it efficiently; there's hundreds of thousands of people doing it, no way to tell easily whether they're legally entitled to that file, and the total damage of any /individual/ file being shared are too small to be worth prosecuting for, monetarily. But whether or not you feel the recording industry is in the wrong, ethically, and whether or not you feel the courts are wrong for supporting it, or that the laws and pertinent treaties are dated and badly in need of revising, if you fileshare, you ARE breaking the law in just about any country in the world.

In the past, the recording industry and the court systems basically ignored individual people who were file trading in favour of hammering anyone stealing their property /commercially/ (ie, selling bootleg music and film, etc), and the companies like Napster that promoted such trading. They're still doing that, but in a recent shift in focus, they are also now looking for individual users sharing large numbers of files and threatening to prosecute them, as well. Note that this has had nothing to do with whether the people involved are in the US or not, and whether the songs are originally recorded and protected in the US or not (see point 2 below). They're basically prioritizing by how many protected files are being shared - the people sharing the largest collections are the ones being targetted first. It appears that they feel that, even if they can't stop file trading entirely, if the people who share most get their asses sued off or criminally prosecuted, pretty soon no one will be sharing very many of their files, and it will bring things back under semi-control. Whether this will have the desired effect or not remains to be seen.

2) Despite the 'of America' in its name, the RIAA is very much an international group, and operates internationally. Its five biggest members (Universal, Sony, Time Warner, EMI/Virgin and Bertelsmann), include two companies headquarted in the US, two in Europe, and one in Japan, although they all have major subsidiaries in the US. These five companies own something on the order of 90% of the rights to all the music recorded not only in the US, but /worldwide/, including Australia, Europe, and Japan. No, I don't know whether whatever company owns the rights to (for instance) Gackt's music is in the RIAA... but with odds like that, I know which way I'd bet in the absence of concrete data.

The RIAA is NOT just going after people file-trading in the US, and not just people for US-recorded music. I've already heard reports of some file-traders in, for instance, Denmark (which reportedly has some fairly strict IP protection laws) having their network activity tracked by anti-piracy groups, and have received bills for the money owed to the files' owners based on their downloads. We're only starting to see the tip of the iceberg, here...

Suits in the US get the most publicity because, frankly, the vast majority of the world's net users (and thus, the world's file traders) are still in the US. The recording industry can have its biggest impact at the smallest cost by trying to shut down file- trading in the US first. It's just economics.

3) Sharmann, the people who do KaZaA, are not only going to /get/ sued by the RIAA, they have already BEEN sued, in US, Australian, and Denmark courts. The only reason they haven't been successfully shut down already, though IS geography - they've been using some very cypher-punkish tactics to avoid it. The company is incorporated in a tiny South Pacific island nation whose name momentarily escapes me (Ventuata, or something like that), and which may not even be signatory to international IP treaties. Their management and sales are handled by a company in Australia. Their servers (and, it's speculated, the actual people who wrote KaZaA although no one seems to be able to find them right now) are in Denmark. The source code is apparently stored on a system in Estonia. All of this makes it very hard to shut them down; understand that it's not because it isn't possible, or because they're not in the US, or because what they're doing isn't arguably illegal, but because they've purposefully made it extremely difficult for any individual court system to GATHER the information needed to make an informed decision, and because you'd have to successfully shut them down across most of those locations to get them to stop.

In any case, there you have it. This stuff is going on all over the world, and for music released all over the world, and unless you're basically willing to take the sort of extreme measures that an international jewel thief would take (what else would you call Sharmann's shenanigans? Whether they're guilty of a crime or not, they're certainly operating under the assumption that /someone/ thinks they are...) you ARE a target. The only thing saving you (or I) right now is that you're one microbe among hundreds of thousands or millions.

The only question is whether that will continue to be true until the laws are successfully changed...

Me

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2003

Who are you Mr. No Name? Did you come to the Greenspun anime forums just to point that out? Are you Garret Ford or somebody related? from the RIAA? Also most of what you're saying is problably true, but can you tell me where you heard all this at?

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2003

kazaa and napster are totally different. with napster u actually downloaded the music FROM napster, with kazaa u get it directly from other users. And if they make that illegal they might as well outlaw breathing. You know?

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2003