File-sharers shrug off legal threat

By Zenaida Serrano Espanol
Advertiser Staff Writer

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A glimpse into the music industry's battle against digital piracy Napster, one of the original Internet file-sharing programs that started the music downloading hype in 1999, shut down in July 2001 after being sued by the recording industry on charges of violating copyright laws. Next-generation Napsters such as Grokster and Morpheus have been able to avoid major legal troubles by decentralizing their systems and arguing they have no control over users. On April 29, the Recording Industry Association of America began to step up efforts to deter individual users by using the instant-messaging systems of Kazaa and Grokster to warn users of copyright infringement when they share unauthorized copies of songs. On June 25, the RIAA announced that it would begin to file lawsuits against individual users en masse by searching file-sharing networks to identify those who illegally share music files online.

John recognizes himself as the kind of person the music industry wants to warn off from trading music online. For that reason, he asked that his last name not be published. But as just one downloader in a big crowd of file-sharers, here in Hawai'i and worldwide, he's not too worried about getting caught either.

The Recording Industry Association of America put out the warning last month:

It will step up efforts to curb unauthorized file-sharing, which it terms digital piracy. The association has begun searching Internet file-sharing networks to find users who offer MP3 music files for downloading — whether a few files, or thousands.

"We haven't put a number on it, because we don't want there to be some sort of false threshold number," said RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss via telephone from Washington, D.C. "So if someone's sharing one file, that's one file too many."

The RIAA says it expects to file at least several hundred lawsuits through early September, seeking damages of as much as $150,000 per copyright song.

File-sharing sites such as Kazaa, Gnutella and Limewire — also known as peer-to-peer or P2P sites — allow users to swap music files stored on the users' computer hard drives.

But John doesn't feel an immediate threat from the RIAA. "It's not going to work — there's no way," he said of the industry warning. "(Networks) will just find a way around it eventually where everybody will be anonymous who does it."

Like John, Ray Strode of Halawa said the move to sue individual users will be "an insurmountable task. "I think the RIAA is a little bit too overzealous," said the 20-year-old University of Hawai'i student.

" ... Now they're going after individuals, and I think that's ridiculous, because there are so many people out there (who do it) that it doesn't make any sense to me."

Strode sees the announcement as a scare tactic. "I don't think that it's something that they're doing to get everyone," Strode said. "I think they're trying to get a few examples so people are deterred."

Millions of others don't seem to be feeling the heat, either.

Sharing continues

The number of users visiting Kazaa, the biggest of the file-sharing networks, has not increased or decreased significantly since the RIAA's June 25 announcement, according to BigChampagne LLC, a Los Angeles-based research firm that tracks P2P activity worldwide.

In the last few months, the number of simultaneous users on Kazaa has fluctuated between about 4 million and 5 million, and the number of files exchanged between about 800,000 to more than a billion, BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland said via telephone from Beverly Hills, Calif.

"All indications are that that fluctuation and that range have been really totally unaffected," Garland said.

On one day last week, Garland noted, the network reported activity on the high end, with about 5 million users putting more than a billion files in play.

"What (the RIAA) would hope to see, if the announcement were really internalized and people got the message, that those figures would plummet," Garland said. "We're not seeing that."

The music industry isn't "looking for miracles overnight," Weiss said. "We just announced we're going to file lawsuits, and I think when people start seeing lawsuits filed, we hope that will have a deterrent effect."

That doesn't scare John — yet. He counts himself among millions of music-hungry fans who plan to continue downloading from their computers rather than heading to a music store to buy a $15 to $20 CD.

"If I were somewhere closer to where they are, I would imagine I'd be more worried," he said. "But being how we're out in the middle of the ocean, I doubt that the first wave of lawsuits will happen here."

Evidence invisible

Not only is downloading from file-sharing sites widespread, but the industry may have trouble finding whose who download, said Bobby Cooksey, 35, of Honolulu.

"I think they have a right to do it, but I think they may have a hard time," the loan processor said. "We don't have a large collection (of music files) on our computer system, but when we do download, we pull it out of the program. So even if they did check our system, they wouldn't be able to find them, because I pull them out of the sharing program."

Cooksey, who used to frequent Limewire, now downloads music "the legal way," he said.

He's among thousands who have turned to the Apple iTunes Music Store (www.applemusic.com), a service for Macintosh users that charges 99 cents per high-quality song, Cooksey said.

The increasingly popular pay-per-download service has virtually no restrictions on how and where the songs can be played, and sold more than 2 million tracks within 16 days of its April 28 launch.

Still, Cooksey downloads music only once every two to three weeks for song clips he adds to home movies he makes for his family, he said.

Strode also said he downloads music rarely these days. He does it "once every couple or few months," usually from Gnutella, just to hear samples of songs, he said. "I just listen to what's on the radio, and that's usually good enough for me."

Melissa Peneyra of Kane'ohe admits downloading songs off Kazaa, but said that doesn't keep her from buying CDs of the artists whose music she downloads.

"I think it's better that way, because you'll actually go out and buy (a CD) and you know you'll be satisfied," said the UH student, 23.

Virus dangers

Deayonn Barquis, an IT systems manager, suggests computer users should steer clear of downloading music from file-sharing networks — also called shareware sites — altogether. "Shareware itself is bad because viruses are just constantly passed through there," Barquis said. "Because it's a shareware site, there's no regulations on it, really, and also it's harder to trace who has what, who's passing what virus, because usually once a virus is detected, it's passed hands too many times to actually pinpoint who brought it through."

A thumbs-down to downloading music files doesn't mean the Mililani resident, 27, sides with the industry.

"I do not agree with anybody dictating things on which they have no control over," Barquis said.

The RIAA, meanwhile, plans to continue its campaign full force. "File-sharing copyrighted music is illegal, and we're not going to stand by while artists, songwriters, music companies and others who work very hard within the music community lose money each and every day to piracy," Weiss said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Reach Zenaida Serrano Espanol at zespanol@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-8174.