Posted on: Saturday, August 21, 2004

It's payback time for many music downloaders

By Ted Bridis
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A woman in Milwaukee and her former boyfriend are under orders to pay thousands to the recording industry. A man in California refinanced his home to pay an $11,000 settlement. A year after it began, the industry's legal campaign against Internet music piracy is inching through the federal courts, producing some unexpected twists.

"I'm giving up and can't fight this," said Ross Plank, 36, of Playa Del Ray, Calif. He had professed his innocence but surrendered after lawyers found traces on his computer of hundreds of songs that had been deleted a day after he was sued.

Plank, recently married, refinanced his home to raise the money. "I didn't see any other way. They've got all the power in the world," he said.

The campaign has also produced worries, even from a federal judge, that wealthy record companies could trample some of the 3,935 people across the country who have been sued since the first such cases were filed in September 2003.

"I've never had a situation like this before, where there are powerful plaintiffs and powerful lawyers on one side and then a whole slew of ordinary folks on the other side," said U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner at a hearing in Boston.

On the West Coast, another judge rejected an injunction sought by record companies against one Internet user, saying it would violate her rights.

But record companies are largely winning their cases, according to a review by The Associated Press. They did lose a major ruling this week when a federal appeals court in California said manufacturers of software that can be used to download music illegally aren't liable, leaving the industry to pursue lawsuits against Internet users.

James McDonough of Hingham, Mass., said being sued was "very intimidating." He told Gertner, the Boston judge, that his 14-year-old twins might be responsible for the "heinous crime" of downloading music.

Gertner, who has a teenage daughter, blocked movement on the Massachusetts cases for months, to ensure that "no one, frankly, is being ground up."

She started ruling on cases again this month, when she threw out counterclaims accusing record companies of trespass and privacy invasions for searching the online music collections of Internet users.

At least 807 Internet users have settled their cases by paying roughly $3,000 each in fines, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. If they went to court and lost, it would cost them $7,500.

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