Question Regarding Downloading Music, Movies, Etc.

[pineda]

Grandpa being sued by MPAA for grandson downloading four movies

I'm starting to see more and more of these kinds of stories, and it's worrisome to me because the target audience for sites like Kazaa and Limewire, among others, is teenagers. If the recording industry and the motion picture industry associations want to penalize someone, why are they not going after the site owners, instead of unwitting parents and grandparents? This type of action only serves to make these industries look like thugs. If you go to the sites advertised for "legal downloading" the verbiage used is extremely complicated jargon that most teens probably just ignore, because they saw the word "legal" being used and besides, "all their friends at school are doing it." Why aren't the industries affected partnering with the ISP's and tracking down the site owners and immediately shut them down? If the MPAA can track down a teenager through his ISP, why can't the MPAA find out who the site owners of these "legal downloads" sites are and take them to court and play hardball with them? Where can teens go to legally download songs, movies, files without breaking the law? Do such places exist? Are there any clear-cut rules put out by either the FTC or FCC on what and where these sites are?

Edited November 3, 2005 by pineda

[Jeebus]

There's no where teens can go to legally download copyrighted music or movies for free that I know of. The common explination I'm given is that they (MPAA & RIAA) target those who "share" the files versus those who download the files. I've read that they will arrest kids that are sharing thousands of songs on their hard drives because essentially they are doing the same thing Napster did - centrally distribute illegally downloaded & shared music/movies from one computer location.

Supposedly this is why P2P networks are loophole-legal. The industry can't go after any single party because each computer becomes its own Napster (or so I've read..). My advice is to not illegally download anymore - but if you must, then be smart. Do not share any music, and simply share an empty folder. Keep a good firewall program running that can alert you to any activity beyond your open ports. What happens is that if you share your files, they can browse them. Therefore they can pick bigger targets.

Its easier to get one guy sharing 1000 songs versus 1000 people sharing one song. However - with the MPAA going after a kid over 4 movie sets a whole new standard to the rules. I wonder if maybe they setup their own server to catch people attempting to download files - like a sort of cyber-sting. I wouldn't be surprised.

Hey - on a side note, I've bought music from the iTunes store, and it comes in this locked format (.m4p I think?) that I can only use iTunes to burn my cd's. Is this the same with Napster? Does anyone know where you can buy true .mp3's?

[editor]

The industry did go after the networks. That's why Napster got sued into bankruptcy.

Kazaa and Limewire are designed specifically to make it hard to find out who's behind the sharing, so the industry goes after the easier target -- the downloaders.

And the industry isn't letting the services off the hook, either. Kazaa has been in court for a year while the music and movie industries try to shut them down. One trick they use is to change the country their based in.

There are plenty of sites where teenagers or anyone else can go to download music for free legally. It's just not the music the teens want. It's indie stuff, not Brittney Spears. The performers and companies involved want to be paid for their work. Is that so wrong?

As for the iTunes v. (new) Napster thing -- iTunes downloads are encrypted with your e-mail address. You can use them on up to five computers, unlimited iPods, and burn CDs from them. Wanna get rid of that restriction? In preferences, set your import settings to MP3, then right click on the song or songs you want to strip and select "Convert to MP3." There is no restrictions on MP3s, like there are on AACs. AACs are necessary or the recording industry would never let Apple sell their songs.

As for Napster -- their terms seem to change all the time so I don't know what the machine/burning/portable restrictions are. The one thing that remains the same, however, is that if you stop paying thier monthly fee then your songs stop working. That's one big reason I use iTunes instead -- if I buy it, it's mine forever.