Im being sued by the IRMA for filesharing!

[Melachi]

Well not yet officialy, but Ive been tipped off that I am one of the 17 people who are going to be sued.

First off heres some clip outs from news sites about whats happening.

Ill post the rest of my input in a reply for easier reading...

Music downloaders face hefty fines in piracy crackdown
Sunday April 10th 2005


NICK WEBB

HUNDREDS of music downloaders and file sharers could be prosecuted in a devastating crackdown on internet piracy unleashed by the majorrecord companies.

People who have illicitly downloaded songs including U2's Vertigo and Paddy Casey's Saints and Sinners could face fines of up to €5,800 if prosecuted. This could include the parents of children who have spent hours on the internet pirating songs for iPods or creating their own CDs, echoing the case when a 12-year-old New York school girl, Brianna LaHara, was sued by US record companies in late 2003. The Irish Record Music Association (IRMA), which represents the record companies, has prepared affidavits against close to 20 individuals, who are alleged to have distributed or "uploaded" shared files or illegally pirated music on the internet. Up to 250,000 people are thought to have illegally downloaded music here last year, according to IRMA data.

It is understood that the first 20 or so cases will be taken against these uploaders, but that a concerted campaign over the next three years will target more casual file sharers, with sources suggesting that "hundreds and hundreds" could be pursued.

IRMA is set to go to the High Court to force Irish internet service providers to divulge the identity of the initial 20 targeted internet accounts used for uploading the pirated music. In December, IRMA hired a US spy firmto monitor internet traffic from Ireland downloading thousands of specially selected tracks, ranging from well-known Irish acts suchas U2 and the Corrs to hip hop stars such as Eminem and 50 Cent

12th April 2005 - Irish Recording Industry Takes Legal Action Against Major Music Filesharers

The Irish Recorded Music Association, IRMA, today announced the start of legal action against "serial filesharers" in Ireland who illegally make copyrighted music available on the Internet. IRMA is seeking damages and injunctions against 17 individuals who have illegally uploaded hundreds or thousands of music tracks onto peer-to-peer filesharing networks.

As a first step, IRMA is asking Internet Service Providers to release the names of the individuals they have found to be abusing copyright on the Internet. The major filesharers subject to legal action include users of the filesharing network FastTrack - on which KaZaA runs - and the Gnutella network.

IRMA Director General, Dick Doyle, said: "This action is being taken against serial file sharers. The top six offenders have uploaded in excess of 2,000 illegal files which is equivalent to 200 albums. This is wholesale mass distribution and is effectively stealing the livelihood of the creators of music. When you consider that each of these individuals could be connected to up to 2 million others at any one time, you begin to appreciate the scale of the damage. We have been issuing warnings for 15 months now. It is time to take action - we are not accepting this situation anymore."

Massive illegal file-sharing is undermining the livelihoods of everyone in the creative chain involved in making music, from composers and music publishers to performers, musicians and record companies. Abuse of copyright on the Internet has contributed to a €28 million drop in music sales in Ireland between 2001 and 2004, a decline of 19%.

The current legal action comes after 15 months of educational initiatives to raise awareness of the cultural and economic damage done by illegal file-sharing. These initiatives have included educational brochures sent to colleges and businesses, an extensive radio campaign on national and local radio, countless media interviews and an informative website www.pro-music.org. Instant messages have also been sent to the computers of illegal filesharers worldwide warning them of the consequences if they continue breaking the law.

On behalf of the composers and publishers of music, Victor Finn, Managing Director of MCPS (Ireland) said: "We fully endorse the actions taken by IRMA today. All parties have been fully aware of their responsibilities for some time in this area. Unfortunately, not all have heeded the warnings given and they have made this action inevitable."

IRMA's announcement comes after a breakthrough year for legitimate online music services that are offering legal downloads to consumers. The current legal action is aimed at giving crucial breathing space to legal services and allowing them room to develop. There are five major legitimate services in Ireland: iTunes, Eircom Music Club, mycoke.com, vitaminic.com music club and wippit.co.uk.

The launch of legal actions in Ireland forms part of an announcement from the international recording industry that it is stepping up litigation against illegal filesharers internationally. IFPI, the organisation representing the recording industry worldwide, has today announced a total of 963 new actions launched in 11 countries in Europe and Asia. This brings the total number of cases against illegal filesharers to 11,552 worldwide. In Europe, 248 individuals, mostly men aged 25-35, have already paid average fines of €3,000.

The latest research suggests that the international legal campaign is already having an impact. Overall, the number of infringing music files on the internet dropped from its peak of 1.1 billion in April 2003 to 870 million in January 2005, a drop of 21% despite a sharp rise in broadband penetration worldwide. KaZaa, which used to be the largest and most popular filesharing services, has seen its number of users drop by around 45% since the start of the warning and litigation campaign.

Éanna Casey, Chief Executive of Recorded Artists and Performers (R.A.A.P), said: "R.A.A.P fully endorses the actions outlined this morning by IRMA. Online music piracy is selfish, illegal and has a direct impact on the economic welfare of Recording Artists and Performers. No industry can be expected to allow illegal activities to continue unchallenged, the unauthorised uploading of copyrighted music is now being confronted and R.A.A.P. is committed to protecting its members' moral and economic rights."

Source: IRMA

The Irish Recorded Music Association has announced plans to take legal action against 17 Irish people who illegally make copyrighted music available over the internet.

IRMA said the Irish music industry was losing €3.8m annually because of illegal downloading and had seen its revenue fall from €146m annually to €118m over the past three years.

It also said legal action against music fans worldwide had led to a 21% decline in downloading.

IRMA said the 17 "file-sharers" it was targeting had made hundreds if not thousands of tracks available over the internet and were “effectively stealing the livelihood of the creators of music”.

 

[Melachi]

Ok, so what was I doing?

Well I am in possesion at this very moment of 1774 mp3's (some are reaccuring, due to difirent quality ect..)

Anyway, I was a bit stupid, and had all my music shared. I was using WinMX.

Ok, so if you didnt bother reading those news clippets (which i cant blame you) heres my view on things.

The IRMA (Irish Recorded Music Association) are taking legal action against 17 what it calls "serial copyrighted material distributers".

Im not trying to make myself look innocent, but they are totally blowing this crap out of proportion!

Example
This action is being taken against serial file sharers. The top six offenders have uploaded in excess of 2,000 illegal files which is equivalent to 200 albums. This is wholesale mass distribution and is effectively stealing the livelihood of the creators of music. When you consider that each of these individuals could be connected to up to 2 million others at any one time,

Ok, first off. The IRMA only has legal grounds to sue over its own copyright material, therefore they have no grounds to sue over 95%+ of the stuff I shared.

Second, the rediculous idea that 2000 illegal files were available to 2million others at any one time, while technically correct is still alot of bull.

Im on a 16kb upload connection, before that I was on 8kb upload connection. The idea I imagine they will try to paint is that I was constantly distributing 2000 songs to 2million people 24/7 aint true. Think about it, if lets say the average song was about 3mb (which in my opinion is a bit modest) thats 6000mb distributed to 2million users. On a 16k connection that would take roughly...

6,000 * 2,000,000 = 12,000,000,000mb of traffic

12,000,000,000 / 0.016 = 750000000000seconds
= 12500000000 minutes
= 208333333 hours
= 8680555 days
= 23782 years
(i hope my math was correct)

hahahaha!

Anyway, since I was lets say on average online sharing my files for 10 minutes every day(very generous) and only downwards of 5% of the shared content was under IRMA durastiction, and not all of that online sharing time was I actually uploading at max speed, let alone uploading at all.

Frankly I think they have very little to hit me for.

Especially now that I have burned all the mp3s onto cd's, and formated my HD, and patterned it 7 with random 1's and 0's. NASA could probably still prove I have it, but the IRMA? Hah, my local internet cafe actually made their public website a few years ago, doubt they have the tech to get it

I think ill be laughing this one out of court.

Im not totaly innocent and im not dening that what I was doing was wrong, but this is childs play to really what goes on. Serial file sharer my friggin arse, I only got broadband in December, and its ADSL which means 128k upload, before that I had ISDN.

Bleh bleh, still anxious though, thoughts?

 

[Tasslehoff]

Hope you won't get any bills, sounds like you hid it a lot better than I would have been able to

Oh, and this might be their biggest clue if they ever find it

Do you play Wow by the way? =p

 

[Mey]

have you actually heard anything? I.e Summons etc..?

 

[Natswoo]

There was some DJ who had copied all his songs onto his Ipod, and used that at a few clubs instead of the origionals... Even though he had all the origional CD's using an Ipod means you have no liscence to play the songs publically.. think he was fined +£1mill....

 

[Job]

Ever since that lad gotoff with hacking and bringing down a whole port in America (port as in ships and harbours), remember he was cleared in a Welsh court because he claimed someone must have put a trojan on his PC and then auto deleted it, I can't believe ANYONE gets prosecuted anymore.
That ruling effectively cleared the excuse that someone 'unknown' 3rd party did it all and you have only had pictures of your dog on the file share.

Ask them to prove that someone did'n't..they can't, no-one can.

They can't stop hackers so how can they expect you too.

 

[Marc]

what about newsgroups? Surely these are just as illegal no?

 

[Fana]

"The top six offenders have uploaded in excess of 2,000 illegal files which is equivalent to 200 albums. This is wholesale mass distribution and is effectively stealing the livelihood of the creators of music"

Think of the poor billionair artists! Poor poor eminem and madonna etc.... Now they cant get their 230th luxury car, or that third private jet they were looking at :/ Oh the horror.

 

[Gamah]

Think of the underground artists and labels that are going under because of illegal music sharing..people are loosing jobs etc..I have no sympathy for you, if you want to steal then you can deal with the punishment.

Fana its not like music sharing is affecting the rich and famous only...its affecting the base level musicians trying to make a living by music and being ripped off by people who share it on the net.

 

[bult]

But it IS only for the big artists that record sales make much of a difference. Other bands/artists hardly get any cash at all from record sales, it goes to the record company and works mainly as advertisement for the artists themselvs. The main income for less well known artists come from gigs and i dont see what is wrong with making a living doing that instead of earning huuuuuge amounts of cash from record sales they can tour and earn well enough anyway.

Its not like its a bad job beeing a musician getting paid minimum wage, id much rather do that then work in some office for twice the cash anyway.

 

[Escape]

It's just a group of lawyers exploiting the situation to get rich. How much of the collected fines are going to the artists? I doubt they get anything of significance, most of it ends up in the lawyer's pocket.

If they were genuine, they'd go for filesharers based on the amount uploaded. But it's easier to say xxxxx is sharing 2000 files, omg! how many children are going hungry because of him!

AFAIK in previous cases like this, the accused group end up paying the bill :\


I don't see how this law works. If you leave your front door open and someone walks in, grabs your CD collection and runs out... Are you the criminal or the theif?

In principal, filesharing is the same. You leave part of your PC open and if someone takes a file, they're breaking the law.

 

[Tasslehoff]

It's just a group of lawyers exploiting the situation to get rich. How much of the collected fines are going to the artists? I doubt they get anything of significance, most of it ends up in the lawyer's pocket.

If they were genuine, they'd go for filesharers based on the amount uploaded. But it's easier to say xxxxx is sharing 2000 files, omg! how many children are going hungry because of him!

AFAIK in previous cases like this, the accused group end up paying the bill :\


I don't see how this law works. If you leave your front door open and someone walks in, grabs your CD collection and runs out... Are you the criminal or the theif?

In principal, filesharing is the same. You leave part of your PC open and if someone takes a file, they're breaking the law.

It's more like you let your CDs out on a street with a big sticker saying "Copy if you like".

And of course the previous cases are not mentioned, as that wouldn't cut down the downloading, most likely the opposit

 

[Ctuchik]

Think of the underground artists and labels that are going under because of illegal music sharing..people are loosing jobs etc..I have no sympathy for you, if you want to steal then you can deal with the punishment.

Fana its not like music sharing is affecting the rich and famous only...its affecting the base level musicians trying to make a living by music and being ripped off by people who share it on the net.

thats bullshit. just look at Wilco.

http://www.wilcoworld.net/

they have many if not ALL their songs available for free download on their homepage. and i cant see them suffer because of it. sure, they might have made slightly more if they didnt. but they sure as hell make enough as it is now.

the so called "artists" that say they cant make a living because of file sharers are lying their arse off because they are too greedy and/or lazy to try any other way.

yes i know Wilco started out with a contract. but they were doing horribly bad and broke it and started again on their own. and are now doing better then ever.

 

[Tiques]

It's just a group of lawyers exploiting the situation to get rich. How much of the collected fines are going to the artists? I doubt they get anything of significance, most of it ends up in the lawyer's pocket.

Can't leave out mentioning that an investigation done by an independent group in Denmark showed that the local group against filesharing (APG (Anti-Pirate-Group)) was accually running on red numbers, the many money they got from sueing people ended up not covering their huge wages and hurted the little musicans more than anything else...

Why o why still have them then?

 

[Roadie]

Saying it hurts small bands etc is semi true but its also a pretty good medium for getting their material out considering when most bands start they make cash from playing gigs not selling records.

id imagine it would be pretty hard 2 find material from small bands with most file shring programs unless they have good distribution deals :z

 

[Morchaoron]

Think of the underground artists and labels that are going under because of illegal music sharing..people are loosing jobs etc..I have no sympathy for you, if you want to steal then you can deal with the punishment.

Fana its not like music sharing is affecting the rich and famous only...its affecting the base level musicians trying to make a living by music and being ripped off by people who share it on the net.

seen a list of most shared songs once and could only see big names on it from rich *****...

also notice that the industry actually believes that if people wouldnt be able to download their crap they would have bought all those CD's... yeah right

they bitch about people stealing their crap, but infact they are stealing with their overpriced crap, and you can bet your ass on it that if there wasnt any filesharing it would be even higher since people will have no other place to get it anyway...

It may be illegal, but what some companies or governements are doing should be illegal too but there isnt a damn thing we can do about it, the only thing they can get from me is the long finger...

 

[Melachi]

have you actually heard anything? I.e Summons etc..?

Nothing off the IRMA, but a good friend of mine who works for my ISP has told me, the IRMA has requested logs and stuff from several accounts, one of which is mine.

Ever since that lad gotoff with hacking and bringing down a whole port in America (port as in ships and harbours), remember he was cleared in a Welsh court because he claimed someone must have put a trojan on his PC and then auto deleted it, I can't believe ANYONE gets prosecuted anymore.
That ruling effectively cleared the excuse that someone 'unknown' 3rd party did it all and you have only had pictures of your dog on the file share.

Ask them to prove that someone did'n't..they can't, no-one can.

They can't stop hackers so how can they expect you too.

Yeah, this would probably also work.

But what I was thinking, is that without the music on my drive now, if they sieze that they cant prove I have it. Then with ISP logs they can show that the music came downstream to me from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, they cant necesearlly prove that I requested it. And if they can show that my pc requested it, they cant prove it wasnt some spyware/trojan on my pc.

*I might download some viruses and start believing that "I am the millioneth customer to this website!"*

 

[Escape]

It's more like you let your CDs out on a street with a big sticker saying "Copy if you like".

Not really, in this case you're 'inviting' people to take your CDs.

There's no specific invitation in filesharing.
Someone searches, finds the file and downloads it. He takes the file and the responsibility!

If these people want to stop real piracy, they should focus on car boot sales and the illegal software/DVD sales. There's a big market for fake DVDs now, generating £Millions for east-european criminals and terrorists... at least according to our local radio broadcasts

 

[Thorwyn]

As somebody who´s living from developing and selling computer games, I have to say that I have no sympathy for piracy copies, regardless if it´s music or software. People who´re copying our products are a direct threat to our respectively my job. However, it´s obvious that the industry (and I`m mainly talking about the music industry here) has made some big mistakes in the past, simply by failing to recognize the internet as the No. 1 medium of the future. Their ways of distributing their media are ancient and their attempts to fight piracy copies are of "charging windmills" level.

The problem I see is, that more and more people are considering music and software something that´s coming for free and out of the blue. There´s absolutely no conciousness about value and the fact that software and music is - in fact - a product. I can live with people who´re saying "I know that I´m stealing stuff and I don´t care". Those people aren´t the problem. The real problem are those people, who´re not even realising that they´re doing something wrong when they´re opening Kazaa and start downloading random mp3´s.

 

[Job]

'The IRMA has requested logs from my ISP'

This is just fuckin unbelievable, how on Earth did these guys get permission to access this info????

Are they the frekin police or the home office??

The privacy laws are slowly being trounced into the ground and the whole thing rides on the back of 'crime prevention'

Yeah sure ,but keep going down this short road and it's......


BIG BROTHER!!!!!!!

Of course you'll get the 'if you don't do anything wrong then you have nothing to worr... STFU YOU CLUELESS CRETINS!!!!

 

[liloe]

So basically what a lot of people here say is: Rolls-Royce is too expensive, so cause I can't buy it, let's steal it.

Now don't try to argue on this, cause this is exactly the same thing. The musicians work to get the tracks done, like you go to work every day. What if your boss told you that he can't pay you, cause people steal the products you make? Would you be happy? It is common today to see Software as public being, but it is NOT. Software has an owner, like you car, your house, your clothes and like a thief, a software pirate steals and thus is prosecuted by the law, simple as that. You can't steal stuff and think you get away with it like that.

I agree that CD's have become more and more expensive, but this is the same for other goods, too. Still there is no reason to steal if you can't afford something.

Well I do not hope that you get a hard penalty, becaus I guess you're still young and it would hurt your parents aswell, but I do hope you learned your lesson out of this.

EDIT: I just realised I wrote a lot of same stuff as Thorwyn =)

 

[Ormorof]

So basically what a lot of people here say is: Rolls-Royce is too expensive, so cause I can't buy it, let's steal it.

Now don't try to argue on this, cause this is exactly the same thing. The musicians work to get the tracks done, like you go to work every day. What if your boss told you that he can't pay you, cause people steal the products you make? Would you be happy? It is common today to see Software as public being, but it is NOT. Software has an owner, like you car, your house, your clothes and like a thief, a software pirate steals and thus is prosecuted by the law, simple as that. You can't steal stuff and think you get away with it like that.

I agree that CD's have become more and more expensive, but this is the same for other goods, too. Still there is no reason to steal if you can't afford something.

Well I do not hope that you get a hard penalty, becaus I guess you're still young and it would hurt your parents aswell, but I do hope you learned your lesson out of this.

its not the same thing... what you are doing isnt taking something away from someone, its copying it without permission, that means that the company/person whatever can still sell the product if they wish but you can use it too, so i dont see it as nearly the same thing as stealing a car

and i for one will download something then go buy it if i like it (for example i hear a song on the radio, i download it, like it, go buy the album etc)

and i know im not the only one in this boat

 

[liloe]

Ok, so let's change it: You steal the research from a company and produce it for 0% of their price. They can still sell the product, yes, but some will take it for free aswell....is that any better? No!

 

[Escape]

What you're saying is true.

But Games/Music Publishers have been charging high prices for a long time. Their excuse "now" is they need to make up for the loss caused by piracy. Hence, if there were no pirates, prices would be lowered...

That's bullshit in two ways.
#1 Genuine consumers shouldn't have to cover the cost of piracy
#2 Prices were high even before filesharing was common!

And you don't hear Rolls Royce saying their cars are expensive because of the joyriders out there. Ultimately publisher became greedy > consumers found an alternative > publishers suffer.

In the case of a car, you buy what you can afford. But there's no such flexibility in the music/software market.

 

[Thorwyn]

But Games/Music Publishers have been charging high prices for a long time.

If I would tell you how much money we´re getting per sold copy, you´d sit back and cry.
The prices for computergames are remarkably constant during the last couple of years, despite the increasing complexity of the games, the increasing demands for enviromental stuff like trademarkets/licences, cutscreen videos and marketing/merchandising. It´s impossible to produce and sell any cheaper.

A couple of years ago, there was a company that made the decision to sell their games for about half of the "normal" price. They went tits up after just 2 releases iirc.

 

[Hamro]

the most who suffer are rich anyway, people woulnt but more cds if there wasnt peer to peer programs, we only dl them because theyre easy to have access to. idiots. and as far as i know no one else then the authority is allowed to access your ISP or computer. heard a discussion bout this on the radio. its illegal.

 

[Thorwyn]

In the case of a car, you buy what you can afford. But there's no such flexibility in the music/software market.

Actually there is!
There´s freeware, there´s shareware, there are budget titles, there are browsergames, there is abandonware, there are mods etc.etc.
The customer can perfectly decide how much money he can afford to spend on software. And he has plenty of options to chose from.

 

[Morchaoron]

Ok, so let's change it: You steal the research from a company and produce it for 0% of their price. They can still sell the product, yes, but some will take it for free aswell....is that any better? No!

nope, but its funny how the music industries pretend that everyone who download their crap would have actually bought it in the stores if it wasnt availible for download...

 

[Fana]

But what I was thinking, is that without the music on my drive now, if they sieze that they cant prove I have it. Then with ISP logs they can show that the music came downstream to me from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, they cant necesearlly prove that I requested it. And if they can show that my pc requested it, they cant prove it wasnt some spyware/trojan on my pc.

*I might download some viruses and start believing that "I am the millioneth customer to this website!"*

Actually, i really did have a trojan installed filesharer on my comp 2 years ago. I ran without a firewall in my silliness and one day discovered that i had about 20 gigs of porn, movies, games and music on one of my HD's disguised in a folder in the recycle map. I managed to remove it and secure my comp and always run a tight ship from then (hardware firewall etc), in fact im pretty paranoid these days about comp security. So its perfectly plausible that a person could get charged with illegal filesharing and not have a clue he was doing it.

 

[Morchaoron]

discovered that i had about 20 gigs of porn, movies, games and music.

would burn all on DVD's, empty the folder and rename it to "THX 4 PR0N NOOB"