Irish music-swappers admit liability

HelterSkelter

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050804/95/fovid.html

By Matthew Clark

Eight people in Ireland have agreed to pay damages of up to EUR6,000 after settling out of court in the country's first batch of music uploading court cases.

The Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) said that eight of the 17 people it has accused of being among Ireland's worst offenders when it comes to music uploading have agreed to settle out of court with the organisation. According to an Irish Times report, the eight have told IRMA that they will no longer swap music over the internet, and have agreed to pay damages of between EUR2,000 and EUR6,000.

The paper says that some of the accused were parents of children who had uploaded and downloaded music over peer-to-peer file-sharing services such as Kazaa or Gnutella. There was also an instance of an employee of a firm which had been uploading tracks, exposing that company to potential legal liability. Dick Doyle, director of IRMA, said that many of the remaining nine alleged file-sharers who have not yet admitted liability have claimed that file-sharing was undertaken by someone else in their home.

Interestingly, Doyle said that IRMA now has additional information on the activities of alleged file-swappers, and he said that it may target more individuals in the coming months.

The 17 people involved in the current legal action were written to by IRMA in late July after the organisation and its backers -- which include the big music labels -- succeeded in forcing internet service providers to give up the names of file-sharers. This effort actually began in April as part of a global assault led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which filed 963 new cases against file-sharers in Britain, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Iceland, Finland, Ireland and Japan during that month.

Worldwide, the total number of cases against those accused of illegal file-sharing has hit 11,552 worldwide since the US-based Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began its crusade three years ago.

Last month, the IFPI made rare positive comments about the digital music business, claiming that the number of songs downloaded legally over the internet had tripled to 180 million in the first six months of 2005. Conversely, illegal file-sharing continues to grow, but at a slower pace, rising just 3 percent to 900 million tracks in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2004. The IFPI said the most cited reason for the growth of legitimate downloads is the threat of lawsuits.

"We are now seeing real evidence that people are increasingly put off by illegal file-sharing and turning to legal ways of enjoying music online," IFPI CEO John Kennedy said in a July statement. "Whether it's the fear of getting caught breaking the law, or the realisation that many networks could damage your home PC, attitudes are changing, and that is good news for the whole music industry."

dahamsta

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=lang_en&q=chickens&btnG=Search

egan007

In fairness the music industry lost 1billion euro - poor EMI we all feel for them
Lets not get into the 50Billion the industry actually made

Blaster99

Unfortunately the law says that theft is theft regardless of how wealthy the rightful owner is.

egan007

121kmph is breaking the law but that does not bother me either.

egan007

121kmph is breaking the law but that does not bother me either.

kaizersoze

egan007 wrote:

121kmph is breaking the law but that does not bother me either.

Good man yourself :rolleyes:

the corpo

its mental

last week sony USA, a beacon of integrity in the illegal download war, is nabbed for payola, and in the same week the bbc run a story that illegal filesharers actually spend far more money on music than non illegal downloaders.

who are the real crooks in all this?

me, probably

Chalk

Blaster99 wrote:

Unfortunately the law says that theft is theft regardless of how wealthy the rightful owner is.

i could have sworn it was copyright infringement.
lucky theres no names printed or youd be in court for libel.

blorg

Blaster99 wrote:

Unfortunately the law says that theft is theft regardless of how wealthy the rightful owner is.

...theft is theft but copyright infringement is quite a different offence...

Goldstein

Chalk wrote:

i could have sworn it was copyright infringement.
lucky theres no names printed or youd be in court for libel.

Exactly, I'm sick of people using IRMAs "theft" and "stealing" media buzzwords.

mcgovern

the corpo wrote:

and in the same week the bbc run a story that illegal filesharers actually spend far more money on music than non illegal downloaders.

Thats been established for a long time now, more than a year, its just RIAA etc keep it quiet.

Gegerty

They must have some super duper broadband service nobody else in Ireland has heard of if they can upload and be considered *serious* uploaders LOL! People try to grab files off me but they give up after 5 mins of 1K speeds

Gegerty

You'd be an idiot to settle out of court anyway. Any evidence they have is basically a text file of logs, which anybody can just put together. I doubt very much it'll stand up with outdated Irish laws.

egan007

I wonder is this a tactic by IRMA
i.e. These people don't actually exist - hence the settlements

Chalk

Gegerty wrote:

You'd be an idiot to settle out of court anyway. Any evidence they have is basically a text file of logs, which anybody can just put together. I doubt very much it'll stand up with outdated Irish laws.

hehe,
which court do you preside over?

high court, circuit court?

grumpytrousers

Gegerty wrote:

You'd be an idiot to settle out of court anyway. Any evidence they have is basically a text file of logs, which anybody can just put together. I doubt very much it'll stand up with outdated Irish laws.

Fine to say that from your vantage point...however, it would be ballsy in the extreme to tell 'em to shove it and you'll take your chances in court. You might win. You just might lose and have to pay their costs as well.

While the law doesn't legislate per se for copyright infringement over the internet using peer to peer networks, assuming IRMA can prove you committed copyright infringement by
a) subpoenaing somebody from the ISP to say that such an IP address corresponds to a certain person
b) getting expert testimony that certain logs mean that you (or somebody at that IP address) did do x, y, or z

then the burden of proof will shift to the alleged file sharer to provide his own witnesses and rebut the accusations.

might be tricky enough...

Gegerty

Chalk wrote:

hehe,
which court do you preside over?

high court, circuit court?

em, Judge Judy's court

Blaster99

Chalk wrote:

i could have sworn it was copyright infringement.
lucky theres no names printed or youd be in court for libel.

Lucky me.

In my book copyright infringement equals theft, particularly this form of copyright infringement. But it's fairly irrelevant what I think as it's illegal either way. I don't know how the courts treat it but I seem to recall that in the States they multiplied the number of downloads with the value of the song and offered to settle for a lot less out of court. A couple of grand sounds pretty cheap to avoid going to court.

Gegerty

The fact that most of them were parents says it all. It's fear tactics, people fear what they don't understand. They're homing in on people's ignorance and trying to squeeze money out of them. It's another sign of thier greediness. F*CK THE SYSTEM, FIGHT THE REVOLUTION!!! Try paying the artists 2 million instead of 10 million, WHO'S THE FOOKING THIEF HERE?????

btw, Whoever uses gnutella is just asking for it anyway . Before the world wide web there was usenet.......nuff said.

mrblack

Gegerty wrote:

You'd be an idiot to settle out of court anyway. Any evidence they have is basically a text file of logs, which anybody can just put together. I doubt very much it'll stand up with outdated Irish laws.

I am curious about their evidence as well. Since its not a criminal offence IRMA only have to provide enough evidence that is reasonable to an ordinary person-But I wonder has anyone ever actually contested their logs/files etc in a court where a technically informed barrister could cross examine their experts and introduce enough doubt that no reasonable man could find the defendant guilty. I would assume that most of the logging evidence has been gathered in the USA

At the very least a defence of having been hacked or a virus or maybe someone accessing your wireless network might provide enough doubt to sway a judge/jury.

Maybe one of the 17 is a solicitor/barrister and we will find out some answers down the line.

PS I am not a solicitor/barrister so don't take this as any form of legal advice whatsoever and is purely a personal opinion of mine, which is not intended to damage IRMA or condone copyright infringement

Zapho

Blaster99 wrote:

Lucky me.

In my book copyright infringement equals theft, particularly this form of copyright infringement. But it's fairly irrelevant what I think as it's illegal either way. I don't know how the courts treat it but I seem to recall that in the States they multiplied the number of downloads with the value of the song and offered to settle for a lot less out of court. A couple of grand sounds pretty cheap to avoid going to court.

If copyright infringement was the same as theft, the gardaí would have shown up at their houses, put the 'criminals' in hand-cuffs and marched them off to prison, then they would need someone to bail them out. This of course doesn't happen because copyright infringement is not the same as theft. It is simply an excuse for IRMA to create and inforce their own laws because they have so much money.

Chalk

Blaster99 wrote:

Lucky me.

In my book copyright infringement equals theft, particularly this form of copyright infringement. But it's fairly irrelevant what I think as it's illegal either way. I don't know how the courts treat it but I seem to recall that in the States they multiplied the number of downloads with the value of the song and offered to settle for a lot less out of court. A couple of grand sounds pretty cheap to avoid going to court.

etc, etc,
this isnt the states, etc etc.

obviously your book isnt the big book of irish law,
so i guess it is irrelvant...

Gegerty

Does anybody know which ISP's are handing out personal details to IRMA??? Are UTV amongst those by any chance??? I know there's a lot of people on the boards stuck in contract with those shower of sh*tes and if they're handing out personal information then thats a nice excuse to get out of the contract

ButtermilkJack

Blaster99 wrote:

Unfortunately the law says that theft is theft regardless of how wealthy the rightful owner is.

Oh, and charging €25 for the latest 'pop idol' idiot is not theft? Don't get me started... :rolleyes:

paulm17781

ButtermilkJack wrote:

Oh, and charging €25 for the latest 'pop idol' idiot is not theft? Don't get me started... :rolleyes:

Well, technically it's not. A waste? Perhaps. Theft? No.

Blaster99

Chalk wrote:

etc, etc,
this isnt the states, etc etc.

obviously your book isnt the big book of irish law,
so i guess it is irrelvant...

Pretty much. But I suppose the good news for me is I don't have to sit here and come up with various excuses why breaking the law is justifiable, I can just sit back and enjoy the show.

My understanding, and I admittedly don't care too much about this stuff other than poking fun at guys like Chalk, is that they can get details from any ISP once they've caught somebody. The ISP's don't go after illegal activity, lawyers do.

Gegerty

paulm17781 wrote:

Well, technically it's not. A waste? Perhaps. Theft? No.

It's theft and you know it and don't go quoting the law here you know what he means. Are you going to say if you don't like the prices then don't buy it? Eh, well ok so I'll download it for free.

Chalk

Blaster99 wrote:

Pretty much. But I suppose the good news for me is I don't have to sit here and come up with various excuses why breaking the law is justifiable, I can just sit back and enjoy the show.

My understanding, and I admittedly don't care too much about this stuff other than poking fun at guys like Chalk, is that they can get details from any ISP once they've caught somebody. The ISP's don't go after illegal activity, lawyers do.

i dont get it,
how are you poking fun at me?

i havent come upo with any reasons justifying anything,
i merely commented that you could be considered a law breaker in terms of libel,
nothing else,

you then claimed ignorance of the legal situation.
which pretty much sums up the relevance of you posting on the subject,
does it not?

paulm17781

Gegerty wrote:

It's theft and you know it and don't go quoting the law here you know what he means. Are you going to say if you don't like the prices then don't buy it? Eh, well ok so I'll download it for free.

You may want to reread all of what he and I wrote.

He said

Oh, and charging €25 for the latest 'pop idol' idiot is not theft? Don't get me started...

and I said

Well, technically it's not. A waste? Perhaps. Theft? No.

How is cahrging €25 for something theft?

Where did I quote the law?

I would neither buy nor download pop idol related "merchandise".

ButtermilkJack

Gegerty wrote:

It's theft and you know it and don't go quoting the law here you know what he means.

Exactly, just making a point really.

Gegerty wrote:

Are you going to say if you don't like the prices then don't buy it? Eh, well ok so I'll download it for free.

Spot on!! That's the whole arguement here. I don't mean to sound jealous or anything here, but what gives an artist the "right" to earn €10m per album. Ok, he/she/they have a talent, but I have a talent for what I do but I don't ask my employer for €10m per year. If they are good, they will earn enough to live a modest lifestyle. If they are crap they will have to take an office job and the music lovers will be forever greatful. You've got to work hard for your money, not become a millionaire overnight because you're a one-hit-wonder.

That's what the Lotto is for