Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Tune Raiders

Walking around campus in his anti-Recording Industry Association of America T-shirt, University of Nevada, Las Vegas junior Landin Ryan has received pleny of support from fellow students.

"I've gotten a lot of comments, especially at UNLV. People are like, Yeah ma, keep the fight on,'" Ryan, 21, said. "I'm not usually very political. That shirt is about as political as I get."

The logo, which features "RIAA" encircled and slashed, has became popular in recent weeks, particularly since the government agency brought lawsuits against 261 file sharers on Sept. 8.

Those individuals are accused of distributing copyrighted music over the Internet, a practice that has become widespread as the online universe has grown over the past several years.

"I'm not so much a participant as an active voice against what they're doing to people," Ryan said. "I would actually download music just to make a stand against what they're doing.

"I think it's unreasonable for them to persecute people for downloading. It just seems like a lot of corporate greed to me. They make enough money as it is."

Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the RIAA, pointed out that the 261 individuals singled out in what the organization has termed its "first wave" of lawsuits were selected not for downloading, but for uploading mass quantities of music files for others to download.

"We're pursuing a strategy of enforcement against people who are sharing massive amounts of music files illegally, and the lawsuits that we announced were against people who were on average sharing 1,000 music files with millions of other people on the network," Lamy said.

"That's 100 CDs that they're giving away to anyone who wants them on the Internet, without a penny going to any of the people who created them. These are egregious offenders."

Lamy stopped short of saying that downloaders are exempt from lawsuits, however.

"In our view, there's no longer any excuse for stealing music from a peer-to-peer network when you can get it legitimately," Lamy said.

Those peer-to-peer networks, including Kazaa, Grokster, Gnutella, iMesh and Blubster, link together computers around the world to facilitate the downloading of MP3 music files, compressed movie files, computer software and other material.

"If you are on those networks and you are downloading a copyrighted song or movie and distributing it to others, you are most likely committing copyright infringement," Lamy said.

"It's certainly the case if you are sharing it with others. 'Sharing' is actually a misnomer. If you and I were to share something, we'd each have less of it. With these services, you are allowing people to make a perfect copy for themselves, and they can then make perfect copies for others."

Sour notes

Las Vegas singer/songwriter Franky Perez, who released his debut album, "Poor Man's Son," on Lava Records in May, attested to the impact music downloading has had on his industry.

"I've seen the toll that it's taken on the business," Perez said. "The entire music business right now is in disarray, and it's not getting any better. If we keep going at this rate, there is going to be no music business. It's going to be obsolete."

Lance Plautz, a student at the Community College of Southern Nevada, argued that for up-and-coming acts, having tracks available for free download can provide a boost in exposure.

"I'm a big listener of independent music, and for those people it's helping the band more than it's hurting them," Plautz, 20, said. "They're just trying to get their name out there."

But Perez said that such an approach can also backfire for aspiring musicians.

"If your music is out there so much, you're overexposed. And then, why buy it?" Perez said.

Paying the price

According to the RIAA's website, each violation of federal copyright law is punishable by up to three years in prison and fines as high as $250,000. But Lamy said the RIAA does not reasonably expect those types of penalties to be handed out in its recent lawsuits.

"We have a strong interest in settling those cases before they go to court, as do the users," Lamy said. "This is ultimately not going to be resolved in the courtrooms of America. It's going to be resolved at the kitchen tables in people's homes."

One defendant, 12-year-old Brianna LaHara of New York City, recently settled her suit for a reported $2,000.

Fears over such potential fines haven't stopped Plautz from occasionally using peer-to-peer networks.

"I think about it now, and it is a concern. I don't want to get sued, but I don't think I'm going to be targeted," Plautz said. "But a lot of people I've talked to have slowed down."

Ryan, meanwhile, said he has cut back on his music downloading not because of the legal risk, but out of concerns over the spread of computer viruses to his machine during the process. He also described the audio quality of many downloadable MP3s as sub-par compared with tracks on store-bought CDs.

Tracking the offenders

The RIAA identifies file sharers through their Internet Protocols (IPs), which are unique online addresses that match specific Internet users.

For anyone who has previously downloaded or shared music, avoiding such detection is easy, Lamy said.

"The best advice is simply to un-install the peer-to-peer software on your computer," Lamy said. "For example, to use Kazaa you have to download the software onto your computer, so the best advice is to delete that."

Barring that, Lamy recommended peer-to-peer network users disable the "share" function, which is left active in most of the services' default modes.

"A lot of people are unwittingly distributing along with their downloading," Lamy said. "A way to minimize the likelihood of becoming a target is to stop being a distributor."

The RIAA has also introduced a "clean slate" program on website www.musicunited.org, which Lamy termed "a form of amnesty" offered by the organization.

"If you fill out this form and promise to delete any illegally obtained music files and promise never to do this again, we will assure you that you will not be a target of a lawsuit in the future," Lamy said.

This program itself has drawn controversy, however, with one recent lawsuit against the RIAA alleging that the amnesty offer is, in fact, "designed to induce members of the general public ... to incriminate themselves."

The RIAA responded to that suit with the statement: "No good deed goes unpunished, apparently."

Youth movement

Though Lamy said music downloading spans all demographics, he said it is "a particularly acute problem with college students and teenagers."

Lori Temple, associate provost for information technology at UNLV, said the school receives three to four notifications each week from the RIAA (or an individual music label) that an on-campus computer user could be involved in illegal sharing activities.

"Once we're notified that there's a problem we immediately take care of it," Temple said. "We get an IP address and we use that IP address to track down the machine that is engaged in the activity.

"Most of the time, what we find is that the machine has been taken over without the user's awareness, that there's a security port that's opened and for whatever reason didn't get closed. So we just clean off the material and the user is very apologetic, and that usually takes care of the problem."

Occasionally the file sharing is being done with the user's knowledge, usually in one of UNLV's residence halls, Temple said.

In those cases, the students' network ports are turned off and they are required to sign an agreement to clean off the downloaded material before they are allowed back on the network.

In only one case over the past three years has a student been a repeat offender of the policy, Temple said. That individual then went through a student judicial process, the results of which are kept confidential.

"We let folks try to be honest citizens, but if they're not and they get caught, then we certainly follow up immediately and take care of the problem," Temple said.

Generation gap

Tony Fargo, an assistant professor of mass communications at UNLV, said the music downloading controversy demonstrates a basic generational difference in views about concepts of intellectual property and copyrighted material.

"I talked about this subject in my ethics class this summer, and the only person in the room who expressed a different opinion was a musician," Fargo said. "He turned around to the class and said, 'You people are advocating stealing from my pocketbook.'

"And one of the students said to him, 'Well you should be recording music for the love, not to make money from it.' And I nearly passed out. It sent a shiver down my spine. They don't think what they're doing is at all ethically problematic."

Fargo said that many of his students express frustration over the high prices of compact discs, explaining that downloading is their way of combating costs they believe are unreasonable.

"CDs are incredibly expensive, especially compared to what we used to spend for cassettes or even for albums, and I think you're seeing a backlash," Fargo said. "There's a generational feeling that they're gouging us now, and if we can find the music online, why can't we go get that? A lot of my students feel the record companies have brought this on themselves."

Plautz, who has signed an online petition at website www.eff.com against the RIAA's policies, justified downloading by pointing out that wealthy musicians and record company executives don't really need more money from CD sales.

"I don't care if this person can only buy three Ferraris now instead of five," Plautz said.

But Lamy argued that such views fail to take into account the full impact on the music community.

"Music sales are down 31 percent over the last three years, and ... we believe online piracy is certainly the primary reason," Lamy said. "Record companies have laid off thousands of employees, you can't drive more than a block without seeing a record store that's closed down and artist rosters are getting slashed.

"And the record labels have many faces. Some are what people think of. Many of them, though, are the people who operate the forklift at the CD plant, or the sound engineer in Nashville who gets the audio just right for a country singer or the truck driver for the distributor ... a whole host of people in the music scene that I don't think a lot of people appreciate."

Ryan said he sympathizes with those who have been affected by music downloading, but that "targeting college-age students who have the least amount of money" is ridiculous.

"I don't want to put anybody out of a job or anything, but I would be at the record store buying music all day if they would just lower the prices," Ryan said.

Lamy referred fans who prefer getting their music via downloads to several authorized online providers, including Apple's iTunes, Rhapsody and BuyMusic.com. Those services offer individual tracks for around 99 cents apiece, some with additional monthly access charges.

"We have to find a happy medium," Perez said. "File sharing is here, so we've got to deal with it. The key is putting out good artists and trying to entice the listener.

"My CD came out for like $10, 18 songs for $10. But it's funny because if it somehow turns around, they'll jack it back up to $20, which I agree is too much."

Regardless of whether CD prices come down, as record companies have promised, or whether the legitimate online downloading services take off, Fargo said he thinks the debate over music downloading will rage for sometime.

"I think you're going to see people get increasingly creative about how to do this and slip under the radar," Fargo said. "I don't see an easy solution to it at all. I think it will get messier before it gets any better."

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