August 1st, 2009
Hey, kids! The days of free music are over.
The RIAA claims that they will not be going after any more individuals who share music. As Ars Technica points out in its coverage of the ruling in the Joel Tenenbaum case,
Last December, the labels announced that they were no longer initiating new cases against individual peer-to-peer users. However, they said they would see through to the end those cases already in the litigation pipeline. According to the labels’ attorneys, there remain about 100 cases pending where the defendant has filed an answer, about a dozen of which are being actively litigated in the discovery stage.
Guess what? It doesn’t matter. The Tenenbaum and Jammie Thomas-Rasset cases make it abundantly clear that what had been a fairly anonymous, matter-of-fact practice among seemingly every kid on the planet (I’m sure plenty of XOs are running BitTorrent) is no longer going to fly. Everyone knew that it was illegal to share copyrighted material; it’s just that nobody cared.
Judges and juries are handing down ridiculous, bankrupting punitive awards in favor of recording companies. The days of downloading whatever you want simply because you can are over. Is it time for a new distribution model in an industry dominated by MP3 players? Of course it is. However, with judgments like these, all our students need to know is that they better come up with some way of buying their music.
Our students largely understand Internet safety. If creepy guys try to convince you to meet them in person after chatting you up on MySpace, don’t do it. Fine. But what nobody seems to understand is that just because a torrent for your favorite band’s latest album is available doesn’t mean you should download it and seed it.
Knock it off kids. And teachers/administrators/parents? It’s time for the next wave of Internet safety education. The free downloads need to stop. Right now. We can’t make this clear enough to the kids and we can’t make it real enough to them.
Even if RIAA doesn’t go after any more individuals, they will certainly go after the companies that make file sharing possible and the institutions that fail to stop it. What happens when they go after Verizon or Comcast? Who do you think will bear the cost of judgments against the ISPs? Who will Verizon and Comcast go after to save their own bacon?
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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