Apparently the United States Congress are concerned that the RIAA is targetting the wrong people in their blanket subpoena policy. The RIAA have sent a letter to U.S. Senator Norm Coleman stating that they would only target major swappers.
The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) pledged in a letter to U.S. Senator Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota, that it is "in no way targeting de minimus users" in its campaign to stop the copying of songs without permission.
"RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted music," the trade group's president, Cary Sherman, wrote.
For those of you not up on your silver dollar phrases, "de minimus" means "to contribute little value". So exactly what qualifies as a maximus user then?
I know people who have downloaded over a million files. Granted a large majority of those files get discarded when they discover they are crap. But I also know people who have easily 25,000 files on their hard drive. Is that a lot? Or does the RIAA consider 100 files a lot? 100 files is approximately 8 music CDs, so that doesn't seem like a lot to me, but 100 files does sound like a lot. However, that's approximately 500 MB, which is less than 1 mp3 CD. Now it doesn't sound like a lot anymore. And what if that person with 100 files has 1,000 CDs? That's just a drop in the bucket compared to the CDs they have then.
Maybe 1,000 files is a lot. That's 5 GB. Of course the newest portable mp3 players are able to play more than 10 GB of music. This player from Archos costs only $150 ($99 after rebates), and it boasts that it holds 10 GB or 250 albums. So that measly 1,000 files won't even fill mp3 players. Now what if this person has only 100 CDs. Suddenly he seems to be a major violator again.
At the moment there are 2,747,326 users online at KaZaa sharing 598,221,572 files for a total of 4,707,968 GB. That comes out to an average of 217 files per person. Does that mean anyone above the average is a major swapper?
Come on RIAA, cough up some numbers. What's major?
The RIAA has also addressed another issue that people were concerned about.
RIAA said its software scans public directories available to users of peer-to-peer networks who are offering to distribute copyrighted music files.
The software downloads a sample of the music files and locates the user's Internet address and service provider. An RIAA employee then "manually" reviews the information and verifies before seeking a subpoena.
So according to that, they do check if it's a real file. But they only download a "sample". That means they still don't check the full thing. It could be a loop for all they know.
The RIAA say they have filed over 1,000 subpoenoas and should begin filing their lawsuits in September.
Another group is asking exactly how people are targeted.
That group, called NetCoalition, said the RIAA should disclose exactly how its search software works and how the association's employees reach their decisions about who should be targeted in subpoenas.
"The RIAA admits that they're sort of the judge, jury and executioner here," said Markham Erickson, NetCoalition's director of federal policy.
"If we're going to trust them, we're going to need to know more information."
I agree, everyone should know exactly how all of this is being determined. The time for vague statements that they won't target "de minimus users" is over.
Heh, I ran into a guy on the DC++ network who was sharing over 230 gigs worth of movies and music. Yes, 230 GIGABYTES, not megabytes. He must have one heck of an array.
