Letter
to the editor
Fear not, music downloaders
Recently,
the RIAA (Recording Industry Association
of America) announced that it would monitor
file-sharing networks, such as Kazaa and
Morpheus, where many MP3s of copyrighted
songs are traded. They further stated that
if they find users sharing copyrighted songs,
they would instant message them and threaten
to take legal action. This is all in an
attempt to instill paranoia in music traders
and get them to stop sharing music.
As a computer engineering student, let me
assure you, there is next to no way they
will find you.
To track you down, the RIAA is collecting
the IP (Internet Protocol) numbers of file
sharing users. Your IP address is a unique
number used to establish your location on
the network. The RIAA then subpoenas the
ISP (Internet Service Provider) that owns
the IP address for records that can give
them a physical location. Once they have
this location they can serve court papers,
make threatening calls, yada yada yada.
Now, this may all sound bad, but don’t worry.
For modem connections, which are used by
the majority of Internet users, this number
changes every time you log on. Likewise,
for DSL or Cable Modem users, but the number
changes less frequently as you are always
connected.
While the RIAA may be able to find who your
ISP is, I doubt it will do them much good.
A subpoena for company records may take
months and by that time the info they need
will have been destroyed. ISPs don’t keep
long records of who connected to what IP
address over several months; it’s just not
cost effective. Imagine AOL keeping these
records for their twenty million users.
Even if, by some miracle they find out who
you are, what are they going to do? Spend
thousands of dollars on litigation to recover
the $100 worth of music you downloaded?
Even they are not that stupid.
These threats are a last, pathetic attempt
to save an industry that should have died
long ago. Free networks are the future,
away from the homogenous radio stations
and the far too expensive CDs, which have
only 10 percent of the cost going to the
artist. So download on music lovers, and
ignore the empty threats.
—
Jesse Langham,
computer engineering
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