Is the RIAA still targeting individuals currently?

**n98** · October 23rd, 2005, 12:18 AM

A friend of mine recently downloaded a whole bunch of songs (but deleted them out of guilt) and is afraid to get caught. I haven't heard anything recently so is the RIAA still targeting individuals for illegally downloading music?
Thanks for the help. My friend is VERY worried.

**axlman** · October 23rd, 2005, 02:42 AM

I don't see why they wouldn't be! Money is Money to them cheap ass bastards!

And it's not really the "Downloading" that they go after you for, it's the "Uploading" that they get you for!

**Krell** · October 23rd, 2005, 02:51 AM

UPLOAD, or stay the hell off P2P!

period

.

**fleecy** · October 23rd, 2005, 02:52 AM

nonsharers can rot in hell.

**Signa** · October 23rd, 2005, 03:02 AM

the trick is to share only a little at a time, so that you are still making the p2p system to work, but keeping yourself resistant to lawsuits

**Govern_cannonball** · October 23rd, 2005, 03:33 AM

The risk is still low. Even if they do notice you uploading copyrighted material
they usually just send a letter to your ISP telling them to make you stop.
Getting a letter is not the end of the world.

If your friend has not received a letter or been kicked off his/her ISP
a month after stopping using filesharing programs thenit is unlikly that
anything will happen.

**Kythe** · October 23rd, 2005, 04:06 AM

Originally Posted by n98

A friend of mine recently downloaded a whole bunch of songs (but deleted them out of guilt) and is afraid to get caught. I haven't heard anything recently so is the RIAA still targeting individuals for illegally downloading music?
Thanks for the help. My friend is VERY worried.

To help your friend put it in perspective: the chances of a person engaging in file sharing receiving a "pay up!" letter from the **AA's over the next year is on the order of the chances of dying from several common causes.

There are ways to increase your chances, of course -- running Kazaa sharing 1,000 or more infringing copies of recent, popular songs (as a supernode, no less) with the listing of all your shared songs enabled and available is probably not the smartest thing in the world to do. Even so, it's simply beyond the resources of the industry lawsuit groups to catch any but a very small minority of file sharers, especially with the number of people running p2p increasing significantly.

And that assumes they're actually catching infringers in the first place: It appears the RIAA is paying bounties for IP addresses, which provides incentives for bounty hunters like Media Sentry to basically pull IP addresses out of their butts as fast as they can.

Anyway, I've downloaded hundreds of songs over the years--and yes, even shared them, Krell and Fleecy--most of them on Kazaa (until very recently), but also on Limewire and Morpheus. No letter. Your friend can probably relax.

The **AA groups rely much more on fear than on actually nailing infringers.

**alwayswondering** · October 29th, 2005, 10:23 PM

I personally don’t care what the RIAA thinks about downloading music off the internet. I have been buying CD’s ever since they came out, and that is back when they cost an arm and leg just to purchase one disk. I have a few thousand CD’s and if those people think for one moment that sharing those albums are wrong, then they are just as greedy as everyone else in this world. I share because I feel it is the right thing to do, and I still continue to buy CD’s. I worked long and hard to rip everything that I have, and if someone is looking for something, I would want to be the first to give them a chance of finding that one song that they might be looking for.
Those people make millions of dollars every year, but us poor folks don’t mean nothing to them, we are just the piss on the sidewalks to them. If they cared at all, none of this crap would be going on. The same crap happened back when VHS first came out, they bitched and moaned, then and they are still bitching. Just like a bunch divorced women.

**pimpinaman** · December 11th, 2005, 08:05 PM

I would think your friend is somewhat low risk...RIAA wants folks that started spreading the files around. I can't remember which issue of Wired I saw it in, but by the time stuff hits p2p networks it has already been around the "elite" circles for a while. I would think your friend would have to be chewing up some SERIOUS bandwith from the isp to get targeted.

maybe you should direct your friend to give TOR a look...