NYTimes.com
New Parent-to-Child Chat: Do You Download Music?
September 10, 2003
By AMY HARMON
Tamara Amey has tried to instill solid values in her
daughter on everything from schoolwork to sex, but what
Kyla Amey, 16, did on her computer was up to her. Or at
least until Ms. Amey heard that the record industry was
planning to sue Internet file swappers.
Last month, Ms. Amey ordered Kyla to delete the software
she used to download popular songs without paying for them.
But in their debate about online sharing and stealing, Ms.
Amey sometimes feels more confused than confident.
“The Internet is so gray when you come to these kind of
areas,” Ms. Amey of Shelby Township, Mich., said after the
lawsuits were filed. “When I was a kid, we used to tape
music off the radio. You never heard of record companies
suing people for that.”
As the record industry filed a barrage of lawsuits on
Monday against people who copy music over the Internet,
many parents across the country were caught unaware,
accused of condoning an illegal activity they do not know
much about – and do not necessarily want to.
With the threat of hundreds more lawsuits, parents across
the country say they are having to wrestle with unfamiliar
digital-age ethics. Even for the rare parents whose
computer skills match those of their children, the prospect
can be daunting.
“This practice is illegal, but it’s something that we all
sort of turn our heads from,” wrote one parent on a
discussion board devoted to teenagers on the iVillage Web
site. “As a parent, what exactly do you say to your kid?”
Yet it is just such discussions, not legal action against
ordinary Internet users, that many Internet and family
experts argue will be crucial to stamping out online
piracy.
“The solution is in parents talking to their kids, not
lawsuits,” said Parry Aftab, executive director of
Wiredsafety.org, a nonprofit group that seeks, among other
things, to educate the public about problems that can arise
for children who go online.
Ms. Aftab said her group had been flooded in recent weeks
with questions from parents and teenagers about the
legality and ethics of music file swapping. A particularly
hard challenge for parents, she said, is how to explain to
children that copying music online can be illegal when so
many people – including plenty of parents – are doing it.
“A lot of parents are totally clueless about this,” Ms.
Aftab said. “They don’t understand the laws and they don’t
understand the technology.”
The Recording Industry Association of America, which filed
261 copyright infringement lawsuits Monday on behalf of the
major record labels, hopes its sweeping legal action will
provoke many such discussions. The industry holds file
sharing largely responsible for a 25 percent decline in
sales of CD’s since 1999, when Napster, the first popular
file-swapping software, was released.
Today’s file-swapping services like KaZaA and Grokster have
survived legal attack because they, unlike Napster, do not
provide a central directory of computers on the network and
what files they have. Like Napster, however, they resemble
a pirate cooperative allowing individual users to make
music files available on their own personal computers for
others to copy.
Without those ready targets, the record industry is aiming
its lawsuits directly at individuals, starting at those who
“share” at least 1,000 files.
By discouraging people from allowing files to be copied,
the record industry hopes to destabilize the whole ecology
of file-sharing networks. Typing in a search term like
“White Stripes,” the name of an indie rock band, typically
yields a list of hundreds of files on other computers that
users can click to copy almost instantly. Once copied, that
file typically adds to the total available copies.
The industry’s tactic may be working. Sylvia Torres, the
mother of Brianna LaHara, a 12-year-old from the Upper West
Side of Manhattan who was named in one of the lawsuits,
said yesterday that she had settled for $2,000. “We
understand now that file sharing the music was illegal,”
Ms. Torres said in a statement. “You can be sure Brianna
won’t be doing it anymore.”
But critics argued that the record industry was eager to
settle with Ms. Torres because the spectacle of suing a
12-year-old honors student who received front-page
treatment only added to the impression that the industry’s
legal actions were heavy-handed.
Ms. Torres, who did not respond to messages yesterday, told
The Associated Press that she believed that her family was
entitled to download music because it had paid $29.99 for
software that provides access to online file-sharing
services.
But in an online discussion, several parents voiced
impatience with those who claimed ignorance.
“Parents are always responsible for their kid’s actions,”
wrote one participant, identified as “peppergarden84.”
“Wake up America!! Teach your kids what’s right and good
and love them, then they will be responsible citizens.”
Explaining the boundaries of copyright law may prove more
difficult for some parents than explaining where babies
come from. One woman who received a subpoena from the
record industry association said she had struggled to
explain to her 13-year-old son, who likes to write songs,
why file sharing was wrong.
“I said, `Suppose you wrote a song and a famous rock group
sang it and you didn’t get paid,’ ” said the mother. “He
said `I wouldn’t care, that would be awesome.’ They’re just
still in that young age where money doesn’t matter.”
The mother said she had better results when she compared
taking someone’s song to plagiarizing a school paper,
something else she wants to teach him not to do as he
enters high school this month.
Linda Hodge, president of the National PTA, said that
parents were still learning to add Internet behavior to the
list of issues that families need to talk about. “It goes
along the lines of talking with them about drugs, talking
with them about sex, and talking about how to keep yourself
safe,” she said.
Still, Stephany Hitchcock, 46, a jewelry designer in
Manhattan, who was taking her 11-year-old son, Nick, home
from school on the Upper West Side yesterday echoed the
frustration of many parents confronting an Internet that
never sleeps.
“You can’t stand over these kids 24 hours a day,” Ms.
Hitchcock said. “Even if parents and kids are educated,
it’s like a candy store,” that their children will take
from if they can.
Sometimes it is parents who lead their children astray.
When Lon Rogers, 50, of Lakewood, Colo., found out Monday
that he was being sued by the record labels, a local
newspaper reporter suggested that perhaps his son, Erick,
had been responsible for the file-sharing activity. But Mr.
Rogers said he originally told his son Erick about KaZaA -
and warned him to stop using it shortly before he received
a subpoena in the mail in July.
“He has nothing to do with any of this, this is all me,”
said Mr. Rogers, a restaurant owner. “I have my tail
between my legs. I am his father. I should be his mentor,
not the one who is getting in trouble.”
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