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Illegal Downloading
Hidden Lawsuit Troubles on the Internet
The following is an excerpt from an e-mail message sent to a friend.
On October 31, 2007 our daughter Briana received a packet from a law firm indicating a lawsuit was being filed against her in federal court for copyright infringement. The law firm represented a number of large record companies including EMI Recorded Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and others. At first we were not sure if the claim was real or another scam going around. An attorney friend of ours reviewed the legal notice, contacted the law firm and verified that it was legitimate. They indicated that they would be willing to settle for $5,000 to be paid within 30 days.
We decided since the lawsuit was against Briana and even if she were to be sued, not much could be done since her only form of income was $100 a month from her part-time job and no assets to her name. What could they do?
We really did not want to deal with this situation and decided to not worry about it for now. Last week she was hand delivered a summons to appear in a Dallas, Texas Court. We determined it was not worth the headache any longer and contacted the settlement representative to discuss the options. Since this incident I have met one other parent that had a similar situation 4 years ago. Her child was 13 years old at the time therefore the parents were responsible for the charges. They ended up paying $3,000.
The lawsuit claim is for copyright infringement for illegally uploading and downloading sound recordings on peer-to-peer networks. Briana's Internet provider, University of Texas at Austin, identified her in a response to a subpoena issued in which Briana was sued anonymously by reference to her Internet Protocol ("IP") address. Briana, along with over 300 other University of Texas dormitory residents on campus, was identified as the individual responsible for the IP address from which at least 280 copyrighted sound recordings were distributed over the Limewire peer-to-peer network. They even indicated a date and time in which the "distribution" took place.
What we understand is that because Briana left her Limewire folder on "share", anyone seeking recordings that were found in her folder were made available to upload. This appears as though she was reselling for distribution. Evidently on that day 280 uploads were made from her folder. According to the lawsuit the minimum damage under the law is $750 for EACH copyrighted recording that has been infringed ("shared"). I guess she got off pretty easy considering.
Most of these suits are being made to college students living on campus and from what we heard the University of Texas has been targeted the most. They continue to file suites.
Please pass this information on to your children, friends, family etc. We surely hope you are not next. This is public record and Briana will more than likely always have to make it known if asked. Now employers look at everything when hiring.
Today we paid $5,000 to settle. This was a very expensive lesson learned and we hope to save others the money!
To protect their intellectual property, the recording, motion picture and software industries have hired companies to search the Internet for computers that are sharing material (i.e. songs, movies and software) protected by their copyrights. When these companies find such a computer, they ask the Internet Service Provider (e.g. West Virginia University) to stop the unauthorized activity by removing or disabling access to the infringing material. However, if the computer has a large amount of infringing material, they will sue for damages.
Colleges and universities are targeted because peer-to-peer programs are very popular among students. To avoid similar legal trouble, I encourage you to use legitimate music services such as iTunes. Yes, iTunes charges $1 per song, but a law suit may cost much more.