I heard this over a month ago that the gov't is going to start fining people who download media through programs like kazaa. The other day I read that some have already been fined. One of the people that were fined was a 12 year old private school girl in New York. Are they going after people who are sharing thousands of files or are ANYONE? My question is, are they fining people who are DOWNLOADING or SHARING? Also, do you believe the gov't will be successful in reducing or totally eliminating the number of people sharing? Are there ways to get around so that no one knows you actually have media files that were taken from such programs? Meaning, if you were to move the media files from say... "kazaa download folder" to your "custom made" folder.... is possible for someone to check on your computer to see that you recieved these files?

In Denmark the "Anti Piracy Group" has made precedence in court, fining a young man $16000 for sharing music- and moviefiles. -Their only evidence was a screenshot of his share -which they can only see if THEY start a download from him..! (Wasn't that illegal?)

APG stated that they never downloaded a whole file. If they had, they would have broken the copyright law too!. (I thought it was illegal to download ANYTHING copyrighted..?) So in fact, they had no way of telling if the files actually WERE music- and moviefiles. -Could have been anything renamed to "whatever.mp3".
Still, they won the case..

Since then, the APG has taken hundreds of screenshots from others. -Sent them a bill for $500 - $20000, followed by a fine of the same amount and a letter stating that if they pay the bill right away, they won't have to pay the fine. And people actually do pay.

They target those with the biggest shares first of course.

So if we make the hypothetical assumption that I have ever been file-sharing, then i would have cut my share down to a bare minimum of a few musicfiles by now..

Freestyler

__________________
Never criticize someone until you've walked a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do, you're a mile away -and you have his shoes!


'86 300E optically converted to '95 E300 (Sold)
-Blauschwarz on silver
-Black leather
-17" AMG & 15" AMG for winter

PaulC.. I didn't know it was the music companies that went after the "sharers". I seriously thought it was the feds/gov't. Anyways.. I guess I shouldn't freak out about the 250 or so .mp3 files I downloaded. BTW.. there is an option on kazaa that either lets you share or not share. Anyone seen that before?

I possess 3,000+ mp3s. More than 2,000 of which I own, meaning I ripped the mp3 from a CD I purchased. When I do use p2p programs, they are shared. The fact that they are trying to fine people is ridiculous. I use Kazaa Lite, which blocks known RIAA and Record Company IP's.