Has the RIAA crackdown affected your downloading?

[hightimber]

I have to admit, since I heard folks were getting busted, I made my daughters quit downloading altogether.

First off, fuck the RIAA. With that out of the way, here is my take on this.

(I'm going to assume for the most part people are using kazaa)

If you share, there is a chance they will bust you.

What they look for: Mainstream, pop music, not that artist nobody has ever heard of. They search for popular music that everyone knows and has. If you don't share this music, you lessen your chances of getting busted.

Millions of people use kazaa or whatever. You are one out of a million. Even if they sued 100 people per day, it would take forever for the chance of them getting you to be anything to worry about.

It's very easy to share without sharing. Kazaa lets you specify your shared folder. To "share" but not share, simply move completed files out of the folder. You programers out there could probably write a script that scans a given directory and moves any file that doesn't end with ".dat" the kazaa extension for temp files.

Also, I do buy cd's of artists I like, if you like the stuff enough to have the album on your disk, buy the cd.

I'll end by stressing, once again, fuck the RIAA.

[Evan]

You can also completely disable file sharing via Kazaa's options menu too.

Originally posted by Evan
You can also completely disable file sharing via Kazaa's options menu too.

Good point, but isn't that only in K++/Klite?

I think I read that K++ has new features that helps prevent the RIAA from finding you (or atleast make it much harder). I still download stuff. I don't have uploading from me enabled. Apparently Penn State has struck a deal with Napster so that next year we can just pay a one-time $10 fee and download whatever we want off of Kazaa. Problem is, I think all of the files are "tethered," meaning it's more as if you're streaming from them, but I'm not sure about this.

-Bagginses

[Evan]

Originally posted by Xenius
Good point, but isn't that only in K++/Klite?

I believe it's Kazaa, Kazaa Lite, K++. I use K++ since, in my opinion, it's a lot better.

[Rand0m]

It doesn't matter if the RIAA does catch you and sue you all you have to do is tell them you will delete all the files and stop using the program. A lot of young people have done this, how are you going to sue young people like say a ten year old.

[hightimber]

Originally posted by Nazi_Killer
It doesn't matter if the RIAA does catch you and sue you all you have to do is tell them you will delete all the files and stop using the program. A lot of young people have done this, how are you going to sue young people like say a ten year old.

Ultimately, parents are responsible for the equipment and the actions of their children. The parents get sued, not the kids.

I just did a 20 min presentation in a class about this lol, today too. I'dd say as long as you're not uploading pop music or rap music you're pretty safe. I don't upload but thats not because I have it disabled I just download cd's burn them and delete the files once the CD works fine. As long as you aren't a supernode which you can look up how to NOT get sued at http://www.eff.org and you don't upload alot of really overpopular garbage music you're almost completely safe.

[RCglider]

newsgroups

I would still be downloading if my connection settings let me use the programs ,seemed not to work with this programs, No RIAA involved.

[shockwave203]

Use kazaa lite. on techtv, they said it's much better, and a bit safer (harder for them to see what you're sharing)

[PudriK]

I pay for what I like on iTunes, and get the rest via the sneaker-net from my friends. Not really scared of RIAA, so much as I was never happy with what I could find P2P. Also, I would like to see commercial music sites do well, as the artists should get paid somehow.