Anti-Piracy Laws (Part Two)

Lime Wire has also been the center of attention being accused of copyright infringement.  The RIAA has been successful in shutting down the official site of Lime Wire.  Eight music publishers have also filed suit charging there was pervasive online infringement of copyrights.  A statement from the publishers stated they will seek "equitable relief and damages" from LimeWire for the alleged copyright infringement. Copyright statutes provide for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per violation.”  Lime Wire was supposed to make it harder to share files between users.  Lime Wire did not make it harder for its users to share files with one another by putting up technical barriers.  The music publishers believe that this would have deterred users from illegally sharing files of music.  Alternatives to Lime Wire have come out of the wood works.  It is like a cancer that never dies.

Churches have had to figure out how to get around the copyright laws.  Churches usually have to make copies of songs to give to their musicians to learn new music.  Also, they like to show videos that are copyrighted.  So what they do is pay a fee each year to the Christian Copyright Licensing, International (CCLI) and Christian Video Licensing International (CVLI).  Each one of these gives them permission to copy music and play videos without breaking the law.  It is like blanket coverage.  Some business has to be careful they do not cross the lines, like churches.  As long as they use it for congregational purposes they will not be fined.  But I must say the contemporary Christian music market does suffer because you know the worship team members put the songs on their computers for their own personal pleasure.  Almost all churches burn CDs to hand out to their teams.  With 170,000 churches paying the license fee each year that can add up to a lot of free downloads that can potentially be illegally downloaded to personal computers.

Pirating software has become a huge problem as well.  There are many torrent sites that have become very popular.  Try before you buy is what these consumers say.  Torrent sites give allow you to download a software program illegally for free or a fee.  Someone I went to school with had over 15,000 dollars of illegal software on his computer.  All the software was from torrent sites and was the latest software.  This can be expensive for software companies.  The company Steinberg found a good way to combat this problem.  They encourage you to register your software.  When you do with your product key a red flag goes up and they customer service rep gets all of your information and then you have police showing up at your door.  Other software makers do the same.  These companies also allow you to have a 30 day trail of their product.  Legally you can keep getting 30 day trials by signing up with different email addresses.