If you don’t think that violating copyright by downloading mp3 with filesharing programs like Kazaa, Grokster, Morpheus, Madster, eDonkey, Direct Connect, OpenNap, iMesh, or Gnutella it could get you in serious trouble, you need to read RIAA Obtains Subpoenas Against File Swappers and House Bill to Make File-Sharing an Automatic Felony.

The RIAA is using the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to force ISP to turn over the names of file traders. They can determine your internet protocol address by connecting with your peer-to-peer client over the World Network. Using your IP address and the time you were connected, the ISP can determine your name. If the RIAA finds you this way, they will sue you.

When you are the defendant in a civil lawsuit, you don’t have the protection against self-incrimination that the U.S. Constitution grants criminal defendants. You will be required to give a deposition, in which the party suing you will be able to ask you anything they want, while you will be required to give truthful answers under oath.

In civil lawsuits, there is a process called “discovery” that allows the party suing you to use the force of law to require you to turn over any evidence they ask for. In particular, they can seize your equipment and forensically examine your hardisk (so that they might even recover files you’ve deleted), read any logs of email you’ve saved, obtain your telephone records from your phone company and obtain the log files from your ISP as well as the log files from any Web sites you’ve ever visited.

The RIAA has had limited success at suing the publishers of file sharing software. Some systems, like Gnutella, are so decentralized that there is little hope of finding anyone to sue. So now they are coming after the individual file traders – meaning you. The article above says the RIAA has already obtained subpoenas against 871 file traders, and will likely have obtained many more by the time you read this. They are asking for $150,000 in damages from each file trader for each song whose copyright they have violated. What will they use the money for? Suing more file traders, of course.

If you lose one of these lawsuits, the only recourse you will have to be declare bankruptcy. If you’re a juvenile, your parents will have to declare bankruptcy.

While simple copyright infringement is a civil offense where the copyright holder’s only recourse is to sue you, especially egregious offenses are already criminal violations for which the law enforcement authorities will arrest, prosecute and imprison you. Remember the FBI warning you always see at the beginning of movie videos? It is common for large-scale software pirates to be arrested. File traders are next in line.

You can avoid all of these problems by enjoying mp3 from the tens of thousands of talented musicians who offer legal downloads of their music. And you can tell the RIAA to kiss your ass.

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