The widespread proliferation of p2p file sharing has become a major topic across all industrialised and digitised countries. For the music industry in particular it has meant the loss of millions, if not billions, of dollars in revenue from downturns in CD sales and legal online downloads. Legally, legislations has been introduced to try and control p2p file sharing, legal acts like ‘The Digital Theft Deterrence Act’ sets damages payable to the copyright holders at between $750 and $30000 for each infringement, and as much as $150000 for a wilful violation (Joel Fights Back:Overview, accessed 21/08/09)
Joel Tenenbaum is a 25 year old graduate student at Boston University pursuing a PhD in physics (Joel Fights Back:About us, accessed 21/08/09). He has been accused of downloading music through the p2p network, he is fighting those allegations with the help of lawyers and law students led by a university professor. If the maximum penalty is applied in court, Tenenbaum could face a charge of $4,500,000 for wilful acts of digital theft.
This case is representative of the music industry taking a stand against music piracy via the internet, and the internet isn’t happy. All over the web bloggers, news sites and reports are pitching this as a David vs Goliath battle. Blogs, which are predominantly run by internet savvy people, people that would most likely be downloading the exact same songs that Joel has, are overwhelmingly taking his side in his fight against the charges.
Technolgy sites such as arstechnica.com and gizmodo.com.au have multiple stories on Tenenbaum, with the latter having a link to a bittorrent file that includes ‘all 30 songs that Tenenbaum downloaded. On July 31st Tenenbaum was ordered to pay a total of $675,000 ($22,500 per song), after the verdict was handed down Arstechnica reported that he was evasive when asked if he regrets downloading the music for free (Oy! Tenenbaum, accessed 21/08/09).
[1]Joel Fights Back: Overview, website http://joelfightsback.com/about-the-case/overview/, accessed 21/08/09
2 Joel Fights Back: About Us, website http://joelfightsback.com/about/ , accessed 21/08/09
3 Sheffner, B, Oy! Tenenbaum, website http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/o-tenenbaum-riaa-wins-675000-or-22500-per-song.ars, accessed 21/08/09
Other Related Sites:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10298079-93.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10299794-93.html
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/tags/joel-tenenbaum/
