Court cases don't scare music file swappers away
By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY
Despite two huge court losses for file-sharing firms, unauthorized online song and movie swapping is at an all-time peak, says Internet measurement company BigChampagne.
"File sharing has never been more popular than it is now," says BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland. "People have heard all the legal threats and admonitions, but that's not enough. They don't believe it."

He says about 9.6 million people were logged onto sharing networks at any one time in August, up from 6.8 million the year before.

The recording industry has filed 14,000 copyright infringement lawsuits against song swappers in the last two years, at a time when more than 1 billion songs have been offered for trading each month on services such as Kazaa and eDonkey. The industry has also looked to the courts for relief.

On Monday, an Australian federal court judge ruled that Sharman Networks, Kazaa's parent firm, must install filters to prevent its software from being used for unauthorized sharing.

The ruling followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that said software firms Grokster and StreamCast Networks, which operates the Morpheus service, could be held liable for their users' actions.

The Supreme Court decision hasn't curbed online swapping, and neither will the Australian court ruling, says Phil Leigh, an analyst at research firm Inside Digital Media. "A lot of college students still don't feel vulnerable at all," Leigh says.

The Australian decision is only enforceable there. Kazaa, meanwhile, is a global product whose popularity already had faded.

Once the most-used sharing software, it has been in steady decline. According to Internet research firm CacheLogic, Kazaa's market share tumbled to 9% in July from 24% a year earlier. Currently, eDonkey is the most popular sharing software, with a 50% market share, CacheLogic says.

Kazaa is bloated with too much backdoor, spyware-type advertising, Garland says. "People went elsewhere. A judgment might have been more meaningful a few years ago, when Kazaa was more popular."

Recording Industry Association of America CEO Mitch Bainwol said he is pleased with the Kazaa decision, which "reflects a growing, international chorus: Those who promote theft can be held accountable no matter how they may attempt to escape responsibility."

Garland says the industry should spend less time fighting the online pirates and more time turning them into paying customers.

Legitimate online music stores have taken off since Apple's popular iTunes site made its debut. But Garland says Apple and competitors Napster, RealNetworks and others could sell even more if they made their songs compatible with each other's systems.

Songs purchased at iTunes can't be transferred to non-Apple digital music players without some workarounds, and vice versa with songs from Napster. "The incompatibility is a nightmare for consumers," Garland says.