Oklahoma Blog: Criminal Law Situations

When Shawn Fanning created Napster in his dorm room at Northeastern, he probably didn’t anticipate how much his clever design would revolutionize the music industry for years to come. In fact, Napster quickly became the fastest growing application in the history of the internet as people caught on to its appealing ability to allow a user to download virtually any song they wanted for free. Up until this point in time, people were used to having to go out and buy an artist’s entire album if they wanted to own a particular song of theirs, an idea that sounds downright ludicrous to the iTunes generation.

Of course, the people in the music industry were not at all thrilled about Napster’s ingenious initiative. In 2000, A&M records and several other recording companies sued Napster for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which eventually ended the glory days of Napster. However, Napster paved the way for a wave of decentralized peer-to-peer file-distribution programs, which have been harder to control. Despite government efforts, there are still countless programs out there that give users the opportunity to access free music until their heart’s content. I would even venture to say that a vast majority Americans possessing a sizable electronic music file have at least a few songs in there that they didn’t pay for. We’ve all seen what happens to these corporations when they are caught committing copy right infringement, but what are the consequences to an individual caught using the programs to illegally obtain music?

If caught with illegal music that costs the record company a total of more than $350, you are legally viable to be sued or to even be arrested and detained in prison, and your sentence could be a maximum fine of $5000 and imprisonment of up to 6 months. Up until September 2003, RIAA member companies filed copyright infringement claims against 261 individual file sharers, and they haven’t seemed to have let up.

Furthermore, parents who have never even heard of these file sharing programs may still be at risk for lawsuits if there kids are downloading these programs and sharing music files behind their back. In February 2005, mother of two Patricia Santangelo was accused of illegally downloading and distributing music to her complete shock. The culprits, of course, were her two children aged 11 and 15 at the time of the charge. Instead of forking over $4,000 for a crime she did commit, she fought the charges and the lawsuit was dismissed in April 2006. It didn’t just go away, however, and new lawsuit came into play, this time directed at her children. Even though they were both minors when the original charge was made, the now 22-year-old and 18-year-old owe the RIAA $7,000 after a settlement was finally made on April 27, 2009. Perhaps their case should stand as a warning for all of those teenagers still illegally downloading music and thinking that they will never have to pay the repercussions.

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