Student ordered to pay $675k for file-sharing

Though illegal file-sharing seems to have eased (see this), a story out of Boston this past week certainly underscores that the legal risks haven't. Admitting in court that he had downloaded and distributed 30 songs, Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum was ordered to pay $22,500 for each song to four recording companies, the Washington Post reports. "Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful." Tenenbaum's lawyer said he would appeal the decision because he wasn't allowed to argue the case based on fair use. Tenenbaum said he'd file for bankruptcy if the decision stands, but nearly 100 people have already offered to help pay his legal fees if his appeal fails.

Teens' illegal music downloading going down

It's great to get free music, TV, and film off the Internet, but it's even better when you can get it fast – and that it's legal too maybe be a bonus but isn't a key issue. That's my take-away from a passel of recent stories and blog posts. Which spells a turning point for the music industry: piracy may have peaked. Thirteen-year-old Josh in New York may've said it all. His dad, a VC and a blogger, asked Josh how he's seeing all the episodes of his favorite TV show, "Friday Night Lights," afraid Josh will say "BitTorrent," the file-sharing technology millions of people use for free illegal downloading, but Josh just said "BitTorrent's too slow." He streams the shows with the family's Netflix's $24.95/mo. subscription. His dad wrote: "The good news is that, as the media business wakes up and puts all the media we want out there in streams available on the Internet (paid or free - this is not about free), we see people streaming more and stealing less." [Brad Stone of the New York Times picked up this story.] The Guardian cites a survey showing that Josh is not alone: "The number of teenagers [14-18] illegally sharing music has fallen dramatically in the past year." They're "using services such as YouTube and Spotify [the latter with 6 million users in Europe and now trying to break into the US market]." The Times also mentions MySpace Music and imeem among popular sources of licensed media streaming. In December 2007, 42% of teens were illegally downloading music, down to 26% this past January, The Guardian adds. Another study by NPD Group in the US found that teens 13-17 "illegally downloaded 6% fewer tracks in 2008 than in 2007, while more than half said they were now listening to legal online radio services like Pandora, up from 34% the year before," the Times reports. Here's similar coverage from ZDNET.

Young music fans choosing vinyl

Go figure. Just when we thought that music downloads had pretty much killed off CDs, The Guardian reports that, "in a rare case of cheerful news for the record labels" there's a "vinyl revival" afoot in the UK (and quite possibly in the US too). It says two-thirds of all UK singles in the UK now come out on in the 7-inch record format, "with sales topping 1 million. Though still a far cry from vinyl's heyday in 1979, when Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes alone sold that number and the total vinyl singles market was 89 million, the latest sales are still up more than five-fold in five years." The Guardian adds that it's not unusual to young people to buy records even with nothing to play them on. It quotes an industry analyst as saying they'll buy the digital version to listen to and the record as art, something tangible in their hands, maybe as a memory of a great concert. Another sign that today's media sharers (as opposed to mere consumers) don't abandon sites, formats, technologies, etc., they just fold new ones into the mix.