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The Courts Government Media Music Privacy News

UK High Court Orders ISPs to Identify File-sharers 222

Posted by michael from the icu dept.
securitas writes "The BBC reports that the British High Court has ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) to divulge the identities of 28 customers accused of music file-sharing to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK equivalent of the RIAA. The court order issued by Mr Justice Blackburne is a big victory for the BPI and its umbrella oranization, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), especially after recent setbacks in Canada (CRIA) and the USA. Blackburne is quoted as saying, 'On the face of it this appears to be a powerful case of copyright infringement.' The ISPs have 14 days to comply with the court order. More coverage at the Guardian/Reuters and the Register."
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UK High Court Orders ISPs to Identify File-sharers More

UK High Court Orders ISPs to Identify File-sharers

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  • Different here? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chuck Bucket ( 142633 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:01PM (#10528144) Homepage Journal
    when push comes to shove, will it turn out this way here too? This really changes things if ISPs are going to have to police their users. This should cause ISP rates to go up as well, which is bad for everyone.

    CB$#@*(

    • Re:Different here? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 )
      Wasn't there a story the other week where US ISPs were giving away the details under the vaguest threat of a court order?

      I much prefer the british way - the ISP will only divulge details when the court order is granted. Judges are there to make damn sure there's enough evidence for this to happen.

      • Re:Different here? (Score:5, Informative)

        by eln ( 21727 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:08PM (#10528248)
        I know when I worked at an ISP (admittedly several years ago), the policy was basically to give the authorities anything they wanted, with or without an actual court order. I think most ISPs work on such slim margins that they can't really afford to try and fight a legal battle over their users' right to privacy when faced with subpoenas like this.

        Having a court give sanction to the violation of privacy involved like this when it actually is challenged just makes ISPs far more likely everywhere else to keep handing over records whenever anyone asks for them.

        • Re:Different here? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by julesh ( 229690 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:21PM (#10528440)
          I know when I worked at an ISP (admittedly several years ago), the policy was basically to give the authorities anything they wanted, with or without an actual court order.

          Authorities, sure. An industry association of record labels? I would hope they wouldn't.

          • Re:Different here? (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward
            An industry association of record labels = Authorities
            • Bullshit. An industry association of record labels doesn't constitute 'authority' under any accepted colloqial or legal definition of the word. It's an interest group, nothing more.

        • Re:Different here? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by simoncrute ( 468690 )
          What the article doesn't make clear is this.

          Has the BPI got to go to seek the courts' approval each time they want the name and address, or have they somehow automatically gained the right to see confidential records of ISPs just by saying they suspect someone of sharing illegal files ?

          I hope it's the former, but I fear it's the latter.
      • Wasn't there a story the other week where US ISPs were giving away the details under the vaguest threat of a court order?
        If you're reffering to this [slashdot.org] story, then no. The ISP's in question were European [www.bof.nl].

    • Re:Different here? (Score:2, Informative)

      by erick99 ( 743982 )
      I think so, though it won't happen until the RIAA can convince a judge with incontravertible evidence of copyright infringement.

      I think the US judges are, for the most part, loathe to give the okay to what ends up being a fishing expedition. What a fine line this is.

      The RIAA is tenancious and they are not going to give up until they can get to the people that they believe are stealing (their words) copyrighted material. They seem to be on a three-pronged campaign of going through the courts, the legis

    • Re:Different here? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rushmobius ( 687814 )
      Read the article....

      The ISP's are not being asked to police their users, they are being ordered to release information about subpoenaed users to the proper authorities. This is information ISP's usually maintain anyways.

      As much as I hate the RIAA and other major media conglomerates, I find no fault in a company trying to enforce the standing laws.

      If you think a 65mph speed limit law is unjust, are you going to complain to the ticketing officer or try to get the law changed?
      • "If you think a 65mph speed limit law is unjust, are you going to complain to the ticketing officer or try to get the law changed?"

        Nope...that's what Radar Detectors are for...

        :-)

        Just go as fast as I please...and listen for the >beep

      • If you think a 65mph speed limit law is unjust, are you going to complain to the ticketing officer or try to get the law changed?

        Or live in a country where police officers are allowed to use discretion. A British motorway has an upper speed limit of 70mph but nearly no one will be done for doing 80mph or less unless the weather conditions mean it's unsuitable. You can go higher but the higher you go the more likely you are to be done. I tend to drive at 85mph on the motorways (in the right conditions) an

  • British Pornographic Industry (Score:4, Funny)

    by spikiermonkey ( 751302 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:03PM (#10528156) Homepage
    For a moment i thought it was the British Pornographic Industry. If the porn industry starts suing people internet would be obselete for me. :(

  • Hopefully (Score:2, Funny)

    by stecoop ( 759508 )
    These 28 customers accused of music file-sharing are from North Korea. Then what are you going to do?
    • Easy: send them the boys to hunt for weapons of mass filesharing and arrest Kim Jung Il and his government for threatening big record corporations.

      How do I know Kim Jung Il and his cronies are the ones doing the file sharing? well, ask yourself: who else has internet access in NK?

  • Damn! (Score:4, Funny)

    by holzp ( 87423 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:03PM (#10528165)
    There go all the Benny Hill rips from Emule!

  • Go Canada! (Score:3, Funny)

    by euxneks ( 516538 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:03PM (#10528168)
    I'm glad we're allowed to improve our cultural knowledge base here in Canada. ;) Time to go download some more songs.

  • Here they come... (Score:3, Funny)

    by BaCkBuRn ( 621588 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:05PM (#10528203) Homepage Journal
    Is the new age of file-swapping enforcement a lottery now? Not long until file-traders must obtain draft cards".

  • Good. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:06PM (#10528213)
    You know what, you can spare all of your music should be free hippy bullshit, if these were the 14 biggest file sharers out of a population of fifty million plus British internet users, then so be it. It's not like anybody can say that they didn't know it was illegal, that they didn't know they were violating international copyright laws.
    • As recent surveys have shown, 80% of internet traffic [cachelogic.com] nowadays is copyrighted stuff. If ISPs stop that, they will lose like 80% of their customers and go bankrupt.

      The internet industry totally depends on filesharing. It's time to acknowledge that, not fight it.

      • The internet industry totally depends on filesharing. It's time to acknowledge that, not fight it.

        You prove it, and I'll acknowledge it. Very few people I know spend much, if any, time ripping illegal content. Most of us surf the web, read our e-mail, sometimes use Usenet, IRC or IM apps, or play on-line games, none of which relies on the type of filesharing you're describing.

        Incidentally, if you think about it, a lot more than 80% of the content transferred over the Internet is probably covered by so

      • As recent surveys have shown, 80% of internet traffic nowadays is copyrighted stuff.

        Everything is implicitly "copyrighted" by the author unless explicity put into the Public Domain.

        In other news, I have made "copyrighted" stuff available for download on the Internet. It's stuff that I personally authored. Yes, that's right children, I made it myself! You too can make your own stuff but you'll have to stop spending all your life mindlessly absorbing junk culture from the mass-media (TeeVee and BBC Radio 1

  • /dev/null (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ylikone ( 589264 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:07PM (#10528223) Homepage
    Why don't the ISP's just dump all their usage logs to /dev/null ? For the sake of customer privacy. Can't really expect the ISP's to come up with data that they don't have, can you!?

    • Re:/dev/null (Score:4, Insightful)

      by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:09PM (#10528273) Homepage Journal

      That would make it rather difficult to nail crackers & spammers on their network. What would happen in the case of a billing dispute?

    • Re:/dev/null (Score:5, Informative)

      by julesh ( 229690 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:19PM (#10528397)
      Because of the law discussed in this article [bbc.co.uk].

    • Re:/dev/null (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mustangsal66 ( 580843 )
      The only logs my ISP keeps are mail, and intrusion. Instrusion logs get cycled weekly (If you don't catch an intrusion in a week, you probably won't). Mail logs are kept for 3 days to track issues.

      This is already several Gigs worth of data.

      We'd need a SAN to keep all of the traffic logs. We have modem customers that flow upto 10 Mb/s... I couldn't imagine trying to log it all.

      Ok Say we spend $$$$$$ to keep all the logs... then to have to filter through it to find specific data... nightmare. Our lea
    • What makes you think the ISPs are on *your* side. Maybe the guy who owns the ISP is also an internationally known pop star (Bob Geldof used to have one). Maybe the ISP doesn't like to be associated with people breaking the law.

      • Re:/dev/null (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ScrewMaster ( 602015 )
        At least in the United States (I can't speak for elsewhere) ISPs are on the side of their customers because it is in their best interests to be. Verizon, for example, stuck up for a bunch of file-sharers not because it was the ethical or "right" thing to do, or because they really cared one way or the other about what happened to those accused infringers, but because they didn't want a legal precedent to be set. Furthermore, communications companies that are avowed squealers tend to have problems keeping

    • Re:/dev/null (Score:3, Informative)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 )
      Because there are data warehousing laws. Depending upon where you live, not tracking your customers can be just as illegal as anything those customers might do.

  • ISPs here assured me file sharing is fine! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PtrToNull ( 742886 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:07PM (#10528232)
    When I signed up for my 512 kb/s ADSL in Kuwait, I asked the ISP salesman specifically if I might have any problems with file sharing.

    He said it's perfectly fine with the compnay policies, and even suggested a few P2P clients that he liked!

  • Why KEEP records? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WCMI92 ( 592436 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:09PM (#10528259) Homepage
    It seems to me that keeping detailed logs of your users is just a big legal headache.

    One of my clients was once interested in installing detailed internet monitoring and logging (so as to see who is wasting time on the web). They lost interest rapidly when I pointed out that they could be compelled to provide it in court should someone sue.

    SurfControl and the other Big Brother ware makers never include that in the copy.

    Here's what I'd do: You need to keep certain logs so you can know if there is an intrusion, DoS, etc, but program your logs to automatically erase every week. That means that there will never be more than THE CURRENT WEEK's worth of data that could be subpoened.

    Of course, I'm sure if ISP's start doing THAT the RIAA will just get Congress to pass laws that make us all retain ALL logs for all time...

    • Re:Why KEEP records? (Score:5, Informative)

      by julesh ( 229690 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:15PM (#10528357)
      I believe British ISPs are now legally required to keep this information, which is a serious PITA for them. The ISPA complained and complained about the terabytes of storage they would need... but I don't recall the government ever relenting.
      • Sounds like the perfect system for an old liner printer and a portable storage unit that trucks can drop off anywhere. Make people think twice before they harras you for logs again.

      • Re:Why KEEP records? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jonwil ( 467024 )
        And there are probobly good reasons for wanting ISPs to keep this information.
        For example, things like child porn.
        Or like scumbags or perverts in chat rooms.
        I think a good answer is to have the law such that you need a court order to get the logs.
        That would mean that the BPI can still get the logs to sue people but only after they have gone to court to prove that was in fact sharing illegal files.

    • When we changed to a new tape storage vendor, they sales guy told us that the new thinking isn't "How long should I keep it?" it's "How soon can I destroy it?"

      They can't hold evidence you don't have against you (unless they can hold not having evidence against you, but that's a different problem).

    • the RIAA will just get Congress to pass laws that make us all retain ALL logs for all time...

      Doing so would require massive resources (archiving,backup,storage etc) especially if you're a big ISP, right? And resources cost money, right?

      Wouldn't it be fair that they pick up the tab too? Or should I squander MY money so they can continue THEIR business?
    • One reason to keep records is so that when a court reviews a request and considers it reasonable you have the data be it music piracy, card fraud or even spamming.

      I'm glad to see the music industry taking this path, this is the right approach. Show the courts the evidence, get an order and then pursuse the actual people commiting the crime not the manufacturers and distributors of multi-purpose tools.

      Music piracy in the uk is an offence, the way to change that if you don't like it is to convince governmen

  • Pay those starving artists to front the campaigns! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:10PM (#10528280)
    "They are uploading music on a massive scale, effectively stealing the livelihoods of thousands of artists and the people who invest in them."

    Yet they chose Brittany Spears to be the front-person for the anti-pirating campaign. How about paying some of those starving artists to play frontman instead?

  • Its time to just open up your wireless router (Score:5, Interesting)

    by L7_ ( 645377 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:11PM (#10528298)
    If you have an open WAN for anonymous people to connect to the internet over, can the owner of the router (and ISP connection) be held responsible for sharing files over said connection?

    • If you have an open WAN for anonymous people to connect to the internet over, can the owner of the router (and ISP connection) be held responsible for sharing files over said connection?

      What if it isn't open and someone hacks you can you be held liable? We have too many people out there that have open WAPs are we going to expect all those people to become knowledgable about WLANs and close it up?

      I mean there are 4 open WAPs in the immediate vicinity around my house (and when I say open, I mean default p
      • There was a case in the UK recently where somebody got off charges of downloading child porn because he had a trojan on his system that he claimed somebody else had been using to download the stuff in order to frame him.
        • ...is that I believe I would be perfectly capable of framing 50%+ of the population so bad, they'd never be able to make that defense. Crack their box, download a bunch of stuff to their box, then secure their box. Like it or not, it's not finding it that is hard, it is not getting caught. As long as you're using his IP you can go on P2P and whereever and downloading everything "suspect". It will simply add fuel to the fire.

          Kjella
          • I had an interesting conversation with my brother (a police officer at the time) about this case. He said it was ridiculous that he got off with such an easy defence and 'something must be done to stop people like him getting off again'. At which point I challenged him, I'll put child porn on his computer, and he can invite the police to check it. When he refused, I pointed out that he'd just given reasonable doubt that files on the computer meant he was guilty.
    • Why not just start using secure, anonymous protocols? Freenet comes to mind. They can't prosecute if everything is anonymous and encrypted!

    • thats liek saying well if pots legals lets all smoke pot then they will never catch us. No they will just pick a select few give them the maximum sentence until everybody get a clue. you should be responcible for your own network. so if you open your WAN then your responcible for its content. Suppose instead of mp3's these turned out to be pedofile material. I guess it would be ok then. laws are in place to protect society, not just yoru society but everyone.

  • This isn't scary. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:14PM (#10528342)
    Compared to the next step, I mean. How do you identify filesharers when they do it secretly and not via some dumbass gnutella/fasttrack/etc that lets everyone in the world know exactly what you're doing?

    Well, you don't. You just suspect everyone whose traffic stats look abnormal. Sure, the hell will freeze before ISPs are going to provide this data for free. So what happens? A new law...
    • How do you identify filesharers when they do it secretly and not via some dumbass gnutella/fasttrack/etc that lets everyone in the world know exactly what you're doing?

      not a problem until the "secure" P2P networks are as fast and easy to use as Kazaa, and don't come with any unwanted baggage of their own, such as routing child pornography through your system.

      "plausible denial" is the defense your lawyer trots out when he has nothing else to go with.

    • Re:This isn't scary. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Artifakt ( 700173 )
      "You just suspect everyone whose traffic stats look abnormal."

      Open Office = (roughly) 50 Mb.
      Red Hat, Gentoo, BSD, etc. = 2 or 3 CDs worth each.
      20 perfectly legal to download DivX format shorts from Atom Films = 200 Mb.

      So the RIAA looks at #1, and assumes I've just pirated the new Metallica CD.
      The MPAA looks at #2 and assumes I just pirated Shrek 2 or Teminator 3.
      And I'm sure the Software anti-piracy association can find something that is the right size to fit #3.
      So if I stay away from big files...

  • Deadlines (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dema ( 103780 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:15PM (#10528358) Homepage
    The ISPs have 14 days to comply with the court order.

    Apparently the courts in Europe know how to set deadlines, unlike the US Courts [slashdot.org].

  • sad (Score:4, Interesting)

    by compro01 ( 777531 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:17PM (#10528372)
    seems that Cananda is the only country to have the sense to tell the music industry to shove it...

    • Re:sad (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BitterOak ( 537666 )
      seems that Cananda is the only country to have the sense to tell the music industry to shove it

      Are you talking about the same Canada that charges a tax (oops, levy) on all blank media (including data CD-Rs) that is paid out to the record industry?

      • Better a levy than a lawsuit? "Here's a nickel kid; go buy yourself a packet of razor blades to play with."
        • "Better a levy than a lawsuit?"

          I think people who buy CD-Rs for non-copyright infringement-related purposes would disagree. It's not fair to make someone who just wants to backup his business files have to subsidize other people's music listening.

  • For a momen there ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Savage-Rabbit ( 308260 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:22PM (#10528448)
    ...I read:

    "...the British Pornographic Industry (BPI), the UK equivalent of the RIAA."

    Dyslexia can be funny.

  • Depressing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by locarecords.com ( 601843 ) <david@lFREEBSDocarecords.com minus bsd> on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:23PM (#10528461) Homepage Journal

    I'm still of the opinion that criminalising your audience is a very dangerous game for the record labels to be getting involved in. And also extremely sad and backwards. I think Steve Job's comment that he treats downloading tracks as his biggest competitor to iTunes Music Store.

    In any case, it will further push the record labels one step further away from any claim to believe in the importance of music for music's sake and hopefully open up the eyes of fans to the sheer amount of manipulation these guys now have in terms of creating pre-planned acts, factory stamped songs and shallow, empty and talentless indivduals who want fame more than anything else.

    It will be extremely interesting to see how the music press in the UK react - most of them are in the pay of the music business anyway except a few genuine exceptions, Void Magazine for one...

    Also I really hope that this will provide more impetus to people experimenting with the copyleft music scene...

    • I'm still of the opinion that criminalising your audience is a very dangerous game for the record labels to be getting involved in.

      They're not "criminalising the audience", they're identifying the major uploaders. These are the people we've been saying to go after all the time! These people are criminals, knowingly breaking the law and aiding others in doing the same!

      Why is it that when the music industry does the right thing -- it's going after the people who are ripping illegally, not the ISPs, and

  • Anyone Know the IPs ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by anat0010 ( 76128 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:35PM (#10528597) Journal
    Anyone have the full disposition ? What IP addresses are the BPI asking to divulge the identity of ?
    Not that I'm worried or anything.

  • How to Outwit the BPI (Score:3, Insightful)

    by turgid ( 580780 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:38PM (#10528625) Journal
    Well, the American RIAA seems to be doing a very poor job of identifying suspects. How many false positives does their brain-dead software flag up?

    Why doesn't everyone put up files named Madonna_Like_a_Virgin.mp3 or Britney_Spears_Takes_it_Reel_Good.mp3 filled with random data? A few hundred thousand of those on the peers should give the BPI a headache.

    You could plead you innocence quite legitimately.

    They would then have to copyright file names....

    • Why doesn't everyone put up files named Madonna_Like_a_Virgin.mp3 or Britney_Spears_Takes_it_Reel_Good.mp3 filled with random data? A few hundred thousand of those on the peers should give the BPI a headache.

      Maybe because everyone is smart enough to realise that if you destroy the filesharing networks by flooding them with mislabelled garbage, but avoid prosecution by so doing, you haven't actually achieved anything except wasting a lot of bandwidth?

      • So you flood them with garbage, annoy the BPI and get them to waste their money and the courts' time. Assuming you're vaguely honest, you support the musicians who really deserve it by paying for their stuff and the BPI, RIAA et. al. get the message that people don't want Britney and Boyz R Us and that trying to force us to pay for it, and filling up the radio and TV with it is futile.

        The people who download the sort of dross that the record cartels peddle are usually 12 years old and younger and have no m

    • 'They would then have to copyright file names...."

      SSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh. Don't you know they're listening?!

  • USA situation is better, thankfully. (Score:4, Informative)

    by deacon ( 40533 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @03:42PM (#10528670) Journal
    The Supreme Court handed Internet services providers and privacy advocates a crucial victory yesterday when it decided to pass on an important Internet piracy case. . . .

    "The recording industry may not agree, but the U.S. Supreme Court thinks personal privacy is far more important that music piracy," Red Herring reported. "On Tuesday, the high court refused to entertain an appeal of a unanimous 2003 decision by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals that held that copyright holders cannot force Internet providers to identify file sharers using a mere subpoena.

    Industry watchers see this as yet another blow that the recording industry has taken in its fight against online file sharing -- a fight it is slowly losing. The lawsuits in question were between New York's Verizon Internet Services and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), headquartered in Washington, D.C."

    From instapundit.com 5 minutes ago, of course. :)

    • The Supreme Court handed Internet services providers and privacy advocates a crucial victory yesterday when it decided to pass on an important Internet piracy case. . . .

      The Court accepts about one hundred cases a year. Denial of Cert is the norm and the justices almost never expose their reasoning or any internal debate. Other matters, such as the execution of juveniles, may have been considered a tad more urgent or at least ripe for a decision.

  • In the US (Score:2, Insightful)

    by d3ity ( 800597 )
    In the US, the ACLU would be screaming bloddy murder, and lawyers would be flocking over this like vultures over a rotting elephant.

  • It's all in a name, apparently (Score:3, Funny)

    by Spencerian ( 465343 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @04:04PM (#10528908) Homepage Journal
    Uh, has anyone caught that the filing was done by a Mr Justice Blackbourne?

    So, if he is a judge, then justice is being sought by Justice Justice?
  • here is the kind of email you can receive from a copyright holder. > Re: Unauthorized Use of Twentieth Century FOX Film Corporation Property - ALIEN VS. PREDATOR > > > Notice ID:###### > Notice Date:# Oct 2004 ##:##:## GMT > Case ID: ####### > > > Dear Sir or Madam: > > TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION and its affiliated companies (collectively, "FOX") are the exclusive owners of copyrights in motion pictures, including ALIEN VS. PREDATOR. > > It has come to our
    • And to think ive just bought a cd that wont even rip onto my mp3 player thats sick. I'll probably have to download the same cd in mp3 format and get sued for something i have bought.
    • " here is the kind of email you can receive from a copyright holder. "

      I had a couple once; they referred to a file that I'd never downloaded, which begs the question what kind of proof is actually produced. This was the first hint that I had that MD5 hashes weren't entirely unique.

  • Have you noticed how all judges in the UK seem to have the first name Justice? Must be some sort of ordained-from-birth thing.
  • Stop all this lawsuit garbage once and for all.

    At least until they make it a crime to use a P2P network for ANY reason. " assumed guilt".
  • Guess I'll just have to leech instead then.
  • If I understand the UK law and practises correctly they'll be fined and maybe pay some minor damages.
    Definitly not $140.000 (or what was it) per song as in the US.

    I actually agree with releasing their IDs. They knew it was illegal, and law enforcement can't work if people cannot be identified.
    Would agree with the DMV not releasing IDs in order to identify hit-and-"runners" when the license plate is known?

    I do not agree, however, to the same practise in the US, as the threats and trials by the RIAA t

  • How to beat all this crap: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ralph Spoilsport ( 673134 ) on Thursday October 14, 2004 @09:44PM (#10531663) Journal
    start having informal FIREWIRE parties.

    I've done this several times. I go over a friends house, with two other interested people. We all have Macintosh computers. We all have Firewire Drives. At around 1 in the afternoon we start drinkin' ourselves stupid and plugging our drives into each other's laptops or desktop (depending). Then we go through the drive, copying files over to our own drive as we see fit.

    Net result?

    I have 85 gigs of music on my 120 gig drive.

    Now, it's much more "site specific" - I'm not "open to the public" but I know my friends have remarkable taste in music and we get to recommend music to each other.

    If I like something, I go to the record store AND I BUY THE CD. (sometimes I buy it used, sometimes new, depending on how I feel and the depth of my pocket and the obscurity of the music)

    Why? It's not because I'm feeling guilty - I just know that the CD will likely outlast the hard drive, and it's just good sound back up policy.

    Of course, to rip all my CDs over would take a few months of dedicated part time effort, but that's fine. It's still good to have the back up, JIC.

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