Now Israel jumps into the fray

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Israeli Music Industry to Get Tough on Downloaders
Wed September 24, 2003 09:51 AM ET
n By Gwen Ackerman
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's music industry vowed Wednesday to crack down on local online song swapping and said it would show zero tolerance.

"We have decided to do anything in our capability to protect the assets of the industry," said Ronnie Braun, head of Israel's branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the global music industry's trade body.

"What was decided is there will be a policy of zero tolerance," he told Reuters in an interview. "It is the music that we are going to fight and protect."

The action is part of efforts to stamp out the copying of music over the Internet, which the music industry blames for a decline in sales of recorded music in the past two years.

Israel's decision to pursue legal action follows the example set by the Recording Industry Association of America, which is cracking down on "peer-to-peer users" suspected of widespread copyright violations.

The recording industry sued 261 music fans in the United States earlier this month for up to $150,000 per song.

Copyright infringement is also rampant in Israel, even off-line.

"Israel is a modern hell for anything that has to deal with Internet and copyright," said Braun, who is also the owner and managing director of Tel Aviv-based Helicon Records.

He said that, acting on instructions from the recording industry, he had collected names of Israeli users of the file-swapping networks and intends to seek out Internet service providers that sell broadband services by promoting file-sharing.

NIGHTMARE COMBINATION

"On the one hand, you have people who think they deserve to get things for free and have a philosophy of not being a sucker, and on the other hand this is a haven for early adapters to technology, so the combination makes it a real nightmare," he said.

The recording industry filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in New York last Thursday against the Tel Aviv-based file-sharing network iMesh, which is registered in the U.S. state of Delaware.

The suit against iMesh, the third-largest song-swapping network on the Web after KaZaa and Morpheus, sought damages and an injunction.

KaZaa, Morpheus and iMesh let Internet users trade software, music and video over the Internet.

iMesh, which is registered in Delaware and runs on a server based in Texas, denied infringing copyright and said the lawsuit was "ill informed." It said it would "respond appropriately" and win the case on merit.

Braun said he hoped to meet iMesh CEO Elan Oren to discuss ways to cooperate.

The recording industry's long-term goal is to move users of file-swapping services to industry-sanctioned services, which charge users a fee for downloading music.





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