 The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents
music labels, says the campaign is showing "new signs of success," and
research supports it.
Nielsen/NetRatings says the average
number of users on Kazaa, the top music and movie trading program, has
dropped 53% since June '” when the RIAA first warned of lawsuits. More than
200 lawsuits have been settled. Most often, defendants pay fines of $
1,000 to $ 3,000 to avoid court.
"The average teen daughter is no
longer downloading," says Jorge Gonzalez, who runs the Zeropaid.com
file-sharing information Web site. "Her mother has been scared by the
RIAA."
Meanwhile, more advanced users are
migrating to other systems, where they can be anonymous, Gonzalez says.
Some college students, for instance, are forming private networks to share
songs among themselves. Also, many users have migrated to legitimate
alternatives introduced this year from Apple, MusicMatch and Roxio (the
revived Napster).
Some file sharers, estimated at
about 60 million worldwide, say they are undeterred.
"The odds of being singled out for a
lawsuit are 56 million to one," Indiana University student Campbell
Vertesi writes in an e-mail. "The odds of being struck by lightning are
about 90 times greater, but I still go out in the rain."
Nielsen analyst Greg Bloom also says
the lawsuits have only increased interest in illegal file-swapping in
Europe, where no lawsuits have been
filed. | 
