At Least Three Arkansans Are Among Those Sued By Recording Industry

At least three Arkansans were among the 744 people sued by the US recording industry last month for downloading copyrighted music files from the Internet. The Recording Industry Association of America started going after file-sharing Web surfers when an appeals court in San Francisco ruled that the makers of the file-swapping software weren`t liable for the activity. Among those caught in the dragnet were Rosemary Winford of Conway and her two sons, ages ten and 18. The kids downloaded hundreds of files after the industry won a landmark case against Napster.com in 2001, which established that copying copyrighted music files off the Internet was illegal. Winford said she didn`t know the practice was illegal because there was no indication of that on the Web sites. She, like many others, will have to pay the record companies thousands of dollars in fines.