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When the RIAA sued a 12-year-old for MP3 piracy

Dave Farquhar Copyright, Music, Retro Computing September 8, 2025September 8, 2025

It was 22 years ago this week, on Semptember 8, 2003, that the Recording Industry Association of America started suing individuals for pirating MP3 files. One of the people caught up in a lawsuit was a 12-year-old honors student who lived in public housing.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Abandonware: Is it preservation or just plain piracy?

Dave Farquhar Copyright August 7, 2024January 19, 2026

The concept of abandonware does not exist anywhere in copyright law, although there seems to be a perception that it does. In this blog post, we will explore the idea, why it exists, and why it persists.

Dave Farquhar

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Is Bittorrent legal?

Dave Farquhar Copyright April 22, 2021August 7, 2024

I tell my kids if they have to ask if something is legal, that’s a good sign it isn’t. But when it comes to computer matters, sometimes it’s a bit grayer. Bittorrent is a good example. Is Bittorrent legal?

Bittorrent itself isn’t inherently legal or illegal, as it’s just a protocol. What you’re using Bittorrent for is what’s legal or illegal.

Dave Farquhar

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The best e-book site I’ve found

Dave Farquhar Copyright, Design, e-readers August 11, 2015October 11, 2019Australia, kindle, public domain

The best ebooks site I’ve found, by far, is the archive at the University of Adelaide in Australia. The selection is outstanding, but the presentation is even better.

Steve Thomas, the curator, takes tremendous care to ensure Adelaide’s e-books display their best on any device. Most e-books, even commercial books, pay little to no attention to formatting, and the result all too often is books that are difficult to read.

Dave Farquhar

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Need public domain content? Check out dp.la

Dave Farquhar Copyright October 2, 2014September 13, 2014public domain

The Digital Public Library of America celebrated its first birthday this year. Their archive boasts more than 7 million public domain works.

In this era of over-extended copyrights, it’s good to see a massive collection that demonstrates the value of an active public domain.

Dave Farquhar

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Welcome, Tony’s Kansas City readers

Dave Farquhar Copyright March 24, 2013February 10, 20251980s, 1990s, apple, journalism, Kansas City, treadmill

Thanks to Tony’s Kansas City for the link this morning. Tony noted that “Security dude reminds us that Google Fiber could kill the software industry.”

That’s an interesting spin. I do think it will affect the software industry–but so long as Kansas City stays at the forefront and the rest of the country is content with being a technological backwater, the effect will be minimal. But “kill” is an awfully strong word, even if every major city in the country were to get affordable Gigabit Internet in the very near future.

I say that because of what I saw in college. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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A penny-book author’s take on secondhand sales, physical and digital

Dave Farquhar Copyright March 9, 2013January 23, 2022margin of safety, supply and demand, Wayne Wesolowski

There was talk on Slashdot on Friday about reselling digital media, and typical sky-is-falling predictions saying that secondhand sales will drive down prices and drive artists out of business. “Look!” some say. “There are used books on Amazon that sell for a penny!”

Yes there are. My book was one of those, until Windows 95 became old enough that retro computing enthusiasts became interested in it. Now when I want to buy a copy, I have to compete with those hipsters. But you know what? Copies of my book selling for a penny never bothered me. I’ll tell you why.

Dave Farquhar

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Book scanning on the (relatively) cheap

Dave Farquhar Copyright February 15, 2013November 3, 2025Adobe Acrobat, Ars Technica, Fair Use, imagemagick, tinkerer

Ars Technica has a fascinating article on the trials and tribulations of building a book scanner from a kit.

They lament the lack of software support, however–namely, a program to convert the image files generated by the digital camera into a PDF. Should I point them in the right direction? Why not? The key is Imagemagick, of course.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

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A reasonable analysis of the current copyright mess (updated)

Dave Farquhar Copyright November 17, 2012April 15, 2017ipod, legislation, recording industry

Well, that was a disappointment. It was retracted nearly as quickly as it burst onto the scenes. Crud.

A reasoned, level-headed analysis of the problems that current copyright law creates rocked Slashdot yesterday. The amazing thing is, this thing came from Washington.

Here’s the highlight reel: Read more

Dave Farquhar

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How abandonware gets abandoned

Dave Farquhar Copyright, Retro Computing, Software November 1, 2012January 19, 20261980s, 1990s, Ars Technica, commodore, commodore 64, public domain, Star Wars

From time to time on classic computing and/or videogaming forums, the question of how to track down the current copyright holder to a particular given title comes up. Sometimes someone knows the answer. Frequently they don’t.

This week, when George Lucas announced he’d sold Lucasfilm to Disney, illustrated precisely how this kind of thing happens.

Dave Farquhar

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