BOB GARFIELD: This week some computer users downloading music files from the Internet found instead nasty messages that they are violating copyright laws. These are not idle warnings, because the legal landscape and the record industry's tactics have changed. In one case, a federal court ruled that Verizon, the Internet service provider, must turn over the names of individual subscribers using Verizon's servers to download copyrighted files. In another case, four college students settled with the Recording Industry Association of America after being sued for running on campus music file swapping services. New York Times technology reporter Amy Harmon says that the suit signaled a new focus away from big name swapping services and on to Joe Download himself.

AMY HARMON: It was the first time that they directly targeted students in a legal action in their sort of efforts to control Internet piracy, and they were originally asking for literal--billions in damages; 150,000 dollars for each file and there were tens of thousands of files that they said that these students had contributed to other people copying or had copied themselves. But in the end, you know, it was a relatively modest amount that they agreed to pay --between 12 and 17,000 dollars -- and they agreed to, you know, never do it again. [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD:Making an example of the nickel bag users instead of trying to go after an invulnerable kingpin. And on that subject, there is the third legal development which was a ruling about the kingpins, by which I mean the major file-swapping services. Tell me about that.

AMY HARMON: Yes. There was a decision by a federal judge in Los Angeles that was quite a setback for the record industry and sort of a surprise in that it said that these two of the most popular file-trading services -- sort of the successors to Napster -- they're called Grockster and Morpheus -- were in fact not illegal, and so the users who are copying copyrighted material over them are doing something wrong - those users are, are violating the law -- but that the companies that run these services are not.

BOB GARFIELD: How were Morpheus and Grockster different than Napster which was deemed to be illegal in another federal court decision?

AMY HARMON:Well the analogy that this judge drew was --he said that Napster was more like the owner of a swap meet; that because Napster had a central server and controlled an index of all of the files of all of its users on its own computers, that it had, therefore, a responsibility to monitor what was going on there and to block copyrighted files --because it could whereas Morpheus and Grockster, the technology itself is different. Once users download the software, Morpheus and Grockster don't have any control over what they're doing. There's no central index; they copy from each other; they don't go through a computer that's, you know, owned or controlled by these companies.

BOB GARFIELD:There had been an argument that the record industry historically has been shortsighted in seeing how technology that seems at first threatening would eventually redound to its benefit, but I gather there's no evidence so far that the file swapping which some people have argued only gets music lovers even more interested in buying CDs has done any good whatsoever for the industry.

AMY HARMON: Right. And if you talk to people who do it, a lot of them will say this just makes me buy more CDs, I, I get to sample music that I wouldn't otherwise have heard, and so I, then I go to the record store if I like it. What the recording industry says is they have done surveys of people who use file trading services and that there's sort of a 2 to 1 ratio - you know a third of people might say it makes 'em buy more music, but two thirds say it makes them buy less music.

BOB GARFIELD:Now there's another new development in all of this, and that is that Apple, which dominates the market for MP3 players which play, among other things, illegally [LAUGHS] downloaded songs from the internet, has just launched what it calls an I-Tunes music store, an online store that allows users to download a song -- not for free, but for 99 cents.

AMY HARMON:This is the kind of legitimate service that the record industry wants to see people using; they think it's a pretty good deal for customers. You get access to a lot of music; you pay 99 cents - you don't have to buy the whole CD -- which is very important to a lot of frequent file traders -- you can sort of do an a la carte mixed tape of your choosing and burn it to a CD and it offers the convenience and a higher quality than you would find over a free service. Apple's not the only one; there are other legal alternatives to free file trading. One is called Rhapsody, and you can pay ten dollars a month for access to most of the world's music.

BOB GARFIELD:So do you think we're looking at -- a decade from now -- at an entirely a la carte downloadable music industry where CDs look as ridiculous to us then as vinyl records look to most of us now?

AMY HARMON: I think that the technology is inevitably pushing the music industry toward that world, and honestly, for as much as people criticize the music industry for being, you know, Luddites, they've always adopted new technologies! I mean we've gone from the record to the tape to the CD in a relatively short period of time. So as much as they may dig in their heels at first, they seem like they're about to --whether they want to or not -- embrace the Internet as their primary means of distribution.

BOB GARFIELD: All right, Amy. Well, as always, thank you very much.

AMY HARMON: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD:Amy Harmon covers technology for the New York Times. Coming up, why the Department of Homeland Security doesn't want to seem too pushy, and why advertisers are willing to pay increasing amounts of money for dwindling numbers of TV viewers. This is On the Media from NPR.