College Student Busted for Internet Piracy

A twenty-two-year-old college student is the latest casualty in the escalating war over MP3s. On Friday, Aug. 20, Jeffrey Gerard Levy pleaded guilty in a U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore., to violating the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act. He is the first person to be convicted under the Act, which President Clinton signed into law in 1997. The NET Act protects against the free distribution of copyrighted material without the copyright owner's permission.

As a college senior, Levy ran a Web site out of his Eugene apartment that made available thousands of copyrighted songs, film clips and video games. He offered pirated works of everyone from the Beatles to Nirvana on his high-volume site, which has since been dismantled. He faces up to three years in jail and a fine of $250,000.

The Justice Department hopes that this conviction will prevent future piracy. "We hope it will fire a shot across the bow and send a very strong message to many audiences, including young people, that Internet-facilitated piracy is theft, pure and simple," said Roslyn Mazer, Special Counsel for Intellectual Property in the Criminal Division.

Levy is set for sentencing on Nov. 2.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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