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We got a call from our provider, they had received a few letters from a couple of lawyers. They requested EZT to be shut down immediately, otherwise we and the hosting service would be sued.

1. There is no lawsuit. They (RIAA or whoever) told the to shutdown or there would be a lawsuit
2. "Damages" does not mean "direct loss of revenue".

If a band wants to allow fans to tape their shows and gives copies to all their friends, fine. That's their right. However, if they don't want to allow it, that's also their right.

Or maybe the creator's rights only matter when it's GPL software being "stolen" for use in closed source commercial software.

A lot of that music is also illegeal.

I normally don't respond to an AC, but this is incorrect.

From http://www.easytree.org/extras-faq.php#faq6

What kind of torrents are allowed with this tracker?

- All torrents must have music related content.

- No torrent may distribute any official material. This includes, of course, OOP material and the separated audio part of VHS videos, Laserdisc videos, and DVD videos, too -- even if the recording is from a different source than the officially available material. Also not allowed are remixes/remasters of any officially available material and so called "bastard" mixes. One exception: The recording represents a complete show of which only minor parts are (or have been) officially available. In this case it's ok to keep those minor parts included to the recording. This applies not to compilations. No compilation may contain any officially available material!

- No torrent may distribute any material of artists respectively bands who do not agree to the electronic distribution of their inofficially recorded live shows. For a list of bands/artists see here.

- No torrent may distribute any lossy compressed music, i.e. MP3, VQF, OGG, so long as the material is known or expected to be available to the trading community in better quality.

- No torrent may contain compressed archive files, i.e. RAR, ZIP, GZ. For content allowed with this tracker it doesn't make much sense to pack it in compressed archives. Thus, we assume that the torrent uploader wants to hide impermissible content in case a torrent contains such files.

- No torrent may contain losseless compressed but platform dependent files like MKW. It's contra bonos mores of live music trading to exclude users of other platforms from the download!

- No torrent may contain uncompressed PCM audio files like WAV, AIFF. Including such files to a torrent is a huge waste of bandwidth -- both, on seeder's side and downloader's side.

- Microsoft Windows executables like EXE, COM are not allowed in a torrent because of the risk of carrying viruses.

- Torrents without a self-explanatory title or detailed description indicating the contents, as well as torrented data not containing an info-file in plain text format (file extensions .txt or .asc) with a content's description will be considered as contra bonos mores of live music trading and are not allowed on EZT.

If you are not sure if your torrent will adhere to these rules, please ask the moderators first. Torrents violating the rules or contra bonos mores of live music trading will be banned without further notice.

And similarly for bt.etree.org:

From http://etree.org/legal.html

Etree.org welcomes lovers of all types of music. We support the discussion and trading of the highest quality recordings of:
live performances;

by bands/performers that allow taping and trading;

in a lossless compression format.

Many bands are very clear in their support of taping and trading: Grateful Dead, Phish and Dave Matthews Band, for example, all have written policies on taping and trading. http://www.etree.org/thebands.html has information on many other taper-friendly bands. There are also links on that page to other information on bands that allow taping and trading. You may use the appropriate etree.org mailing list to discuss any band or performer that allows taping and trading.

Conversely, there are performers who are notoriously against taping and trading (Bob Dylan and Live, to name only two). You may not use the etree.org mailing lists to discuss such artists. Solicitations to exchange music by these artists are prohibited and will not be tolerated.

There will always be performers whose views on taping and trading are unknown, or unclear. If you would like to trade music by such a performer,

Not that I don't recognize that BitTorrent is currently used for many legitimate applications (whereas that was extremely difficult to argue with a straight face with P2P), but I think this statement is a little overboard. I'd say that, currently, "legitimate" use of BitTorrent is a "token minority" of its use. The vast, vast majority is pirated software, pirated movies, and pirated TV shows (and, to a lesser extent, music, just because of the nature of BitTorrent being more conveniently applicable to small amounts of large files, rather than large amounts of small files).

Anyone not admitting that at this particular point in time is lying to themselves.

Maybe that was true when SuperNova and LokiTorrent were around. We are sorta heading back into the "time before torrents" when stuff wasn't easily available on a huge online database available on the web.

Have you take a split second to look at the legitimate uses of torrents recently? easytree, Etree, etc? HUGE repositories of legal music for download?

It's obvious to me that you haven't.

Some people are missing the point and think that this project was invented just to play MIDI drum sounds through a speaker. Although I cannot reach the website because of the slashdotting, I can infer from the original post that this is a real robot playing real drums. This is an admirable feat at the very least.

Having a synthetic Neil Peart would be phenomenal. I'm happy that these students have taken it upon themselves to usher MIDI to the next level by melding it with very real robotic triggers to make the drums sound more realistic. Also, I'm elated that one of the most spectacular and accomplished drummers of our time is being recognized by name with a project such as this.

If you want to check out some real Neil Peart, here's an excellent site for some bootlegs. Just do a search on 'Rush' for the ultimate in percussive listening pleasure!!! IMHCO, a mechanical drummer will never sound this good. If you're sufficiently impressed, go buy the studio albums. You won't regret it.

Recording live performances is allowed in some cases. Not only with jam bands that have followed the Dead and Phish in their stance on live recording. Other bands and artists are cool with it too. They realize that, by allowing shows to be recorded, they are potentially increasing their fanbase, as well as increasing the number of people at a show. I've been to shows to tape, based solely on a recommendation to go see and tape their show.

Many bands are now allowing their live shows to be posted on the archive http://www.archive.org/audio/etree.php and there's always bit torrent as well http://tracker.bargainville.org/ http://bt.easytree.org/

Taping shows for personal, non-commercial use should be ok. Selling is what should be illegal

Define "superstar" -- plenty of artists are popular because of filesharing/filetrading that they promote (or at least don't try to stop).